AccuWeather astronomy expert Brian Lada offers tips and tools for amateurs to get started, plus what they can search for above the clouds.
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 And welcome to AccuWeather's Ask the Experts.
00:15 I'm your host, Dean Devore.
00:16 On this show, we go beyond the everyday forecast
00:18 to give you the how and why on all the cool
00:20 and interesting stuff that you've always wondered about
00:23 and wanted to ask in the fields of weather,
00:26 space, and science.
00:27 In this episode, we're going out of the atmosphere
00:30 and talking about astronomy and stargazing.
00:33 And I'm happy to welcome our own astronomy expert,
00:36 AccuWeather meteorologist, Brian Leda.
00:39 Brian, thanks for joining us here at Ask the Experts.
00:42 And I know, just like so many forecasters at AccuWeather,
00:45 you started in general forecasting,
00:47 but this love of stargazing and astronomy
00:50 led you to becoming our curator
00:52 for our AccuWeather astronomy situation on accuweather.com
00:57 and on our website and on Twitter.
00:59 You love this stuff, right?
01:00 Yeah, Dean, I am a meteorologist by trade,
01:02 but growing up as a kid,
01:03 I wanted to be that astronaut when I got older.
01:06 And I remember watching NASA TV
01:08 and watching all the space shuttle launches.
01:11 So when I started my career here at AccuWeather
01:13 and started writing about the weather and everything,
01:15 I found this nice blend of my passions
01:18 about writing about how the weather could impact
01:21 meteor showers and if you could see eclipses
01:23 and other events like that.
01:24 And that just really a good combination
01:26 of both the things I love about science.
01:27 Well, yeah, the two go hand in hand.
01:29 I mean, we can't see what's going on
01:30 up in the outer space area
01:33 without having good weather on the ground.
01:34 And so that kind of goes hand in hand.
01:36 And actually we're finding more and more relationships
01:38 between what's going on in space
01:40 and the weather down here at home.
01:41 So I think it's a natural outfit.
01:43 And so I think today we wanna talk about
01:45 some general concepts of stargazing
01:47 and talk about some specifics too.
01:49 So, you know, when we talk in particular
01:51 about stargazing itself, let's get people started.
01:54 What do we need in terms of equipment
01:57 to do some good stargazing?
01:59 Well, really, bottom line,
02:01 the only thing you need for stargazing is good weather.
02:04 There's a lot that happens in the night sky,
02:06 a lot of different events.
02:07 And one of the biggest misconceptions
02:09 is that you need a telescope.
02:11 And while having one is helpful,
02:13 you know, you can see certain things
02:14 that you can't see without one,
02:16 a lot of the big events that we have throughout the year,
02:18 you know, lunar eclipses, meteor showers,
02:21 even just seeing the moon,
02:22 you can do that with the naked eye.
02:24 You don't need any special equipment.
02:26 But if you wanna take that extra step,
02:28 you know, really get a deeper dive into astronomy,
02:31 we do recommend a telescope,
02:32 but you know, start small and work your way up.
02:34 There are some telescopes out there that are big,
02:36 you can see great things,
02:37 but you could break the bank doing it.
02:39 So, you know, start with a smaller telescope,
02:41 a little bit on the cheaper side,
02:42 get familiar with the ins and outs
02:44 of how exactly they work.
02:46 And then if you really like that,
02:47 you know, invest some money,
02:48 save up over time for that bigger telescope.
02:51 Because there are things like Saturn,
02:53 we could see that without any help,
02:55 you know, just with the naked eye.
02:57 But if you have a telescope,
02:58 you could see the rings of Saturn.
02:59 So it could really enhance the views of things
03:02 that we already see in the sky.
03:03 So not a necessity, but definitely good to have.
03:06 - Even in the interim, binoculars can be a help too, right?
03:09 If you don't wanna go all the full step to a telescope.
03:11 - Exactly, you know, the trick that comes with that
03:13 is you need a steady hand,
03:14 you know, you're holding these binoculars
03:15 up focused on the sky.
