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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 Broadcast, Joe shares current monthly issues of Big Apple Sky Calendar, the guide to sky viewing that used to conclude the 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.”

Mars at opposition. This term means it's “opposite” the Sun in the sky. Therefore it rises at sunset, is directly south (but VERY high in the sky, nearly overhead) at midnight, and sets at sunrise. Also, it’s as close to the earth as it ever gets—just 48 million miles. Therefore it's very bright—about as bright as Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. Shining with its distinctive baleful red color, Mars is a beautiful sight on all December nights. And on good nights, it will be a great target for telescopic viewing throughout the month.

The first-quarter Moon passes just south of Jupiter tonight.

On this date in 1942, the first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was achieved by the “Manhattan Project” scientists—in an underground squash court at the University of Chicago. Working under the direction of Enrico Fermi, the team found that by bombarding uranium with neutrons, the uranium would fission into lighter elements, together with more neutrons, which would immediately find more uranium to fission—each time with energy release (because mass is lost, and E=mc^2). This was the basis of the atomic bomb. They basically knew this would happen, but needed to find a way to control the reaction—otherwise you couldn't build a bomb without blowing yourself up. After the tense but successful experiment, the team cabled to the super-secret agency, “The Italian Navigator has discovered the New World.” The cryptic reply came: “How were the natives?”, eliciting the answer “very friendly.”

On these four nights, the International Space Station (ISS) makes overpasses which will be easily visible to NYC observers. In each case, the ISS will first be visible low in the northwest, then brighten as it quickly rises higher, then finally disappear about four minutes later, in the eastern half of the sky. You can tell it's not a plane because (a) it doesn't blink and (b) it disappears—when it enters the Earth's shadow. These particular overpasses are the brightest of the month, because they occur pretty close to overhead. It's a great return for five minutes of viewing!

You can study the times yourself from the website 

All magnitude -3.5 (about as bright as Venus), and all starting low in the northwest.

Death of Omar Khayyam in 1148. Perhaps the last of the great Persian astronomers… and my favorite.

Full Moon 11:09 pm EST. The Full Moon is just north of Mars tonight. Since Mars is essentially opposite the Sun (see December 1 entry), and since the Full Moon is by definition opposite the Sun, Mars and the Moon must be very close! A dramatic sight up there, northwest of Orion.

Earliest Sunset for NYC (4:28 pm EST). This might be surprising—why isn't it the December solstice, which is always the shortest day (nine hours and 15 minutes)? It's because the exact time of “solar noon” (when the Sun is directly south) wanders by as much as 15 minutes during the year, due to the Sun's inconstant motion (owing to the slight eccentricity in the Earth's orbit). Also, it's only “earliest” by a gnat's eyelash. NYC sunset only varies by 10 minutes for EVERY December day.


On these nights, Mars passes close to the famous bright stars in Gemini: Castor and Pollux.

This morning (basically midnight to dawn on the 14th) is the peak night for the 

 meteor shower. The Geminids are the strongest and most reliable of the annual showers, but are basically confined to the post-midnight hours since Gemini is below the horizon during the evening. I recommend 2 am to dawn—plus a good sleeping bag and a vantage point well away from city and local lights—and at least one companion. Meteor-watching can be a joyful shared activity, but the long intervals of meteor-less cold really need conversation to spice things up! Also, LIE DOWN; human necks are not naturally designed for this activity.

And after the meteors, drink a toast to Tycho Brahe, born on this day in Denmark in 1546. Tycho's exacting measurements of planetary motions, all done before the invention of telescopes, were the key ingredient to Kepler’s subsequent discovery of the laws of planetary motion.

Last quarter Moon, rising around midnight.

During these ten days in 1995, the Hubble Telescope stared at one spot in space, a direction possessing no special properties—just a random direction, away from any planetary objects, known galaxies, bright stars, etc. The idea was to take the deepest possible image—to sample what the Universe is like at enormous distances, with minimum clutter by nearby stuff.  This historic image, the "Hubble Deep Field," contained ~3000 galaxies, most of which proved to be at enormous distances. It greatly expanded our knowledge of the early Universe, before most of the stars we know about today ever formed.

