Just back from a sunny sojourn on the Tropic of Cancer. Not far along the beach from where I was staying is a concrete slab with “23° 26′ 22.07″ North of the Equator” in big letters.
Astronomy
Tropic of Cancer, Little Exuma, Bahamas • Photo by Venture Minimalists (CC BY 2.0)
Photo by Ryan Hutton on Unsplash
Direct from NASA, the universe!
In a poem titled “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven,” William Butler Yeats muses.
The original 1995 image of the Eagle nebula • NASA, Jeff Hester, and Paul Scowen (Arizona State University)
More than gas, less than Jesus
A few weeks ago [in 1995], the Space Telescope Science Institute released two spectacular pictures of a star-forming region in the constellation Serpens. It was an easy matter to download them quickly over the Internet into my computer.
Lord Rosse's telescope, photographed in 1885
A Big Bertha of an observatory
Ireland — with its rag-wet skies, its one clear night in 10 — is no place to build an astronomical observatory.
The Hubble eXtreme Deep Field image of thousands of galaxies • NASA, ESA
Take the universe with a grain of salt
I push back the desks and make a model of the Milky Way Galaxy on the floor with a box of ordinary kitchen salt. I sprinkle the salt into a dense nucleus at the center, then add sweeping spiral arms. The grains glitter against the dark tiles.
Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash
Just stop a minute and think about it
Sometimes it’s fun to think about things that no one has thought about before.
NASA astronaut repairing the Hubble in December 1993 • NASA (Public Domain)
Too big, too pricey, too late
The Hubble is out of trouble, NASA assures us.
Photo by Donald Giannatti on Unsplash
Searching for alien beings is like playing the lottery
Are we alone in the universe? Answering this question is the goal of the scientific project called SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
The new computer-controlled Charles Hayden Planetarium • Photo Credit Museum of Science, Boston © Michael Malyszko 2010
Zooming through the heavens for a picnic on Mars
Sputnik! America’s rude awakening. When the Soviet’s hurled their beach-ball-sized satellite into space on October 4, 1957, this country’s vaulted illusion of scientific and technological supremacy came crashing to earth.
UGC 12158, an example of a barred spiral galaxy • ESA/Hubble
For a new generation, the Milky Way beckons
Gather round, children, and listen to my tale of coming of age in the Milky Way.