This year, our eyes were once again redirected to our own Solar System for a just a few fleeting
minutes -- from the myriad wonders of our “seeable” Universe to a small space probe called New
Horizons that at 7:49 AM (EST) on July 14 th 2015 passed within 7,750 miles of little Pluto at a
record-breaking speed of 30,800 miles per hour (49,600 kilometers per hour).
We’ve all shown Saturn to someone, or perhaps have shared a clear view of a bright globular, say, M13, with someone who hasn’t seen such a thing before. In these and similar cases, the sheer beauty of the thing is the whole point; any impressive facts are secondary.
“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)
For most of human history, the night sky demanded our attention. The shape-shifting Moon, wandering planets, pointillist stars, and occasional comet enchanted our sensibilities...
Spot naked-eye exoplanet host stars!
Want to see something new in the night sky? To date, more than 700 exoplanetary systems have been identified in...
We investigate star formation in the Sc(s) II-III galaxy M33 by analyzing eight prominent HII regions using multi-wavelength data from the Spitzer Space Telescope and optical imagery. Results indicate that dust emission is a compact tracer of high-mass star formation, while PAH and H-alpha emissions decline more slowly with galactocentric radius.
Just like the dust that stubbornly besmirches your computer monitor, bookcase, and ancestral credenza, cosmic dust is now recognized to have a multiplicity of origins. For decades, astronomers thought that aging red giant stars produced most of the dust responsible for obscuring and reddening our views of nebulae and more distant stars ...
In this essay, I argue in support of teaching the Earth & space sciences together, so that students can attain a more holistic understanding of their planetary environment, how it came to be, and where it is headed. Such teaching (and teachers) should receive the same priority as in the teaching of physics, chemistry, and biology.
A photo/video account of comet NEOWISE by Gloucester Area Astronomy Club astrophotographer Jeremy Parker, and a review of some of the more recent Great Comets.
