A Guide to this Upcoming Celestial Event Looking out my window one recent night, I noticed the crescent moon with three other bright points of light trailing in an arc. I had often seen Venus and, less often, Mars and Jupiter. I hadn’t noted that arc before, though I must have seen it. What was… Continue reading The Parade of Planets:
Tag: NASA
A Northern Light Show in Northern California:
The Aurora Borealis Illuminates the Sky In a rare celestial display, the Aurora Borealis painted the night skies over Northern California with glowing, spectral colors this past Friday and Saturday, May 10th and 11th. Stargazers and casual observers alike seldom see the Northern Lights so far south. What are the Northern Lights? The Northern Lights… Continue reading A Northern Light Show in Northern California:
Unraveling Cosmic Mysteries: The Fascinating Discovery of FRB 20220610A
The Mysterious Pulse from Deep Space Imagine capturing a fleeting whisper from the depths of the universe, so powerful that it releases as much energy in a millisecond as our sun does over 30 years. This is not science fiction. Recently, astronomers traced the origins of a Fast Radio Burst (FRB), known as FRB 20220610A,… Continue reading Unraveling Cosmic Mysteries: The Fascinating Discovery of FRB 20220610A
Nancy Grace Roman:
Gazing Beyond the Stars Last week’s post referred to the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope and a reader asked, “Who is Nancy Grace Roman?” NASA astronomer Dr. Nancy Grace Roman, a tireless champion of the Hubble Space Telescope, became the first woman to serve as Chief of Astronomy at NASA. Her pioneering work laid the groundwork… Continue reading Nancy Grace Roman:
Lone Wanderers
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;” from W. B. Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming.” Imagine a planet without a star to orbit, drifting alone through vast space. Such lone wanderers, known as rogue planets, are planets not bound to any star. Astronomers think a collision with another proto-planet knocked them out of their star… Continue reading Lone Wanderers
New Vistas
The James Webb Space Telescope The James Webb Space Telescope(JWST) has to count as one of the greatest advances in science in 2022. NASA’s giant infrared observatory in the sky is now sending images back to earth. This new perspective on the cosmos revealed unprecedented detail of distant galaxies and the far reaches of space,… Continue reading New Vistas
Winter Solstice
Winter holidays in many cultures originated as ancient people observed the changes in the sun’s height in the sky and the corresponding length of the day. Every day for the past six months the Sun has been lower in the sky and there have been fewer hours of daylight. This past Wednesday, December 21st, the… Continue reading Winter Solstice
Yvonne Clark
Rediscovering Women and People of Color in Science Yvonne Clark’s path to working on the Saturn Five rockets that took astronauts to the moon started with burned toast and her desire to fly planes. Y.Y., as she like to be called, had a longer road to that rocket project than most of her NASA colleagues.… Continue reading Yvonne Clark
The Biggest Comet Ever!
The biggest comet ever discovered, the lecturing astronomer told us, is speeding toward the sun at 22,000 miles per hour. I sat up straighter, as I’d guess did most of us in this Zoom class. We were here to learn why Pluto is no longer a planet and this was news. But, he continued, we… Continue reading The Biggest Comet Ever!