When I was twelve, my family went to see the Space Shuttle land at Edwards Air Force Base. It was the first mission after the Challenger disaster, and the orbiter was Discovery.
I took a roll of slides using a manual SLR camera and (for the landing itself) a telephoto lens. With the last shuttle mission ending tomorrow, I decided to track down the slides and scan them. Continue reading
Check this out:
It’s the aurora australis, or southern lights, seen from above! It was taken May 29, 2010 from the International Space Station. Bad Astronomy talks about what causes aurorae in the blog post where I found the picture.
Seriously: The aurora. From space. How cool is that?
At the age of 34, I’ve finally seen the planet Mercury.* It’s notoriously difficult to spot, but when I read that it was going to be very close to Venus for the next few days, I had to try.
As it turns out, I was able to see it from a local grocery store parking lot. I left the car just as Venus was becoming visible, concerned by the clouds starting to drift past, and left the store to a clear twilight sky and a “star” below and to the right of Venus…exactly where Mercury should be!
*Of course I’ve seen photos, but I’d never seen the planet directly with my own eyes — or if I have, I didn’t recognize it.
Do you believe there is other intelligent life in distant galaxies? If no, why not? If yes, do you believe this is something to be feared and avoided or actively sought out?
Could there be? Certainly. Have we seen any sign of it, or any reason to believe that it is there? Not yet.
I remember seeing a poster in one of my high school science classrooms that said something like, “Either we are alone in the universe, or we are not. Both possibilities are overwhelming.” A quick Google search determines that it’s a paraphrase of Arthur C. Clarke, though there seems to be some disagreement as to his original phrasing, and whether the two ideas were overwhelming, staggering, terrifying, etc. However it was phrased, I think it’s a fitting summary.
One evening last week I looked to the west and saw a bright light above the horizon. I couldn’t tell whether it was moving or not, and wondered: was it an airplane, or Venus?
I couldn’t remember whether Venus was visible in the evening or morning (or at all) right now. It was roughly in the direction of an airport, so it could easily have been a helicopter or an airplane traveling at an angle roughly in line with my line of sight. By the time I got home, buildings and trees blocked the horizon, so I didn’t think much more of it.
I’m in California. Interestingly enough, thousands of miles away in Ohio, people have been seeing a bright light in the west every night for the past week and making UFO reports.
Last night I decided to see how early I could spot Venus, and caught it fairly high in the sky just after sunset. It was hard to see without really looking for it because the sky was still light, but it became a lot easier as the sky darkened. Not surprisingly, as it set and brightened in the dimming sky, it passed through roughly the area I remembered seeing the unidentified light last week. Mystery solved.
I don’t understand why, in a world full of airplanes, helicopters and the occasional blimp — not to mention a world where we see stars and planets every night (barring clouds and light pollution) — people jump past these mundane explanations when they see a light in the night sky and decide it must be an alien spacecraft.
Awesome, indeed! @BadAstronomer says:
Awesome awesome AWESOME pic of the Milky Way’s heart, by 3 magnificent observatories.
Meanwhile, in a brilliant move, I have just twisted my shoulder funny 5 minutes before driving home. At least it’s the left shoulder. Still: Ow!
