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Grand Mesa Observatory in Colorado, under the direction of Terry Hancock, offers on-site and remote access to unpolluted skies.

Let morning stargazing begin! The darkness of night, when all naked eye stars and constellations are visible, prevails until about 5:35 a.m. this week and 5:50 a.m. at month’s end.

For the most part high-achieving, low-income students do not apply to highly selective colleges. Many under-reachers live outside of cities, are white, and attend smaller high schools. I have seen this phenomenon play out at Great Barrington’s Monument Mountain High School. Honors track low income students are more likely to apply to schools less selective than their grades and scores would recommend.

Avid observers, known as amateur astronomers (amateur from amour, love, lovers of) are also very social, gathering together in clubs, at star parties, around observatories and planetariums.

The haze that more or less obliterates – especially in towns and cities – what would be a clear, awe-inspiring, star-filled sky at night, is slow to be recognized for what it is: a smog of light pollution.

At nightfall the Great Square of Pegasus, harbinger of autumn, is sketched on the heavens above the eastern skyline.

The summer return of the Dog Star is known as Sirius’ heliacal rising, an astronomical term indicating star rise close to sunrise.

Every year, from about July 17 through Aug. 24, planet Earth orbits through the debris field of Comet Swift-Tuttle, the parent comet of the Perseid meteor shower.

He had unveiled a plaque affixed to the Eagle that bore the inscription, “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon, July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.”

All summer, Saturn will be visible at least until midnight, before setting in the southwest as the Sun rises in the northeast.

Whereas Altair’s magnitude remains constant going forward, Mercury dims and, of more significance, sets a minute or two earlier every night this week.

Year End Studies—or YES, for short—is one local district’s answer to the end-of-year stagnation, a perennial phenomenon that often leaves students and teachers inching toward the 180th day of school with little, if any, enthusiasm for the work at hand.

It will be about an hour after sunset, when the sky darkens, that unaided eyes will first observe the great planet above the southeastern skyline.

While venturing out at nightfall to enjoy the asterisms, be sure to appreciate the Crow careening in the south and the full figure of the Lion striding high in the southwest.

This is the fourth in our video series: You'll have lots of goals, but the most important one is to keep the conversation going!

In Greek mythology, the Crow, Apollo’s sacred bird, got into trouble that resulted in the god catapulting the offender and his companions into the sky.