by Pamela | Sep 26, 2007 | Astronomy, Observing
Yesterday a fascinating press release from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory crossed my inbox. In a re-analysis of 480 hours of data from taken with the 210-foot Parkes radio telescope in Australia, astronomers found a single 5 millisecond burst that resembled...
by Pamela | Aug 25, 2007 | Astronomy, Observing
Every 6 months-ish there is a lunar eclipse visible somewhere on the planet Earth. While newspapers like to call these things rare, they just aren’t. What is rare is a nicely timed for prime time lunar eclipse. For those of you who aren’t quite sure what...
by Pamela | Aug 22, 2007 | Astronomy, Observing, Teaching
My Office My Sky Oh, what a wonderful Google world we live in. Today, Google unveiled a new feature in Google Earth, the Sky. That’s right, along side your house, your office, and that mutant strange thing you created in Google Sketchup, you can also look at the...
by Pamela | Aug 10, 2007 | Observing
My Astronomy Cast co-host Fraser Cain wrote an amazingly illustrated piece on amateur astronomers and their observing rigs for Wired online. My first reaction was, “Wow, that telescope as itty bitty wheels,” (seriously, take a look at the scope on the...
by Pamela | Jul 25, 2007 | Observing, Teaching
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....
by Pamela | Jul 22, 2007 | Observing, Random
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...