I must go down to the seas again, To the lonely sea and the sky. And all I want is a tall ship, And a star to steer her by. ~ John Masefield Suppose you lived in olden times and you joined a fleet of wooden ships and iron men. Or maybe it’s wooden teeth […]
February 23, 2014
Comets
Comets are essentially big dirty snowballs, the kind you throw at someone you really don’t like. They are mostly made of muddy stinky ice, and bits of dust and little rocks. Comets are about the size of cities and towns, sort of like frozen lakes in space. We’ve had a few that were the size […]
February 16, 2014
Bode Titius Rule
Johann Bode and Johann Titius were best buds and they made a rule about planets. Okay first of all let’s call it what it is. It’s not really a rule. And it’s not a law. It’s not even a theory. It’s more of a thingy. It’s the Bode Titius Thingy. It all started in the […]
February 9, 2014
Black Holes
A black hole is a region of space where the force of gravity is so intense that it is best pictured as having curvy criss-crossing lines on it. Nothing can escape, not even snarky comments. If you’ve ever thrown a baseball into the air, you probably noticed it quickly returned to the Earth. The harder […]
February 2, 2014
Big Bang
“In the beginning there was nothing at all. To the north and south of the nothingness lay regions of fire and frost.” ~ Snorri Sturluson 1220 CE Snorri sounds like a real hoot. If the 13th century Vikings had a dictionary, and looked up the word “hoot” I bet Snorri’s image would be sketched right […]
January 26, 2014
Aurora
Aurora is a pretty thing, a real pretty thing. If you haven’t seen it, and want to, I’ll tell you how. Call your local astronomy club. Those geeks will go on and on about it, and put you on a list to be called if someone sees it happening. You have to agree to receive […]
January 19, 2014
Asteroids
The majority of asteroids are just silly little rocky bits of junk between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, the crumbs that fell from the plate as those planets were served up on the solar dinner table. This crumby region is known as the Asteroid Belt.[insert suspender joke] There are other tribes of asteroids gathered […]
January 12, 2014
Analemma
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 […]
August 11, 2013
LX200 Telescope
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 […]
August 4, 2013
Happy Mars Curiosity Day
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 […]
July 28, 2013
Coronado SolarMax
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). […]
July 21, 2013
Lightbridge Telescopes
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 […]
The Big Blog Theory
Suddenly, there was a huge cacophonous sound. The event was actually unimaginably tiny, and there was probably nothing quite like sound yet, but FINALLY, after who knows how long, time itself was invented. And so it begins.Deep Sky Zodiac
NASA Social JPL – Mars Curiosity Landing
The Planets
Stonehenge
Bible Satire
Neakita – An American Story
Skywise Unlimited 
March 2, 2014
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