03:17 But yeah, if you have a pair of binoculars,
03:18 just grab that, even just looking at the moon,
03:21 it is littered with craters
03:23 that you just don't know that are there
03:24 until you zoom in on it.
03:26 - All right, and then the other important thing,
03:27 I think, is placement of yourself
03:30 when you wanna do stargazing.
03:31 Because, you know, let's face it,
03:33 the more and more populated cities in metropolitan areas,
03:37 got a lot of light pollution to have to deal with
03:39 when we're trying to look up.
03:40 - Yeah, this has been a growing issue, you know,
03:42 over the decades as we have more and more lights
03:44 and people are spreading out.
03:46 And if you are in a big city, you know, New York, Los Angeles,
03:49 you can definitely still see bright things,
03:51 like the moon, some of the brighter planets,
03:53 even maybe a couple constellations.
03:55 But when we get to events like meteor showers,
03:57 where, you know, you really need a darker sky
04:00 to get the full effect of it,
04:01 maybe you could see a couple of shooting stars,
04:03 but if you really wanna see the full meteor shower itself,
04:08 or even some constellations,
04:10 you need to get away from that light pollution.
04:11 It's estimated that approximately 80% of people
04:14 that live in the United States
04:16 live where there's light pollution,
04:17 where you can't see the Milky Way.
04:18 And the Milky Way is such a breathtaking sight.
04:21 - It is.
04:22 - So you do need to travel sometimes
04:24 to get to those darker skies,
04:25 get away from the light pollution
04:26 to really enjoy the cosmos.
04:28 Because at the end of the day, looking up is free,
04:31 but you need to make sure that you're in the right place
04:33 and you have the right weather
04:34 to enjoy what's above our heads.
04:35 - I remember being a little kid
04:36 and being out with my parents,
04:38 and we used to go, we spotted deer,
04:40 which is something that we do in Pennsylvania.
04:41 But at night, we would stop, turn the car off,
04:43 and be out in the middle and see the Milky Way.
04:45 And he was like, "Wow, I don't see that at home.
04:47 It's pretty awe-inspiring."
04:50 Brian, I'm not the only one that gets to ask the questions.
04:52 It's time for our first viewer question.
04:54 And this comes from Jesse in Colorado.
04:56 And he writes, "When I'm looking up at the sky
04:59 with just my naked eye,
05:00 how do I tell what's a star, an airplane,
05:03 a planet, or a satellite?"
05:05 You know, Brian, this is, I think, a great question here,
05:08 because let's go over some of the tools
05:10 that people can use to figure out what they're looking at.
05:14 - Well, right off the bat,
05:15 if you're looking up at the sky
05:16 and something is blinking or flashing,
05:18 it's an airplane or a helicopter.
05:19 - Okay, there you go.
05:20 Blinking, flashing is airplane or helicopter.
05:22 - Yeah, so any kind of flashing in the sky
05:24 that is not something in space.
05:26 - Right.
05:27 - So you can rule that out completely.
05:28 In terms of planets and stars and constellations,
05:31 they can blend together a little bit.
05:32 But planets, they do have some subtleties.
05:35 Jupiter and Venus, for example, they are very bright,
05:38 brighter than most stars in the sky.
05:39 So if you see, especially right in the evening
05:41 or first thing in the morning before sunrise,
05:44 you see a really bright planet, that might be Venus.
05:46 And you know, Mars is one of the more popular planets.
05:49 It's also known as the red planet.
05:51 And when we see it in the night sky,
05:52 it actually appears kind of orange and red in color.
05:55 So there are some subtleties with that.
05:56 But you mentioned satellites,
05:58 and this is one that's been a growing topic,
06:01 especially over the past couple of years,
06:02 because over the decades, we've launched so much into space.
06:06 There are countless satellites up there.
06:08 And one of the more popular ones
06:09 is the International Space Station.
06:11 This is by far the brightest satellite,
06:13 the size of a football field.
06:14 And really, when you see it in the night sky,
06:16 it's our connection to space,
06:17 because you see it, and it's not just a light.
