Walkabout

Tonight, the sky was exceptionally clear, especially for summer, and I trekked (well, drove) down to Jordan Lake to see what I could capture. Jordan Lake is about the only place in the area with largely unobstructed views and relatively dark skies, and that “relatively” is key – there are too many cities nearby pumping [...]

In a series of posts earlier, I talked about the possibilities of extra-terrestrial life, and in Part Three, I mentioned our findings of planets around other stars, usually referred to as “exoplanets.” Now, in that post, I was a bit misleading in the progress we’ve made, and while not exactly incorrect in what I said [...]

Yeah, I’m still at it – there are links where you can find Part One and Part Two of this extended essay to catch up or keep continuity. Meanwhile, I’ll keep going with the idea, which basically is, what are the chances of us contacting intelligent life elsewhere in the Galaxy? This time, I talk [...]

This continues a rather long-winded essay on my part. In Part One, I talked about the idea of extra-terrestrial life from the standpoint of cosmology, the planetary conditions that might be needed to produce it. In that post, I went out on a speculative limb, always a dangerous thing from the uneducated. Here, I’m going [...]

I’m warning you ahead of time, this is going to be long, as evidenced by the “Part One” bit above, but hopefully it’ll be interesting as well. I’ll do my best. One of the staple topics of all-night bull sessions, and not just in college dorm rooms, is the concept of intelligent life elsewhere in [...]

Twenty years ago today, the space shuttle Discovery carried a brand new telescope aloft into space, to be settled into orbit the following day. And this was a significant delay over plans – the Challenger accident had occurred only eight months before the tentative launch date of Hubble in October 1986, and set its schedule [...]

As threatened, I did indeed get out and do some more night shots, both during the snowstorm and after it stopped. We got a significant amount here for NC, roughly seven inches in my area I think, and the temperature peeked above freezing only for a couple hours today. It’s made standing outside late at [...]

In consideration of the full moon on New Year’s day (well, okay, New Year’s night,) and with recognition of not having done a damn thing for the International Year of Astronomy, I ventured out on the evening of January 1st and tried for some moonlight photos. No, not photos of the moon itself – I [...]

Today marks the 40th anniversary of a remarkable accomplishment for us, as a species: Walking on the surface of another body in our solar system. Despite the politics, despite the nationalistic fervor, despite the questionable use to us at a time when we had lots of more important things to think about on our own [...]

[Reconstructed from the original posted 1/4/09 or thereabouts] So, I didn’t go out to shoot anything new to kick off the International Year of Astronomy like I should’ve, when we had nice clear skies (but cold, of course). So instead, I’ll post a curious photo and ask for comments. The pic above was taken in [...]