Isaac Newton was born on this day in 1642. Isaac's father died a few months earlier, and Isaac's mother soon remarried, leaving the young Isaac to the care of his grandparents. René Descartes, the other intellectual giant of the 17th century, had a similar childhood.

Christmas. The exact timing of Jesus's birth is highly uncertain. Neither the day, month, or year is known. Early Christians may have favored a day near the winter solstice, because that signifies the seasonal rebirth of the Sun's gifts (warmth and light). And some Christians celebrate January 6; that seems to be the origin of the “12 days of Christmas.” Some astronomers have tried to find an astronomical event (planetary conjunction, nova, comet, etc.) around that time, and link it to the story of the Magi “who saw a star in the east.” But none of those events occur in the year zero (most are in the range 2-6 CE). Also, it’s hard to understand how an astronomical sighting can indicate a particular 

 on Earth—as stated in the Matthew gospel, the only source for the story. Everything in the sky 

Johannes Kepler was born on this day in 1571. Kepler's derivation of the precise orbit of planets (ellipses) was the first to establish that the planets moved in a precise geometric pattern. Arthur Koestler wrote a great popular book about Kepler—

It was part of an equally great popular book about the Scientific Revolution—

First quarter Moon—close to Jupiter in tonight's evening sky.

December Big Apple Sky

Big Apple Sky Calendar: December 2022

First quarter moon. In tonight's sky, the bright yellow object just NW of the Moon is Saturn.

End of Daylight Savings Time. At 2 am EDT, wake up and set your clocks back to 1 am…except in Hawaii and Arizona, which do not participate in Daylight Savings Time.

Birthday of Marie Curie (nee Sklodowska) in Warsaw in 1867. The only person ever to win Nobel Prizes in different fields (1903 Physics, 1911 Chemistry).

In this morning's sky, all USA observers will see a 

A few minutes after the partial phase begins (4:10 am), you might see a little nick taken out of the Moon's side. Over the next hour, that nick—the Earth's shadow—grows to cover the entire Moon. The total eclipse begins at 5:17 and ends at 6:42 am. During totality, you'll probably notice a reddish tinge to the remaining faint moonlight. This is sometimes called the Blood Moon (ooooooo……), and it comes from sunlight that has reached the Moon after getting refracted around the edge of the Earth. Thus lunar residents, looking back at Earth, would see a faint reddish circle around the darkened Earth's periphery. Some total lunar eclipses are bloodier than others (any guesses why?; no one knows, so your guesses are safe). I've seen some that are deep red, some just a faint gray, and one where the Moon disappeared entirely (to the eye) during the total phase.

By the way, pay no attention to any times you see listed for the “penumbral eclipse.” A penumbral eclipse is when the Moon is still fully illuminated, but by a slightly dimmer light.  You won't notice the difference; it's like reading by a 60-watt rather than a 100-watt bulb.

But here's a big problem. For New Yorkers, all of this occurs in the early morning hours, when the Moon appears quite low in the west. City lights might bother you a little, but BUILDINGS are an absolute scene-wrecker. Pardon me for being obvious, but you need to see the Moon…and therefore need a clear view to the west, as near to the horizon as you can manage. (Actually, the Brooklyn waterfront should be pretty good.)

Half the Earth—the side facing the Moon—will see the eclipse. That's true of all lunar eclipses. But far less than half of 

 will be able to see it, because the center-line of this eclipse (where mid-eclipse occurs at local midnight) coincides almost exactly with the International Date Line, where humans don't live. That's the mid-Pacific, if you haven't checked a map lately. Apologies to Fiji, New Zealand, etc. For Earth's most populated regions—Asia, Africa, Europe—the eclipse occurs in daylight hours, when the full Moon is always below the horizon (since it's 180 degrees opposite the Sun).

