variable star – Astronomy Now

Will you see the Moon hide naked-eye star Eta (η) Geminorum on 15 November?

13 November 2019 Ade Ashford

Lucky observers with clear skies who also happen to live on a line drawn between Porthcawl on the Welsh coast through just south of Birmingham and on to the Lincolnshire Wolds can witness a grazing lunar occultation of naked-eye star Eta (η) Geminorum by the rising 18-day-old waning gibbous Moon just before 10pm GMT on 15 November 2019.

Remains of ancient globular clusters found at the heart of the Milky Way

12 October 2016 Astronomy Now

Ancient variable stars, of a type known as RR Lyrae, have been discovered in the centre of the Milky Way for the first time. RR Lyrae stars typically reside in ancient stellar populations over 10 billion years old, such as globular clusters. These stars may even be the remains of the most massive and oldest surviving star cluster of the entire Milky Way.

BBC Stargazing Live helped amateur astronomers find supernovae

3 April 2015 Astronomy Now

More than 40,000 amateur astronomers working on a supernova hunt run by the Zooniverse team based at the University of Oxford, in collaboration with BBC Stargazing Live, found five supernovae and catalogued two million unidentified heavenly bodies found by the SkyMapper telescope in Australia.