Skywise Unlimited

24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence? Well yeah, maybe. Or maybe not. It probably has something to do with those pesky ancient Babylonians and their obsession with overwrought symbolism. Somehow they got onto a kick about how magical the number 60 is, and how that divides nicely by 12, and […]

Meade 10″ f/10 LX200 ACF I’ll start with that “ACF” part because that tells you what kind of a telescope I’ve purchased. It looks an awful lot like a Schmidt Cassegrain because the light path is “folded up” into a similar package to a Schmidt. The 10″ f/10 suggests a 100 inch light path but […]

One whole year ago my fellow NASA tweeps and I were at JPL in Pasadena listening to Allen Chen give us live play by play updates as Curiosity descended to the Martian surface and the famous seven minutes of terrible possibilities unfolded. Even Neil deGrasse Tyson has since admitted he had severe doubts about the […]

The Scope 60mm, f/6.6, <0.5A H-α, BF15. And here’s what all that technical mumbo jumbo means. The telescope is a refractor and the diameter of the lens is 60mm. The f/6.6 means the length of the scope is 6.6 times longer than it is wide which makes it 396 mm long (but everyone says 400). […]

Meade Lightbridge Dobsonian Surrier Truss Telescopes A dobsonian telescope consists of optics which were designed by Isaac Newton in the 1660’s, on a mount popularized by John Dobson in the 1960’s. They say more than half of all amateur scopes are of this type and I believe it. Many people make their own, as I […]

Did I ever tell you about the time I prevented a bombing? Okay forget I said anything, but here’s what happened. On July 11, 1991 in La Paz, Mexico there was a total eclipse of the Sun. The Keystone Astronomers were there. Keystone Astronomers at Large is a quirky cable access TV show that I […]

Lyra, Aquila, Cygnus, and Sagitta Respectively they are The Harp, The Eagle, The Swan, and The Itty Bitty Arrow. The first three are all birds being shot at with the arrow. Well, two birds and a musical instrument, but the harp used to be a pigeon. Hey, it was a simpler time. Meanwhile the brightest […]

Big Dipper The most famous of all the dots ever connected. So well-known that people pretend to see it even when they don’t. There are seven stars, eight if you count correctly. One of them is tiny, little, and wee, and is attempting to hide behind the handle. America calls it the dipper, which is […]

Capricornus the Seagoat The name Capricornus has been shortened to Carpricorn by some folks. But that is a very recent thing, like only in the last hundred years maybe. Either way, it means Seagoat. And Seagoat is the oldest known name still in use for anything in the whole sky. People have been calling these […]

Scorpius the Scorpion In the scorpion we find lots of bright stars that make an obvious fish hook shape, especially when you ignore the claws that the Romans surgically shortened in order to make Libra. In fact some natives of the south pacific call this constellation “Maui’s Hook.” You see Maui is one of the […]

Leo the Lion The big kitty is one of the few real connect-the-dots sort of allegories. It makes a reasonable stick figure of an animal at least. The Chinese call it the horse. It takes some imagination. If you try to connect the dots you may get something that looks like a coat hanger after […]

Taurus the Bull Taurus is a bull, well half of a bull anyway. The front half. Actually mostly the head, with a shiny red eye. I think he’s been drinking. He’s charging Orion who appears to be perfectly prepared to defend himself from the assault. Orion also appears to have lost his pants but we […]