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Exciting things in the night sky… or so I’m told

December 27, 2019 @ 17:29 By: gordon Category: Astronomy

So, there are interesting things going on in the night sky right now. Betelgeuse, the shoulder of Orion the Hunter, is the dimmest it has been. This is exciting for astronomers because it could be the prelude to Betelgeuse going supernova. Or not. (Or at least not yet.) It is, apparently, visibly dimmer than it was just a few weeks ago, which is a pretty big deal, astronomically-speaking.

And there’s also a couple of comets out there, which would be fun to try to image some evening. Last year, it took me a couple of attempts, but I was able to image Comet 46P.

Comet 46P (c) Gordon P. Dewis, 2018.
Comet 46P (c) Gordon P. Dewis, 2018.

And there’s always pretty things like M42 in the sword on Orion’s belt, which is not visible to people in the northern hemisphere in the summer.

M42 (c) Gordon P. Dewis, 2019.

And I have two new cameras I’m itching to try out.

Instead we have clouds. Lots and lots of clouds. I’ve looked at the cloud cover forecast for the rest of 2019 and it sucks. With the possible exception of the evening of December 29th, there probably won’t be any nights worth dragging my telescope gear out to the observatory.

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