How I learned to love looking at the moon – and you can too

Observational astronomers hate the moon. This might be surprising to some of you – after all, the moon is gorgeous, it’s the closest astronomical object we can observe and the dominant feature of the night sky on Earth. But that very spotlight is the problem: when the moon is out, its glare can hide nearly everything else. When you are looking for tiny details or deep-sky objects, that is a problem.

Even in just the next couple of months, there are two meteor showers that will each happen within a few days of the full…