Astronomers Without Borders

09/04/2026

Great opportunity to get familiar with our home galaxy!!

🌀 THIS WEEKEND: THE MILKY WAY GETS ITS TURN 🌀

📌 SAVE THIS POST NOW — if you’ve been waiting for a good excuse to get away from city lights, Friday through Sunday night is your window.

🌌 WEEKEND SKY MISSION

GO FIND THE MILKY WAY

The Moon is moving out of the evening sky, which means darker nights are returning, and that gives the Milky Way a much better chance to show itself.

By Sept. 4–6, especially later in the evening, the bright summer Milky Way is still stretched across the sky.

Around 10–11 p.m., look for Deneb high overhead. From there, the Milky Way runs through Cygnus and down toward the richer star clouds farther south.

🤯 THE WOW FACTOR
When you look at that faint glowing band, you’re looking through the disk of our own galaxy. Most stars are thousands of light years away from Earth!
That soft “cloud” isn’t a cloud at all.
It’s the combined glow of countless distant stars, packed so densely together that your eyes blend them into a milky ribbon across the sky.
You are literally standing inside the Milky Way while looking across it.

🎯 YOUR WEEKEND SKY MISSION
✅ WHEN: Friday–Sunday night, Sept. 4–6
✅ BEST TIME: Around 10–11 p.m.
✅ WHERE: Get as far away from city lights as practical
✅ LOOK: High overhead and through Cygnus, near bright Deneb
✅ GEAR: NONE REQUIRED — your eyes are best
✅ BONUS: Even from city suburbs use binoculars to slowly sweep along the Milky Way. What looks like a faint haze suddenly explodes into thousands of stars.
🌃 THE SECRET IS DARKNESS
The Milky Way can be surprisingly easy to miss from the suburbs.

For your best shot:
1️⃣ Find the darkest location you can.
2️⃣ Avoid looking at your phone for 15–20 minutes.
3️⃣ Let your eyes adjust to the darkness.
4️⃣ Look for a pale, uneven band crossing the sky.
5️⃣ Use averted vision, look slightly beside it instead of directly at it.

📱 PHOTO MISSION: Put your phone on a tripod or solid surface, switch to Night mode if available, and try a long exposure with some trees or landscape in the foreground.

🌌 FOLLOW The Night Sky Guy and I’ll help you know what to look for, when to look and where to look every week.
⭐ SAVE this post before the weekend
📤 SHARE it with someone who needs a night under the stars
📍 COMMENT your location — how dark is your sky?

And if you’re heading out to hunt the Milky Way this weekend, comment:
MISSION ACCEPTED 🌌👇

08/23/2026

🚨 DON’T MISS THIS WEEK’S BIGGEST SKY SHOWS 🚨

📌 SAVE THIS POST NOW because the biggest event of the week happens Thursday night and you do NOT want to realize Friday morning that you missed it.

This week brings an almost-total lunar eclipse, a beautiful Venus–Spica pairing, the Moon guiding you straight to Saturn and some of the best opportunities yet to begin your own Saturn Season.

🌌 YOUR SKY MISSION THIS WEEK:

🔴 THURS NIGHT–FRI MORNING • AUG. 27–28
DON’T MISS THE LUNAR ECLIPSE
Earth’s shadow will sweep across almost the entire Full Moon. No telescope. No binoculars. No eclipse glasses. Just look up.

✨ FRI EVENING • AUG. 28
VENUS + SPICA
Look low toward the west after sunset for dazzling Venus closing in on bright Spica.

🪐 SUN NIGHT • AUG. 30
MOON + SATURN**
One of the easiest Saturn-finding missions of the year: let the Moon point the way toward the Ringed Planet.

🚨 MISSION PRIORITY #1: THURSDAY NIGHT’S ECLIPSE.
Start planning now...and watch this page because I’ll be posting your exact viewing times, observing guide and reminders as eclipse night approaches.

🤩If you love looking up but astronomy sometimes feels complicated, follow me The Night Sky Guy

Every week, I’ll make the sky simple and show you:

⭐ WHAT to look for
🕒 WHEN to look
🧭 WHERE to look

📌 SAVE this post so you have your missions handy.
📤 SHARE it with someone who would hate to miss Thursday’s eclipse.
💬 COMMENT: Which event is YOUR #1 sky mission this week?

And if you're joining me under the stars this week, comment:

👇 MISSION ACCEPTED

📷SkySafari

08/17/2026

One of the best parts of astronomy is the way it brings people together across borders. 🌍✨

Taken at the AstroAccel Innovation Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, this photo brings together an inspiring group of Astronomers Without Borders National Coordinators and community leaders from around the world: Peter Linde, AWB National Coordinator from Sweden; Isa Mohamed from Trinidad and Tobago; Claudio Pablo from Mozambique; Hira Fátima from Pakistan; Yasmin Catricheo, AWB Board Member from Chile; Suhel Ahmeti from Kosovo; Olayinka Fagbemiro from Nigeria; and Eden Orion from Israel.

From August 15–17, they’ve been connecting, exchanging ideas and building new collaborations with people from across the globe, all exploring how astronomy can be a powerful tool for education, innovation, connection and a better future.

