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Due to weather conditions, Pioneer Works is suspending open gallery hours for Friday, September 29. MHYSA's performance has been rescheduled for Sunday, October 1, with all tickets being transferred to the new date.

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CEO Announcement

Just Announced: Pioneer Works Names Mara Manus Chief Executive Officer

The Board of Directors of Pioneer Works is pleased to announce that Mara Manus, former Executive Director for New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), has been appointed as the organization’s new Chief Executive Officer. 

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We're pleased to announce the first major renovation of Pioneer Works! To accommodate the first phase of our construction, we're temporarily relocating to 133 Imlay Street opening in Spring 2022.

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In the 1990s, astronomer Joe Patterson self-published a zine he called "Big Apple Astronomy." In this column, Patterson brings back his beloved daily guide to sky-viewing with a new calendar every month.

In the 1990s, astronomy professor Joe Patterson wrote and illustrated a seasonal newsletter, in the style of an old-fashioned paper zine, of astronomical highlights visible from New York City. His affable style mixed wit and history with astronomy for a completely charming, largely undiscovered cult classic: Big Apple Astronomy. For 

, Joe shares current issues of Big Apple Sky Calendar, the guide to sky viewing that used to conclude his seasonal newsletter. Steal a few moments of reprieve from the city’s mayhem to take in these sights. As Oscar Wilde said, “we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

July

On this and all later Tuesdays in July, the Amateur Astronomers Association will have night/twilight observing for the public from 7:00 to 9:30 from the High Line. Meet at the crossroads of Little West 12th and Washington Street. Watch the weather; rain or heavy clouds will likely mean a cancellation. Also, check the AAA and HighLine websites (both .org).

Earth at aphelion. Today the Earth is 1.017 AU (95 million miles) from the Sun—as distant as it ever gets. Yet it's the hottest time of year for us borealites. The reason is that the Sun's local heating of the Earth depends not on distance, but on the 

 of the noontime sun (now nearly overhead for us) and on the length of sunlight (now 15 hours).

Mercury at “easternmost elongation (26 degrees).” There’s no compelling reason to add “seeing Mercury” to your bucket list—except, perhaps, that it’s really difficult! Allegedly, even 

 never actually saw it. He was a “theoretician,” as we call them today, and must have relied upon the observations of others—especially 10–13 Arab astronomers, who did a very good job with it (and had much better skies). So, to one-up Copernicus, find a spot with an absolutely clear western horizon and look for three stars very low down, about 1 hour after sunset. The brightest and leftmost is Mercury; the other two are the Gemini twins Castor and Pollux.

Fortunately for us northerners, Mercury whips around very fast, and better opportunities will exist when the Sun is well to the south (mid-December of 2025 is good, when a nearby crescent Moon will point the way).

July 4 is also the traditional date for the appearance of the most famous supernova in history. What we know for sure is that in the early summer of the year 1054, a very bright “guest star” (the Chinese word) appeared suddenly, and was closely observed by Far Eastern astronomers (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean). It was described as “visible in daylight” for 23 days, and in the night sky for over a year. It must have been amazing to stargazers everywhere—but strangely enough, no definite record exists for its visibility in Europe or the Americas.

Today, the remnant of that explosion is still visible as the Crab Nebula, a small elliptical cloud of gas and dust. Virginia Trimble, an American astronomer famous for her quick wit and insightful astrophysics, found that the nebula is rapidly expanding, such that it must have originated from a single point around the year 1100 (and for once, she wasn't kidding). This proved that the 

 originated in the explosion of a tiny, faint star at its center, or perhaps the ancestor of that star. A few years later, it was found that this star is a 

—a solid star, made entirely of neutrons and spinning at a rate of 30 times a second.

This star is 6500 light years away—and if you do the math, you'll find that in the summer of 1054, this object was about as luminous as an entire galaxy. Holy mackerel! This was basically the beginning of modern stellar astrophysics. Two years later, the first black hole was discovered—and we were off and running.

