Bakersfield Night Sky 2023

Sunday, November 19, 2023 The two giant planets of the solar system, Jupiter and Saturn, continue to reign in the evening sky. At sunset, Saturn is already at its highest point in the south as it travels across the sky among the dim stars of...

Sunday, Novemeber 5, 2023 Did you remember to set your clocks back an hour? Our digital devices take care of it automatically but there are probably still the microwave and stove clocks to take care of. The moon was at third (or last) quarter last...

Sunday, October 15, 2023 This Thursday evening, October 19, the William M Thomas Planetarium will present the ever-popular “Black Holes” show. The doors open at 7 p.m. and are locked when the show begins at 7:30 p.m. The Black Holes show describes...

Sunday, October 1, 2023 The OSIRIS-REx sample return capsule landed safely last Sunday morning (September 24) with its precious cargo of pieces of the primitive asteroid, Bennu. In honor of that and the other asteroid missions we’re celebrating this...

Sunday, September 17. 2023 This Thursday, September 21, will be the start of the fall season of shows at the William M Thomas Planetarium with “Mars One Thousand One” (or Mars 1K1). Mars 1K1 is the story of one possible mission to Mars. Space...

Sunday, September 3, 2023 Next Saturday, September 9 is the Dark Sky Festival at Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Parks. There will be a keynote address by Dr. Cameron Hummels, the Director of Astrophysics Outreach at Caltech, and educational...

Saturday, August 20, 2023 Well, the astronomy outreach about the Perseids was obviously successful because the observing site our local astronomy club, the Kern Astronomical Society, uses for observing was packed for the peak night! The Perseids put...

Saturday, August 6, 2023 Tonight, the moon is in a waning gibbous phase, two days before third (or last) quarter. That means it will be just a waning crescent phase this coming Saturday night (the night of August 12/13, rising at about 3:30 a.m....

Saturday, July 16, 2023 A couple of days after I turned in my draft of the column for the July 2nd paper, my wife got a message from her aunt about her grandson’s latest astronomy discovery about the origin of the Geminid meteor shower that peaks in...

Saturday, July 2, 2023 On Thursday, July 6 at 1:06 p.m. Pacific Time, Earth will be at the aphelion point of its orbit—its farthest distance from the sun, equal to 94,506,364 miles. That’s 3.1 million miles farther out from the sun than it was in...