06:20 There are people on that,
06:21 typically three to six people
06:23 on that speck of light in the sky.
06:26 So to me, that is our connection to the heavens.
06:28 But you know, SpaceX has been making news
06:30 because they've been launching these Starlink satellites,
06:32 literally thousands of them,
06:34 just to the goal to have fast, high-speed internet
06:37 anywhere in the world.
06:39 So they have thousands of their own satellites,
06:41 in addition to the ones already up there
06:43 for the military, communication, weather.
06:47 So there's just so much up there now.
06:48 If you just go out and look at the night sky
06:50 for five, 10 minutes,
06:51 you're almost guaranteed to see some satellites.
06:53 - Well, let's take a look at some of the things
06:55 that we can see up in the sky.
06:56 Let's bring them in here
06:58 and talk first about constellations.
07:00 I think as I was a kid and growing up,
07:03 my father would point out constellations
07:06 and tell stories and things about that.
07:08 I think it's a great way, as we humans
07:11 have kind of tried to talk about what's up in the sky
07:14 and kind of give them some stories, right?
07:16 - Exactly.
07:17 And every constellation, you know,
07:18 it's just a grouping of stars
07:20 that the stars might be incredibly far apart,
07:22 but here on Earth, they look like they're really close.
07:25 And so we're actually able to, you know,
07:27 with our eyes, mind,
07:28 just kind of pick out these shapes in the sky,
07:31 whether it be, you know, the Big Dipper
07:33 that looks like literally just a soup ladle
07:35 or Orion, which is a constellation
07:37 that kind of resembles a person.
07:39 - Yeah, they can resemble like an animal or a person.
07:43 Love Orion.
07:43 I think Orion is one that I grew up as a kid.
07:45 Let's talk about something else that I love a lot,
07:48 and that's called conjunctions,
07:49 and that's the moon and some of the planets.
07:52 And we've been seeing a lot of those lately.
07:55 They go in cycles.
07:56 You can see them,
07:58 and here's a couple of examples of the moon and the planets.
08:01 These are really gorgeous right before sunrise
08:04 in the morning sometimes or right after sunset
08:06 when it's just kind of getting a little bit dark.
08:10 These are beautiful things of different planets
08:12 and the moon.
08:13 - Exactly.
08:14 The thing about conjunctions, you know,
08:16 it's just a fancy word for saying a group
08:17 or a gathering of things we could see in the night sky,
08:20 but often they have the moon,
08:22 and everyone knows what the moon looks like.
08:24 So even if you're not super familiar with stargazing,
08:27 if you see the moon and then think,
08:28 oh, I heard that Jupiter's right next to the moon,
08:30 you could easily find planets.
08:32 And even some dimmer planets like Mercury,
08:34 it's really difficult to see,
08:36 but if the moon's nearby, you can spot it.
08:37 - Right, it sets it off, right?
08:38 - Exactly.
08:40 - The other thing that we can look at is a comet,
08:42 and we've been seeing some comets of lately,
08:44 including the one that we're gonna show here,
08:46 which is NEOWISE, which was, I think,
08:48 2020, the big story of the sky.
08:51 - Yeah, and this is actually a photo
08:52 that I took of comet NEOWISE in 2020.
08:54 It was visible for a couple of months out of the year.
08:56 And the thing with comets is they're kind of random.
08:58 They come and go.
08:59 This one only orbits the sun every couple thousand years,
09:02 so we're never gonna see this one again in our lifetimes.
09:04 And so they kind of come out of the blue
09:06 and when they do, you know,
09:09 you look at this, this is stunning.
09:10 You don't see anything else like it in the night sky
09:12 on a nightly basis.
09:13 So every couple years, we typically see one.
09:16 And I mean, you definitely have to enjoy the opportunity
09:19 to see one since they are kind of uncommon.
09:21 - Absolutely, and then, you know,
09:23 we talk about satellites,
09:24 and we talked about this a little bit.
09:26 This is actually a picture of the space station.
