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One day in the solar system…
All pictures taken within the last 24 hours throughout the solar system.
Not bad, humanity, not bad at all. More days like this, please.… Read more
Category: And Beyond The Infinite
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On Mars, BRB
Murray Buttes, Mars, day before yesterday, stitched together in ~10 minutes from images on the Curiosity raw image server. The seams show in a couple of places, but if you can overlook those… look upon it in wonder. Click to see a (much, much) bigger version.… Read more
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Be even more Pacific
More big, lovely GIFfage follows the jump. … Read more
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Could you please be more Pacific
Fair warning: giant GIF animation. Giant beautiful GIF animation. May take a moment to load, but it’s totally worth it. … Read more
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A brief note about the universe
A controlled explosion.
The same science that’s behind a gun is the same science that’s behind a rocket.
Set off an explosion in a chamber capable of withstanding the pressure. Channel the force of the explosion to create thrust at the open end of the chamber, or to discharge a projectile from the open end of the chamber.
Fire a bullet to satisfy some sense of tribal pride, some sense of fury that someone dares to believe or dares to have simply been born differently than you.
Or fire a rocket into space and learn more about how we were all actually born the same, and how the differences barely matter because when you look back, the borders don’t exist.
It’s all about controlled explosions. Chemical explosions, or bursts of passion.
We can choose to learn, or choose to burn. It’s. that. simple.
I know I’ve probably driven half of everyone reading my Facebook and Twitter feeds crazy in the past few days/weeks/more-than-weeks (remember how Pluto-happy I was about 350-odd days ago?) with all of the space stuff. But it matters. You may not see how it applies directly to you. But it does.
I try to share that awe and wonder with everyone who wants to know more. Articles…podcasts…websites. “But you run a sci-fi site, right?” Sorta. The focus has shifted in recent years. In a way, the sci-fi is there to lure you in so I can talk about that awe and wonder.
I figured out a long time ago that I wasn’t going to be an astronaut or a scientist. I’d read National Geographic and Astonomy Magazine articles about the people playing various roles on the Voyager and Viking missions, and I’d idolize them like rock stars.
Did/do I ever have the mental agility to join their ranks? No. Found that out pretty early too. Only later in life have I figured out why. Why some days I can hold this whole universe of knowledge in my head, and synthesize it successfully, while other days I have the mental acuity of a particularly gited sea cucumber.
But one gift I do have is to smoosh some words together and tell a story and draw you in to learning more than I know about this stuff. (Spoiler: that’s a skill you acquire as a parent.) So if it really drives you batty, I’m not insulted by anyone who wants to exercise the unfriend/unfollow option…
…because I’m not going to stop going on and on about it anytime soon. There’s a whole universe out there waiting to be explored. I’ve long since moved past the point where I care if one person attributes that universe to God, another attributes it to Allah, a third attributes it to the Big Bang, and yet a fourth attributes it to the Great Green Arkleseizure.
None of that changes the fact that the universe is out there.
Waiting.
We just have to judiciously harness the right kind of controlled explosions so we can stop harming one another and go see it.… Read more
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The best of 2015
Aside from hugs from my boys and kitty kisses and puppy snuggles, this was the best of 2015…
…and don’t get me wrong, all of that was cool…but I’ll be pretty happy to put this year out to pasture. Be gone with ye, 2015.… Read more
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Encounters at a variety of far points
No wordy blog post tonight – did that last night. But I thought I’d share with you a few gems I found on Youtube: the live coverage of past planetary encounters. I hope you enjoy this stuff like I do. … Read more
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The Incomplete Completion Conundrum
Here we are, on the eve of our closest – and perhaps, for my lifetime, only? – visit to tiny Pluto, the body which marks the outermost boundary of the “classical solar system”. My generation was brought up counting nine planets; it’s only in the past decade that the obsessive-compulsive need to shovel things into rigidly defined categories knocked that down to eight.)
It’s humbling to think about it: Pluto is the most recently-discovered of the “classical solar system”, and the only one discovered by an American astronomer, Clyde Tombaugh. Not even Tombaugh could have imagined that, 85 years after he found that speck of light that moved between two still photos of the night sky, we would be there. … Read more
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Star party!
Little E and I went to our first Star Party, held each month by the Arkansas/Oklahoma Astronomical Society – and much to our delight it was really more of a planet party!
The event is held at the wonderfully light-pollution-free Janet Huckabee Nature Center in Chaffee Crossing, on a ridge next to Wells Lake Road. The guys from the AOAS had a 10-inch telescope set up, which is great for ogling the confluence of celestial bodies on view right now.
Me and E got there waaaay to early for stargazing, giving us an opportunity to explore the grounds, meet a gaggle of geese, and relax while the sun disappeared from the sky. It was finally time to peer at planets!
The moon and Venus – sky’s still too bright for Jupiter to emerge.
The best time to catch Venus is just as the sun is setting or starting to rise. The planet showed off a nice, easily identifiable crescent shape, bright white as always. This wasn’t an astrophotography setup, so I recorded what I saw the old-fashioned way: I sketched it on paper, scanned it, and inverted it on the computer! In much the same manner as the ancients!
Sadly, we missed Jupiter – Little E was trying to catch lightning bugs. But when it was darker, the telescope was re-aimed at Saturn.
Yep, about that dark. Cell phone photo enhanced to make Jupiter more visible.
Not only were Saturn and its rings visible, but its largest moon, Titan, could also be seen.
Saturn and Titan
We had lots of fun and stayed up well past Little E’s bedtime (hey, it’s not a school night).
Meanwhile, at the edge of the outer solar system…
The Pluto Party awaits.… Read more
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Everybody’s geekin’ for the weekend, part four: do it again!
In February, the fine folks at Oklahoma City’s Starbase Studios announced another of their open house events, during which all and/or sundry are invited to tour their exquisitely detailed replicas of the original Star Trek shooting sets, free of charge (though it’s hoped that visitors might be impressed enough to drop a few coins in the hat, donating to the upkeep of those sets so future fan-made productions can make use of them. My wife was pregnant with Little C when Little E and I tagged along with some friends to visit the sets last year, and that was before they had built sickbay and started work on a transporter room (!). There was no way she was going to miss out on this open house.
As the date got closer, Little E expressed disappointment that we weren’t going to repeat the entire trip with the Martins – i.e. Friday night at Arkadia Retrocade, and a visit to the Stafford Air & Space Museum in Weatherford, Oklahoma (almost an hour further west from OKC). Since he was so keen on doing it all again, we reserved a hotel room in Weatherford and decided to make it a whole geeky weekend getaway. (It should be pointed out that the timely arrival of a tax refund was pretty much the pivot point where we went from “go to OKC and back” to “make a whole weekend of it.”)
What follows is a ridiculous record – over 60 photos – of the geeky weekend in question. Ready to beam up and go to the moon?
Click on any photo below for the full-size version – I took “the good camera” this time and didn’t rely on my phone for much of the picture-taking this time around.… Read more
