Use the Moon to learn to stargaze

The Sky Tonight is our sky show for learning by doing.

As the Moon is likely in the sky, either a crescent or nearly a quarter full, we take advantage of its presence to aid our star-hopping as we stargaze.

It is an ideal type of night to demonstrate how you can get started as a stargazer at home.

We also bring you up to speed with newsy stuff, like the recent NASA update on the Artemis programme. Two astronaut missions to the Moon have been delayed and are now scheduled for 2025 and 2026 (instead of 2024 and 2025, respectively).

The first mission involves a crewed lunar orbit while the later one will return astronauts to the surface, near the lunar south pole.

Technical issues with spacecraft and spacesuits, for example, mean that contractors need more time to do their work to meet NASA’s requirements.

Find more information from NASA about Artemis here:

https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/

On brighter moonlit nights we can also spend more time on introducing you to ways to understand the view on any evening. There is a reference to information in “Outback Astronomy’s Stargazing Field Guide” – a small book you can keep in your glovebox as you travel the outback and encounter our magnificent dark skies.

This guide is available to purchase online when you book your sky show with us.

Image Credit:  Outback Astronomy’s view of the five-day-old waxing crescent Moon, July 2022.