Archive of Writings
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Carnival of Space!
It's Thursday so it's Carnival Time. This week's carnival of space is at the Lifeboat Foundation (which is just really cool).
I’m on Technorama!
This has been a very chaotic week. Next week is a joint meeting of the AAS / ASP with a major meeting-within-a-meeting dedicated to IYA. I'm involved in a lot of things, and I'm afraid something had to give this week, and it ended up being my blog. To hold you over...
Of Audio Books and Guilty Pleasures…
It is spring (or at least pretending to be spring in the middle of the country. Temperatures are in the 70s F (low 20s C), flowers are in bloom, and the birds are LOUD. For me spring means 2 things: no more classes and lots of weeding. It also means that I have time...
And then there were 3: Jupiter’s trio of red spots
When I saw this new press release, my first thought was "Good lord, there's another one." This response was loaded with about the same emotional energy I give sparrows in the attic. Sure, I love wild birds, but sometimes (like when they come into the house), I'm just...
If it’s Thursday, it’s Carnival Time
They are actually setting up a Carnival a couple block from my home in the city hall parking lot. I wonder if my iPhone and I can ride both the Space Carnival and town carnival at the same time... This week's Space Carnival is located on Catholic Sensibility. Have a...
A new way to find Supernovae: SN2008D
In case you haven't heard, on January 9, 2008, astronomer Edo Berger (working with Alicia Soderberg) noticed something fuzzy emerge in fresh Swift data, and that something fuzzy turned out to be the first supernova ever caught in the act of exploding. This discovery...
Common Misconceptions
Let me start by saying, this is Phil's area of expertise. That said, there are certain things that as an astronomer I face over and over and over and over and ... well, you get the picture. And some of them I just don't understand. There are the jokes, of course - Oh,...
Random and Off Topic
First the Random: Today I did an interview with the undead. Specifically with Chuck and Kreg of Technorama, which, despite the rumors, is not actually dead. I'm not sure when the show will air, but I'll let you know! May 31 I'll be at AstroZone in St Louis, and I am...
Carnival Time!
Check out carnival 54 on Altair VI 🙂
Falling out of a Cluster: The history of the Sun
One of my favorite things to do with students in the late fall is to take them outside and point first to the Orion nebula, then to the Pleiades, and finally to the Hyades cluster, saying "these are snap shots in the evolution of open clusters." Each of these systems...