About The Star Hop
The Star Hop is operated by TheStarHop. It offers free tools on this website.
The Star Hop is a weekly guide to the night sky for people in the US: what is up this week, which nights are worth going out, what time to look and which way to face. Every item says what you need to see it, and says so plainly when the answer is your eyes alone.
The workbench side explains how telescopes, eyepieces and cameras behave, with the formula shown. Owen at The Star Hop writes each issue from published sources, chiefly NASA, observatories, university course notes and long-running astronomy references, and links them. We don't rank gear, name brands or tell you what to buy.
For anything involving the Sun, including eclipses, we link the official safety guidance and nothing else. You'll find it on the cards page.
Questions or corrections: contact@thestarhop.space.
Image credits
Saturn near equinox, seen by Cassini, 2008
NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute. Public domain.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Saturn_during_Equinox.jpg
The Pleiades star cluster
NASA, ESA, AURA/Caltech, Palomar Observatory. Public domain.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pleiades_large.jpg
An 8-inch telescope set up for imaging in dark skies, Kickapoo Valley Reserve, Wisconsin
Brainandforce. CC BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ritchey%E2%80%93Chr%C3%A9tien_at_Kickapoo_Valley_Reserve.jpg
An engraved star chart by Johann Bayer (1572-1625)
Johann Bayer; scan from the David Rumsey Map Collection. Public domain.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Night_Sky_I._(IA_dr_night-sky-i-12181052).jpg
The Milky Way over Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado
Jeremy M. White, National Park Service. Public domain.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Milky_Way_Over_Rocky_Mountain_National_Park_(26367177284).jpg
Images are resized for the web. Headings use Marcellus by Astigmatic, under the SIL Open Font License, version 1.1 (its notice is embedded in the font).