Moon Bishop

Moon Bishop: A Quarky Story

Unlike some of our other work and stories, such as navigating the acquisition of land for astronomical use, this story is going to be more lighthearted and a good story. It might lead to a…


Famous Comets Comet Meteor

Comet Classification Types Explained

Classifying comets can be done in several different methods, including orbital period, orbital body, and orbital shape. The reason for such variation is that how comets orbit, where they orbit, and the orbiting body makes…


Land Regulations

Astronomy Land Zoning And Building Regulations

During the process of purchasing and building land for astronomical purposes, one has to consider that the purchased property has to meet the basic land regulations to allow for the building of the desired structures….


Nebula

Nebula: An Introduction

A nebula is an interstellar cloud of dust, hydrogen, helium and other ionized gases. The term nebula originally described any diffuse astronomical object, and did include galaxies beyond the Milky Way. This did at one point in time include the Andromeda Galaxy, which…



Spring Triangle

Spring Triangle

The Spring Triangle is a popularly known pattern or group of stars that can be seen in the night sky in the northern celestial hemisphere to help astronomers find other objects in the sky. The defining vertices of this imaginary triangle can be found…


Star Clusters

Star Clusters: An Introduction

Star clusters are very large groups of stars. There are two types of star clusters can be distinguished by astronomers. The first type of star cluster is the globular cluster, which are tight groups of hundreds to millions…


Hertzsprung–Russell Diagram

Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram

The  Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram is a scatter plot of stars showing the relationship between the stars’ absolute magnitudes, otherwise known as their luminosity, versus their stellar classifications, otherwise known as their effective temperatures. A simple definition of what the diagram represents is…


James Webb Space Telescope Famous Space Missions

James Webb Telescope

Planned to be the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope’s primary scientific mission has four key goals: to search for light from the first stars and galaxies that formed in the Universe after the Big Bang, to study the formation…


COVID-19 Member at Astronomy Club Event Stargazing COVID19 Amateur Astronomy Coronavirus Oregon State Parks Idaho State Parks Star Party Volunteering Covid-19

What Is Stargazing?

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, stargazing can be defined as “the act or practice of a stargazer.”[1] Digging a bit deeper, Merriam-Webster defines a stargazer as “one who gazes at the stars, such as an astrologer or…