Planets!
Monday, October 19th, 2009From [our] results, we know now that at least 40% of solar-type stars have low-mass planets. This is really important because it means that low-mass planets are everywhere, basically,” explained Stephane Udry from Geneva University, Switzerland. Planets everywhere, no longer fiction! Read the whole article at BBC News.
Video of Launch of Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009This is very cool – from a camera on the Atlas rocket, here’s the launch of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter last week. UPDATE: NASA reports that the LRO achieved Lunar orbit earlier today.
Scientists
Tuesday, April 28th, 2009Listening to the radio today – “scientists” were quoted in a story about the swine flu outbreak, as in “scientists say that…”. Are these scientists the same scientists that expressed concern about sunspot activity? I picture a door with a sign that says “scientists” – inside there are two or three scienctists who answer questions [...]
Sunday Afternoon: Solar Minimum
Sunday, April 26th, 2009I’ve been following the news about sunspot activity on the Sun. The Sun goes through cycles of sunspot activity that normally last seven years. I learned about this as a teenage ham radio operator (callsign KA7NTR), because sunspot activity affected some of the radio bands my dad and I liked to use. We have hit [...]
Sunday Afternoon: Galileo, Part 2
Sunday, January 18th, 2009This is a continuation from last week’s post: Galileo, Part 1. In Galileo’s time (again, we are talking about the last 1500′s and early 1600′s), science as we know it was still new. It was still common for pure logic and reason alone to be used to discover things about the universe. Galileo was one [...]
Sunday Afternoon: Galileo, Part 1
Sunday, January 11th, 2009What really happened? Galileo has been brought up so many times in conversations I’ve had with people about religion and science that I figured it was long past time that I looked into exactly what happened. What I’ve found is that the Catholic Church was definitely in the wrong, but that it was politics (not [...]
Ten Great Astrophotos
Monday, January 5th, 2009Sky and Telescope Magazine has posted a collection of stunning pictures taken by amateur astronomers. Find them |here| and enjoy!
Sunday Afternoon: What I Can and Can’t Do
Sunday, December 14th, 2008It’s the end of the year, which is an easy time to get reflective about life’s direction, so please bear with me while I do so. I’m generally very happy with this blog. I’ve been able to do some things with it that I hoped to do, while other parts of it just aren’t coming [...]
Stars Orbiting Galactic Center
Thursday, December 11th, 2008That short video is the result of a 16 year effort to map the orbits of several stars near the center of our galaxy (The Milky Way). The actual stars move much slower than this (32 million times slower, according to the description of the video). Below is a longer video that offers [...]
Sunday Afternoon: Science Fiction and Religion
Sunday, December 7th, 2008There is some new discussion on Science Fiction and Religion that started with John Scalzi’s column at AMC, and continuing with Gabriel McKee’s post at SF Gospel in which he says that he disagrees with Scalzi in his title, then agrees with him. Scalzi got this exactly right: It’s an interesting topic because in our [...]
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