astronomy

Article

Documentaries I Like: Connections

Connections was a documentary series produced for the BBC in 1978. It sought to explain human history through an "alternative view of change" in which multiple aspects of history, including technology, religion, and finance combine to bring about social change. This mode of analysis moves beyond conventional linear narrative, and as a result embraces complexity. Each episode is an essay connecting several seemingly disparate events or technologies through an extended web of logic -- it's great fun to... READ ON

Article

16 Incredible Planetarium Projectors

I'm a big planetarium fan. What could be more fun than sitting still in a big dark room and looking at stuff, while somebody talks about the cosmos and the sweep of time and stuff? No, seriously -- that's big fun for me. Planetariums combine the fun of sitting with the joy of staring. Also: darkness punctuated by points of light, and sometimes video. So I was delighted to come across a link to sixteen incredible planetarium projectors at object/design site Oobject. These projectors look like crazy... READ ON

Article

If We Had No Moon

Check out this article from Astrobiology Magazine, describing how things would be different if we lacked the moon. Here's a... READ ON

Article

Heading into the weekend, and into "6 billion trillion miles of emptiness"

In case you're feeling overwhelmed by the unnameable lately, you're in good company. Scientists just discovered a swath of universe in which there's really, well, nothing: The cosmic blank spot has no stray stars, no galaxies, no sucking black holes, not even mysterious dark matter. It is 1 billion light years across of nothing. That's an expanse of nearly 6 billion trillion miles of emptiness, a University of Minnesota team announced Thursday. "This is 1,000 times the volume of what we sort of... READ ON
  1. FIND THESE T-SHIRTS AND MORE IN THE STORE!

Article

Harvard's Observatory Going Digital

The New York Times has a lovely article on an effort to digitize the Harvard Observatory's collection. Since the nineteenth century, photographic plates of the night sky have been stored on Observatory Hill on the Harvard campus, representing the history of a discipline prior to the digital era. The collection weighs 165 tons (they're glass negatives) and accounts for 25 percent of the world's astronomical photographic plates. But the problem is, it's all offline. There is no digital version of the... READ ON

Article

Baby, monitor this space mission

As a longtime fan of the Baby Be of Use series, I was glad to see a baby finally stepping up to the plate--by monitoring a NASA space mission. Ok, via the baby monitor, but still. It's not shocking, of course, since it's really a radio transmitter like any other--but it's something to think about that your baby could, just as likely, be viewed remotely by other transmitters. If you don't have such a hypersensitive baby monitor but you still want to keep current as the Atlantis crew repairs... READ ON

Article

Chiron, Heal Thyself...Safely Away From Earth

The planetoid Chiron has fascinated me for years--about as long as I started noticing its annoying presence on any astrological chart I'd get. "Chiron is the wounded healer," every report would say. "It shows where your deepest wounds are." But its placement in my chart isn't exactly unique--Chiron will be in Taurus for anyone born within six years of my birth year (which means, if you're interested, money issues). Named after the centaur in Greek mythology who could heal everyone but himself (and who, in... READ ON

Article

Move Over, Pig...Let's Get Heliophysical!

If you haven't figured out what the Chinese Zodiac has to say about how the Year of the Pig will treat you, by all means please do. But if you discover you're not favored (we can't all be rabbits & goats), fret not--2007, ScienceDaily begs us to consider, is also the International Heliophysical... READ ON

Article

The Power of Pluto

Okay, I'll admit it: I've been reading a weekly horoscope put out by the astrologers over at astrocenter.com for the last six years or so. They also send me a daily, but I've never found it to be even remotely accurate. The weekly, on the other hand, has often been spot-on, if you can believe that, and when not accurate, at least the cause of much mirth. Now, I don't know much about how astrology works, but I do know this: our bodies are made up of 55-75 percent water. And we... READ ON

Article

"Beware of pludog" doesn't have the same ring

We know, we know. It's been a week since Pluto was demoted, and it's time to come back to Earth and get on with our lives. But before we resign ourselves to accepting that from now on, Pluto will be a planet only in our hearts (and on our t-shirts), we'd like to second Joan Bushwell's point that by the astronomers' logic, Pluto is also not a dog: Having recently realized that Pluto has a number of characteristics not ordinarily found in Canis lupus familiaris, the members of the panel -- after much heated... READ ON

Pages