This week on Looking Up Hal speaks of night sky wonders both near and far.  There are lots and lots of amazing and wonderful things in the Colorado night sky. Some make you say “wow” because of how beautiful they are and others because of the wonder of what you are actually seeing.

To the star Menkar, which, as we learn on this week’s episode of Looking Up, is well on its way to becoming a planetary nebula. With the end of daylight savings time, the nights come early to southern Colorado.

This week on Looking Up Hal gives us the low down on a planet that will be up all night long.  Regular listeners of Looking Up will recall that I really like the planet Uranus.

This week Hal takes a “vested” interest in space rocks of all kinds. Have you ever touched a rock that was not of this Earth?

The alpha star is not always the brightest star in a constellation, as we learn on this week’s Looking Up. I want to tell you about a very strange star known formally as Beta Ceti, and less formally as Diphda.

This week on Looking Up we learn the astronomical reason for the seasonal changes. I have breaking news from the world of astronomy. The Earth has seasons! Ok, so maybe you already knew that. But do you know why? Ok, you probably do.

Sometimes when a thing becomes hidden, something else is revealed. Hal reveals an upcoming occultation in this week’s episode of Looking Up.  One of the great things about astronomy is that there are so many different things you can look at. Some astronomers are fascinated with planets, while others study entire galaxies.

When a planet appears to reverse course and move ‘backwards’ in the night sky it’s said to be in retrograde motion. You may have heard about Mercury doing that but other planets do, as well. This week on Looking Up we learn of Neptune’s impending retro action.

On this week’s Looking Up Hal points out the meteoric rise of GZ (short for comet Giacobini-Zinner) a celestial visitor visible in the Colorado sky this month. Comets, you recall, are often called dirty snowballs in space.

When you’re No. 2 you have to shine a little harder. This week on Looking Up we learn of the 2nd brightest,  but much lesser known star in the constellation Aquila.

The Perseid Meteor Shower is back and the 2018 edition could be a banner event as we learn on Looking Up this week. One of the most interesting and beautiful things anyone can see in the night sky are meteors!

This week Mars will be as big as the full moon (as long as it’s viewed through a telescope at about 100x magnification). There’s a rusty planet up on the Southern Colorado sky right now that is definitely worth taking a look at, because you’ll won’t see it this well again until 2035.

But there’s still fire, or some mysterious heat source, deep in the belly of Pluto, as we learn on Looking Up this week. OK, I admit it, I’m a sucker for Pluto.

It’s a good week to try and find the closest planet to our sun. Often times, the brightest objects in the sky are our fellow planets. Jupiter, Saturn, and especially Venus blaze in the night sky.

This week on Looking Up we cross paths with the Northern Cross, otherwise known as Cygnus the Swan, and get right to the heart of the matter. This week I’d like to tell you about a very cool star high in the southern Colorado skies, that’s part of an even cooler constellation.

This week on Looking Up Bruce Bookout sheds some light and some shadow on the origins of the sundial. As we have discussed before, timekeeping is an essential part of Astronomy.  The ancients relied on very low tech for many methods to tell time.  One effective method divides the day into relevant parts.