The Middle Ages: Globular Clusters

As an undergrad and even for most of my graduate school years, astronomy had this problem: Globular Clusters seemed to be older than the universe. We all knew this was a matter of someone calculating something wrong, but no one knew what. Cosmologists, looking at the still being explored expansion of the...

Tomorrow’s Interactive Toys

Earlier this evening a friend sent me a link to this blog post. Having only recently been introduced to a gin that didn’t feel like fire, I was highly amused by the title and the image from the text of all of the US and UK simultaneously drunk on gin and overpopulation, well, it kept me reading (really...

End of the Semester

It’s T-6 class days and counting until final exams start at SIUE. Spring is in the air, and students have cast away their winter cloths to frolic in the sun in shorts and T-shirts as they try to cram in as much of college life as they can before disappearing for summer. Yesterday, while...

Summer Nights Drifting In: Summer Observing Challenge

As odd as this may seem, I’ve never been big on the summer sky. It’s not the fault of the sky – summer brings a wealth of stunning objects, and I keep trying to convince myself to learn them. It’s just, somehow, a season I keep missing. I have countless memories of frozen nights spent...

See you in St Louis?

I would like to take this opportunity to invite all of you to the nearest city to my own small town: St. Louis. This May 31 – June 4 the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the American Astronomical Society and the US International Year of Astronomy team are all converging on the Gateway City and you...