by Pamela | Apr 13, 2008 | Personal
No Spring/Summer AAVSO meeting would be complete without a field trip. Over the years there have been trips to the VLA, Star Parties, Yerkies, Mauna Kea – All manner of modern astronomy marvel has been oogled at by bus loads of sleepy, cheerful astronomers who...
by Pamela | Apr 12, 2008 | Personal
Every once in a while, statistically detected once a day or so, a GIANT star explodes as a hypernova (an over grown supernova) and channels its energy straight at us. This energy is mostly contained in an insanely powerful beam of gamma rays. That said, they also give...
by Pamela | Apr 12, 2008 | Astronomy, People
Earlier today I was talking with Rebecca Turner, another alumni of Slacker Astronomy and a staff member of the AAVSO. She and I are about the same age and often have our hair dyed the same random shades of red (I’ve let myself go to a boring auburn this...
by Pamela | Apr 12, 2008 | Astronomy, Observing
The nearest star to the Earth is easily observed during the day. It just happens to be called the Sun. The problem is, it’s quite close and this can make it very hard to observe safely without hurting yourself or hurting your eyes. The current speaker, Lee...
by Pamela | Apr 12, 2008 | Astronomy, Stars
The word Novae generally refers to a “New Star,” or a “Guest Star” – An object that springs up in the sky quite suddenly as a new but non-permanent object. Today we give these non permanent sky features a dozen or more names: Supernovae...
