• While putting our Christmas decorations up a couple of weeks ago, it occurred to me that I only hear the word "stocking" in connection with Christmas these days. Does anyone actually wear stockings anymore?
• Well, the best Christmas present we telescope freaks could ask for is a successful launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, now scheduled to ( Read more... )

• Mercury has a tail. Whodathunkit? With all that ( Read more... )

• Coffee is being used as a COVID-19 diagnostic tool. Basically, when you wake up and smell the coffee, make damned sure that you can smell the coffee. Carol and I kid each other about being able to smell lots of things, including coffee but also bacon, garlic, ozone...and dog poop. If we ever catch Teh Viruss, we will know it.
• This has evidently been ( Read more... )

• I've mentioned this before in several places, but I will mention it again here and probably more than once again before it happens: On December 21, Jupiter and Saturn will be only one tenth of a degree apart. That's one fifth the diameter of the full Moon. I've never seen two planets that close, and I've been looking at the sky now for 63 years.
• As ( Read more... )

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Boy, writing this entry just felt good. I gotta do more of these...

• People are asking me what's happening with Dreamhealer. (First chapter here.) I'm working with an artist on a cover. The ( Read more... )

• Amazon is selling hand-made (in Latvia) steampunk thumb drives incorporating copper pipe caps and a Soviet-made pentode vacuum tube. LEDs light up the glass from the bottom of the tube when there's power available at the USB connector. (Thanks to Bill Meyer for the pointer.)
• Tonight would be a good night to see Mercury. It's never easy ( Read more... )

• Grocery conglomerate Kroger is testing a driverless robot cart for grocery delivery here in Scottsdale. The service uses robots made by Nuro. (Watch their videos to get a sense for the ( Read more... )

Very late Tuesday night (in fact, just before dawn on Wednesday morning) we're going to have us a super blue blood lunar eclipse. If that sounds peculiar, it's because it is--and rare. The last one, in fact, happened in 1866. The key facts about the eclipse are these:

• It's a "blue moon" eclipse. A blue moon isn't about color; it's ( Read more... )