Archive of Writings
Additional articles can be found on EVSN.tv.
A telescope dream for any budget
As a graduate student at the University of Texas, I got to accompany the undergraduates on star parties (nominally as the 'responsible' adult, but really as a colleague in madness). We'd load up our cars with every telescope we could find, about a dozen pair of...
Quantifying the Darkness
We've all had those magical moments of looking up and suddenly seeing something breathtaking in the sky. Perhaps it was just a moon low in the sky with a planet near and bright. Perhaps it was the Milky Way pouring itself into the horizon over a country road. Whatever...
Mercury & Venus: Understanding hot rocks & Greenhouse gases
The latest episode of The Universe focused on our solar system's hottest two planets: Mercury and Venus. In looking at each of these worlds, scientists are faced with Sun related issues no other planet has: we can never study these planets when they are high in the...
Summer Days, Drifting Away . . .
As an academic, I can be as bad as any school child when it comes to counting down the days until summer begins. The holidays of Easter & Passover always mark the final race toward finals, and with these spring celebrations I know a brief reprieve from scheduled...
Randomness
1) Harry Potter is 759 pages 2) Jupiter & Venus are high(ish) and gorgeous(!) in the sky - That is a hint you should go out and look at them 3) Sagittarius is at its best. If you have never scanned it with binoculars on a clear summer night, you are missing a...
upgrade time
Okay, so I'm very tired of the failure of this version of Wordpress to handle links in a semi-logical manner. And I recognize that the categories I have things filed under really aren't useful. And, and, and... I have reached the point where I'm going to spend the...
Carnival of Space #12
Carnival Time, come one, come all, ride the intellectual ride over at Music of the Spheres
Black Holes don’t exist ?
Black Holes do exist!
All of us have a certain amount of rubber necker inside us. We all turn to see the wrecked car, and as kids we paused to watch the fights in the school yard. As an adult, I have to admit to taking a secret (well, maybe not so secret anymore) thrill in watching the...
GRBs Blow Light Rings
One of the cooler and least talked about phenomena in astronomy is the light echo. Any time a momentary bright something occurs (supernova, stellar flare, etc...), a packet of light is sent rocketing through space like a "Hallo!" vocally screamed out from a canyon...
HD 189733b: A planet like Jupiter (but very hot)
It sometimes seems like the exoplanet folks put out a press release every time anything half way novel or solar system-like is found. What we don't hear about are the boring discoveries that fill in the details. One recent paper seems to be flying under the press...