09:28 Now, because at night, you've gotta use that long exposure,
09:32 that's why you kind of see the line
09:34 of this thing moving so slowly.
09:35 - Exactly, yeah, this is a picture I actually took
09:37 with my backyard on my iPhone.
09:40 It just took maybe about 10 seconds,
09:42 and that's how far it went across the sky.
09:43 So, you know, in this snapshot,
09:45 it looks like one long streak of light,
09:46 but really, that's just showing the motion
09:48 of the space station over the course of 10 or 15 seconds
09:51 to show, you know, how bright it is
09:53 and how far it tracks in just a short period of time.
09:56 - So, and the other thing, quick, we could throw up
09:59 is a lunar eclipse, and we see that a lot
10:01 where the shadow of the Earth is interacting with the moon.
10:05 - Exactly, and this is something that happens
10:07 on a fairly regular basis.
10:08 We get it typically one, two, three, even four a year,
10:12 depending on how exactly the Earth and the moon align.
10:16 But this is an event that you don't need
10:18 any special equipment to see.
10:19 You know, we talked about telescopes.
10:21 Yeah, they're nice to have,
10:22 but you certainly don't need them to see it.
10:24 - For sure, we've got a lot to talk about.
10:26 So coming up later today in our WeatherWise segment,
10:30 three interesting things.
10:31 We're sharing some of the best pictures
10:33 that have been captured by the James Webb Space Telescope.
10:36 But coming up next, we're looking at another
10:39 nighttime phenomenon that sparks a lot of interest,
10:41 the Northern Lights, or the aurora borealis,
10:44 answering more of your questions
10:46 when Ask the Experts returns.
10:49 (upbeat music)
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11:02 (upbeat music)
11:04 Welcome back to AccuWeather's Ask the Experts.
11:06 I'm your host, Dean DeVore.
11:08 Today, we are talking about space and stargazing.
11:11 And joining us is our astronomy expert here at AccuWeather.
11:14 He's meteorologist Brian Leda.
11:16 And we wanna talk next about a phenomenon,
11:19 Brian, that seems to be getting more and more interest
11:21 because in some ways, I think maybe it's happening more,
11:24 and that's the Northern Lights, or the aurora borealis.
11:27 So let's talk a little bit about first how it's formed.
11:31 What causes the aurora borealis, or Northern Lights?
11:35 - Well, the Northern Lights, or the aurora,
11:37 like you mentioned, it all is rooted with the sun,
11:39 you know, the center of the solar system.
11:41 It doesn't just give off light.
11:42 It's always giving off a steady stream of charged particles
11:45 that we call the solar wind.
11:47 And when this wind reaches Earth's magnetic sphere,
11:50 the magnetic field, it kinda siphons those particles
11:53 towards the North Pole and the South Pole
11:55 to create the aurora.
11:56 Now, that's happening all the time,
11:58 but the big events, the ones that make headlines,
12:00 that's a little bit different process.
12:02 The sun not just giving off this steady wind,
12:04 but something like explosions on the surface of the sun.
12:08 And those will send massive clouds
12:11 of these charged particles.
12:12 - You may hear coronal mass ejection,
12:14 which is the kind of, the long word, or CME.
12:17 That's one of those big storms,
12:19 or big bursts of energy that comes off the sun, right?
12:21 - Exactly, you took the words right out of my mouth.
12:23 - Oh, there you go.
12:24 - These explosions, they happen all the time,
12:26 but when they're directed straight at the Earth,
12:28 that's when it's a big deal,
12:30 because when that massive cloud of particles
12:33 bombards the Earth, it creates huge outbursts
12:36 of the northern lights, and typically,
12:38 they're seen closer to the poles,
12:40 but this is when we see them here
12:41 in the lower 48 states in the United States.
12:44 - So, let's talk about that.
12:45 Where typically you can see the northern lights,
12:48 parts of the United States, certainly that northern tier,
12:51 but there are times when the opportunity
12:53 is a little farther south
12:55 to see the northern lights every time.
12:57 - Exactly, and we call these solar storms,
12:59 and the stronger it is, the farther south
13:01 we can see the aurora.
