We live in a remarkable era. If you brought an ancient Greek astronomer to the present day and dropped him off in a field somewhere, he would be awestruck, and maybe terrified. (Heck, it probably wouldn't even need to be an astronomer: I think that most people were quite familiar with the night sky until recent times ( Read more... )

You've probably heard at some point that tides on Earth are mostly caused by the moon, along with some smaller but still noticeable effects from the sun. In other words, the two objects' tidal forces are comparably strong (rather than being many orders of magnitude different: Uranus doesn't appreciably affect our tides!). You've probably also heard ( Read more... )

This is an absolutely stunning image: the Curiosity rover spotted while descending to the Martian surface, dangling under its parachute. It took some tremendously careful calculations by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter team (and some good luck) to snap this shot of a fast-moving object in the few moments available (they had to aim the camera in ( Read more... )

Charged particles released after the big solar flare last week have been reaching the Earth all weekend, and there's a good chance of an impressive aurora tonight! (I probably ought to have said something yesterday...) There's a good Aurora Forecast page from the University of Alaska that will show you what to expect where. In fact, if it weren't ( Read more... )

I've finally finished mucking with my poster of the solar system!

( Read more... )

When our college president sent out his monthly campus update, I was pleasantly surprised to see my picture: he was happy about the very successful public viewing event that another professor and I arranged for the transit of Venus on June 5. (I'm up for tenure this fall, so the recognition is good!) We got an article on the front page of the ( Read more... )

Tomorrow (Tuesday, June 5) starting at about 6:04 Eastern time, the planet Venus will pass directly between the Earth and the Sun. This is a Rare Thing: the next time will be in 2117. There's been a lot of good science done using these transits in the past (like the first good estimates of the size of the solar system) and they still provide neat ( Read more... )

When we realized that our trip to see family in Los Angeles was going to line up with the (partial) solar eclipse, Kim and I made sure to bring a pair of the solar viewing glasses that Harvey Mudd sent out to alumni a few weeks ago. We were on our way to dinner when it started (after showing off the baby to a bunch of thrilled relatives all ( Read more... )

One of the things that still blows my mind about our studies of planets around other stars (beyond the simple fact that we can see them at all) is that astronomers are actually able to figure out the composition of their atmospheres. That's possible when a planet passes between us and its star: it creates a tiny shadow that dims the star's light ( Read more... )

I am really excited by what I've heard about Planetary Resources, a private company that has just announced plans to mine near-earth asteroids for precious metals and other resources. Here's a write-up from the Bad Astronomy blog that goes into details: it sounds like these folks have a plausible business plan (as well as the necessary level of ( Read more... )