Resources for stargazing in Pennsylvania.
Is tonight’s weather any good for viewing the night sky?
Visit cleardarksky.com to find other locations.
Check out a light pollution map to find dark skies near you here.
New Projects
Hubble 35th Anniversary Challenge
NASA, in conjunction with The Astronomical League, is coordinating the Hubble Night Sky Observing Challenge throughout 2025 to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the space telescope. More about the challenge can be found here.
I, of course, am late to the party. The challenge began in January of 2025, and I was unaware of it. However, I didn’t observe in January due to cloudy and extremely cold conditions. I did however break out the telescope in February and took images of the January objects which I will publish here in blog posts.
The “telescope” I will be using for this is the Seestar S50 smart telescope. This qualifies for the challenge as an imaging device. I will also be using this blog as my “outreach” for the challenge, as well as attending public star parties. This is a learning process for me, especially the post processing so expect some blurry and noisy images. I also have a small refractor which I hope to use more once the weather improves.