Happy Webbmas!

It’s the third anniversary of the launching of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST, or “Juiced” – well, probably not that last one,) and in that scant amount of time, the telescope has been making hay with the amount of useful data that it’s been downloading to us, even after being read more

Like, Wow!, man!

This one popped up several weeks ago, when I was too busy to do it justice, so I set it aside for when I had plenty of time to write it up properly, which appears to be now. There are a decent number of details and thus it will take some explaining, so get comfy as we set off on this journey.

There used to be a massive radio telescope at Ohio State University, dubbed the Big Ear, that monitored a read more

Too cool, part 53: Two comets

For reasons unknown, I never went looking for these after returning from the trip, but I also never had any such images pop up anywhere in my usual haunts, so I suspected that no one got anything worth keeping. Until now, that is.

Astronomy Picture of the Day features someone who actually got comet 12P/Pons-Brooks read more

Exactly/mostly as feared/intended

I don’t know who comes up with these holidays, I really don’t – it’s makes little sense to celebrate something so banal. Why don’t we have National Spaghetti Day or Stay Away From Seattle Day while we’re at it?

[Oh. We do.]

But anyway, today/yesterday is/was Encounter Extraordinary/Rotten Luck Day, and since there read more

Too cool, part 52: Falcon transit

The latest ‘Too Cool’ entry comes from Astronomy Picture of the Day again, but wonder of wonders, it’s not a composite edited photo – I was starting to think this was a requirement for them. Instead, this is a carefully planned and timed shot, one that took a lot more effort than it might first appear.


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Too cool, part 51: Enki Catena

I still routinely check out Astronomy Picture of the Day, even though I’ve come to personally call it the Photoshop of the Day because the number of edited images are now surpassing the unaltered ones – virtually all of those showing starfields over landscapes, certainly. But yesterday’s deserves read more

If you’re not doing this, why not?

So we did our thing for Halloween last night (or Hallowe’en if you want to be pedantic in an enormously stupid way, because who makes a contraction like that anyway?) and I have to tell you, we won’t ever stop doing this. I’m referring to All Hallow’s Read (or is it A’allo’ead?) read more

Hubble comes of age

That’s right, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was launched 33 years ago today, which makes it now a functioning adult if you’re into Tolkien – ‘course, I don’t think you can be seriously into Tolkien and a functioning adult simultaneously, which is simply an invitation to a flame war, to which I reply, Bring it,you Lazy Lobs

All that aside, we check out a couple read more

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