A short post about something that is all over the news now. No, not the election. I’m talking about the latest “supermoon”. This is a term I don’t believe I had ever heard before about five years ago. I don’t…
Year: 2016
Mars or Bust!
Ready to go to Mars? Elon Musk is. So is Robert Zubrin. And so is NASA. But I wouldn’t book my flight quite yet. There are some significant challenges to be overcome before any human footprints are left on the…
Jupiter and the Fourth of July
There are currently 24 active spacecraft exploring the solar system beyond low Earth orbit, ranging from the relatively nearby–Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is mapping our moon–to the far-flung. Voyager 1 has actually left the solar system and is currently 135 astronomical…
Mars Opposition 2016
That increasingly bright and obviously red object rising in the southeast late at night (around 10:30 pm EDT from Lynchburg) is Mars. It will rise ever earlier as it moves into position exactly opposite the sun in our sky on…
Tagged with: Mars opposition 2016
The 29th of February
A relatively rare event—an extra day in February, the every-four-years February 29th—greets us again this Monday. Why does this happen? As you might expect from my posing the question on this blog, the answer is wrapped up in astronomy. In…
That Einstein Was a Smart Guy
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… Two black holes collided and merged, releasing unimaginable quantities of energy in the form of gravitational waves. Last year these waves were detected on Earth by an exquisitely sensitive pair…
Pluto Is Still Not a Planet
Sorry, Pluto lovers. A recently published paper by Jean-Luc Margot of UCLA (as a Star Trek Next Generation fan, I had to give the author’s full name) proposes a mathematically rigorous way to define a planet. Pluto, for all its…
Tagged with: Pluto
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