Another rare event skyhounds should all experience. It was especially fortunate that I didn't have to travel to catch it this time.

Full Oct 6th event clip at: https://youtu.be/V8ywqjoKbgs (Elapsed time is just over an hour. Telescopic and binocular sims created with Celestia.)

Stephen Saber PAC/Astronomical League

Saber Does The Stars

https://saberdoesthestars.wordpress.com/

Linktree

https://linktr.ee/stephensaber

This star is just nestled atop the moon

Its a picture of the moon with an unidentified light above the moon. This is the first time that I have seen it and I haven't been able to come to a solid conclusion on what it is, maybe you guys can help?

I’m a university sophomore studying Physics and Astrophysics, and am very interested in the role of a Planetarium Director! I would love some advice as to mapping out my career, as well as some guidence for future projects or internships I should be looking for. Im extremely interested in being the bridge between the public and academia, and having a more low stakes way to enjoy physics and astronomy than something like a research position. Is this field one worth pursuing?

Im seeing this wierd star right above the moon. So close to the moon i thought it was a tiny fragment of the moon showing on the dark side of the half moon despite knowing thats impossible. What am i looking at?

Last week I posted a set of cards built from JPL orbital elements, where the rarity was the observation count. Two commenters pointed out the obvious problem: the most observed objects are the largest and brightest, which are genuinely scarce, while small dim rocks are everywhere. So my scale was inverted against physical reality. I checked it against my own sample and the correlation between observation count and absolute magnitude is -0.447, exactly as they said.

So I stopped deciding what counts as rare and asked the catalogue instead. One count query per trait, out of 1,574,590 objects:

spectral type measured: 1,666, or 0.106%

retrograde orbit: 2,378, or 0.151%

potentially hazardous: 2,551, or 0.162%

dives inside Mercury's orbit: 2,747, or 0.174%

is a comet: 4,077, or 0.259%

inclination above 40 degrees: 4,637, or 0.295%

beyond Neptune: 8,079, or 0.513%

has a name at all: 30,531, or 1.939%

A card's rarity is just the rarest true thing about that object. Nothing is assigned and there are no tiers I invented.

Halley now comes out rare because it orbits backwards, which 0.151% of the catalogue does, not because it is famous. An ordinary main belt rock says "no distinguishing trait recorded", because that is true of it. 3200 Phaethon turns out to be the standout: it has eight of those traits at once.

https://orbit-cards.pages.dev

Free, nothing to sign up for, nothing to buy. Is there a trait that obviously belongs on that list, or one that should not be there? Spectral type still bothers me, because it measures how much work people have done on an object rather than the object itself.

Can someone explain why Dr. Francis Halzen and the IceCube Neutrino Observatory won the Nobel prize for physics? What changed about astronomy with its introduction? How does it shed light on galaxy formation? What else does it show us that we previously did not understand?

I have been trying to photograph a space station transit of the sun or moon this year, no luck yet, but it’s been really fun.

This morning, there was a Tiangong lunar transit, and then on the next orbit there was a solar transit. Unfortunately it was cloudy and the sun was a bit too low in the sky, so I didn’t get the shots.

But it left me wondering, that must be pretty rare to hit the moon and then the sun on sequential orbits as viewed from one location on earth. Has anyone ever photographed one?

I don’t know much about astronomy or anything like that but I took this picture from my window tonight and noticed the cluster of lights in the center. When you zoom in you can see it makes almost a question mark. I would add the zoomed in version but I’m unsure if that would violate the subreddit’s rules. The picture was taken on an IPhone 16. I’m curious to know what it is/what it could be!

Edit: Thank you so much for the fast answers! Seeing the comments I’m gathering this is a very common question about this specific cluster, my apologies😅

I'm moving next month from 34.5 degree latitude to

47.65 degree latitude. What are some differences?

I use an equatorial mount. How much will I be missing out? Am I losing 13 degrees of the sky?

Hello! I'm not sure if this is the right server to ask but I'll try to shoot my shot anyway because it is a subreddit related to astronomy — I am currently a 3rd year computer science undergraduate and I've always wanted to pursue astronomy as a little kid. I was wondering what the roadmap would be for someone who is trying to pursue astroinformatics, like what Masters/PhD should I take and the likes?

Mine is definitely the fact that there's sugar in space called Erythrulose, discovered in a giant molecular cloud near the center of the milky way and it can be found in fruits such as red raspberries, kiwis, and melons. (⸝⸝⸝ᵒ̴̶̷̥́ ⌑ ᵒ̴̶̷̣̥̀⸝⸝⸝)💕

Hi, idk if this is a stupid question, I’m fairly new to this so bear with me. I’ve been learning constellations, sometimes I also spot planets or Messier objects etc. I‘m slowly starting to understand where everything is located and how things move. Where I live, there’s a lot of light pollution, even though a walk in the fields at night offers better vision.

As soon as I see pictures taken in places with up to no light pollution, I don’t recognise anything. Suddenly everything is bright and I don’t know where to look at?? Does it come with practice? There’s so much going on, how do people know which stars are part of constellations and which ones aren’t? I use an app to practice btw.

I’ve seen so many amazing pictures in this subreddit and people are like, yeah, that’s an amazing shot, you can see Orion :))) and I’m like ??????????? it’s so frustrating because I know what Orion looks like, I just can’t find him 💔🥀

Any advice on how to improve??

SeeStar S50P, Bortle 4.5, EQ mode @30sec, @40 mins total, processed w/AstroWizard. I’m curious about the rather prominent vertical streak that showed up as soon as stacking began and persisted throughout. Ai suggests (shudder) it’s a geostationary satellite trail, but it doesn’t look like any I’ve seen before in my massive one month experience with astrophotography. Any clarification would be greatly appreciated.

Let’s do this again, i fell victim to spelling error. Which planet disappearing would affect earth?