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Night Sky
Eye on the sky

Why I’m giving a telescope away – To the right person


At the end of this column, I’m offering a cool, brand-new equatorial reflector telescope – for free. It’s a donation by Ed and A. J. of Shady, who’d like some worthy person to get it. Hang on and I...

October 20, 2011 12:00 PM | 0 0 comments | 20 20 recommendations | email to a friend
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All the colors of fall – and then some

Our Sun is white and our sky really violet, but we see them differently


With the autumn eruption now beginning, let’s look at the bigger picture: What are the colors and what do they mean? First, make no mistake: Colors are not “out there.” Our retinas and brains crea...

October 06, 2011 12:00 PM | 0 0 comments | 21 21 recommendations | email to a friend
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Let’s go loony!

Join International Observe the Moon Night skywatchers at Vassar or Mohonk next Saturday


Ah, early autumn: my favorite time of year. If you’re a regular reader of Bob Berman’s “Night Sky” column in this publication, you’ve been reminded many times that the Hudson Valley’s season of mos...

September 29, 2011 11:34 AM | 0 0 comments | 23 23 recommendations | email to a friend
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Lost in space

Cosmic blunders put the future of U.S.-manned space programs in jeopardy


No more Space Shuttles. The rocket-plane designed to make getting into orbit so cheap and routine that they called it a shuttle, as if it were a commuter jaunt, wound up killing one out of every 68...

September 22, 2011 12:02 PM | 0 0 comments | 28 28 recommendations | email to a friend
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Photo of the flooded Wallkill River in New Paltz by Lucia O’Corozine
Water, water everywhere

Excessive rain events like Hurricane Irene are highly atypical for the moderate mid-Hudson


Some of us have rain gauges. I don’t know why everyone doesn’t own one. The plastic $2 gauges work best. You shove the pointed end into the ground, and then you know what kind of rain event happene...

September 08, 2011 01:02 PM | 0 0 comments | 29 29 recommendations | email to a friend
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The plane in the rain

Record precipitation isn’t the only unusual thing to be found in the sky of late


With the torrential rains of has-been Hurricane Irene over our region, we broke the all-time record for August rainfall. We had already been about three inches above normal for the month, even befo...

September 01, 2011 08:00 AM | 0 0 comments | 27 27 recommendations | email to a friend
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Comets and calories

In which our intrepid sky reporter does his part to reduce Earth’s growing mass


During Friday’s call-in show on the WAMC Northeast Network, three separate people expressed alarm. They’d each heard that incoming comet Elenin is either going to crash into us in 2012, or else it’...

August 18, 2011 11:00 AM | 0 0 comments | 26 26 recommendations | email to a friend
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Throwing daylight on the Sun

Researching and writing a book about our home star will teach you a thing or two


They say the best way to learn about anything is to write a book about it. Sure enough, the product of 18 months’ work, The Sun’s Heartbeat, just published by Little, Brown, taught me how amazing t...

August 04, 2011 10:02 AM | 0 0 comments | 26 26 recommendations | email to a friend
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Gimme swelter

Why dew point is a more meaningful measure than relative humidity


Unlike the summer of 1996, when our region never reached 90 degrees even once, this has been a hot one. But the old saw “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity” is as true as ever. People have flocke...

July 28, 2011 12:12 PM | 0 0 comments | 21 21 recommendations | email to a friend
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Keep your eyes on the skies…

...but what about using our other senses?


Astronomy is a visual experience. All our knowledge begins with light. Yet the universe makes us use the poorest facets of our vision. Through all telescopes, galaxies look gray and blurry. That’s ...

July 21, 2011 12:01 PM | 0 0 comments | 24 24 recommendations | email to a friend
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