Polar Asterisms

Have you ever seen the North star, Polaris? It’s decently bright and very close to the North celestial pole.  Lining up with the rotation axis of the Earth, the North celestial pole is the point in the sky that never moves, day or night.  If you know how to find Polaris, it becomes easy to find the cardinal directions and navigate by the stars. And finding it simply requires finding the big dipper, a bright and easily recognizable object.  The same rules apply in the southern hemisphere.  But even though there is no southern star, there is another fantastic object in the South that can guide you to the...

Universe Radio on Repeat

Looking at the universe in radio waves is a fascinating sight.  For one, the radio sky is very weak; If you placed your cellphone on the Moon facing back at Earth, it would be brighter than all other radio sources in the entire sky by a factor of a million.  But as with every other part of the electromagnetic spectrum, it has scientific value in studying the sky.  Over the past decade, astronomers have been identifying several Fast Radio Bursts (FRB), short bursts of radio waves from different places in the universe that last for a few short seconds.  These are...