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Fall has finally come. So far, it is still beastly hot, but a few leaves turn. We are expecting a full harvest moon, and again, I have pumpkins trying to bloom. Very challenging times, I'm afraid.
Here are some glimpses of fall and Halloween current and past to enjoy. Happy apple bobbing and leaf raking.
Once again, it is the Summer Solstice, Blessed Be! People gathered at Stone Henge to welcome it, and other celebrations took place all over the world.
Skyward for June 2025
David H. Levy
A Tail of Three Comets!
In
just the last few months, we have enjoyed a parade of no fewer than three
comets. Last fall there was Comet
Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, discovered by the Purple Mountain Observatory in east China,
near Nanjing. The comet sported a very long tail and it was visible without a
telescope for several weeks. It was the highlight of an observing session
a local high school shared with its students.
As the students sat and gazed at the sky, they could easily spot the
tail stretching proudly across the western heavens.
Just
a few weeks later, in December a second ATLAS comet began to brighten
significantly. I tried hard to see it as it was apparently visible for less
than an hour during evening twilight, but couldn’t find it.
My
close friend Steve Edberg, however, did.
He and his family had to evacuate their home in La Canada during to the
fires burning at the time. On the
evening of 14 January, while strolling along San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge,
he spotted Comet Atlas low in the west.
He is one of the very few observers in the northern hemisphere to see
it. He was so excited about it that he
called me over the telephone. Our conversation was the first in more than two
years but it resumed a friendship that has lasted for decades. I was proud of him that night over his
sighting, and still am.
Over
the next few days, until Comet ATLAS sank below the southern horizon, I
attempted unsuccessfully to spot the comet.
But then, on 25 January, I was outside looking at some cirrus
clouds. Behind them, in the southern portion
of the sky, there ss something else—strange, misshapen. It might have been the tail of Comet ATLAS. I recorded it as a possible sighting.
When Sky
& Telescope’s June issue appeared with its pictures of the great “ghost
comet,” meaning that the bhead had disintegrated, the actual tail looked
identical to what I saw on photographs taken just two days earlier than my
sighting. I changed my record from
“possible” to “probable.” Comet ATLAS is
the 236th comet I have seen since Comet Ikeya-Seki in 1965.
There
was yet a third comet. Comet Swan
(C/2025 F2) was discovered in March 2025.
The discoverers used the Solar and Hemispheric Observatory spacecraft’s
SWAN (Solar Wind Anisotropies) instrument.
The SWAN instrument has discovered over five thousand comets. I saw this lovely comet on the morning of 10
April 2025, andit is the 237th comet I have seen. This SWAN instrument aboard SOHO, and SOHO
itself, by the way, has discovered more than five thousand comets.
Three wonderful comets over just a few months is
unusual, interesting, and fun: But all
three have departed. As Hopkins wrote in 1864,
But then her
tether calls her; she falls off,
And as she dwindles sheds her smock of gold…
And then goes out into the cavernous dark.
So I go out; my little sweet is done:
I have drawn heat from this contagious sun:
To not ungentle death now forth I run.”
Tomorrow at around four am the winter solstice arrives. Blessed be. I recommend Rosamund Pilcher's novel, Winter Solstice.
Skyward for November 2024
David H. Levy
Palomar Mountain Observatory.
Last month I drove all the way from my Vail, Arizona home to Palomar Mountain Observatory. As most of this column’s readers know, I have visited this place many dozens of times from my first encounter in March of 1974, and regularly from the late summer of 1989 to the late spring of 1996. I have always loved this magical place. Each visit, as I would drive in, I would pass the expansive dome of the mighty 200-inch Hale Telescope. As I drove by I felt the telescope waving at me. It and I are the same age. The telescope was officially inaugurated on June 3, 1948, just thirteen days after my birth on May 22 that year. We are both 76. (I was probably too young to give a speech, with a poetic quotation, at that event.)
The purpose of this visit was to watch the September 16th partial eclipse of the Moon with my close friend Jean Mueller. I have known Jean for decades. Jean operated telescopes at Palomar, mostly the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Schmidt telescope which opened just before the giant 200-inch. While there, she exposed many photographic plates for the second POSS (Palomar Observatory Sky Survey) survey. Mueller would scan the plates for stars that appeared in and around galaxies and mark a galaxy. She would then compare that galaxy with a picture from earlier to see if the star had newly appeared. If it had, she would measure the position of the star, and then an astronomer would confirm her discovery on the 200-inch. This meticulous work enabled Mueller to discover 107 supernovae in addition to fifteen comets and thirteen now-numbered asteroids. Jean Mueller is a prime, absolutely first-rate astronomer and observer of the night sky, and she is admired and highly respected around the world.
It has been thirty years since I last visited Palomar, and I was overdue for a return. As I cruised by the colossal dome housing the 200-inch Hale telescope, at one time the largest in the world; this was not my reason for visiting Palomar all those years ago. Instead, I drove on some meters on to see the 18-inch Schmidt camera telescope. This beautiful instrument was the first and is the oldest telescope on this mountain, and its record of discovery is dazzling. It helped Fritz Zwicky discovered 121 exploding stars, or supernovae, in distant galaxies. It has a historic record of discovery of asteroids and comets, by far the most important of which is Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on March 23, 1993. In July of 1994 the pieces of this shattered comet slammed into Jupiter. Colliding at a velocity of 37 miles per second, each fragment left a very bright flash and a large brownish cloud that persisted for months.
During my March visit I learned how the 18-inch was moved to the observatory museum where it has become a lovely exhibit. Whwen I saw my old friend again; I almost cried. I then visited the outside of the dome that was our home for so long, and while there the treasured memories of working with Gene and Carolyn flooded back like an incoming ocean tide. This time I could not hold back the tears of joy.
With the possible exception of our discovery of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, this was by far the most emotive visit I’ve ever had to Palomar. For the first time in my long association, the overwhelming history of the place really struck me. I felt I was standing next to Russell Porter as he drew a sketch of the telescope, even before its mirror was installed, pointed towards the north. He even flashed me his legendary grin. Porter became famous long before he helped design the 200-inch. In the November 1925 issue of Scientific American, he published its lead article “The Heavens Declare the Glory of God.” That piece of writing also marked the opening of Stellafane, the telescope makers conference still held every year atop Breezy Hill in Vermont. Last year Stellafane celebrated 100 years of its legendary pink clubhouse.
On that incredible evening of September 17, we watched a wonderful partial lunar eclipse. Only 7% of the Moon was covered in the Earth’s central or umbral shadow, but the outer penumbra shadow dimmed much of the rest of the Moon. And just five weeks later, mighty Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS painted its rosy picture across the evening sky. May these haunting events add to our joy in the night sky that shall be remembered forever.
