Humankind has pondered the idea of life existing beyond our solar system for many generations. Recent discoveries of “earthlike” planets have re-energized these speculations. But what makes Earth perfect for life, and what does that mean for extraterrestrial life? Lucky Planet by David Waltham addresses these questions.
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) is the largest astronomical organization in the world. Every 3 years, the IAU convenes a General Assembly somewhere on the planet. This year, the General Assembly took place in Honolulu, HI for the first time ever.
Ronald Drimmel
William H. Waller Ph.D.
Water has been identified in the most uncanny of places – as vapors in the nebulae that roam our Milky Way Galaxy, as ices in the protoplanetary disks that surround many protostars, and as liquids below the icy crusts of the Jovian moons Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. In 2005, the Cassini spacecraft imaged geysers of liquid water erupting from the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The liquid form of water is especially important to biotic processes, as it provides an essential solvent for making the sundry hookups and energy transfers that are necessary to life.
“It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it?” — Richard Feynman (1918 – 1988)
Tony Reichhardt
David H. Levy, Jarnac Observatory
William H. Waller Ph.D.
For 25 years as an astronomy educator, I have informally polled hundreds of students, teachers, and the general public regarding their awareness of the night sky. Invariably, no more than 25 percent have ever seen the Milky Way with their own eyes.
Michael Deneen Ph.D. & William H. Waller Ph.D.
Reports of new exoplanets are an almost daily occurrence. But how many can you point to in the night sky? The authors have put together a table of a few dozen naked-eye host stars for you to share.
William H. Waller Ph.D.
William H. Waller Ph.D.
William H. Waller Ph.D.
Amateur telescopes can reveal thousands of other galaxies in those sections of the sky that are sufficiently far from the Milky Way’s congested disk. The digital images of elliptical, spiral, irregular, and interacting galaxies that these “citizen scientists” can now obtain surpass the best images obtained professionally just 25 years ago.