No, we aren’t talking about Tom Hanks or Meryl Streep. These are the stars you see in the sky at night. If you have ever been confused by statements like the following, then let’s see if we can help you…
Year: 2013
Shopping for a Telescope?
When you are an “astronomy guy”, around this time of year you get inquiries from friends looking to buy a telescope as a Christmas present. Often this is for a child or a grandchild, but sometimes the friend is shopping…
Will It Be a Spectacle Or a Speck?
Spectacle or speck? OK, I stole that phrase. But it’s just too good not to use. Comet ISON will very soon be upon us. The image above was taken with the Hubble Space Telescope when ISON was a little over…
What “Gravity” Gets Wrong
Let’s establish a few things at the very beginning. I love movies about space. I quite happily go along with improbabilities like warp drives, phasers, Vulcan mind melds and the concept that every extraterrestrial species we encounter will be remarkably…
Tagged with: Gravity
How to Point a Telescope
It was a lot simpler in Galileo’s day. Up and down, left and right, manually controlled—simple, right? Yes, but simpler was not always better, at least until computers came along. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. There are two issues…
Ladies and Gentlemen…Voyager Has Left the Solar System!
To boldly go where no one has gone before… Bigger than Elvis? I would say so. NASA announced today that the Voyager 1 spacecraft launched 36 years ago has finally entered interstellar space, the space between the stars. This is…
Full Moons: Not So Super?
A friend: “Hey, did you see that blue moon last night?” Me: “Uh, yeah, I went outside and took a peek.” (Even if I didn’t.) Look, don’t misunderstand. I’m all for anything that gets people outside and looking at the…
Where Do You Build An Observatory?
On a crisp Bedford County day in early 2007, I walked slowly around a ridge in the middle of a cleared field at Lynchburg College’s Claytor Nature Study Center. The ridge was the highest point on the property, but I…
Tagged with: Belk Observatory
Quick Follow-up
Last July, I posted about the possibility that the Curiosity spacecraft might be captured during its parachute descent to the Martian surface by another spacecraft in Mars orbit, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Indeed it was, and the resulting image is…
Hurray For Plutonium!
Wait a minute! Isn’t plutonium that nasty stuff they make bombs from? Radioactive? The stuff Doc Brown stole from Libyans to fuel the Back to the Future DeLorean time machine? Well, yes…but there’s more to it than that. Plutonium exists…
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