Greg Redfern

4 days ago | wtop.com | Greg Redfern

The Vera Rubin Observatory held a news conference Monday to unveil its first images to the public. VRO is named after the American astronomer Vera C. Rubin, who first established the presence of dark matter due to her work involving galaxies. And one word describes the observatory and its images: Wow!This ground-based observatory, located on a remote and high mountain top in Chile, will have digital photographic and data set processing capabilities that no other telescope has.

2 weeks ago | wtop.com | Greg Redfern

The start of June marked meteorological summer while astronomical summer starts for the northern hemisphere on June 20, 2025, at 10:42 p.m. EDT. Known as the summer solstice, it is the astronomical end of spring and start of summer. The last full moon of spring, the full strawberry moon, occurs on June 11, 2025, at 3:44 a.m. EDT. But this year’s full strawberry moon will mark the moon’s lowest path in the sky since 2006. This is occurring because the moon is undergoing a major lunar standstill.

3 weeks ago | wtop.com | Greg Redfern

Editor’s note: A G3 (strong) to G4 (severe) level geomagnetic storm is ongoing since early Sunday. The Space Weather Prediction Center’s most recent forecast (8:30 a.m. Eastern) is that these conditions will continue Sunday night through Monday morning. For D.C.-area Aurora chasers are recommended to scan the northern horizon visually and with a smartphone/camera starting as soon as it gets dark in the evening. Favorable conditions are forecast to last through the night.

3 weeks ago | wtop.com | Greg Redfern

“What’s up in the sky?” is a recurring feature and publishes on the first of every month. You can find it on WTOP’s The Space Place. Email Greg your space questions and he might answer them in the next edition. Welcome to WTOP’s monthly feature: “What’s up in the sky?” Each month it will feature the best the sky has to offer stargazers regarding the moon, planets and stars. Space-related events that might interest you taking place in the D.C. area will be included as well.

3 weeks ago | rappnews.com | Greg Redfern

For D.C.-area aurora chasers are recommended to scan the northern horizon visually and with a smartphone/camera starting as soon as it gets dark in the evening. Favorable conditions are forecast to last through the night. Just over a year ago, on May 10, 2024, the aurora borealis lit up the skies worldwide due to an extreme geomagnetic storm. The D.C. region had several glorious nights of the northern lights in 2024. kAm%96 =2DE 2 2FC@C2 2=6CE 7@C E96 C68:@? H2D :?