Each Friday, Professor Todd Brown shares his love of astronomy and encourages readers of the Insider to get outside and look skyward. Here are his collected columns.

Take a chance, Columbus did: For Thursday’s event, the odds were grim but the payoff would have been great. I had an approximate 5 percent chance of seeing a 10-mile wide rock called 1988 EB (ah, the romantic names in astronomy) pass in front of the star 22 Scorpio (I think Shakespeare wrote a sonnet about this star) at 2 a.m. for a brief one second. 04.21.08

End of the bull market: Taurus is something like the younger sibling of the celestial family compared to Orion: always being compared and never mentioned first. As Rodney Dangerfield (who was a standup comedian in my college days) would say, it gets no respect. I have been guilty of this as well as I have been hailing the wonders of Orion without a mention of the Zodiac constellation that treks through the sky along with it. As a farewell to winter, I think Taurus has deserves its column. 03.28.08

What's your sign?: For those born under Cancer or Virgo, good luck in finding your constellation. They are two of the dimmest constellations with few, if any, bright stars. Meanwhile, easily visible Orion and Cassiopeia are left out of the select group of twelve simply because, as a realtor would tell you, it is all about location, location, and location. 02.28.08

The sun god is thirsty for blood: I must warn anyone that this is a ‘spoiler alert.’ For those that do not want to understand the science behind the brilliant colors in a sky at sunset, then stop reading now and just go enjoy the eclipse. 02.19.08

End of the world tentatively rescheduled for 2036: If that oblong piece of rock had hit us, the world wouldn’t have ended but someone would have gotten the big hurt put on them. If downtown Pittsburgh had been 2007 TU24’s final resting place, then the city would have been replaced with a crater about a mile wide and the shock wave would have assured us that classes at Pitt-Greensburg, as well as most of us that study and work here, would have been permanently cancelled. 02.04.08

Global Warming goes to the dogs: Canis Major: Fast forward from the Greeks to the mid-1800s. By now, civilization had advanced to the point of the telegraph and early photography. People wore underwear, Mark Twain was alive and the Chicago Cubs were about to be founded. Scientists thought they knew a lot of stuff over those Greeks. Yet, by this time, a puzzle with the motion of Sirius was apparent. 01.28.08

The sky above for the year ahead: The new year has started and the spring semester is packed with astronomical events. Hope springs eternal with the rolling of the yearly odometer and in case some of your New Year’s resolutions fall by the wayside in the months to come, here are some events that are set in stone, weather permitting, for viewing during the upcoming months. 01.18.08

Signs you are dating an astronomer: One of the first times I brought my future bride to my small hometown in Illinois to meet the family, it just so happened to be on the weekend of the great 1994 annular eclipse. To make sure I didn’t let time get away from me during the five or so minutes of maximum coverage, I found a song of similar length I could play on a cassette player; when Pachelbel’s Canon was drawing to a close, so was the event. Three years later, it should be no surprise that I was dancing to the same piece at our wedding. 11.12.07

Holy cow, it’s Comet Holmes!: Trapped in a short-term orbit of less than eight years, Comet Holmes has seen so many fly-bys of the sun that its gas supply has been depleted and hence it is a target for really large telescopes and observers that just want a challenge. Compound this with the fact that it is daily getting farther from the warming sun and the earth and one would not have high expectations for Holmes. But something happened to Comet Holmes in the late hours of Oct. 23. 11.02.07

The coast is clear for Orion the mighty hero: Orion is familiar to most mainly because it contains so many bright stars in a pattern that almost resembles a human form. If Monet painted stick figures, then Orion would be his masterpiece. Making a list of the Top 35 brightest stars in the night sky, Orion would contain five of them. 10.19.07

Comet Halley (partially) returns next week: A pessimistic person would think that the most famous comet of all time, Halley’s, is not due back in our area of the solar system until 2061. Such people would say that it last graced our skies in 1985 and, because it takes 76 years to orbit the sun, simple addition demands a very distant date in the future for its return. Technically, that is true. Luckily for us, Halley’s Comet is, like all comets, a litterbug. 10.12.07

Sputnikish: Despite its prime location in the sky, our poor natural satellite seems to be lost in the nearsightedness of today’s world with the Apollo landings of 35 years ago condemning it to the ho-hum realm, of “been there, done that." With ongoing space missions to Mars, Saturn and Pluto (to name just a few), it seems almost unimaginable to realize that the race that Sputnik created was ended, as far as the public was concerned, when Neil Armstrong stepped off that ladder on July 20, 1969. But, for the amateur skywatcher, the moon is still the dominating target and there is plenty to behold. 10.05.07

The king has (almost) left the building: Unlike most other planets in the sky, if Jupiter doesn’t have to share the sky’s stage with the sun then it is always an eye-catching target. It is easy to see why the Romans named the planet for the king of their gods. The reason for its rather steady brilliance comes from the facts that it is the largest planet and has a very reflective atmosphere. 09.28.07

The fall of common sense: With my license to practice astronomy on the line I am, by law, required to discuss the approaching equinox — the first day of fall. If the shortening daylight and the recent cool weather haven’t been enough, then at 5:51 a.m. on Sunday it becomes official: after 93.6 days of summer we are entering autumn, which lasts only 89.7 days. After that, there are 89.0 days of winter to weather. 09.21.07

The must-see Grecian television fall lineup for 300 BC: Before the modern age of television (and radio), hard lives and little options translated to an early bedtime. But everyone likes a good story when they have the chance and the easiest source for early civilization was simply to look at that high definition, million-inch diagonal screen mounted overhead: the sky. Viewing the heavens did not carry any cable fees and, as is still true today, there is never a warning in the sky after sunset regarding copyright laws and pirating. There were just the stars, and they became very important to humanity for many reasons. 09.14.07

Getting steamed at the start of school: The start of the school year is here: it’s time to get steamed. That’s right, it is a prime time to see one of the brightest constellations of the sky: Sagittarius, the archer. One of the twelve Zodiac constellations, its beginnings date back at least to Babylonian times and it has been carried through (and tweaked) by Greek and Roman mythologies to today. 09.07.07