In the USA, November 8 is also Election Day. No matter what their political preferences, columnists and talk-show hosts will be hard-pressed to avoid finding significance in the Blood Moon. Emmys or Pulitzers should go immediately to anyone who resists the temptation.

On these two nights, the nearly full Moon passes near Mars. The red planet is rapidly brightening as it approaches its dramatic December 8 opposition (closest approach to Earth).  Look at it up there, slightly above the constellation Orion.

, an event for the public organized by the Amateur Astronomers Association of New York. Talks, telescopes, public observing, and even a raffle. Everything is free. 5-8 pm, East Meadow of Central Park, enter from 5th Avenue at the 99th Street gate.  WEATHER PERMITTING.

Tonight is the peak night of the Leonid meteor shower, occurring when the Earth collides with dust debris strewn around the orbit of Comet Tempel-Tuttle. The comet itself is nothing special, and is now out there beyond Jupiter. It's an ordinary comet, but at least once spewed a huge hunk of dirt and ice, which continues to orbit the Sun with the parent comet's 33-year period. So astronomers keep an eye out each November 16-17, when we collide “with the orbit.” That apparently happened on November 13, 1833, when Boston observers reported meteors falling “like snowflakes in an average snowstorm.” Other great displays were seen in 1868 and 1966. Nothing special is expected this year, but comets and their debris are famously fickle.

Roz Chast once described comets as like NYC landlords: they live very far away, with a heart made of ice and stone.

During this interval, there will be particularly good overpasses of NYC by the International Space Station (ISS). Each one lasts 3-6 minutes, and they're separated by 95 minutes (the orbital period of the spacecraft). Now you might think that there'd be ~16 overpasses every day. Technically, there are. But to be "good," it has to occur at night (to be visible), and pretty close to sunset or sunrise (because, at only ~100 miles altitude, it'll be in the Earth's shadow within a few hours of every midnight).

Once you see it, follow it ‘til it disappears (in just a few minutes). It's fascinating to see how it just fades away in the middle of the sky. It's entering the (unseen) Earth's shadow!

Each one of these overpasses is about as bright as Venus:

November 17: starts 17:59:36, travels SSW to SE, lasts 3 minutes.

November 19: starts 17:58:43, travels SW to NE, lasts 4 minutes.

November 20: starts 17:10:03  travels SW to E, lasts 6 minutes, nearly

Remember, the spacecraft travels 18,000 mph. Typically, when you first see it, it's approximately over Kansas. Five minutes later, when it disappears, it's somewhere south of Greenland.

Sun enters the astrological sign Sagittarius.

New Moon at 5:56 pm EST. Also, the Sun enters the constellation Scorpius. Whoa! Didn't stay long in Sagittarius, did it? And shouldn't it be traversing these constellations in the OPPOSITE order? Truth be told, astronomers—mostly the Brits—paid only rough attention to astrological boundaries when they divvied up the sky in the 19th century. They had a difficult task: make the star pattern roughly resemble a scorpion, roughly keep the boundaries of old star maps, and assign each zodiacal constellation 1/12th of the Sun's path. On top of all this, they were well aware that the Earth's 26,000 year axial precession would make their assignments gradually obsolete. So, in the ~2000 years since the traditional zodiacal were set, things have moved almost an entire constellation. So about 5/6 of all people are in “the wrong sign.”

But it could have been worse. Those Brits could have put Queen Victoria in the sky.

Thanksgiving. No astronomical significance whatsoever. But if you adopt the (highly recommended) practice of giving thanks at dinner, here's one for you: give thanks that t

he Moon and the Sun have the same angular diameter

. And if you're pretty savvy, tell your dinner companions why it's worth celebrating. (They'll think it's weird, but tell them anyway.)  Plus, if you're VERY savvy about such matters, tell them why it will not always be so. We live at a special time in history.

The medium-bright object near the Moon on these evenings, shining with a steady yellow-ish light is Saturn. Great for telescopic viewing.

