Because its out there
Saturday, December 4th is Astronomy Night at Tye Preston Memorial Library, Canyon Lake. If we have a clear enough sky, we’ll start at 6:30 in the library with a brief orientation before going to the observatory. If the sky is not cooperating,
We humans have made it to Mars, well, vicariously with machines. One day humans will set foot on Mars and witness Martian existence, feel its wind, the regolith beneath their boots. But until then we depend on the machines in place on,
You might have noticed the discrepancy; my title says 50 years but the race to Mars started nine years earlier with the Soviet Mars 1 in 1962. NASA’s Mariner 4 Mars flyby was the first spacecraft to reach and study Mars, and
First, an announcement. The 2021 kickoff of Astronomy Night at Tye Preston Memorial Library was a big hit with 63 in attendance! A donated (Gibbs family) circa 2002 Meade ETX-90EC telescope package was given as a door prize to a very excited
One of the bedrock tenants of cosmology is our universe being smooth. In other words, it pretty much is the same in terms of matter distribution and density everywhere when observed on a large scale (billions of light years). Of course, on
First, an announcement: Tye Preston Memorial Library in Canyon Lake has received the very first Night Sky Friendly Business certificate from Comal County Friends of the Night Sky and partner Canyon Lake Rotary Club. Their outdoor lighting is a model for all
No, it’s not some 60s bubblegum group, not a comic book adventure, Lucy is a mission of scientific exploration. Starting her journey on October 16, 2021, Lucy perched atop an Atlas V as it roared away from Earth. Lucy’s mission, chase and
Neutron stars are the last remotely normal matter objects that exist before we get to black holes. Black holes, those things you cannot check out of once you go past the event horizon. Black holes, those things that can gobble up stars
OK, it won’t actually fly, it will float in a pool of gravity. More on that later. Hubble has needed a sibling, a bigger, badder, swashbuckling, and more sensitive sibling. The James Webb Space Telescope (Webb) has been designed to supplement, not
It’s progress. The Hill Country Alliance, along with many hill country counties and cities, have designated October as Hill Country Night Sky Month. The State of Colorado has designated June as their Night Sky Month. Utah has April. I’m sure it took
Before I begin, I must correct a mistake from my article of two weeks past. I mentioned gravity as part of the standard model of physics. It is not. The standard model omits gravity because of contradictions arising when gravity (general relativity)
The father of Jupiter, God of agriculture and wealth in Roman mythology, Saturn is probably #1 on most everyone’s list of favorite celestial objects to view. It is one of those “oh gosh!” things that stand out for anyone who has see
I better say yes or risk the wrath of standard model physicists. According to the standard model gravity is one of the four fundamental forces – Strong, Electromagnetic, Weak, and Gravity. It’s in there with the other forces but something’s amiss. The
My philosophic view of our universe is everything, really, everything that exists is on the spectrum of existence. I see existence as a smeared continuum vs. absolutes. An example is visible light. It’s part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Red light is part
Change. It’s relentless. In our lives, our families, neighbors, towns, cities, on and on. Time is the culprit, time is change. If we could stop time, we could stop change. Well, good luck with that. The constellations have seemed constant in our
So, in 1950 Enrico Fermi is having lunch with a few of his colleagues at Los Alamos National Laboratory. They had engaged in a lively conversation about extraterrestrial civilizations, UFOs, travel at or faster than the speed of light, you know, the
This short, suggestive, and excited plea from the Eagle’s Life in the Fast Lane is also an apt description of how space and everything in it acts. The farther out we look, the faster things are speeding away from us, red-shifted. In
Last year I wrote a Binocular Highlights article in April. Springtime nights are wonderful, and the sky is in transition from winter sights to summer sights. Well, it’s over a year later, a challenging year for many, and it’s SUMMERTIME, SUMMERTIME! The
Our universe was different in ancient times. There we were, living on Earth, and there was everything beyond and no one knew where beyond really started. It was beyond the atmosphere but at that time no one had ventured beyond the atmosphere.
