What's Out Tonight? - Guides to Astronomical Events

"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. "
- Carl Sagan

Every month Sky Maps offers a free, two-page, evening sky map showing constellations and objects for the current month. A celestial events calendar; a list of naked-eye, binocular and telescope objects; observing tips and a glossary are included.  I download and print the map every month. I laminate it too so I can mark it up with a dry-erase marker and use it outside at the scope.

Astronomy a Go Go -  Alice Few's podcast is a monthly tour of the night sky including Moon phases, planetary positions, celestial events and a monthly Messier list. Download it to your MP3 player and listen to it under the stars. Website has summary including a calendar of events, information and links.  

Astronomerica offers MP3 "Spacewalks Among the Stars" of these popular deep-sky objects: 

• The Andromeda Galaxy (M31), satellite galaxies M32 and M110, and nearby double stars in Andromeda. 
• The Owl Nebula and galaxy M108 in Ursa Major. 
• M42, the Great Orion Nebula.
• Galaxies M81, M82, NGC 3077, and NGC 2976 in Ursa Major.
• The Rosette Nebula (NGC 2237), open cluster NGC 2252, binary stars, and UGC 3459 galaxy challenge in Monoceros.
• Star clusters M46, M47, NGC 2423, NGC 2425, double stars
• Galaxies NGC 4631, NGC 4627, NGC 4656, and NGC 4676 (A & B) in Canes Venatici.
• Globular clusters M13 and M92, galaxy NGC 6207 in Hercules.

Complimentary finder charts are available for most tours.  Observing tips are worth a look too.

North Houston Astronomy Club provides What's Up, Doc?, a monthly list of objects in the evening sky organized by Astronomical League Club.  Also, they offer an Excel spreadsheet, What's Up Tonight, Doc?   The user enters latitude, longitude and Universal Time and the spreadsheet provides a list of objects in the sky from it's database of 2187 objects covering all 28 Astronomical League Clubs. 

Tonight's Sky is a short video tour of current month's sky from Space Telescope Science Institute

This Week's Sky at a Glance is a summary of upcoming celestial events from Sky & Telescope magazine, which offers several javascript tools such as an almanac; transit time of Jupiter's Great Red Spot; moons of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune and the minima of Algol.

US Naval Observatory Astronomical Applications - This comprehensive online ephemeris provides rise, set, transit, twilight data; phases of the Moon; eclipses and transits; positions of Sun, Moon, major planets and selected bright stars; day and night across the Earth; apparent disks of Solar System objects equinoxes, solstices, perihelion and aphelion; Spring phenomenon; Julian date conversion; and celestial navigation data. If you need a small scale (11" x 17") chart of the whole sky, check out the Navigational Star Chart.

SkyHound provides timely information about observable comets.

Heavens Above calculates visibility anywhere in the world for many satellites including the US Space Shuttle, International Space Station, Hubble Space Telescope and Iridium flares.  Requires free registration. 

Space Weather provides information on solar events including the visibility of sun spots.

American Meteor Society provides a weekly meteor activity outlook, and International Meteor Organization provide a meteor shower calendar with detailed information about each shower.

International Occultation Timing Association provides detailed information about predicted occultations. Their manual, Chasing the Shadow, is available for download also.

American Association of Variable Star Observer's provides a discussion of variable stars of the season and free finder charts.

Sky and Telescope magazine publishes SkyWatch, a guide to the night sky for the whole year. It is usually available on newsstands in December for about US$7. The magazine-like publication provides monthly summaries of naked-eye highlights, binocular highlights and telescope targets. Information on the Moon, planets and meteors showers is included plus a couple articles.

Also, the Skygazer's Almanac is published in the January issue of Sky and Telescope magazine.  This amazing 11" x 17" chart is dense with information about the whole year's celestial events.  For any given night, the chart will give rise and set times for the Sun (including astronomical twilight), rise, set and phase of the Moon, rise, set and transit times of the planets and select bright stars and the equation of time. Conjunctions, oppositions and meteor showers are marked. The optimum dates for observing objects and the sidereal time at any time and date are easily found with this chart.  If you missed the January issue, copies can be ordered for a couple of US$ from Sky Publishing.