But what's this “July 4” business? That's mainly a U.S. obsession. The ancient Chinese were exacting at dates, but not that exacting! (Or at least our 

 of their dates is not that precise.) We do know three things that underlie the modern myth: (1) On the morning of July 5, 1054, as viewed from the western U.S., the waning crescent Moon was just northwest of the Crab Nebula's position; (2) several cave paintings and carvings from that region and era seem to show a round object (the supernova?) next to a crescent-shaped object of equal size (the Moon?); and (3) the Pueblo Indians of that era commonly made early-morning observations of the sky, perhaps to mark the seasons.

Despite this ultra-thin reed of evidence, few U.S. astronomy teachers can resist the retelling of the patriotic supernova story. I certainly can't.

Birthday of John Archibald Wheeler in 1911. Wheeler was probably the most important American physicist of the twentieth century. (OK, Richard Feynman fans; you'll have your say later.) Wheeler became a teacher and mentor to nearly all American scientists working on general relativity, or Einstein's theory of gravity. He invented the terms “

” And he came up with a single, short sentence that perfectly expresses the basic idea of Einstein's theory, and which 

 Newton's theory: “Space-time tells matter how to move, and matter tells space-time how to curve.”

From 1–4 pm, we’ll be hosting solar observing for the public at Pioneer Works and the same will be possible at Pier I (at the same time!)—the fishing pier west of Riverside Park, at 70th Street.

” in 1945—as it was called in Lansing Lamont’s famous book, to signify the first full test of a plutonium-implosion bomb. The test was designed by Kenneth Bainbridge (Oppenheimer for the overall leadership, Bainbridge for the test) who, after the blast, was reported to have said to Oppenheimer “we’re all bastards now.” There had been much debate among the scientists about the ethics of the bomb. Bainbridge ran a seminar for Harvard freshmen in the 1960s; I applied… and always wondered if I would have gotten in, had I shown my knowledge of the “actual” Trinity, acquired during prep school at a Benedictine monastery. (Nah, I decided that wouldn’t help… and didn’t get in.)

A second plutonium bomb was later dropped on Nagasaki. Planners were sure that the alternative “enriched uranium” (U-238) design would work—so they earmarked that, without ever testing it, for the first and most famous use of atomic weapons in warfare (Hiroshima, August 6).

In my opinion, the best of many books on these matters is Richard Rhodes’ 

On this famous day in 1969, two astronauts landed and walked on the Moon. The story has been told a thousand times. Less well known is exactly what happened right after the quite dangerous landing. The original schedule called for the astronauts to catch some sleep before attempting the famous walk. But after all the excitement of the trip and peril of the landing, sleep was the last thing on their minds. Even though they had landed on… ahem... the Sea of Tranquility.

So NASA changed the plan and said “Okay, do the walk.” Then it was most-watched live event in television history: “One small step for a man...” Until, of course, the 2006 FIFA World Cup final between Italy and France, ending in a shoot-out. Now 

Interesting side note: Of the six American flags planted by the six Apollo missions to the Moon, all are still standing (photographed by Lunar Orbiters) 

 the first, which was immediately and ingloriously blown down by the exhaust from the take-off rockets. (The take-off rockets were quickly re-designed to correct this egregious violation of flag etiquette.)

Look west for “the old Moon in the New Moon’s arms” on these evenings. Mars can’t resist paying a close visit on the evening of the 28th. Any of these nights in late July are great for 11 pm–2 am viewing of the brightest regions of the Milky Way—the Scorpius-Sagittarius star cloud, and the Summer Triangle (Vega-Deneb-Altair).

This is the oldest and most famous annual gathering of amateur astronomers in the nation. Beautiful night skies if clouds stay away. Events are spread over four days, so google “Stellafane” and take your pick. It's in the tiny town of Springfield, Vermont… which can present challenges in housing and dining. The deeply committed (there are plenty) camp out on Stellafane's hill.

August

First quarter Moon—directly south at sunset. Really good time for telescopic viewing of the Moon’s most cratered regions.

The Moon passes very close to the bright red-supergiant star Antares tonight.

On any clear morning in early August, look for Orion rising low in the east about an hour before dawn. “Ghost of the shimmering summer dawn / King of the winter nights!” It’s my personal favorite season-defining sight in the sky.

