In August, millions enjoyed the highlight of the year when the Moon’s shadow raced across the blue skies of the southeast US. Gazers everywhere marveled at yet another Comet McNaught—besides the coincidence of the discoverer’s name, this apparition was eerily similar to that just ten years ago. This was a good year for viewing Jupiter, a mediocre one for Saturn, and an off year for Mars. Unfortunately, deep sky observers have been consistently marginalized to fewer and more remote dark-sky sites. Despite the considerable hindrances of light pollution and a widespread high-altitude haze, dedicated observers continue to push their limits by bagging ever more dim and challenging deep-sky quarry. 

Sky &Telescope finally ceased print publication, leaving Astronomy as the only major dead-tree amateur astro publication. In truth, all the good authors have been exclusively online for more than a decade. Astro-Web 2.0 collabro-connectivity, starting with blogs and wikis, has been extended with server-side applications to provide seamless, customized and timely networking and support interactive media for amateurs. Annoyances of web-page ads and pop-ups have long since gone the way of the dinosaurs.

This year, NASA has generously supported the robotic exploration of the solar system, though a return to the Moon has clearly morphed into a purely commercial enterprise among the dozen spacefaring countries. As the prospects of moon colonization languished, it was never establish that the Moon is a critical stepping-stone to Mars. With more than a dozen robots rolling and porpoising around the Red Planet, it is an open question whether it is worthwhile to send people there simply to leave footprints. Freshly collected bits of Mars will be returned robotically to Earth within the year.

The floodgate of planetary discoveries has continued, although planets like ours appear elusive and much less common than anyone expected. It remains a fact that Earth is the only one at present known to have solid, liquid and gaseous water, and thus harbor life. A new, high-resolution map of Pluto from New Horizons has just been released, helping swing both public and professional opinion toward once again regarding Pluto as the ninth planet. The James Webb Telescope is about to come online and peer deeply into the early Universe, and visitors to the Air & Space Museum now can touch the actual Hubble Space Telescope.

Astrophysical research moves forward. Black holes are now well understood, but the inner workings of the Sun that affect our climate are not. As well, dark matter and dark energy remain mysteries, though the latest studies have nailed down the moment of the Big Bang to 13.71 billion years ago, give or take a few million years. On the other hand, perhaps the best the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything isn’t when or why, or even 42, but maybe right in front of us.

Now and again, it’s worth taking a few moments to get some perspective on where the last years and decades have brought us. The sky overhead is the same as that in our youth, yet those youngsters who join us today at the eyepiece or at the screen will in their lifetimes enjoy that very same sky in ways we can hardly imagine. But surely that will happen only if our generation of stargazers passes on its excitement for, and appreciation of, the heavens above.

On the other hand, Casey Stengel said “Never make predictions, especially about the future.” Doug Miller occasionally goes out on a limb while writing Moondark: here the circumstances for the Sun, Moon and planets are accurate, the rest he made up for the last page of this month’s Delmarva Star Gazers' Star Gazer News. Graphics composite from USNO AA, USNO Eclipse Portal / HM Nautical Office and Moondark. This document was last revised on 24 June 2007. Text and images on this web page are free for non-commercial use with attribution under a Creative Commons License. Ask Doug about other uses.