Hello ...
Here's your Cosmic Pursuits newsletter for May 2025!
1. May brings all five bright planets to the sky, and even Neptune makes an appearance in the morning before sunrise. The reliable Eta Aquarid meteor shower gets underway for much of the month and peaks during the first week of May. And the Milky Way rises before dawn at the end of ever shorter nights for northern stargazers, while longer and cooler nights enable longer contemplation of the dazzling deep
southern skies. Here's what to see in the Night Sky This Month...
2. The constellation Hercules wheels into view in the May
sky, and while the constellation has many deep-sky sights for a small telescope, one of its more interesting sights is an unassuming 6th-magnitude star that may be a sibling of our Sun, a star that formed in the same primordial cloud nearly 5 billion years ago. Learn more about our sun's lost sibling...
3. The Northeast Astronomy Forum (NEAF) took place last month in Suffern, NY. This annual expo - which every serious stargazer should try to attend at least once - features the latest and greatest in tools
and telescopes for amateur astronomy. Diana Hannikainen, the new editor-in-chief of Sky & Telescope magazine, takes you through the most interesting new products at the show this year.
4. The BBC's 'Unstoppable' podcast reviews the fascinating and unexpected discovery made in 1967 by Jocelyn Bell, a young graduate student at the University of Cambridge. The discovery earned a Nobel Prize, the first awarded for work in astronomy - but Bell was not among the winners. It's well worth a listen.
5. Finally, enjoy this short video of a spacewalk outside the International Space Station
that shows the breathtaking beauty of the Earth.
And the astronomy quote of the month - a little motivation for all of us to get out and see the night sky:
“The observer who sits in quiet contemplation of what they can see at the
eyepiece will be in direct contact with cosmic things."
- Robert Burnham, Jr.
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Wishing you clear skies!
Brian Ventrudo
Publisher
CosmicPursuits.com
