The text explains the rare phenomenon, in which the azimuths of moonrise and moonset are more extreme. This situation allows us to see distant landscape features with the lunar disk beyond. Learn more about the lunar standstill and its frequency across the centuries. The changes in moonrise/moonset azimuths can give you a clue of how some Megalithic constructions have been set and how the Moon’s path across the sky would have looked like thousands of years before. Moreover, the declination of the Moon isn’t the same. It changes significantly because of the parallax.
Moon
When can we see full Moon in daylight?
At the beginning of this article, I would like to recall one of the questions, which appears from time to time on the Geography Olympiad. The query sounds like this: “If at 9 pm we have a Full Moon in London, what Moon phase can be observed in Pekin?” or something like this. The question, … Read more
Lunar occultations of the brightest stars in the 2021-2040 period
The last piece of the topic about the most interesting celestial events in the period of 2021 – 2040 covers lunar occultations of stars. I haven’t described it before, because in my point of view, they are not as spectacular as they could be. In fact, this is only my point of view, therefore this … Read more
10 the most spectacular celestial events to watch in 2021-2040
This text is somewhat the continuation of the previous one, tailored for the most unique celestial events or group of celestial events, which will occur in the 2021-2030 decade. This time you will read about 10 of the best occurrences in the sky within the next 20 years. Some of the astronomical events described in … Read more
The most unique astronomical events you shouldn’t miss in the 2021-2030 decade
Recently we have entered the new decade 2021-2030. This is a good time to take a look at what major astronomical events will occur throughout this time. I don’t mean typical celestial events, as known from a vast majority of astronomical calendars issued usually on a yearly basis. I would like to take a deep … Read more
The Astropixels.com ephemeris data extractor
I would like to introduce the new tool, whose goal is to extract the ephemeris data from the Astropixels.com service. Before I start to describe the major features of my program I would express a big thanks to Fred Espenak the author of this platform. Fred Espenak is already a retired American astrophysicist, whom we … Read more
Astrophotography with Sigma 150-600mm DG OS Contemporary and dedicated teleconverters
The summary of my amateur test with a Sigma 150-600mm DG OS Contemporary lens and two teleconverters TC-1401 and TC-2001 includes the astrophotography section. I wanted to check this lens in terms of its ability to capture celestial objects. The fundamental difference between celestial objects and terrestrial objects is, that these first are in motion, … Read more
Horizontal visibility as the main factor of long-distance observations, part 1 – weather, astronomical and optical elements
This article is sort of a continuation of issues related to light scattering in the Earth’s atmosphere as well as haze presence. These subjects are closely associated with each other, so some stuff presented here can be pretty much similar and it will be developed on the grounds of my previous articles. This 2-partial article … Read more
What is a light transition? What examples of it can we see?
Light is omnipresent in the Universe and the environment. This is electromagnetic radiation, that can be detected by the human eye. I have written more about the light and the ways of measurement in this article. Now I would like to describe a very common process, occurring both in the Universe and in Earth’s atmosphere, which … Read more
ISS transit across the Sun & Moon
The International Space Station (ISS) is a habitable artificial satellite in low Earth orbit. This is the largest human-made body in low Earth orbit. The width of ISS is 108.5 m and its length is 72.8 m. It orbits about 400 kilometers above the planet so it can often be seen with the naked eye … Read more