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Weighing in With Gravity
Veitimilla Summit, Ecuador How do you feel today? Heavy as a ton of lead, or a ton of feathers? Light on your feet, or dragging on the ground? It probably depends on a lot of things, most particularly...
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Solar Maximum: Fizzle, or Finale Yet to Come?
Image of sun through a Sunspotter Telescope Thinking back through my life, I recall four times when I took notice of sunspots one way or another. Back in 1980 when I was in the 12th grade, I remember...
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Antiques Roadshow of the Solar System
Carl Sagan Poses with Model of Viking Lander On Earth, evidence of past human civilization and habitation can be gleaned from the rocks, soil and some still-standing monuments of architecture large and...
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The State of the Universe: Matter and Age Up, Dark Energy Down
Smile, universe, for your baby picture! Maps of the early universe by the COBE, WMAP, and Planck missions. Image credit: NASA On news that the universe may be 100 million years older than previously...
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Gliese 667 Cc: Musing the Possibilities of Another Earth
Artist concept of exoplanet Gliese 667 Cc. Credit: L. Calcada/ESA Welcome to Gliese 667 Cc. We hope you enjoy your vacation stay on this amazing planet. You have traveled 23 light years from Earth, but...
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The Sun is Having A Blast!
SDO image of June 7 CME. Credit: NASA/SDO If you're still uncertain whether the Sun's most recent, and unusually long and quiet, solar minimum is over yet, just check out this movie from NASA's Solar...
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Dawn: Mission to Explore Strange New Worlds
Illustration from The Little Prince We are soon to explore a new world, one that we haven't seen up close before: the asteroid Vesta. NASA's Dawn spacecraft, which has been conducting maneuvers for the...
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A Year in the Life of an Ice Giant
The "Ice Giant" Neptune. Credit: NASA/Voyager 2 Would you believe we discovered the planet Neptune only one year ago? Weird; I seem to have heard about this planet all my life—it was even my favorite...
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Quasar APM 08279+5255: Really Big Bathtub Drain?
Chandra X-ray image of quasar APM8+5255 Somewhere out there, at the most distant reaches of space and time, a vast space-ocean with 140 trillion times more water than the drop that fills Earth's ocean...
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Dawn of A New Era
Vesta, image from NASA's Dawn spacecraft Ion thrusters full! Set us into a standard orbit, Mr. Sulu…. Well, I don't know if any of the helms-persons at NASA are named Sulu, but we have indeed achieved...
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NASA’s WISE Spots Ys
Artist concept of a Y Dwarf star In the ongoing hunt for things in space that are more and more difficult to find (because scientists love a good challenge), NASA’s WISE spacecraft has revealed...
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Supernova Super Hero
Supernova 2011fe in M-101. Credit: Conrad Jung, Chabot Space and Science CenterAs you read these words, a former star is blasting its remains into space, spreading the chemical elements forged during...
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Opportunity's Endeavour
Endeavour Crater; Credit: NASA, Google EarthWho’d’ve thought back in 2004, when NASA’s twin Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity set wheels on Martia-firma, that one would still be roving nearly eight...
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Dumpster Diving on Mars
Gale Crater, the destination for NASA's new rover Curiosity. Credit: NASA, Google Earth Ready for yet another great Martian adventure? Another prestigious interplanetary mission to that fabled world?...
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Seeing Relativity: No Bungees Attached!
Charles Burckhalter's 1900 solar eclipse image with stars marked for Relativity analysis. Credit: Chabot Space & Science Center Elevendy-one years ago (that's a hundred and eleven to the...
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Asteroid 2005 YU55 Scores!
Asteroid 2005 YU55 - Radar image taken in 2010 - Credit NASA/Cornell/AreciboOn November 8th at 3:28 PM PST the asteroid "2005 YU55" will pass by the Earth at a distance of just over 200,000 miles, or...
