Tag Archives: TV Corvi

Skyward: February 2019

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March 23 In 1963, while living as a patient at the Jewish National Home for Asthmatic Children in Denver, I strolled outside on the evening of March 23 to observe the evening sky. The sky was brilliant and clear that evening so long ago as I set up my small first telescope, Echo, and proceeded to sketch a portion of the Milky Way as it shone in the sky over Denver. It was a silly and immature project of no particular value whatsoever, but it was important to me, and it resulted in a small chart of the winter Milky Way. Over many years, the particular date of March 23 has brought many treasured memories to my personal life and my skywatching life. Late in 1988 I began studying the behavior of TV Corvi, a certain variable star that had been discovered in 1931 by Clyde Tombaugh, the same person who discovered Pluto. On the evening of March 23, 1990, … Continue reading →

Skyward: February 2018

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A predawn total eclipse of the Moon In the last two hours of darkness before dawn on the morning of January 31, 2018, the Moon waded into the shadow of the Earth. The result was a total eclipse of the Moon. Despite a forecast of high clouds during the night, the sky remained clear. There is a profound difference between a total eclipse of the Sun and a total eclipse of the Moon. As some of us witnessed last August, a solar eclipse begins quietly and innocuously, and as the Moon crosses over the Sun, the sky begins to darken, first gradually, and later precipitously and suddenly until, for a magic minute or two, the Sun disappears and is replaced by a jeweled crown. The eclipse of the Moon began gradually around 4:00 am, as the Earth’s partial shadow or penumbra began to work its way across the face of the Moon.   Instead of a sudden start, the beginning is so … Continue reading →