This is what Astronomers Without Borders is all about: one people, one sky.

08/13/2026

Preparations for the eclipse. August 12, 2026, Paredes de Nava, Palencia, Spain. By Valentin Grigore (in Romanian): https://www.facebook.com/share/v/18exDy4gdG/

08/08/2026

What an extraordinary achievement... more than 100,000 pairs of eclipse glasses distributed to help people safely experience the August 12 solar eclipse! 🌞🌑
On behalf of Astronomers Without Borders, our heartfelt thanks go to Go Stargazing for this incredible effort and for generously supporting our work to bring astronomy to communities around the world.
We are also deeply grateful to First Light Optics for taking on the enormous task of packing and shipping the glasses at their own expense. This remarkable collaboration means that thousands of students, Scouts, families, astronomy groups and communities will be able to share the wonder of the eclipse safely.
This is the spirit of astronomy at its very best: working together, sharing the sky and reminding us that we are truly one people under one sky.
Congratulations and thank you to everyone who helped make this possible. Wishing for clear skies on August 12 and can't wait to see all the photos! ☀️😎

☀️ 100,000+ ECLIPSE GLASSES! 🤯

We’ve done the sums… and we can hardly believe it...

For the 12 August solar eclipse, Go Stargazing has distributed OVER 100,000 pairs of eclipse glasses — smashing our previous record of 48,000!

Among them:
⚜️ 7,000 pairs to the Scouts for their Jamboree
🔭 5,000 pairs to Bath Astronomers
🇽🇰 4,000 pairs sent to Kosovo for their partial eclipse event
☀️ Tens of thousands more to astronomy societies, charities, schools and community groups across the UK.

So, if you’re heading to one of the many eclipse events on 12 August and someone hands you a free pair of eclipse glasses — there’s a pretty good chance they came from us!

As well as supporting all of these good causes, there’s an even better reason to celebrate: it has all helped raise money for Astronomers Without Borders and their incredible work bringing astronomy to people around the world.

None of this would have been possible without First Light Optics, who took on the mammoth job of packing and sending all those glasses — at their own expense. A HUGE thank you to them!

😎 100,000+ pairs of glasses.
😎 More than double last year's record.
😎 Thousands of people ready to safely watch the eclipse. 🌙☀️

Now there’s just one thing left to organise…

CLEAR SKIES FOR 12 AUGUST! 🤞☀️

08/08/2026

🚨SET YOUR ALARM: Tomorrow morning’s sky could deliver one of the prettiest predawn scenes of the week. 🌙🔴

Before sunrise on Sunday, August 9, a delicate crescent Moon will meet reddish Mars in the eastern sky.

For most across the Northern Hemisphere the pair rises at approximately 2 a.m. and remains visible through dawn. The best viewing window will be roughly 3–5 a.m. when the Moon and Mars are higher and easier to spot, only about 4° apart.

🎯 YOUR SKY MISSION

⏰ Go outside between 3 and 5 a.m.
🧭 Look east to east-northeast
🌙 Find the thin crescent Moon first
🔴 Look nearby for reddish Mars
✨ Explore the surrounding stars of Ta**us
📸 Try capturing the pair above trees, rooftops or the horizon

No telescope is needed. Binoculars will reveal even more of the surrounding star fields, including Aldebaran and Mercury.

⭐ SAVE THIS POST NOW so you have the time and direction ready when your alarm goes off.

❓ Where will you be watching from? Tell me your city in the comments.

📷 Catch a photo? Return tomorrow and share it below. I would love to see what the Moon–Mars meeting looked like from your location.

🔁 SHARE this with someone who needs a beautiful reason to wake up early and look east.**

Follow The Night Sky Guy for more weekly Sky Missions, observing alerts and simple guides that help you know exactly when, where and how to look up.

- Andrew
The Night Sky Guy

📷 SkySafari

08/08/2026

🌌 NAVIGATING TOMORROW: PAS Astrophotography Exhibit

See the universe through the lenses of our own PAS members — real photos, real gear, real passion for the sky. ✨

WHAT TO EXPECT

🌌 Deep sky wonders — nebulae, star clusters & galaxies
📡 Live sky tracking
🕰️ Space Time Capsule — share your hopes for PH space exploration

📍 Quantum Skyview, Gateway Mall 2, Araneta City

🗓️ Sunday, August 9, 2026 | 10AM–9PM

🎟️ FREE Admission

See you among the stars! ⭐

08/05/2026

Congratulations to the Nature Park and Community of Weißbach on their double designations as an International Dark Sky Park and International Dark Sky Community! The first DarkSky Places in the Austrian state of Salzburg!

Through strong community collaboration, responsible lighting, and a commitment to protecting the night, Weißbach is showing how dark sky conservation supports nature, biodiversity, and sustainable communities.

Welcome to the global DarkSky Places family! Visit https://bit.ly/4ckDGMp to learn more.

📷 Photo by Othmar Ortner

08/05/2026

Scientists anticipated seeing a gamma-ray burst or jets of high-speed plasma blasting away from the supernova, but there was nothing.