StarWatch: Moravian University Astronomy

JULY 2026

JULY STAR MAP | MOON PHASE CALENDAR | STARWATCH INDEX | NIGHT SKY NOTEBOOK

lunar phases

1559 JULY 5, 2026: Dark Sky Fix in Arches: There are some people who need extreme forms of "entertainment" to feel alive, but as an astronomy enthusiast, simply provide me with a dark sky to view, photograph, and contemplate my place in the universe. Dark skies are becoming increasingly difficult to find these days, but there are still accessible locales where the stars shine unimpeded by the lights of civilization, and imaginations can soar on gilded wings. That wish for a dark sky fix came true in several locations in the Southwest during June, when friends Peter Detterline, Cesare Guariniello, Principal Research Scholar at Purdue University, and I traveled to Arches National Park near Moab and the Mars Desert Research Station near Hanksville, both in Utah. Then Pete and I continued our journey to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in central Colorado to visit a mutual friend, Joe Smith, who abides in a comfortable home at an elevation of 9,200 feet. * Clear skies to mostly clear skies were abundant on virtually every evening, so needless to say that sleeping was in a deficit by the time we reached home on June 24, a day shy of my 44 wedding anniversary. * Considering the three sites, Arches proved to be the darkest even with a minimal dome of light created by the town of Moab, brightening a small section of the southeastern horizon. Thankfully, we missed the smoke from the fires in Utah that were just beginning to ignite at the end of our trip. * At Arches, we considered a number of options for sky watching, but eventually chose Panorama Point, a heavily trafficked tourist destination, to view sundown and the darkening heavens. The site remained busy up until midnight, when the scores of trucks, campers, vans, and cars that had passed through the area dissipated, leaving only four vehicles with their stalwart travelers. I originally thought that the countless passing headlights would have dampened the brilliance of the sky, but we easily got used to shutting our eyes for that brief moment of light insanity to maintain our dark adaptation. * Pete and I imaged the Arches' sky with our automated telescope systems, Pete's Dwarf 3 and my Seestar 30 Pro, while Cesare diligently scanned the heavens with binoculars. Peter chose to set up his unit among the hardy, drought-resistant Mormon tea bushes about 60 feet from my Jeep to shield it from passing car lights. I decided to use my Jeep as a light shield, attaching my Seestar to a sturdy, 3D-printed, extremely portable equatorial mount with a flat base, given to me by Terry Pundiak. The mount facing north was set on a small, foldable plastic step stool with a rubberized surface, bubble-leveled with tiny, flat sandstone pieces that Cesare found just off the sidewalk. To add to the craziness, a four-pound counterweight was placed on the mounting platform to improve stability, and a compact 5.5-amp-hour portable battery was attached to the Seestar and placed on the concrete sidewalk to keep the telescope 100 percent charged at all times. If someone had told me a year ago that this Rube Goldberg apparatus would have any chance of succeeding, I would have simply laughed, opting for a more conventional setup. However, there I was, starting about midnight on a warm parking lot, taking what I considered to be wonderful images of the North American Nebula, then later in the morning the Andromeda Galaxy. We photographed until just after 4 a.m., when Saturn, Mars, and the thin crescent moon rose, and dawn's earliest light began to encroach in the northeast, interrupting our photography and sending our weary party back to Moab's empty streets for some much-needed rest. My two Seestar Arches images can be found below. Ad Astra!

1560

JULY 12, 2026: It's HOT on Mars

During this year's mid-June visit to the Mars Desert Research Station near Hanksville, Utah, summertime came early. The Habitat only has fans for cooling, no air conditioning or swamp box like in former years. Interior temperatures reached highs from the mid-90s to 101 degrees F. Nights were tolerable with temperatures in the mid-70s. I also remembered a similar period in June of 2019, when a down jacket did not suffice after a windy sundown, a stark reminder that desert locales can experience significant seasonal variations. Incidentally, both Peter Detterline and I brought long johns and sweatshirts just in case. * However, hot and sunny with clear to mostly clear nights and occasional windy conditions were the bywords for this year's mission to refit the Elon Musk Solar Observatory and the MDRS Robotic Observatory. The work included a thorough cleaning of both observatory interiors and telescopes, installing a new camera on the 14-inch Celestron Edge, housed in the robotic facility, as well as new flooring in that building. * However, major challenges arose in getting the various software components to communicate with each other, and then with the Skynet Robotic Telescope Network operating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Skynet oversees the operation of the telescopes for the various Mars simulation teams choosing to have an astronomer trained to use the equipment. That took the bulk of the effort and was only resolved on the last evening of our stay at MDRS by the third member of our team, Cesare Guariniello, computer wizard and Principal Research Scholar at Purdue University, who had been more than sleep-deprived by the end of our stay. Cesare also kept us well-nourished with Italian cuisine throughout our stay—homemade bread, pancakes in the morning, a tomato and mozzarella salad for lunch, and my favorite meal, delicious spaghetti in multiple flavors. Un plauso a Cesare per la sua maestria culinaria. (A salute to Cesare for his culinary expertise.). Pete and I agreed that we had never eaten so well during any previous time spent at MDRS. * While the computer issues were being resolved, I was given ample time to record events, process day images, and photograph the summer sky with a small guiding refractor on an AVX equatorial mount and a mirrorless Canon R5II camera piggybacked to the scope. I know that sounds archaic from the standpoint of modern astrophotography, but I would rather guide manually than risk damaging my computer in the harsh, dusty desert environment. With the Canon sensor, a three-minute exposure at F/2.8, OSA 1600 recorded so much light that the resulting image was overexposed and useless. Most of my wide-field portraits lasted only one to two minutes, so guiding was not a major issue. * After getting all aspects of my system operational on the first evening, I found the mount and scope had been blown over by a gust of wind on the second night. It was a depressing moment because I felt that would end my astrophotography. Fortunately, there was only one bent screw on the eyepiece end of the scope, but no dirt anywhere because the telescope had fallen onto the soft "Martian" ground within its TeleGizmos cover. Lucky me! Astrophotography continued throughout the stay. Photos are available here. Ad Astra!

