There are times when “Wow!” just isn’t enough of a word. Astronomers just released movies made by stitching together 14 years of Hubble Space Telescope images to reveal the beautiful and fascinating movements of stellar gas clouds surrounding newborn stars.
On September 18, 2010 amateur astronomers, educators, scientists and the general public will celebrate International Observe the Moon Night by observing and learning more about our nearest neighbor.
20% chance of an aurora visible tonight. Look to the north from a dark location!
Understanding why the Earth has seasons is one of the most difficult concepts for people to understand because it is often difficult for people to abandon their preconceived ideas. Some widely held misconceptions are:
Misconception #1
The Seasons are caused by the changing distance between Earth and the Sun.
Misconception #2
There are two days in the [...]
In my March missive on Daylight Saving Time, I mentioned a misconception that is held by some students and possibly some adults as well. A more common misconception concerns the apparent height of the Sun in the sky. When I ask students the question, “When is the Sun directly overhead in Utah?,” most students answer, “every [...]
Twenty-three years ago, on 23 February 1987 at 12:35 a.m. MST, detectors in the US, Japan and Russia observed a burst of 24 neutrinos. They came from a supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy to the Milky Way. About 2 hours later, an experienced New Zealand amateur astronomer observed the area [...]
If we could travel back in time several thousand years to observe the night sky, we would notice two main differences compared to the night skies of today.
The most obvious would be the lack of a sky glow produced by a myriad of outdoor lights. This glow washes out the richness and beauty of [...]
The New Horizons spacecraft is on its way to Pluto. It left Earth back in January 2006. Now it is almost halfway between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus. When will it reach Pluto? Not until July 2015. Why so long? Pluto is “out there.” How “out there” is it? A scale model can help.
There’s an AP news story out today about astronomers announcing the discovery of 32 new planets orbiting stars other than our Sun. That’s quite a number for a single announcement!
I keep a little dashboard widget from NASA on my Mac at home that keeps a running score on the number of extra-solar planets that have [...]
Anthony Garcia wrote in to ask, “Why are planets perfect spheres, or at least appear to be perfect?”
Nature loves spheres. It can’t get enough of them.
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