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Your Guide to the Universe
Current Issue: July/August 2022
The Quest to Find the First Stars |
A Quarter-Century of High Rollers |
Merlin
Merlin clears up a Moon muddle, explains how we see images of the Milky Way Galaxy from the outside (spoiler alert: they’re not real), and reveals the fate of black holes.
Pose your own questions for future issues.
Sky Highlights
Scorpius and Sagittarius highlight summer nights, scooting low across the southern sky. Bright orange Antares marks the scorpion’s hook-shaped body, with teapot-shaped Sagittarius to its left. Under dark skies, the Milky Way rises from the teapot’s spout like steam. The Summer Triangle is in good view in the east by mid-evening in July and early evening in August.
Miscellany
Headache-free cosmology, and a late-year Mars chronology.
AstroNews
* NASA extends the lifetimes of several missions of exploration and receives priorities for some new ones.
* A new recipe for mid-size black holes, and a black that’s getting away.
* A ‘little’ big blast from a binary star system.
* Three new missions prepare for departure.
In the Next Issue
Astronomers, students, teachers, and even the general public are controlling telescopes from far away, helping to track asteroids, find exoplanets, and make many other contributions to science and outreach, and we’ll tell you all about them. We’ll also recount the story of a Russian army officer and member of a long line of European astronomers who became the first director of McDonald Observatory.
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