The Mars Desert Research Station is about seven miles west of Hanksville, Utah. The photo shows MDRS to scale against the summer Milky Way and would appear similarly on Mars. Composite photography to scale by Gary A. Becker...

1561 JULY 19, 2026: Remembering Alan Hale: I was deeply saddened upon learning about the passing of Alan Hale on June 6 after complications that arose after a recent surgical procedure. He died at home in Cloudcroft, New Mexico, at the age of 68. * Hale along with Thomas Bopp (1949-2018) of Phoenix, Arizona were the co-discoverers of Comet Hale-Bopp in 1995. The comet has the distinction of being the brightest interloper seen for the longest interval of time in recorded history. * My association with Alan began very serendipitously on a Friday afternoon in January of 1997 when I was planning a late winter field experience to Arizona and New Mexico for a cadre of Dieruff High School students who were interested in environmental studies or astronomy as possible careers. The reason for the March trip was that Hale-Bopp would be visible in the morning and evening skies of the dark Southwest. * At that moment, I was seeking to acquire camping for our group of 27 travelers in the Alamogordo, NM area. There was going to be a deep partial lunar eclipse during the morning of Sunday, March 23, that I wanted the group to witness it from White Sands National Monument (now a national park). During the eclipse, the comet would also be visible low in the NE. * After I was rejected by one camp official who wanted nothing to do with high school students, I was given a warm welcome by the owner of the White Sands KOA and booked a reservation for the night of Saturday, March 22. Knowing that Hale lived in the Sacramento Mountains outside Cloudcroft, New Mexico, near Alamogordo, I mentioned to the owner that the town must have been ecstatic that a local resident had made the discovery. "Oh, yes," came the reply. "He even dated my daughter for a while. Do you want his home telephone number?" "Yes," I said enthusiastically, thinking Hale might be willing to speak to our students at the time of the lunar eclipse. A few minutes later, his phone was ringing. * When Hale answered, I got the most unenthused "Yeah" as a greeting that I can ever remember. The man sounded exhausted on the other end, but on I went with my story about what a great opportunity it would be for my students to meet him. That also went flat. Then Hale queried whether I had even seen his comet. I answered, "Many times." "How bright is it?" he asked. There were no accurate estimates of its total brightness because Hale-Bopp was very large and diffuse. I replied that I could not give him a precise magnitude, but I knew it was considerably brighter than Mars which at that time was +0.2 magnitude. "And how do you know that?" came Hale's next response. I explained to him that using binoculars, I normally defocused stars of known magnitude in the same field of view as the comet, and then compared them to the comet's brightness. That remains a standard practice for visual comet magnitude determinations. However, I continued, since Hale-Bopp was so large, I simply took off my glasses and let my 10.5 diopters of myopia do the defocusing for me. I could only see two objects in the sky, Mars and the comet, and Hale-Bopp was certainly the brighter, perhaps as luminous as -1. Hale's response was, "I thought so." * After that he relaxed, and we had a pleasant conversation about comets, seeing the eclipse, and meeting my students. Alan agreed to view the eclipse with us but canceled several weeks before our field experience because of an invitation to view a rocket launch at White Sands Missile Range, also near Alamogordo. * However, that was not the end of our association. I brought him to the Lehigh Valley for a week in December of 1997 to support his nonprofit, Southwest Institute for Space Research, founded in 1993, now the Earthrise Institute. During the period of a week, Hale spoke to a dozen school and public groups and regaled over 200 participants at the 40th Anniversary Banquet of the Lehigh Valley Amateur Astronomical Society, Inc., held in late December of 1997. * During the spring of 1998, we were together again, along with LVAAS member and Dieruff High School student, Michael Stump, teaching a nine-day astronomy course at Oceanside Meadows Inn on the Schoodic Peninsula near Winter Harbor, Maine. Later that year, Hale invited me to become a board member of his Southwest Institute for Space Research, but I declined because I needed to commit all of my efforts to saving the Allentown School District Planetarium from being shuttered. The District ultimately failed in a half-dozen attempts, but the memories and opportunities of working and teaching with Alan Hale remained a strong, positive aspect of those turbulent years. May the skies be dark, transparent, and comets plentiful wherever you are, Alan Hale. Ad Astra!

1562 JULY 26, 2026: