News
Happy April everyone! We’re starting off the month with a 7:15 am sunrise and a 7:56 pm sunset, making for a total of 12 hours, 40 minutes, and 27 seconds of daylight. We’ll be ending…
Happy March everyone. We’re finally coming up on the start of spring! We’re starting off the month with sunrise at 7:05 am and sunset at 6:23 pm for a total of 11 hours and 19 minutes of…
What is up in the sky this month?
Happy February everyone! I hope we all made it through the winter storm alright. We’re starting off the month with sunrise at 7:40am and sunset at 5…
Happy November everyone! We’re starting off the month with the sun rising at 8:01am, and setting at 6:29pm. We’ll finish off the month with sunrise at 7:33am and sunset at 5:07pm, on…
Happy October! I hope everyone’s been having a good start to the autumn semester. We’ll be starting the month off with sunrise at 7:28am and sunset at 7:13pm. We will continue to lose…
First-year MFA students Yeoleum Choi and Valeska Tan’s immersive full-dome film Ocean Cemetery was selected for screening at the 2025 Fulldome Festival Brno, held June 10–12, 2025 in the…
Constellations and Astronomical Events-- July 2025!
Happy July everyone-- I hope we all made it through the heat of June. We’re kicking off the month with sunrise at 6:07am and sunset at 9:04pm…
Constellations and Astronomical Events Visible in April 2025!
Happy April! It looks like the start of…
Constellations and Astronomical Events Visible in March 2025!
Happy March! We’re starting…
Constellations, Planets, and Astronomical Events Visible in February 2025!
Happy February! Now that it’s starting to warm up and we’re no longer getting blasted with…
Constellations, Planets, and Astronomical Events Visible in January 2025
Happy January and happy New Year! I hope everyone is finding ways to stay warm with the blast of cold…
Constellations, Planets, and Astronomical Events Visible in December 2024
Happy December! 2024 is rolling to a close as the days get shorter and shorter. We start the month with…
Constellations, Planets, and Astronomical Events Visible in November 2024
Happy November and happy end of daylight savings! November 3rd is the end of daylight savings time,…
Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS vaults into the evening sky on or about Oct. 11th. Map dates show the comet's position from latitude 40° north during the evening hours for U.S. time zones.
A severe geomagnetic storm is possible on Thursday and Friday (Oct. 10 and Oct. 11).
Constellations, Planets, and Astronomical Events Visible in October 2024
Happy October and happy Fall! With the days getting shorter and shorter the month will see sunrise and…
Constellations, Planets, and Astronomical Events Visible in September 2024
Happy September! I’ll be the new writer for Ohio SkyLites, so I look forward to keeping everyone up to…
Constellations, Planets, and Astronomical Events Visible in July 2024
Happy Summertime! With the warm weather finally here, it is the perfect time of year to go out and observe! The sun…
Constellations, Planets, and Astronomical Events Visible in June 2024
Happy Summer! The summer solstice occurs this month on June 20th, marking the astronomical start of the summer…
Happy May! Ohio’s weather is finally becoming more consistent after the whirlwind of a spring. The sun is rising bright and early around 6:15 am, and setting at 8:40 pm, averaging nearly…
Solar Eclipse Edition
The long-awaited 2024 solar eclipse is upon us! Cross your fingers for clear skies onMonday, April 8th, because it will be quite a sight.