First quarter Moon. Sun enters Ophiuchus (the Serpent Bearer). Not on the traditional zodiacal list, but the Sun visits every November 30. ♦

November Big Apple Sky

Big Apple Sky Calendar: November 2022

Sunset 6:38 pm EDT (Notice that daylight is now less than 12 hours. We've passed the equinox.)

 (postponed to a future date due to rain): East Meadow, 99th Street and Central Park East. A stargazing event for the public, held by the New York City Amateur Astronomy Association (AAA) each fall. There will be several speakers, a raffle, and telescopes for evening stargazing. The 5-day Moon and Jupiter will be beautifully placed for observing, with Saturn available late in the evening. See 

for more details about this and other AAA events.

First quarter Moon. During October 2-5, the Moon is ideal for observing because the Sun is just rising over the most mountainous and cratered regions of the Moon. This creates long shadows and therefore a very contrasted appearance. From 240,000 miles away, we can certainly use the help. On the other hand, astronomers tend to shun observing the Full Moon, which lacks shadows and just looks like a big old white ball.

On this day in 1957, the Soviet Union startled the world by announcing that it had launched Sputnik, the first artificial Earth satellite. It was just a little metal sphere, but it carried a radio transmitter—so the world could verify its existence and track its orbit. Along with the USA lunar landing and return in 1969, it will always be remembered as humanity's first venture into space.

Sputnik 1 was quickly followed by the much larger Sputnik 2, which carried a dog (Laika), who actually managed to survive for a few orbits. Laika became an international folk hero; her story (or stories—there are many versions) is well told in the National Air and Space Museum and in Smithsonian Magazine. She belongs with Balto and Hachiko in the pantheon of dog heroics.

These were days that never existed in most of Europe in 1582. The inaccuracies of the Julian calendar had caused an error of nine days to accumulate between calendar dates and the dates of seasonal phenomena (solstices, equinoxes). This was worrisome to the Catholic Church because it meant that the timing of Easter was slipping away from its historic connection with Passover and springtime. Thus was born the Gregorian calendar, which improved the leap year convention and restored calendar agreement by 

The Gregorian calendar isn't perfect either. Its error accumulates to about one day per millennium—good enough for practically everyone, except some enterprising souls determined in odd ways to make the world a better place. Recent proposals have impressive names like Equitable Calendar, International Fixed Calendar, Edward Perpetual Calendar, etc. Perhaps most likely is that we'll go to a completely metric system, with millidays, centidays, etc. This was attributed in the 1976 

to “an anonymous joker in Norfolk”… but one kiloday it may not be a joke.

Birthday of Niels Bohr in 1885. Bohr became famous for the “Bohr model” of the atom, which depicted each atom as a “miniature solar system” with a massive central nucleus of positive charge (consisting of protons), surrounded by negatively-charged electrons in very distant orbits. Although it was mostly superseded by the invention of quantum mechanics in the 1920s, the Bohr model remains the way that practically all astronomers think about atoms. And for most of the century, Bohr's Institute in Copenhagen became a mandatory stop for nearly all European astrophysicists.

Full Moon at 4:54 pm ED. Last month's Full Moon was the one nearest the equinox, which qualified it as the Harvest Moon. So this month's Full Moon is the “Hunter's Moon”—time for gathering your hunting dogs to go search for foxes and other small foraging animals. The idea is that you've finished the harvest, and the leavings in the field are tempting bait for small animals. They're usually protected by the cover of night, but that's where the Full Moon comes in.

Tonight and the next couple of nights, look low in the east for the nearly full Moon rising shortly after sunset. Does that big ol' orange ball look like a pumpkin?

Last quarter Moon. Rising around midnight, and high in the sky at dawn.

Early this morning (on the 22nd), the Earth “collides” with the orbit of Halley's Comet. The comet itself is long gone (totally invisible, somewhere in the rough vicinity of Neptune),  but the comet's dust debris, shed by solar heating during thousands of previous visits to the inner solar system, still continues to orbit the Sun. So there's a continuous trail of dust along all the places the comet has recently been. Twice a year, in October and May, the Earth's orbit carries it through that trail, and a meteor shower occurs as the dust particles burn up in our atmosphere. Away from city lights tonight, a naked-eye observer might see around 20 meteors per hour.

