Stargazing
Stargazing and skywatching from Cosmic Herald — what to see in the night sky, meteor showers, planets, auroras, and observing guides.
-
Stargazing
A June 26 CME Is Inbound: NOAA Posts a Storm Watch and the Aurora Could Reach the Northern U.S.
A coronal mass ejection that left the Sun on June 26 is forecast to reach Earth around June 30, and NOAA has issued a geomagnetic storm watch — with aurora possibly visible as far south as Seattle and Minneapolis.
-
Stargazing
This Week's Sky: Mars Slides Into the Pleiades as the Strawberry Moon Rises
A dated late-June 2026 observing guide: Mars passes the Pleiades June 27-29 in the pre-dawn east, the Full Strawberry Moon rises June 29-30 near Sagittarius' Teapot, Mercury starts retrograde, and the Summer Triangle frames the season's best nebulae.
-
Stargazing
Your July 2026 Night Sky: A Daytime-Bright Venus, the Buck Moon, and a Fireball-Rich Meteor Finale
July 2026 hands naked-eye observers a brilliant magnitude -4 Venus near Regulus, a razor-thin 0.11-degree Mars-Uranus pairing before dawn on July 4, the Full Buck Moon on July 29, and twin meteor showers — including fireball-prone Alpha Capricornids — closing the month.
-
Stargazing
A Surprise G1 Geomagnetic Storm Lit Up June 25 as a New Sunspot Woke Up
A G1 geomagnetic storm crossed the threshold at 4:43 UTC on June 25, 2026, driven by coronal-hole solar wind and a possible glancing CME, as new sunspot region AR4478 fired most of the day's 16 C-class flares.
-
Stargazing
GalileoSharp Puts Real Astrophotography Sharpening in Your Pocket
GalileoSharp is a free, fully offline Android app that sharpens Moon, planetary, and deep-sky photos using the same algorithms desktop astrophotographers rely on — Richardson-Lucy deconvolution, wavelets, unsharp mask and more — with live preview and batch processing.
-
Stargazing
Your First Telescope: What to Buy, What to Skip, and What to Look at First
Aperture matters more than magnification, Dobsonians beat department-store refractors, and the Moon is the best first target. A no-nonsense buying guide for your first serious look at the night sky.
-
Stargazing
Solstice Week 2026: A Daytime Venus Occultation, the Longest Day, and a Strawberry Moon
Late June 2026 packs three marquee events into one stretch of sky: the summer solstice, a rare daytime occultation of Venus by the Moon on June 17, and the June 29 Strawberry Moon — plus a western planet lineup and the rising Milky Way.
-
Stargazing
Mercury Reaches Peak Evening Visibility on June 15: Your Guide to the 2026 Viewing Window
Mercury hits its greatest elongation from the Sun on June 15, 2026, shining at magnitude 0.5 and appearing 25° from the solar disk—the best evening viewing window of the year paired with Venus and Jupiter.
-
Stargazing
Galaxy Season: A Guide to Observing the Local Group This Autumn
Every autumn the great galaxies of the Local Group rise into prime viewing position. Here's how to find M31, M33, and their satellites — and what you're actually looking at when you do.
-
Stargazing
Globular clusters are the oldest things you can see with a backyard telescope
Globular clusters are gravitationally bound balls of hundreds of thousands of stars, some over 12 billion years old. M13 in Hercules is the showpiece of the northern sky, but Omega Centauri dwarfs it — and both are accessible with modest equipment.
-
Stargazing
Planetary nebulae: the most photogenic objects in the sky that no one talks about
Planetary nebulae are the glowing shells left when Sun-like stars die. The Ring, Dumbbell, and Blinking Planetary are all reachable with small telescopes. Understanding what you're looking at makes them far more interesting than any photograph suggests.
-
Stargazing
America's Astronomy Clubs: A State-by-State Guide
From Stellafane in Vermont to the Houston Astronomical Society, 203 amateur astronomy clubs span all 50 U.S. states — and what they offer goes far beyond monthly meetings under the stars.
