I’m back from vacation! And what a time it was up north seeing the Perseid meteor shower this year. With no Moon and the best dark skies I have had all summer, the shower did not disappoint, with at least 50 per hour and perhaps as many as 80 where I was viewing! I saw a few great shots on Reddit’s Astronomy sub. I didn’t catch any meteors in my photos, and not for lack of trying. I am still a rookie astrophotographer, so I had some trouble getting the settings right on my camera, even though I spent two...
It’s that magical time of year once again, the best meteor shower of the year is upon us: The Perseids! Generally the most reliable meteor shower and the one that most people know about, the August meteors have one of the highest rates, typically anywhere from 50 – 100 meteors per hour. Its amazing how well known it is considering most people don’t know there are more than nine showers during the year. Either way, this year will be particularly good for a very special reason: It’s a new Moon. The Moon is the enemy of a meteor shower. Its...
Occasionally it’s strange to see photos from the Curiosity Rover on Mars. Some of them feel distinctly like home. I can almost imagine a person walking by on the soft sand, through the pathway of rocks, and over the horizon, like a traveller navigating the desert. The latest panorama of Mars gives me that feeling in spades. And yet, this rusty world has too thin an atmosphere to allow a human to breathe. It has no water to drink, and intense radiation from the Sun that prevents life from blanketing its surface. It is human, and yet alien. No homo...
I was with my friend and fellow astronomer Jesse Rogerson discussing the fantastic book from xkcd author Randall Munroe, called What if? We were talking about the brilliant analogy used by Munroe when talking about how big a supernova is. The questions asked was “Which of the following is brighter, in terms of the amount of energy delivered to your retina?” 1. A supernova, seen from 150 Million Kilometers, about as far as the Sun is from Earth. 2. The detonation of a Hydrogen Bomb, pressed against your eyeball. What a great question. The answer, surprisingly, is the Supernova, which is...
One of the big questions in astrophysics is about variation of the laws of Physics. The laws we know and are familiar with; angular momentum, gravity, energy, are the same everywhere on Earth. But what about beyond Earth? The universe is so large and so vast, we may be in a local region where the laws of Physics are set, and our laws may be different from a distinct region somewhere else in the universe. The good news is that we can make predictions based on our understanding of physics. And with our powerful telescopes that allow us to view a variety of...
The Deep Space Climate Observatory (DISCOVR) was launched back in February of this year. Although its goal is to measure solar wind particles from the Sun as a space weather predictor, DISCOVR passes the orbit plane of the Earth and the Moon twice per year. In its first pass, it snapped an amazing series of frames of the Moon passing in front of the Earth. The images show the dark side of the Moon, as well as the stark contrast between the darker lunar surface and the bright Earth. The camera that took the shots, the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera...
With all the news of the past year in the Astronomy world, Rosetta on 67P, Dawn on Ceres, New Horizons on Pluto, our old friend the Curiosity rover hasn’t had time to watch the news. Curiosity has been working hard, ‘rocking out’ (pun intended) on the red planet. Tomorrow, August 6th, marks its third anniversary since touching down on Mars and beginning science operations that would forever change our understanding of our next-door neighbor. To mark the occasion, the Mars Science Laboratory team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has released an anniversary video. For its third anniversary, Curiosity has found...
A few weeks back, the Philae lander woke up and began transmitting the coveted science data it had been holding on to for the better part of 2015, waiting for the Sun to shine bright enough to wake it from its deep slumber. As soon as it was able, it transmitted data back to the Rosetta orbiter, which then sent it on its long journey back home to Earth. Now that a few weeks have passed, we can finally see what the first science from the surface of 67P looks like, and determine its true fate. We can clearly see a...
With more than a decade of observations, the Cassini spacecraft has redefined our understanding of the ringed giant Saturn and its diverse moons. Continually working and returning new data, it has achieved significant scientific milestones, along with it’s partner probe Huygens, which dropped down through the thick clouds of mighty moon Titan’s atmosphere in early 2005. Along with a new scientific understanding comes views never-before-seen by human eyes, revealing the artful dance between the gas giant, its moons, and its incredible ring system. One of my favourite photos shows the incredibly beautiful symmetry of the rings. The rotational symmetry in...
Think about Earth and its population of over 7 Billion people. That’s 7 Billion people who wake up, breathe, live, think, experience, and interact with each other. The sheer volume of interactions and variation in the human experience is staggering. Every second you are alive these interactions are happening all around you, and far from you in any corner of the planet. Millions of people right now feel sad, happy, ecstatic, broken, angry, tired, energetic, and everything in between. Now if we go beyond to the Milky Way, where there are more than 50 stars for each and every homo sapiens on...
