A bright fireball appeared in the sky over Hawaii a couple of days ago. It appeared to break into several pieces and burn up in the atmosphere. Naturally one would expect it to be a meteor, but if you take a look at the video below, it sticks around a little bit too long for that. Aside from the over-the-top reaction of those watching, it’s not as exciting and quick as a meteor. In fact, most meteors can move through the sky at up to 70 km/s, enough to burn up quickly and leave a bright flash in their wake....
Lovely Earth is not entirely lonely. We have five planets that have been observed since the dawn of civilization. The five are visible with the naked eye in the sky at different times of year, and were given the name planets as a derivation of the Greek ‘planetes,’ meaning ‘wanderers.’ They do wander, or at least they appear to move against the background of the stars, since they are much closer to the Earth as it orbits the Sun. So what planets are visible this month? For September 2015 and back to school, you had better be willing to get...
The concept of Panspermia is a description of all life in the Galaxy having been seeded by other life, all originating at one point. This life can hitch a ride from star to star on comets, meteorites, and rogue planets. It’s true we have never found evidence for life outside of our own home planet, but if panspermia is a viable theory, it could mean that life is everywhere, just waiting for us to find it. In a new study from astronomers as the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, panspermia creates ‘oases’ where pockets of life form. As life is able...
Over the next week or so I’ll be posting highlights of my summer trip to Canada’s maritime provinces with my girlfriend Kate. We had a blast, and love to have adventures and experiences in new places. This is our story of the things we did and what we thought of them. Day 5 saw us leave Kejimkujik National Park, drive the South coast of NS, stop in the famous Peggy’s Cove, drive Gill to the airport, have our own lobster dinner, and visit my friend Blair for some local beers! We woke up to another lovely morning, this time in...
Over the next week or so I’ll be posting highlights of my summer trip to Canada’s maritime provinces with my girlfriend Kate. We had a blast, and love to have adventures and experiences in new places. This is our story of the things we did and what we thought of them. Day 4 brought us the fun of Tidal Bore Rafting, and a long long drive to Kejimkujik National Park and Dark Sky Reserve! We woke up feeling refreshed, though Kate felt a bit tired. We said goodbye to Hank (tank) and drove up north toward Truro for tidal bore...
Over the next week or so I’ll be posting highlights of my summer trip to Canada’s maritime provinces with my girlfriend Kate. We had a blast, and love to have adventures and experiences in new places. This is our story of the things we did and what we thought of them. Next up is Day 3, after a long day of travelling we find ourselves on the ocean in PEI. Day 3: There is nothing quite like waking up on the ocean after a long day of travelling. Smelling the fresh and salty sea air, seeing the Sun low above...
If you ask someone what the craziest, most powerful, energetic, and enigmatic thing in the universe is, chances are they will say a black hole. After all, we know so little about them, we have never directly seen one, and we can see their influence across space and time. But there is apparently another notch on the crazy powerful cosmic object front. Like turning the volume knob to eleven, a binary system of supermassive black holes has been discovered in a nearby quasar. A quasar is an incredibly bright core of a distant galaxy, shining brighter than the entire galaxy...
Over the next week or so I’ll be posting highlights of my summer trip to Canada’s maritime provinces with my girlfriend Kate. We had a blast, and love to have adventures and experiences in new places. This is our story of the things we did and what we thought of them. Today was day 2, which involved a long drive mixed with sightseeing and sunshine. Day 2: The Sun greeted us in the morning, and we had a lovely breakfast next to the coldest air conditioner ever, seriously I could see my breath, it was glorious. Some other travelers enjoyed...
Over the next week or so, I’ll be posting some highlights of my trip to the maritime provinces with my girlfriend Kate. I’ll post a few photos, likes and dislikes, and talk about some of the really cool experiences we had. I also did a fair bit of astrophotography, so I’ll post some of my first photos of the night sky with my new Canon Rebel T3i. First up… we had to get out of Toronto. Day 1: The first step was leaving at 6am to try and beat the Monday morning traffic rush out of Toronto, which is a...
How often does a star explode as a supernova in the Milky Way? With as many as 400 Billion stars, you would expect it to happen often But stars live a very long time, and most massive stars take anywhere from a few hundred million to a few billion years to reach maturity and explode. Putting all this together gives us a surprisingly human estimate. A supernova explodes in the Milky Way, on average, once every 50 years, or about once per human lifetime. We can still see remnants of great explosions that happened long ago, still expanding into the...