They're called “Orionid” meteors because they'll appear in the rough (VERY rough) vicinity of Orion. More correctly, they'll appear to 

 from Orion—but appear all over the sky. Despite a mediocre ranking among the annual showers, the Orionids are my favorite for observing. Why? Because Orion, grandest of the constellations, hasn't been properly seen since March… and the October mornings still permit viewing without frozen fingers. Also a chance to welcome back all those winter constellations. Rising around 4 am, a thin crescent Moon adds (for a change!) to the beauty this year.

October Big Apple Sky

Big Apple Sky Calendar: October 2022

Today the equation of time is zero. Nowadays, probably 90% of astronomy PhDs would have no idea what this even means. But for most of the last thousand years, it would have been elementary to all astronomers, clockmakers, ship captains, navigators, and many ordinary citizens. Why? 

Because the only really practical and accurate clock in the natural world

. Shadows, and more precisely sundials, were the way you could measure time.

Here's how it goes (in the Northern Hemisphere). Roughly speaking, the Sun is directly south, and casts a shadow directly north, at local noon time every day. But there are two reasons why this is not exactly true. 

, the Sun moves in an elliptical orbit—fastest when it's nearest to the Earth (in January), slowest when it's most distant (in July). 

, it moves in a plane different from the Earth's equator (by 23 degrees). Sundial-makers usually capture these two small corrections (up to 20 minutes) by etching a little wavy curve called the equation of time. But on this day, the corrections are zero, and the Sun is precisely south at noon!

Well, technically, not quite. More precisely, LOCAL noon. But in 1883, the USA legislated “Standard Time,” which meant that everybody within ~500 miles east-west of a standard longitude (which for us is roughly Philadelphia) must be on that time. NYC is slightly east of Philly, so the Sun is directly south (“crosses our meridian,” to use the lingo) slightly sooner—at 11:56 am EST. Check out your shadow today—that's when it points exactly north. (But remember, there's another purely legislated correction—Daylight Savings Time.)

This all sounds complicated, doesn't it? But shadows are truly the natural way to measure time, and Einstein has taught us—if we didn't already appreciate it—that time is pretty much an equal partner to space in describing our world. We wouldn't fare well in life if we didn't know how to measure space.

Many things labeled as sundials are simply vertical or inclined sticks with a horizontal scale for the shadow. Many are sold as small works of art for your garden. These lack all precision; but after looking today at the selections online, they're #1 on my birthday wish list.

I'd love to hear about large sundials still up and unmolested in the NYC area.

On these two nights, the first-quarter Moon passes just north of the bright red star Antares. Can you tell it's “red”? It's about as red as stars can be; but unless you're super-sensitive to color, it'll look basically white to you (compare its color to the Moon's). The same goes for incandescent light bulbs (the old-fashioned kind). They're actually “redder” than any star, since their temperatures are lower. But they emit plenty of light all over the ROYGBIV spectrum. So our eyes, which have not evolved to be quantitative measures of practically anything, see almost every natural emission of light as 

(as that saber-toothed tiger was leaping at you, how important was it that you correctly sensed its color?).

First-quarter Moon. Rising at noon, directly south at sunset, and setting at midnight (as all first-quarter Moons do).

In this morning's sky, Mars passes just north of Aldebaran. The bright sort-of-red planet passes the bright sort-of-red star.

Full Moon at 10:58 am EDT. On this night and tomorrow night, watch the Moon slowly approach the bright planet Jupiter (brightest star-like object in the sky) from the west. Once every few years, the Moon will actually pass in front of Jupiter—and never the opposite! That's how ancient astronomers deduced that the Moon is actually 

On this date in 1882, the brightest comet in the last 500 years reached perihelion (its closest approach to the Sun). It was 50 times brighter than the Full Moon, and could easily be seen in the daytime sky, standing next to the Sun. Unlike practically all comets, it never received a proper name, other than “The Great Comet of 1882.” Like most sun-grazing comets, it broke into pieces after it passed perihelion. No matter how spectacular, all comets are objects of very small mass; and if they get too close to the Sun, tidal forces from the Sun's immense gravity can rip them apart.