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Dog Eats Moon: Total Lunar Eclipse
Total Lunar Eclipse 08-28-07. Credit: Conrad JungLook, up in the sky! Is it a moldy orange? A giant celestial penny? A dragon eating the Moon? In fact, it's a total lunar eclipse, and coming soon to a...
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Luna Nova: Moon of the Cretaceous Skies
Moon today and during the Cretaceous Although I am a lifelong fan of science, I've also been a lifelong fan of science fiction—so I sometimes experience conflict in the DMZ where the two meet. Having...
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Kepler 22B: Exoplanet Dress-up Doll
Kepler 22B compared to the solar terrestrial planets It's 600 light years from Earth, orbits a star very similar to our Sun in a period of about 290 days, and has a diameter about two and a half times...
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Operation Vesta: Pluto's Devious Plan to Regain Status?
Asteroid Vesta - Images from the Dawn Spacecraft With the New Horizons spacecraft hurtling toward its 2014 encounter with Pluto, and with the Dawn spacecraft now at its most up-close and personal...
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The Stars Within an Eyelash's Reach
Orion rising in Death Valley - Credit: Ben Burress I want to take a moment, again, to contemplate the vastness of the Universe…and expect an epic fail…. What brings this on? Well, the skies of Death...
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The Sun Shows A Flare for the Dramatic
M9 Solar Flare of January 23 2012; credit: Solar Dynamics Observatory Let's see, what's the weather like right now (sticks finger into the air). Speed, 1.2 million miles per hour, density 1.1 protons...
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European Comet Blockbuster Currently in Production
Rosetta-Philae lander on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko - artist concept Scene: Spacecraft hurtling through space, approaching a giant 4-kilometer flying mountain of ice and rock. The two hurtle on...
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Starship Math: Are the Stars Our Destiny?
Hypothetical Space Shuttle at Epsilon Eridani. Credit for base image: NASA Once again I have drifted off thinking about the size and scale of space–the things in it and the distances between them–and...
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Solar FireworX: First X-Class Flare of the Year
SDO Solar Flare--the bright spot on the left--on March 7 2012. Credit: NASA/SDO The first X-Class solar flare of the year went off on March 7th in spectacular fashion. Fortunately the flare went off...
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In Search of the Oldest Stuff: Rocks of Ages
Precambrian Noonday deposit in Mosaic Canyon, Death Valley What's the oldest stuff you’ve ever seen, or better still, touched? Have you ever felt awe from contact with something of great antiquity? How...
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A Celestial Sports Extravaganza: Solar Triple Play
Solar Triple Play: Venus Transit, Solar Eclipse, Partial Lunar Eclipse Get ready for a celestial sports extravaganza as you've never before seen—not all at once, anyway. Coming up in May and June this...
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UFO? LGM? OMG! What is That Thing in the Sky?
Unexplained sighting in the night sky. Credit for base image: Nayu Kim Ever seen something in the sky that was unusual, and which you couldn't explain? I've received calls from some of you and have...
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Phoebe: Quirky, Mystical, Magical Moon
Phoebe and Saturn. Credit: NASA/Cassini Who's Phoebe? That quirky blonde from Friends? The mysteriously magical nanny from that old sitcom? A bird? A plant? All that–but the one I'm talking about is...
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The Once and Future Earth
Hypothetical exoplanet of a brown dwarf star--similar to a future Earth? Credit: Jeff Bryant Every now and then, when seeing fresh examples of the world's problems, local or global, I take a deep...
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Don't Miss Your Last Chance to See a Transit of Venus on Tuesday
The Transit of Venus. Diagram from Starry Night Pro. Image from NASA's TRACE spacecraft, 2004. Over the past few months, we've been showing people the brilliant white flare in our evening skies that is...
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Sizing Up the Earth
San Francisco Bay perspective. Created with Google Earth. What has a mass of about 6 yottakilograms, occupies a volume of space of about 1 million million cubic-kilometers, is about 40 kilometers...
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Voyager: Old Spacecraft, New Frontier?
