How do you define noon? There are two ways. 12:00 p.m. on the clock when the sun is at its highest point in the sky, directly south in the northern hemisphere; this is solar noon. In Lynchburg, Virginia on December…
Author: nealsumerlin
Farewell to the Leap Second
In a few days we will reach the December solstice, with the shortest hours of sunlight in the northern hemisphere (a few seconds less than 9 hours and 35 minutes in Lynchburg, Virginia) and the longest days in the southern…
How Far Away Is That Star?
Quick! What’s the nearest star to Earth? Not counting the Sun, because this is not a trick question. If you answered Proxima Centauri, you can count yourself among the astronomically knowledgeable. Its distance of 4.25 light years means it is…
Tagged with: Stellar Parallax
Killer Asteroids From Outer Space!
Q: Why are dinosaurs extinct? A: Because they didn’t have a space program. 66 million years ago an asteroid that was at least six miles wide smashed into what is now the Yucatan Peninsula. Releasing the energy of five billion…
Nukin’ Through The Solar System
How do you provide power to a spacecraft wandering the solar system? In the early days of space exploration, batteries were the first option. Sputnik 1 with its famous beep-beep was powered by silver-zinc batteries that lasted for a little…
Time and Distance
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has elicited well-deserved plaudits for its ability to peer far back into the early days of our universe, only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang that birthed it. Webb’s infrared vision…
Rocket Juice
When (If?) NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) lifts off tomorrow, there will be a spectacular show of multiple rocket engines getting it off the pad. The most obvious will be the solid rocket boosters strapped to the side of the…
Back To The Drawing Board!
“No one was expecting anything like this.” So says Michael Boylan-Kolchin of the University of Texas, Austin in a recent issue of Science. As I would tell my astronomy students, this is when things begin to get interesting. The James…
A Really Big Rocket
A power lifting record more than fifty years old is soon to be broken. No, I’m not talking about barbells and grunting strong men. The mighty Saturn V is about to be dethroned as the world’s most powerful rocket ever…
A New Eye in the Sky (Part 2)
nealsumerlin
Posted in Cosmology, Exoplanets, James Webb Space Telescope, Observatory and Telescopes, Stars
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In the post previous to this one, we discussed two of the five operational images released from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) on July 12th. Let’s take a look at the remaining three. A QUINTET OF GALAXIES (OR IS…
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