When the aurora borealis is going off, clouds are almost always the spoiler. But is it possible to see the aurora through the clouds?
Obviously you can see the northern lights through breaks in the clouds. When skies are mostly cloudy, every hole becomes an astronomer’s friend. Holes allow us brief glimpses of the heavens—planets, deep sky objects—for fleeting intervals as a cloud deck drifts overhead.
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Sometimes I like to sit back and marvel at the remarkable progress our hobby has seen over the past half century or so. Technology has revolutionized everything, but perhaps nothing has changed more profoundly than astrophotography.
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The LROC QuickMap is like a web-based virtual telescope that puts thousands of terabytes of lunar imagery at your fingertips. Its powerful interface makes browsing lunar images deceptively easy—and addicting.
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Twice during every 29.5 year orbital period of Saturn around the sun, Earth and Saturn briefly occupy the same ecliptic plane. During this brief period two rare planetary phenomena can be observed: Saturn’s rings will appear edge on, and Titan’s shadow may be seen transiting the disk of the planet.
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