Jupiter and Venus, king and queen of planets, stage a little dance low in the eastern morning sky this week. From August 7–10, Venus is just above Jupiter. But Venus, brighter and moving faster, passes Jupiter on August 11. The waning crescent Moon, moving still faster of course, passes the pair on August 19.

Today, the Sun enters the constellation Leo. But it entered the 

 sign of Leo 20 days ago, on July 22. What's up with that? Part of this shift arises from minor tinkering of constellation boundaries by humans… but most of it is courtesy of the Earth's wobbling axis. In addition to its better-known motions (spin, orbit), the Earth has a third and very subtle motion—the slow precession of its axis, like a wobbling top. The axis now points towards Ursa Minor—in fact, almost exactly towards the medium-bright star Polaris, which we therefore call The North Star. But the axis slowly wobbles around the sky, and this causes the 

. Our calendar, however, pays attention to seasons, not constellations. So most people who think they're “Leos” are actually “Cancers.” I don't know what the implications are… but it doesn't sound good.

All night, the Earth's journey takes it through a diffuse stream of cosmic dust particles which were once shed by Comet Tempel-Tuttle (named after that comet's discoverers). When a comet sheds matter (dust particles), it doesn't really go anywhere—it just wanders off ever so slightly, continuing roughly in the same orbit for thousands of years. Those little dust particles are like the odor particles emitted by humans and detected by bloodhounds. Except that the Earth, unlike bloodhounds, must follow the law of gravity—and only encounters that stream when its orbit intersects the stream's orbit, in early August.

The Earth encounters the dense part of that stream every August 12, and many of the dust particles fall to Earth with a streak of light—a 

. The meteors appear all over the sky… but if you trace back the streaks of light, they all appear to be coming from the constellation Perseus. Hence the name: the Perseid meteor shower. It’s the most reliable of the annual showers, and many stargazers plan summer outings to watch the Perseids. Unfortunately for us in 2025, it nearly coincides with the Full Moon, whose brilliant light will wash out all but the brightest of meteors.

On this day in 1868, one of the most historically important solar eclipses was observed in Thailand. During totality, several teams of astronomers—mainly British—took spectra and photographs of the Sun’s lower and upper atmosphere (the “corona”). They found a yellow emission line which occurred at a wavelength never seen before on Earth—so they named it “helium,” after the Greek name for the Sun. That was the beginning of helium’s glorious history. Today we recognize it as comprising approximately 25% of the Universe. Essentially all the Earth’s atmospheric helium has escaped—because helium is so light that Earth’s feeble gravity can’t hang onto it. Mendeleev’s periodic table, for example, has no element of atomic number two. Nor does helium combine with any other element—it’s a “noble gas,” to use the lingo. Our only source of helium is through the radioactive decay of heavy elements mined from Earth’s interior (e.g., uranium). That’s why we have 

(for balloons, cryogenic experiments, etc.).

On these mornings, the waning crescent Moon charges past the Venus–Jupiter conjunction in the eastern sky.

This morning will feature a very good apparition of the International Space Station (ISS) for NYC observers. It will suddenly appear nearly overhead (emerging from the Earth’s unseen shadow) at exactly 4:26 am and move rapidly eastward, disappearing (re-entering the unseen shadow) low in the east two minutes later. It’ll be very bright—brighter than any star. Worth an effort to see, especially with the Venus-Jupiter conjunction costarring near the eastern horizon.

. The moon's shadow swept from the Oregon coast, across the Rockies and the Midwest, before finally heading out to sea near Charleston, South Carolina. Nearly all observers enjoyed beautiful weather and got to witness this once-in-a-lifetime spectacle.

If you spend your life rooted to one spot on Earth, you'll have to wait about 400 years between total solar eclipses—and that's assuming no cloudy days! But NYC is in the midst of a streak: four between 1925 and 2020. For the 1925 event (totality occurred above 96th Street in Manhattan), 

 scolded the Columbia University astronomers in headlines for getting the time wrong by four seconds. Maybe the 

was miffed because totality didn’t include 

If you’re inclined to think about future total solars, here are the ones to consider:

2026 August 12: Greenland, Iceland, Spain, or some ship in the North Atlantic

2027 August 2*: Spain, most of North Africa, Saudi Arabia