Coma Star News Today

Two years ago, our January issue brought forth a package, 101 Must-See Cosmic Objects. Now we follow it up in a very different direction.

Just about every indigenous culture on Earth developed a set of constellations in their sky. Those that we in the West recognize today are mostly those

Week of May 7-13, 2023 Just about every indigenous culture on Earth developed a set of constellations in their sky. Those that we in the West recognize today are mostly those created by the ancient Greek and early European explorers. These cover the entire celestial sphere and represent objects, animals and people from mythological stories.

Coma Berenices is the constellation of Queen Berenice's Hair. It used to be the tail of Leo the Lion before it became its own constellation.

The peak of the annual Lyrid meteor shower has just passed. A group of stargazers was able to see a bright fireball meteor with me last Friday night while learning about space in Frankfort. Most meteors are a tiny, little more than the size of a grain of sand. They glow so brightly and appear as shooting stars because they hit the atmosphere of the Earth moving at tremendous speeds — about 30,000 mph on average. That energy of motion, known as kinetic energy, is transformed into heat and l...