Starry Night This Week

Each week most PBS stations air "Jack Horkheimer: Star Gazer", the world's first and only weekly TV series on naked-eye astronomy. The Starry Night images on this page illustrate the show for the week of Monday July 15, 2002. You can view the complete show script, or watch a RealPlayer video of the show.

A Cosmic City Of A Million Stars And How To Find It

A group of four dim stars form an uneven four-sided figure known as the "keystone" of Hercules, the torso of the giant. Find the constellation of Hercules by drawing an imaginary line between Arcturus and Vega.

The Great Hercules Cluster is one of the skies most precious jewels and without doubt the finest and one of the easiest to locate globular clusters in the northern hemisphere. Visible to the naked eye under dark skies, M13 looks like a fuzzy ball brightening towards the centre in binoculars. A moderate sized telescope and high magnification shows a blazing ball of stars with many resolved members. A remarkable cluster.

Still want to know more?

Click here for an archive of the past shows.

Introduce yourself to the wonders of the night sky with Starry Night Backyard. Astronomy software so realistic and easy to use that learning your way around the night sky has never been easier. Learn how to identify planets, stars and constellations. View the heavens from your own backyard or anyplace on Earth. Blast-off and explore the solar system, ride a comet or check out the view from the International Space Station. Do it all using Starry Night Backyard.

And for those whose interest in the night sky goes even deeper, you'll want to get the new advanced Starry Night Pro. With extended data sets, dozens of new Pro-only features and Internet support not found in any other program you'll wonder how you ever observed without it!

See the wonders of our Universe in all its three-dimensional glory. Pilot a starship through 700 million light years of space and 30,000 galaxies. See what's really out there, with Deep Space Explorer.

Feel free to send us an email if you have any questions about Starry Night that you can't find answered here on our website. We also welcome your feedback and suggestions.