The currently accepted hypothesis of how our Moon formed is that of a collision between Earth and a small proto-planet. This is supposed to have taken place about 4.5 billion years ago, when both bodies were still malleable hot. Boy, that would
Last week I presented the scary scenarios posed in an Earthly impact by a large meteoroid or asteroid. This week I will look at technology that might help us avoid these scenarios. But first, I want to mention an issue affecting amateur
They don’t go away. They remind us not to take them for granted…to think of them. No, not your grandparents, asteroids! Well, comets too but comets tend not to be stealthy like asteroids. Comets usually give us their calling card way before
It’s been almost six years since the New Horizons spacecraft snapped a ton of photos of Pluto and Charon as it whizzed by. At that time, it was entering the inner edge of our solar system’s Kuiper Belt, a vast doughnut shaped
The eclipse is coming! Yes, finally, a total lunar eclipse is coming our way. Haven’t had one visible in our neck of the woods since January 21, 2018. Details: Wednesday, May 26th. For us the penumbral phase of this eclipse starts at
We know life. Just look around, it’s everywhere! Living things tend to consume other living or once-living things to live. That stuff gets metabolized, broken down into life-force producing molecules. It boils down to energy. Energy is the life-force produced via metabolic
A while back I used the fictitious city of Trantor in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy to describe the concept of no night. Trantor was not just a city, it was the entire planet, made into one obscene ball of light, with no
Our universe is full of quirky critters. Face it, given 13.8 billion years to work with mother nature has had plenty of time to conjure up interesting stuff. Enter helium stars. While hydrogen is the most abundant element and stars usually spend
Mars has two satellites and they are so small they were not discovered until 1877. Phobos and Deimos, Mars’ little warrior twin children are named after Greek god of war Ares’ sons. So, we use the Roman name Mars but the Greek
Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) are a fact. I think everyone I know has seen at least one so why deny it? Of course, the problem with UFO sightings is in the evidence, or lack of it. The best evidence produced so far
Solar cycles. You probably studied them in science class, boring! Something about 11 years blah, blah, blah, sunspots, yada, yada, yada, snore. Solar cycles, boring as they may appear, help us understand the long-term impact our star the Sun has on the
Coming from Houston I can say my night sky in Canyon Lake is orders of magnitude better than Houston’s. But that’s not much considering Houston’s night sky sucks. In big cities night sky is an oxymoron because for most there essentially is
Funny how once you get away from the rote nature of learning, e.g., high school, your mind can open to the larger questions. What is it all about, do I have purpose, why? It’s all a cosmic mystery, an enigma, no? Oh,
Short answer, not yet. Maybe not yet, but it will sometime, maybe soon, maybe not. What’s going on with Betelgeuse? Betelgeuse is a Red Super-giant Star, with a mass somewhere between 8 and 40 times that of the Sun. That is a
In the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey Dr. Dave Bowman gasps “my God, it’s full of stars!” as he gets pulled into the Monolith orbiting Jupiter. The mantra of astronomy and our existence…it’s all about stars because without stars there is no
Discovering the asteroid belt started an ongoing debate. It continues today albeit with somewhat less controversy. This debate centers on the formation, dynamics, and stability of planetary systems. Well, discussing that would require a series of articles. I’ll stick to how the
Last week I presented two classic methods of determining sky quality for a given evening, called seeing and transparency. This week we’ll look at more methods. It’s all about the Bortle? There have evolved other scales that help us understand how good
I have written about how light pollution is reducing our enjoyment of the night sky. I have not written about how to determine night sky quality. There are fancy gadgets (meters) that can tell you about night sky brightness and then there
When will life, or signs of life be found somewhere other than Earth? I use the word when because I believe the word if is out of the question. Life is out there. Maybe I will be lucky, and signs of life
In 2019 I wrote that astronomers were collectively scratching their heads over a phenomenon called Fast Radio Bursts. To recap: Fast Radio Bursts are extremely energetic and short lived (milliseconds) signals coming from extreme distances (millions to billions of light years away).
I think seeing our Milky Way galaxy in a dark sky is a most moving experience. Knowing its immense proportions and our place in it gives me pause, it’s humbling. Then I find out the Milky Way blows bubbles! Just try to
The early-to-mid 20th century was a time of great advancement in astronomy, no doubt with the aid of technology. Behind the scenes struggles stimulated innovative design and technology. Upstairs, the movers and shakers had meltdowns and out-of-body experiences, mostly due to personality
Do you remember anything about February 24, 1987? I don’t. Maybe if I had been south of the equator… On that day in the Large Magellanic Cloud a star burst forth so bright it could be seen with the naked eye. I
Just got off a Facebook session with relatives about Covid vaccines. The term “established science” was used and then immediately challenged due to its “politicization”. I put my 2 cents in and got out. What about established science? Believe it or not,
Will 2021 develop into a good year? I hear a lot about letting 2020 go and welcoming in a new year. But the year 2021 is a fabricated measure, like any year, month, day, hour, minute, second… Maybe one of the unique
I hope your Christmas day was a good one, considering… Did you get to see the Great Conjunction on the 21st? Or did you get clouded out? We were ready, big binoculars and a telescope set up. Had a few neighbors stop
Friends, family, neighbors, everyone is asking if I know about the Christmas star event coming on December 21st. Then the say “of course you know, you study that stuff”. By the way, December 21st is Winter Solstice. The long night. If you
We’ve experienced four solar cycles of ever lower solar activity, that is, thermal irradiation and sunspots. The Sun’s output has been steadily decreasing ever so slightly over 44 years. This might sound scary…are we headed for a “mini-ice age”? What is a
If you are still searching for an astronomy related Christmas gift and feeling stressed, you are the market segment target for DCOM. Dubious Claims Optics Marketing, I just made that up, has been around for, well, a long time. Seems every year
The thing about astronomy is, once you’re into it you become addicted to the utter ginormousness of it all. I guess it’s a natural thing, considering the vastness of our universe. There are amateur astronomers with 40” telescopes, maybe bigger, and guess
When I was a field rep Thanksgiving was my happy time. I planned my schedule to allow a road trip into northeastern Texas and northwestern Louisiana the week of Thanksgiving. OK, I know it’s just Monday through Wednesday and a lot of
October was the Hill Country Alliance’s first annual Night Sky Month celebration and was so successful I know it will become a tradition. Some of the highlights: Night Sky Month Proclamations – Twenty five hill country jurisdictions, including counties (Comal county too),
New Zealand is considered an astronomer’s paradise, of course when away from its few large cities, especially on the South Island. So, last year (2019) when Nancy and I made the trip I was pretty pumped. The southern hemisphere sky has treats