The editors of Sky & Telescope make every effort to provide accurate information, but errors do sometimes slip through. We correct all mistakes online as well as printing corrections in the magazine. So if you see something questionable in the magazine, check below to see if it's a known problem.

This article lists all known errors in issues of Sky & Telescope for 2022. See also the errata listings for other years.

April 2022

Page 10: In “Nearest Supermassive Black Hole Pair Discovered,” François Schweizer and team identified the galaxy’s double nucleus, and showed that one of them hosts an active supermassive black hole, in 2018. Karina Voggel and colleagues significantly improved the mass measurements for both black holes in 2022.

Page 55: The nebula sharing the frame with the Horsehead Nebula in the photo is NGC 2023.

Page 56: An astrophotographer reduces the effective noise by half each time they multiply the number of images by four.

May 2022

Page 30: The image of NGC 4725 was taken with a 4-inch f/6.5 refractor.

June 2022

Page 59: In the “Select Targets for Beginning Sketchers” sidebar, the Owl Cluster is NGC 457.

July 2022

Page 25: The name Little Gem refers to the planetary nebula NGC 6818, not NGC 6445.

Page 52: The Hubble Space Telescope captured the top image of Saturn on July 4, 2020.

August 2022

Page 64: The image at the top right of is M8.

SEPTEMBER 2022

Page 11: The team that applied its own analysis techniques to the LIGO, VIRGO, and KAGRA collaboration data and found 10 new candidates is from the Institute for Advance Study.

Page 50: The predicted minima of Algol on August 31st was 20:39. And the published Algol predictions for September 2022 were actually those for September 2023. The correct predictions are listed below:

Date in SeptemberUniversal Time
317:28
614:16
911:05
127:53
154:42
181:31
2022:19
2319:08
2615:57
2912:45

Page 52: In “A Lingering Jovian Mystery,” the observations of Io’s flash in 1983 from Mauna Kea matched those from Palomar Mountain.

Page 52: The graph contains errors in the vertical scale. It should display increasing increments of 0.5. See the corrected graph below.

A graph showing the spike in photometric measurements of Io in violet light during flash.
Photometric measurements of Io in violet light with a 1.5-meter telescope at Palomar Observatory (orange) and with a 0.61-meter at Mauna Kea (blue). The Palomar data set contains the anomalous brightening at 6:22:50 UT on July 26, 1983.
S&T ILLUSTRATION, SOURCE: H. HAMMEL, R. NELSON, ET. AL. / NATURE 1993

Page 74: In the illustration of Earth, the continents should have been rotated 23.4° clockwise, aligning Earth’s equator with the Celestial equator. A corrected illustration appears here.

illustration of the earth's rotation and the ecliptic
This illustration shows the difference between the ecliptic, which is the plane of Earth's orbit around the Sun, and the celestial equator, which is essentially Earth's equator extended out into space. Note our planet's 23.4° tilt from the ecliptic.
Leah Tiscione / S&T

October 2022

Page 12: The description of Kepler’s third law of planetary motion omitted the word “root” from the cubed-root phase of the equation.

Page 37: The most common elements in the universe are hydrogen, helium, oxygen, carbon, and neon.

November 2022

Page 34: The team of Brazilian observers mentioned in “Understanding Lunar Eclipses” is the Rede de Astronomia Observacional (Observational Astronomy Network), which has been led for many years by Hélio C. Vital (rea-brasil.org).

Comments


Image of Acugnini

Acugnini

July 20, 2022 at 10:09 am

The inaugural Sky & Telescope article of "Beginner's Space - What is the Ecliptic?" already has a serious error: the Earth is drawn incorrectly! Even in this artful depiction, it's clear that the orientation of the continents should be rotated clockwise by 23.4°.

In the equatorial-azimuthal projection used there, the Geographic North Pole of the Earth (which of course projects to the North celestial pole) should emanate from above central Canada, not from above eastern Canada, as drawn in the article. Similarly, the Celestial equator (not the Ecliptic) should be drawn as the projection of the Earth's equator (as correctly described in the article), which of course runs across the top of South America.

Let's hope not too many new readers are confused!

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Image of Peter Tyson

Peter Tyson

July 25, 2022 at 10:19 am

Thanks for the comment. Yes, we are aware of this error and will be posting a corrected illustration shortly.

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Image of Richard-Woods

Richard-Woods

October 8, 2023 at 4:45 pm

On this page, and errata pages for all previous years, the page byline date precedes the date of the latest erratum listed. Though minor, that seems wrong.

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Image of Richard-Woods

Richard-Woods

October 8, 2023 at 5:15 pm

Of course, actual production dates precede cover dates, but at least some cases aren't explainable by that.

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Image of Monica Young

Monica Young

October 10, 2023 at 10:44 am

Hi Richard: We publish these pages at the beginning of the year and then update them throughout the year.

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