View the March 2023 Nature Friend Magazine One of the closest planetary conjunctions of the year will occur on the first evening of March. On this evening, the two brightest planets, Jupiter and...
Conjunctions
In Our Skies, January 2023: Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF)
View the January Nature Friend Magazine Comet Neowise 2020. Photo © Cheryl Shank. If you look over a list of the year’s best meteor showers, the Quadrantid meteor shower will likely catch your...
In Our Skies, July 2022: Planets
Moon. Photo © Shaphan Shank. This month, nearly all the bright planets are strung across the early morning sky. Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are all easy to find, thanks to their brilliance....
In Our Skies, March 2022: Planetary Conjunctions
Where I live in Virginia, March brings the signs of a new season. The days are slowly warming, and the evenings, which were quiet all winter, are now enlivened by the calls of spring peepers and...
In Our Skies, July 2021, Venus and Mars Conjunction
Throughout July, Venus and Mars will be visible low in the west just after sunset. The planets will start and end the month a little distance from each other, but on the evening of July 12, they...
In Our Skies, March 2021, Lyrid Meteor Shower
As long as the sky is clear, there’s rarely a bad time to be out under the stars. A telescope or even a binocular can reveal scores of galaxies, nebulas, and star clusters, if you know just where to...
The Great Conjunction: Saturn and Jupiter
Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. Photo © Morris Yoder. Jupiter and Saturn appear to pass each other in the sky about once every twenty years. When this happens, astronomers call it a great...
