Tilt!
Whenever I’ve had the privilege of showing a telescopic view of Saturn to someone who has never seen it before, the almost inevitable response is disbelief. “Is that real?” Especially if its beautiful rings are highly tilted, the view is among the most beautiful objects in our solar system. This is an image I took a few years ago at the Belk Observatory, on the grounds of the Claytor Nature...read more ❯
Mirror, Mirror
The first telescopes, like the ones Galileo used to discover the moons of Jupiter and craters on the moon, were crude by today’s standards. Nonetheless, they were gateways to a new understanding of our place in the cosmos.
All telescopes are what I like to describe as light funnels. Their function is to gather more light than can naturally pass through your eye’s pupil, with its 6 to 7...read more ❯
Strange Visitor from Another Star
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s 3I/ATLAS, the third known object to visit our solar system from outside it. The “3” in the name indicates that it is the third such object, the “I” that it is interstellar, and the “ATLAS” that it was discovered by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescope in Río Hurtado, Chile. Although that telescope was designed...read more ❯
More Rocket Science
Take a look at these two images, both the tail end of the first stage of a really big rocket. One is from almost sixty years ago. The other is contemporary. Both have a lot of rocket engines designed to work together. Can you tell which is which?
OK, the graininess of that first image may have given it away. Those 30 engines are on the first stage of the N-1 rocket, the rocket that the...read more ❯
It's Not Rocket Science
The basics of rocket science really are pretty simple. Send a lot of hot gas out one end of a rocket, and it will go in the opposite direction. You know what’s hard? Orbital mechanics, maneuvering a spacecraft to rendezvous with something else. Or at the very least, it’s counterintuitive.
On June 3rd in 1965, the Gemini 4 mission was launched, with Jim McDivitt and Ed White as the...read more ❯
Location, Location, Location
Why does SpaceX launch its gigantic Starship from as far south as you can get in Texas?
Is it because Elon Musk likes lower taxes and a looser regulatory environment than he might find in other states? Probably. But there are very good technical reasons why orbital launch facilities are generally situated close to the equator. American rockets lift off from Cape Canaveral in Florida, at...read more ❯
Where Does Space Begin?
If you are old enough, like me, to remember when riding a rocket into space was something no one had ever done, you may be joining me in some mix of amusement, mild disdain, and (let’s face it) jealousy at all the millionaires and celebrities, and a few regular folks, who get to do so.
As of this writing, Jeff Bezos’ New Shepard rocket is scheduled to carry six persons on an 11-minute ride...read more ❯
Twins, Siblings, and Only Children
Many people have at least a passing interest in astronomy. It’s why, even though my graduate education is in chemistry, I’m always sure to tell new acquaintances that I taught astronomy for much of my career. Chemistry is probably more obviously relevant to them, but astronomy is more popular.
Something they may have heard somewhere along the way is that the majority of stars are binaries,...read more ❯
Theories and Observations
I’m old enough to remember when the solar system was described as a fairly well-ordered place. There was the Sun, the rocky inner planets, an asteroid belt of smaller rocky objects, four large gaseous/icy planets, the since demoted Pluto, and smaller icy objects beyond the most distant currently recognized planet Neptune, from which comets originated. All of these objects were presumed to have...read more ❯
A New Moon Race?
When the Apollo astronauts landed on the moon between 1969 and 1972, they all landed fairly close to the lunar equator.
The largest excursion north or south was that of the Apollo 15 mission. It landed 26 degrees north of the equator in the Hadley–Apennine region, almost to the rim of Hadley Rille, hypothesized to be a collapsed lava tube.
The orbital mechanics of the Apollo...read more ❯