13:03 So, actually, in early 2023,
13:04 there were two pretty big events
13:06 that people saw them as far south as Virginia,
13:09 Colorado, and parts of California,
13:11 and the people with cameras
13:13 that took long exposure pictures
13:15 saw them as far south as Texas and Southern California,
13:18 which is simply incredible.
13:20 But for most people in these areas in the United States,
13:22 it looks like a green or red glow on the northern horizon.
13:26 Sometimes, depending how far north you are,
13:28 it actually looks like it's dancing overhead,
13:30 which is really, that's the bucket list item
13:32 that a lot of people wanna see.
13:34 - Well, and I think, too, the other thing is,
13:36 is there a better time at night?
13:37 I know, like, with meteor showers,
13:38 sometimes seems to me like later in the night,
13:41 closer to morning is sometimes the prime time
13:43 for a meteor shower.
13:44 Is that the same situation with a northern lights event?
13:47 - So, northern lights are a little bit different
13:49 than a meteor shower when we know exactly
13:51 when it's gonna happen.
13:52 There is some uncertainty because, you know,
13:54 even though we watch the sun all the time
13:56 with telescopes and observations,
13:57 there's still a lot that we don't know about the sun.
13:59 And so, getting the timing down
14:01 of when we see the northern lights,
14:02 it's a bit of a question mark.
14:03 So, you know, really the key is,
14:06 the longer the night, the better chance you have
14:08 of seeing the northern lights.
14:09 So, that's why winter is kind of the prime time
14:11 for seeing the aurora, as opposed to the summer
14:13 when we have these really short, truncated nights.
14:16 And obviously, the farther north you are,
14:18 the higher chance you have of seeing the lights as well.
14:20 - Now, they're beautiful, obviously,
14:22 but is this a danger?
14:23 I mean, is this a sign of danger?
14:25 I mean, sometimes I hear with these coronal mass ejections
14:28 that we can have some problems on Earth
14:30 because of all that solar energy hitting us.
14:32 - Yeah, so the aurora, that's the good side
14:34 of solar storms. - Aurora.
14:35 - The bad side is it could have impacts,
14:37 especially since we're really a technology-driven,
14:41 you know, civilization here on Earth.
14:43 SpaceX actually, a year or two ago,
14:46 they launched some satellites,
14:47 and right after one of these solar storms hit,
14:49 and almost all their satellites fell back down to Earth.
14:52 That's how big of an impact it is.
14:53 It could actually disrupt GPS signals.
14:55 So if you're using a GPS on your phone,
14:58 it might not be completely accurate.
15:00 And even back in 1989,
15:02 there was a particularly strong solar storm
15:04 that knocked out power to part of Canada.
15:06 So that's real-life implications.
15:08 And so the chance of these having a catastrophic impact
15:12 is very low, but it's certainly a possibility
15:14 that if we have one of these extraordinarily strong storms
15:18 that hits the Earth, we could have impacts
15:20 to our technology.
15:21 And there's questions about how severe,
15:23 but it's certainly a reality.
15:24 - All right, let's get to our next viewer question.
15:26 It comes from Andrew in Chicago.
15:28 Andrew, what would you like to ask the experts?
15:32 - As an astronomer, what is one of the coolest things
15:34 you've witnessed looking up at the night sky?
15:37 - Ooh, great question.
15:38 Brian, knowing how much you love this stuff,
15:40 it may be hard for you to pick one thing,
15:42 but what's the most amazing thing you've seen
15:45 looking up at the sky?
15:46 - So he said about the night sky,
15:48 actually the coolest thing I ever saw
15:49 was in the daytime sky. - Ah, there you go, right.
15:51 - And that was the total solar eclipse of 2017.
15:54 Before that, I had seen partial solar eclipses,
15:56 which were impressive, but a total solar eclipse
15:59 is just completely different.
16:00 I mean, it literally turns day into night.
16:04 I was originally planning to go to Missouri for it,
16:06 but because of a weather forecast,
16:08 looked like it was gonna be cloudy there,
16:09 I shifted my plans to Tennessee.
