If you miss the "blue moon" tomorrow night (Thu., 5/31/07), don’t cry. Just fly to Europe. The full moon there on June 30 will be the second full moon in a month, hence by the controversial definition, it is a "blue moon." Or you can just wait until December of 2009, when there will be […]
Archive for May, 2007
Do you have a right to a clear, dark, night-time sky? If you are an American, you have a constitutional right to many things, not the least of which is the "pursuit of happiness." If your idea of happiness is to be able to view, unhindered, the majesty of the heavens, is it "right" that […]
Wow, even after decades of observing Venus, I have to say that the old gal is still pretty impressive. The close approach with the moon last night had a less than auspicious beginning, as it was cloudy from late afternoon until nightfall here in Denver. But as the clouds cleared away, there they were, standing […]
The shroud of the darkside has fallen…Yoda
Astronomers have used data from the Hubble Space Telescope to construct a "map" of "dark matter" around a galaxy cluster, as reported in the June 1 issue of the Astrophysical Journal. All matter has gravity, and so far about the only evidence found for dark matter is in the […]
I guess that growing up in the South, I was a little sheltered. I had heard the term "mooning" somewhere, but had never experienced it. I thought that maybe it was some Northern invention, not a real phenomenon that real people experience or heavens forbid, actually do.
Well, more than 20 years ago in the Seychelles […]
Many myths are based on truth.Spock, "The Way to Eden"
Do Vulcans really have pointy ears? Are they a species completely devoted to logic? Do they even exist? Does Vulcan even exist? These are no longer unanswerable questions. The NASA/JPL PlanetQuest project has just announced that the upcoming mission, SIM PlanetQuest, will scan the star 40 […]
It’s interesting that so many human-produced items sent into space can be seen from the surface of the earth. I can remember seeing the Echo satellites in the early 1960s. The Echos were just large, 100-foot silvery Mylar balloons. They reflected sunlight as well as radio signals, and were quite easy to see if you […]