Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  October 20: Lovely spiral NGC 7331 The Orionid meteor shower peaks this morning — the perfect time to watch for shooting stars, as Earth turns into the meteoroid stream of dusty debris responsible for the show.  The best time to do someContinue reading "The Sky Today on Wednesday, October 21: Catch early-morning Orionids"

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Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  October 19: Feast your eyes on the Southern Fish Located in northern Pegasus, NGC 7331 is a bright galaxy that is the largest in a group of five galaxies collectively known as the Deer Lick Group. It’s best viewed in early evening,Continue reading "The Sky Today on Tuesday, October 20: Lovely spiral NGC 7331"

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Sometime around the year 1837, a strange object passed an invisible cosmic mile marker: 1,000 astronomical units from the Sun. (One astronomical unit, or AU, is the average Earth-Sun distance.) For more than a century, it continued undetected toward our star. Finally, on Oct. 19, 2017, humans noticed the visitor. That night, a faint, thinContinue reading "Oct. 19, 2017: The discovery of ‘Oumuamua"

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