16:11 The weather was perfect, and I mean, it was jaw-dropping.
16:15 It brought tears to my eye.
16:16 And even now, I'm describing it to you,
16:18 I can't quite put it into words how amazing it was.
16:21 I was actually watching near a stadium in Tennessee,
16:25 and just the roar from the stadium,
16:26 the people so excited, it was just literally
16:29 almost a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
16:31 - And we're in a once-in-a-lifetime kind of span here.
16:33 We had the one in 2017, there's one in April of 2024,
16:38 but then from that one, it's gonna be 20 years
16:41 till we get another total eclipse, right?
16:43 - Yeah, at least here in the United States.
16:44 After 2024, the next one's not until 2044,
16:48 then there's another one after that in 2045.
16:50 But there will be more solar eclipses like it,
16:52 the total solar eclipse, elsewhere in the world,
16:55 but the trick is, that requires traveling somewhere,
16:57 and the good weather, and it's a logistical nightmare.
17:00 - Yeah, absolutely.
17:00 I know these things sell out, right?
17:03 Stadiums sell out, they have, if you're right in that
17:06 path of the total eclipse, it certainly is something
17:08 that people wanna see.
17:09 Brian, we just have scratched the surface of looking up,
17:12 and we have so many things to talk about.
17:14 I wanna thank you, thank you for all your work
17:16 with AccuWeather and AccuWeather, AccuAstronomy
17:18 and our Twitter site, and all those kinds of things.
17:20 You do a great job, thanks so much.
17:22 - Of course, Dean, and we're always posting
17:24 whenever we have these big astronomy events coming up,
17:26 if you want more information.
17:27 - All right, certainly good.
17:28 Hey, friends, don't forget that when you have a question
17:30 about the weather, space, or science,
17:32 you can ask the experts.
17:33 Send us an email at asktheexperts@accuweather.com,
17:37 and your question could appear in one of our broadcasts.
17:40 Friends, coming up, we are going to have our
17:42 weather-wise segment, and we're sharing some of the most
17:45 amazing images that have been captured
17:47 by the James Webb telescopes.
17:49 (upbeat music)
17:51 Welcome back to AccuWeather's Ask the Experts.
18:06 I'm your host, Dean DeBoer, and now it's time
18:08 for weather-wise.
18:09 Today, we go up in space with three interesting things
18:13 captured by the James Webb telescope.
18:16 NASA says the primary goals of Webb are to study galaxies,
18:19 star, and planet formation in our universe.
18:22 Well, first, let's start with galaxies.
18:24 This image shows the Cartwheel galaxy on the right,
18:28 and then two companion galaxies.
18:30 The Cartwheel has two rings, a bright inner ring
18:33 and a colorful outer ring.
18:35 Scientists say this spiral galaxy was formed
18:38 after a high-speed collision
18:39 more than 400 million years ago.
18:43 Now, let's take a look at an exploded star.
18:46 This is called Cassiopeia A.
18:49 This supernova is one of the most studied
18:52 stellar explosions in the Milky Way by astronomers.
18:55 Infrared light is visible to our eyes,
18:57 but with the Webb telescope and image processor,
19:00 science can translate those light wavelengths
19:03 into visible colors.
19:04 How cool is that?
19:05 And finally, Jupiter.
19:07 It's the largest planet in our solar system.
19:10 It's called the gas giant,
19:12 and this Webb image of Jupiter
19:13 revealed a hidden jet stream, talking about weather,
19:16 that travels about 320 miles per hour
19:18 in Jupiter's atmosphere.
19:20 That white band at the equator of Jupiter?
19:23 Well, those are clouds.
19:26 We thank you for joining us on AccuWeather's
19:28 Ask the Experts.
19:29 I'm your host, Dean DeVore.
19:30 Remember, when you have a question about the weather,
19:32 ask the experts.
19:33 Email us at asktheexperts@accuweather.com,
19:36 or you can also give us a call at 888-566-6606.
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