Sands and Stars

"She's gone ... I better learn how to face it ... "  Hall & Oates, 1973. It's no secret. I'd been seeing her for months, pretty much nightly right after sunset. Some of you may have watched me standing  affixed, staring in her direction, hypnotized by her stunning appearance. This relationship started late last summer and carried throughout the winter. I'd spent many evenings mesmerized by her beauty. She's so bright, eye-catching -- and frankly, she's hot. The blazing goddess on her celestial throne after sunset. Alas, the goddess has left me! She’s no longer showing up for our meetings at dusk. But now, I know just where to find her. Venus had been blazing nightly in the western sky at dusk since about August. The planet is so brilliant, sometimes showing a cream color, so it's nearly impossible to miss. Venus, in fact, normally is the brightest natural object in our sky after the Sun and Moon. The second planet in our solar system, Venus is ...

Oh, spring has sprung! And so has my first installment to my  Observational Astronomy section! Ah, the first day of spring! Or true spring, as I call it. Oh, yes, in some locations, it's still cold and nasty, but as I once wrote in a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article, the arrival of spring just “dealt Old Man Winter a well-deserved death blow!” That instant came this year when the vernal equinox, that heralds spring, occurred at 5:01 a.m. EDT today (March 20, 2025). At least Old Man Winter is pretty much a shadow of his former self. Here are examples from past years. The long and short(er) of it: Two-season shadows across the street from my house. Why is today so important if the weather's not so great? It's spring, right? Because the seasons are astronomical events, not weather events. To me, there is no such thing as meteorological spring, except to allow weather people to have a fixed date to attach data. Without the astronomical tilt of our planet, there would be no seaso...