What is a Solar…
Constellations, Planets, and Astronomical Events Visible in March 2024
Happy Spring! Despite the predictions of a groundhog in February, March is consistently the astronomical start of…
Constellations, Planets, and Astronomical Events Visible in February 2024
While winter brings cold winds and slippery sidewalks, it also brings long nights to go out and observe! However…
Constellations, Planets, and Astronomical Events Visible in January 2024
Happy New Year! Along with the new year, the days will start to grow longer again since the winter solstice is…
Constellations, Planets, and Astronomical Events Visible in December 2023
Author’s Note: Sorry for the delay! I am a 4th-year student at Ohio State, and I am currently applying for…
Constellations, Planets, and Astronomical Events Visible in November 2023
The weather continues to grow colder as Autumn reaches its peak, but the nights are growing longer, so it’s time to bundle…
What’s Up? Constellations, Planets, and Astronomical Events Visible in October 2023
Happy autumn! With the September equinox behind us, we have passed into the astronomical start of the fall…
Constellations, Planets, and Astronomical Events Visible in September 2023
The astronomical start of the fall season is fast approaching! The Autumnal Equinox occurs on September 23rd. Equinox…
Happy August! The days are long and hot, but the nights have perfect weather for stargazing. The days are steadily growing shorter since the solstice has passed. The sun rises around 6:40 am and…
Constellations, Planets, and Astronomical Events Visible in July 2023
Now that the solstice has passed, it is now officially summertime! Enjoy the long days and warm weather, and hopefully, the…
What’s Up? Constellations, Planets, and Astronomical Events Visible in June 2023
-Written and Compiled by Alyssa Whalen
Happy Summer! In terms of the astronomical calendar, summer…
What’s Up? Constellations, Planets, and Astronomical Events Visible in May 2023
-Written and Compiled by Alyssa Whalen
Welcome to May! The weather is finally starting to become…
What’s Up? Constellations, Planets, and Astronomical Events Visible in April 2023
-Written and Compiled by Alyssa Whalen
April is Global Astronomy Month! Every April, Astronomers…
What’s Up? Constellations, Planets, and Astronomical Events Visible in March 2023
-Written and Compiled by Alyssa Whalen
Happy spring season everyone! The astronomical start of the…
What’s Up? Constellations, Planets, and Astronomical Events Visible in February 2023
-Written and Compiled by Alyssa Whalen
While winter brings cold winds and slippery sidewalks,…
What’s Up? Constellations, Planets, and Astronomical Events Visible in January 2023
-Written and Compiled by Alyssa Whalen
Happy New Year! Along with the new year, the days will…
What’s Up? Constellations, Planets, and Astronomical Events Visible in December 2022
-Written and Compiled by Alyssa Whalen
The days grow shorter and colder as we enter December,…
What’s Up? Constellations, Planets, and Astronomical Events Visible in November 2022
-Written and Compiled by Alyssa Whalen
As the weather quickly turns colder, it is time to get…
What’s Up? Constellations, Planets, and Astronomical Events Visible in October 2022
- Written and Compiled by Alyssa Whalen
Welcome to fall! Since the autumnal equinox is behind us…
What’s Up? Constellations, Planets, and Astronomical Events Visible in September 2022
-Alyssa Whalen
Changing Seasons:Fall is *almost* officially here! The autumnal equinox occurs on…
What’s Up? The Constellations, Planets, and Astronomical Events Visible in August 2022
Written and compiled by Alyssa Whalen
SunWhile the days on Earth are always 24 hours, the…
Constellations and Astronomical Events Visible in July
Written by Alyssa Whalen
PlanetsIn case you missed it, the planets aligned the morning of June 24th, 2022. Although they won’t be…
Looking for something to watch this weekend? Check out Particles Unknown on the PBS series NOVA. There you will learn about neutrinos and the experiments done to detect them. Ohio State…
Jupiter and Saturn in Solstice Conjuntion
While we're all trying our best to keep our distance from one another during the current pandemic, Jupiter and Saturn are defiantly doing exactly the…
A Holiday Telescope Buying Guide
Astronomer Phil Plait, at Syfy Wire, goes through a list of some quality telescopes for beginners, experts, and those in between. He has written other posts like…
Ohio SkyLites is back. We will post weekly what is up in our night sky. Podcast recording below.
Looking for something to do to cure your COVID blues?
From July 12-18 you can see this incredible comet gracing our skies just after sunset in the Northwest horizon…
“The moon is a loyal companion.
