Where science and tech meet creativity.

Getting Real Research out of Your Consumer Telescope

Today at AAPT, I gave an 8 hour workshop on using small telescopes to do real research. Since I don’t think any of you were there, I want to share with you what I covered. Below is the content and links from the web-text I created for the workshop. The links...

Meeting time again

This morning I got up at 3am, contemplated how much more I like going to bed at 3am, and then loaded myself into a car to go to the airport. Several hours of travel and one nap later, I am mostly coherent in Greensboro, NC where I am attending the summer meeting of...

Black holes take a bite out of galaxies

Astronomers usually try to educate the public that black holes do not go around actively eating the hearts out of galaxies. Usually. On July 24, astronomers announced that in the early days of the universe large numbers of young supermassive black holes actually spent...

Mars Rovers Update:
To bravely hunker down and wait

Many great explorers quests’ were brought to a standstill by weather – Odysseus hung out on an island, Magellan paused in Patagonia, and Amundsen shivered near Antartica’s coast. Following in the footsteps of these great and weather respecting men...

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...

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...