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…
Category: Planets
Perihelion Day
On January 4th, 2025 at 8:28 a.m. EST, Earth will reach perihelion, the point in its orbit when it is closest to the sun. Then why is it so cold, at least in the northern hemisphere? Winter—indeed all seasons—don’t depend…
Venus
I have often joked that when I am asked a question that begins with “I saw this really bright thing in the sky…” my answer has a 90% chance of being right if I just say “Venus.” It is the…
Tagged with: Venus
The Demotion of Pluto
Poor Pluto! It used to be a planet, and now it’s not. The underdog of the solar system is championed by fourth graders and Boomer traditionalists alike. When I give talks on astronomy, one of the most common questions I…
Invasion From Earth!
Three spacecraft launched last summer will all arrive at Mars soon. The first is the United Arab Emirates’ Hope mission, which will begin firing its rocket engine to go into Mars orbit at 10:30 a.m. EST on Tuesday, February 9th.…
The Great Conjunction
Our night sky appears to us like an overarching dome sprinkled with bright points of light. Some of those points of light appear to be very close to each other, and indeed the ancients envisioned the stars as all being…
Hawaii or Antarctica?
nealsumerlin
Posted in human spaceflight, Mars, Planets, Solar System, Spacecraft, The Moon
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Fifty years ago, nine missions spread over four years took humans to the moon, either to orbit it, loop around it, or land on its surface. Since the return of Apollo 17 in December 1972, humans have ventured no farther…
Tagged with: Human space exploration
A Wonderful Podcast
I have been a member of the Planetary Society for years, an organization co-founded by Louis Friedman, Bruce Murray, and Carl Sagan. It is through this organization that I learned I could send my name (on a CD along with…
Long Distance Calls Home
I’m old enough to remember being completely awed by the low resolution black and white images beamed back to Earth from Mars in 1965. The Mariner 4 spacecraft performed the first successful flyby mission that produced images from deep space.…
The Legacy of Opportunity
The final confirmation of the demise of the Opportunity rover occasioned a remarkable number of tributes to its 14 year mission exploring the Meridiani Plain of Mars—and not a few tears. Mars is a dusty planet, and the solar cells…
Tagged with: Opportunity rover
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