It never leaves. It’s always there, watching, steadfast, knowing us in our light and dark moments, changing forever just as we do. Every day it’s a different…
We had a great star party on March 23, 2019. Here are some images that were taken by Tim Black.
March 20 - First day of Spring in the Northern Hemisphere
March 21 at 1:43 UTC - Full moon - Super "worm" moon
In our evening sky, Mars is in the west at sunset near the Pleiades
On December 16th, Comet 64P Wirtanen will pass the Earth at 12 million kilometers away. It may become as bright as 3rd magnitude. The diffuse coma and a nearly full Moon will make observations…
The Works: Ohio Center for History, Art & Technology and Ohio State Newark are proud to announce the grand opening of the newest exhibit at The Works, a SciDome planetarium, on Saturday, June 9,…
A group of astronomy and physics students recently got a firsthand look at the Green Bank Telescope, the world’s largest steerable radio telescope in Green Bank, West Virginia.
Located away…
In the evening:
Around 9pm when the sky is finally getting darker look toward the west. You will see an incredibly bright spot up in the sky which is the planet Venus. As the sky fades you…
100 years ago in 1916, congress formed the National Park Service within the U.S. Department of the Interior to administer the 39 national parks and monuments that had been designated starting in the…
At their April 10 meeting, the Ohio State University Board of Trustees in recognition of contributions to the College of Arts and Sciences by Gerald and Ann Newsom and David and Sheryl Price,…
Wayne M. Schlingman, the new director of the Ohio State Planetarium, has a room with an enviable view with seats he will never have trouble filling. And he's ready to start taking…
After nearly two weeks of integration and testing, our new Spitz SciDome XD digial projector system was fired up and achieved "first light" inside the newly renovated OSU Planetarium.
This…
The end of the renovation is in sight. The SciDome XD projector has arrived and is being installed, and on 2013 Sept 3 and 4, a crew led by Eric Melenbrink of Ash Enterprises (a sub-contractor for…
The crew from Spitz Inc. put the last rivets into our new NanoSeam dome on Saturday, July 27, finally enclosing the space that for nearly a year has been a big, empty concrete chamber.
OSU…
After successfully raising, leveling, and anchoring the dome support framework into place, the next step is to install the screen panels on the dome.
Each panel is a compoundly-curved…
This morning the dome crew from Spitz successfully raised the framework for the new projection dome into place.
After being fully assembled on the floor by the end of last week, a set of…
The work preparing the chamber was completed on July 3, and first thing Monday morning on July 8 after the long 4th of July holiday a crew from Spitz arrived with a truckload of parts for the new…
The chamber was cleared and cleaned of old junk by the first week of June, and work began immediately on the interior of the chamber.
To prepare the chamber to receive the new dome, seating,…
The bids are set, the architect's drawings are done, the construction materials have been approved (mostly).
Let the demolition begin!
Crews from our prime contractor began the…
After many months of work, the leaky roof above our planetarium has been repaired. The cracks in the concrete slab were sealed and a new roof built up that slopes to drain away rain water and snow…
In the years leading up to the renovation of the OSU Planetarium, we have been plagued by an increasingly leaky roof. This led to water damage on the old projection dome and the control console,…
The next milestone in the OSU Planetarium renovation has been achieved with the removal of the chairs and old floor tiles. We've also taken down all the old pictures.
All that remains is…
Working the System
Astronomy graduate students Kate Grier and Calen Henderson are jazzed by what they learned this month at the intensive week-long Spitz Summer…
Only July 25 we took delivery of the production computers for the Spitz SciDome XD system. The production system is a pair of computers that will be used for creating new planetarium shows offline…
The first major step in the renovation of the OSU Planetarium began today with the removal of the Spitz A3P star ball projector.
A team from Ash Enterprises carefully disassembled the…
In June 2012, OSU will begin a major renovation of the OSU Planetarium located in Smith Laboratory. Among other things, we will be retiring our 1965-vintage Spitz A3P star projector and replacing…