The Voyager spacecraft and the Heliopause In 1977, a mere 20 years after the launch of Sputnik marked the beginning of the Space Age, the twin Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft were launched, bound for tours...
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Deep, Dark Waters of Titan
Crossection of Titan and its subsurface ocean Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, NASA finds another ocean for us to worry about, this time on Saturn's moon, Titan. Funny thing...
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Do Constellations Change Over Time?
"The Duck's Foot" - Credit: Astro Bob, created with Stellarium I thought it was time to take a step back from talking about current events in space exploration and dig up one of those astronomical...
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Mars Science Laboratory's Touchdown on The Red Planet
View from NASA's MSL "Curiosity" Rover Last Sunday, NASA scored a long-distance touchdown (a very long distance, with the goal posts fully 150 million miles away) on Mars! The Mars Science Laboratory,...
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NASA's New Mars Rover: Armed and Curious
NASA's Mars Science Laboratory and ChemCam Space exploration has caught up with science fiction (again): we have deployed laser-armed nuclear-powered robot on Mars, and nearly two weeks after landing,...
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Will the Asteroid Apophis Rock Our World?
Earth and Near-Earth Asteroid--dramatization only The red phone on my desk went off again, flashing and beeping urgently. What was it this time? Another super-villain escaped from prison, threatening...
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Black Holes: Ultimate Trash Compactors of the Universe
Artist concept of a black hole and companion star. Credit ESA/Hubble European Space Agency Information Centre (M. Kornmesser, L. L. Christensen) Ever hear the one "Black holes are out of sight"? Or how...
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News From Mars: A River Ran Through It
Mars streambed conglomerate compared to example on Earth. Credit: NASA/Mars Science Laboratory The news from Mars just keeps getting better. NASA's Curiosity rover, now exploring the alluvium at the...
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Found In Space: Exoplanet Alpha Centauri Bb
Artist concept of Alpha Centauri Bb If you've been keeping up on the now very frequent reports of new extrasolar planet discoveries, here's a news flash: an Earth-sized exoplanet has been found...
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Ten Random Astro-Facts to Entertain and Boggle
From a Flammarion woodcut, unknown artist. I decided that instead of blogging on just one topic in astronomy, I'd blog about ten of them! Here are some of the astronomy fun facts from my archive that...
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The Leonids Are Back!
Leonid Meteors. Credit: Carter Roberts, Eastbay Astronomical Society The Leonids are back—and they're not a family circus group from Russia! This is the annual meteor shower of November that offers us...
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Still Curious About Mars in 2012
Artist illustration of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity. We've been thinking about life on Mars for a long, long time. At first it was easy. Before the telescope, Mars was a brilliant...
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Touch the Sun at Chabot Space & Science Center
Ultraviolet image of the Sun, NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory-July 28 2012 Just in time for the imminent event of Solar Maximum, when the sun reaches a crescendo in its 11-year cycle of magnetic...
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The Stars Go For the Gold
The Stars Go For Gold The middle-aged adage that we are made from stardust, made popular by Carl Sagan back in the 1970s, pops up in my thoughts now and then. I'm looking at my wedding ring right now,...
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Mars Mountain Climbing Mashup!
Comparison of heights of Mars' Mount Sharp and some of Earth's tallest mountains Ready for a real mash-up of explorer-history-science-mountaineering yack? A tale of two mountains on two planets? You...
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Asteroid 2012 DA14: In Line For a Rim Shot
Asteroid 2012 DA14 Flyby February 15 2013 Update: A 150-foot asteroid hurtled through Earth's backyard Friday, coming within an incredible 17,150 miles and making the closest known flyby for a rock of...
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The Mars Rover Curiosity Digs a Little Deeper
Before sending the Curiosity rover to Mars, its drilling technology was tested exhaustively by drilling many holes in samples of Earth rock. Add another word to your vocabulary of Martian geological...
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How Big is Your World?
Is your world big or small? Is the universe really so big, or are we just very, very small? Okay, I admit it, this is a question I've toyed with for a very long time—since sometime back in childhood....
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