An Unusual Lineup of the Planets This June
The Celestial Sphere By Matthew Johnson The beginning of summer occurs on June 21 at 5:14 a.m. on the day celebrated as the summer solstice. The summer solstice occurs when the Northern Hemisphere of the earth becomes tilted toward the sun to its greatest extent, the North Pole glowing with 24 hours of daylight. On […]
Craters and Rays Mark the Battered Surface of the Moon
The Celestial Sphere By Matthew Johnson Looking up at the moon, one will notice that it has a battered surface, created both by lava flows and quakes and by colliding asteroids and comets. Impacts from asteroids and comets shattered the young moon’s crust, forming deep circular craters surrounded by high-rising crater rims with long ejected […]
March Viewing
The Celestial Sphere by Matthew Johnson With temperatures hovering between zero and 15 degrees for most of our Norfolk winter days and nights, the warmer weather that springtime brings will be a welcome event. The transition from winter to spring begins on March 20 at 11:33 a.m. with the long-awaited vernal equinox. On the equinox […]
The Sky’s No Limit in 2022
The Celestial Sphere by Matthew Johnson With space missions planned for launch by Russia, Japan, South Korea, the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA, and the James Webb Space Telescope functioning properly after achieving its distant orbit away from the thermal interference of the earth, moon and sun, 2022 may prove to be a spectacular […]
Comet Leonard to Appear in the Norfolk Skies
The Celestial Sphere By Matthew Johnson We begin the month of December and continue into January with long nights, reaching a maximum on the evening of the winter solstice on Dec. 21—with 14 hours and 56 minutes of darkness and only 9 hours and 4 minutes of daylight. After the 21st, each day grows a […]
Over Half a Century of Spaceflight
The Celestial Sphere by Matthew Johnson Sixty years ago, in 1961, the Russian Yuri Gagarin and the American Alan Shepard rocketed into space, beginning a competition between their two nations and an adventure in space that continues today. Gagarin was born in 1934 in the Russian village of Klushino, a peasant village that suffered severely […]
New Space Telescope Made in America
The Celestial Sphere by Matthew Johnson The James Webb Space Telescope is scheduled to launch in December. The concept for the telescope was conceived in 1995, and construction started a decade later. Many of the components have been built using multiple technologies, with the work done by hundreds of engineering corporations in America, Canada and […]
Looking Into Our Universe’s Past
The Celestial Sphere by Matthew Johnson The James Webb Space Telescope, weighing more than seven tons, is scheduled to be launched in late September or October by a European Ariane 5 rocket from the European spaceport located near Kourou, French Guiana, very close to the earth’s equator. The most important aspect in the telescope’s name […]
A Great Year for the Perseids
The Celestial Sphere By Matthew Johnson The upcoming Perseid meteor shower may prove to be one of the best meteor showers of the year. At its peak on the night of Aug. 11, it may display as many as 60 to 100 meteors per hour. Comets leave behind particles as they travel through our solar […]
Micrometeorites in Norfolk
Celestial Sphere by Matthew Johnson A meteor is a small body of matter from outer space that becomes incandescent and appears as a streak of light due to friction when it enters the Earth’s atmosphere. A meteorite is a meteor that survives the Earth’s atmosphere and strikes the ground. Most are of rocky matter, however, […]
