Tag: Celestial News

Don’t be alarmed if you are sunbathing on a South Pacific isle this coming July 11 when suddenly the Sun disappears and the stars pop out at midday.  It’s just a total eclipse of the Sun.  Many of the islands in the South Pacific will experience about five minutes of the rare darkness produced as…

By Jimmy Westlake, professor of physical science, Alpine Campus As the Earth and Moon perform their perpetual orbital dance, sometimes their shadows are thrown onto each other creating an event called an eclipse.  Our word eclipse is derived from the Greek word ekleipsis, which means “to abandon.” 

By Jimmy Westlake, professor of physical science, Alpine Campus If you are an Ophiuchan, please raise your hand.  Hmmm… I’m not seeing any hands out there.  Perhaps you are an Ophiuchan and you don’t know it.  Please allow me to explain.

By Jimmy Westlake, professor of physical science, Alpine Campus Warm June evenings are perfect for stargazing and the upcoming month offers plenty of celestial events to keep you busy looking up.  Whether you are camping out under the stars or viewing from your back porch, you won’t want to miss these events.

By Jimmy Westlake, professor of physical science, Alpine Campus I love star lore.  The legends and stories attached to the stars carry us back centuries or even millennia and tell us not only about the stars, but also about the stargazers of old.

By Jimmy Westlake, professor of physical science, Alpine Campus In the course of one year, the Sun makes a 360º circuit of the sky, passing through twelve different constellations that form a band around the sky called the zodiac.  Zodiac is a word that literally means “the circle of animals.”  It contains the familiar constellations…

By Jimmy Westlake, professor of physical science, Alpine Campus Winging his way across our springtime sky is a delightful little constellation named Corvus, the Crow.  The four main stars of Corvus form an unmistakable kite-shaped pattern located one-third of the way up in our southern sky around 10:00 PM in mid-May.  Its distinctive pattern makes…

By Jimmy Westlake, professor of physical science, Alpine Campus Centaurs figured heavily in the mythology of the ancient Greeks, so much so that two of them are immortalized in the stars as our constellations of Sagittarius the Archer and Centaurus the Centaur.  The legend of these half man, half horse beasts might have originated when…

By Jimmy Westlake, professor of physical science, Alpine Campus There are lots of reasons to visit Hawaii, our 50th state, but “seeing the world’s largest telescopes” is probably not on most folks’ list of things to do.  To an astronomy enthusiast like me, though, the Big Island of Hawaii is astronomy paradise.

By Jimmy Westlake, professor of physical science, Alpine Campus “When you see the Southern Cross for the first time/You understand now why you came this way… ” I think these lyrics from the hit song by Crosby, Stills, and Nash sum up many people’s feelings about seeing the constellation of the Southern Cross for the…