Later studies of its orbit suggested that this was just a fragment of a yet-bigger comet in the year 1106… and the famous comet of 1965 (Ikeya-Seki, my first comet) may have been another fragment of the 1882 comet.

On this day in 1956, the US Army launched a “Jupiter C” rocket which reached a then-record 700 miles altitude, and could have easily reached orbital velocity if the fourth stage had ignited. However, the War Department (NASA didn't exist yet) had ordered that the fourth stage be a dummy, lest the Army actually launch a satellite—and thereby embarrass the Navy, to whom the satellite mission had been assigned. Over the next year, the Navy's Project Vanguard met with a series of failures… and finally came the October 1957 Russian Sputnik launch, which embarrassed (and scared) practically everyone in the US government. A few days later, the Army's Werner von Braun got the call (“Hey, do you guys happen to have another Jupiter rocket lying around?”) which led to the January 1958 launch of Explorer I, the USA's first satellite.

9:04 p.m. EDT. The fall equinox (or the September equinox, just to be fair to our southern-hemisphere colleagues). Eggs will stand on end today.

Just kidding. It'll be a normal day for eggs. But on this date, day and night are 12 hours long, all over the Earth except at the precise North and South Poles (where the Sun is now exactly on the horizon, rolling 360 degrees around as the “day” proceeds). I saw this once, by total accident, when I was flying over the North Pole on equinox day. Sure enough, the Sun never fully rose or set, but just rolled along the horizon during the ~8 hours “over the Pole.” Of course, neither I nor my parents had any idea 

Rosh Hashanah, first day of the year 5783 AM (“Anno Mundi”) in the Hebrew calendar. This is meant to be the number of years since the world was formed (similar but not identical to the famous chronology of Archbishop Ussher, who reckoned day one to be 4004 BC in the Christian calendar). The Irish archbishop even calculated the day (October 23).

Jupiter at opposition. This means exactly opposite the Sun; so it rises at sunset, crosses the meridian (i.e., appears exactly south) at midnight, and sets at sunrise. Therefore it's in the sky all night long, and at magnitude -3 (“minus 3”), it's easily the brightest star-like thing in the night sky. This is the season to observe Jupiter, especially with binoculars (revealing the Jovian moons) or telescope (revealing the horizontal bands, and maybe the Great Red Spot).

On these nights, look low in the west for the young crescent Moon—and “the old Moon in the new Moon's arms,” also known as 

This occurs because the unlit 90% of the Moon's surface sees a 90%-lit bright Earth… and reflects the light back towards us. A great sight in binoculars—and pretty good naked-eye, too.

In tonight's early evening sky, look for the young crescent Moon passing just north of Antares.

September Big Apple Sky

Big Apple Sky Calendar: September 2022

First quarter Moon. This morning, or 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!” My personal favorite season-defining sight in the sky.

Tonight the first-quarter Moon is close to Antares (“Ant-Ares”= “rival of Mars”). Antares is a red supergiant star, just about the reddest and largest (in diameter) star in the night sky. Superimposed on the Solar System, it would swallow up Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. The Sun’s gas-giant planets, way out there in the solar system, would survive, but would be so hot that all their hydrogen and helium would boil away. But who knows, 

 not oxygen and nitrogen. Come to think of it, they might turn into Earth-like planets…

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 

 of its axis, like a wobbling top. The axis now points towards Ursa Minor—in fact, almost exactly towards the 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 tonight, 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 in roughly 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 it only encounters that stream when its orbit intersects the stream's orbit, in early August.

The densest part of that stream is only crossed every August 12, and many of the dust particles fall to Earth with a streak of light—a 