Pages Tagged “Space”
Reviews
- Babylon 5: The Lost Tales ★★★☆☆ It’s mixed. The first segment is essentially a bottle episode. The second is much stronger, and feels like a real return to Babylon 5
- Calculating God
★★★★☆
Robert J. Sawyer
What if there is scientific evidence out there for a supreme being, but to find it you have to correlate knowledge from multiple inhabited worlds across the galaxy? - A City on Mars
★★★★★
Kelly and Zach Weinersmith
Accessible and intricately researched, with scattered humor to keep the reader’s interest. Getting to space is the easy part. Staying there is going to be a lot more complicated. - Cordwainer Smith: Short Fiction
★★★★☆
Paul Linebarger
Three mid-century science-fiction stories about the future of war, space travel, symbiosis, and the dangers of cutting off your own humanity. - The Defiant Agents
Andre Norton
An enjoyable space western with Apaches as the good guys, wrapped up in the cold war and tossing in the Golden Horde, a lost alien city and Russians with a mind-control ray. - The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking)
★★★★★
Katie Mack
An engaging read for the general audience about what we currently know about the history and structure of the universe and what that knowledge – and the pieces we don’t know – might mean for its future and eventual end. - Five Ways to Forgiveness
★★★★☆
Ursula K. Le Guin
Five loosely-connected stories set in the final years of a color-based enslaving society, the war for liberation, and the messy aftermath. - Four-Day Planet
★★★☆☆
H. Beam Piper
A fun frontier/sailing adventure, but nothing special. Sort of Moby Dick in space with everyone based out of a corrupt frontier town. - Fuzzy Nation
★★★★★
John Scalzi
Not sure it’s better, but it is more enjoyable than the original, with better characterization and less deus-ex-machina. Same overall story of colonization, corporate greed, enviromnental exploitation and who counts as people, but different enough to enjoy both. - Fuzzy Sapiens
★★★★☆
H. Beam Piper
Continuing the Mad Men approach to ecological space colonization, this sequel explores the growing pains of a company town becoming a democracy, a corporation losing its monopoly, and two species of people figuring out how to live together. - Galactic Derelict
★★★☆☆
Andre Norton
A decent outer space adventure from the anything-goes era of science fiction. The story drags a bit after it switches from time travel to space travel. - Interference
An intriguing followup to Semiosis that weaves several drastically different sentient species (both plant and animal) into a story about factions, community, freedom, communication and war. - The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport
★★★★★
Samit Basu
Starts as a cyberpunk take on Aladdin and gleefully launches into a glorious mishmash of robots, legacies, secrets and political upheaval in a crumbling spaceport slowly sinking into the mud on a backwater planet. - Justice (ST:TNG, Season 1) ★☆☆☆☆ Some old TV shows are better than you remember. Planet of the Jogging Bimbos…isn’t.
- Key Out Of Time
★★★★☆
Andre Norton
Lost in time, lost in space, out of their depth, a handful of humans are caught in the middle of a four-way power struggle on the high seas of an alien world. - Little Fuzzy
★★★★☆
H. Beam Piper
An enjoyable tale of first contact, colonialism, environmental stewardship, corporate greed vs. ethics, and most importantly, who counts as “people” on an alien world that turns out not to be uninhabited after all. - No Man’s Sky
- Outer Wilds ★★★★★ A fascinating game of discovery in a finely-crafted, tiny solar system trapped in a time loop. In a ship made of plywood, sheet metal and duct tape. Where you can roast marshmallows on every planet.
- The Outer Worlds ★★★★★ Immersive space RPG that at once satirizes corporate control while asking you to make hard choices within it.
- Paradises Lost
★★★★★
Ursula K. Le Guin
An intricate novella about the middle generations of a multi-generational spaceship, and the religion they’ve developed that believes nothing outside the ship is real, and both Earth and their destination are myths. - Planet of Exile
★★★★☆
Ursula K. Le Guin
A tighter story than Rocannon’s World, with better-drawn characters, and more ambitious in its worldbuilding and themes. - Rocannon’s World
★★★☆☆
Ursula K. Le Guin
A serviceable quest story that melds fantasy and sci-fi. Engaging enough, but I’d only recommend it to someone who’s read her later work. - Semiosis
A fascinating take on space colonization, intelligence, and language, following multiple generations of humans on a world dominated by sapient plants. - Soonish
★★★★★
Kelly and Zach Weinersmith
Fascinating, accessible, funny, and still relevant overview of cutting-edge tech, even though it took me 7 years to get around to reading it. - Space Oddity
★★★★☆
Catherynne Valente
Not quite as fun as the first book, but it’s just as absurd and chaotic, and exactly what I needed in the weeks leading up to the 2024 election. - Space Opera
Fun sci-fi social satire from Catherynne Valente. The world is a mess, but we can find the sublime in chaos. - Stan Lee’s Starborn
An unpublished writer discovers that the science fiction saga he’s been building since childhood is actually very, very real. And it wants him dead. - Star Born
★★★★★
Andre Norton
An adventure woven through the post-war struggles of an alien world, with humans caught on both sides, exploring identity, colonialism and prejudice. Definitely worth the read. - Star Hunter
★★★☆☆
Andre Norton
A standard survival adventure with mismatched partners and ruthless rivals, only with weird stuff going on and in space. - Star Trek (2009 Movie) ★★★★☆
- Star Trek: Discovery - Season 1 ★★★★☆ Star Trek with the pace of Farscape, weaving through existing lore and focused on one crew member’s quest for redemption.
- Star Trek: Discovery - Season 2 ★★★☆☆ The stand-alone episodes are good, and the Burnham/Spock family dynamics, but the main arc gets really frustrating in the second half.
- Star Trek: Discovery - Season 3 ★★★★☆ I liked Season 3 a lot better than season 2. It finally got to be its own Trek. And they did some really interesting things with the future of the 'verse and how the Discovery crew adapted to it.
- Star Trek: Lower Decks ★★★★★ Hilarious self-parody of TNG-era Star Trek. Funny on its own, but even better if you know the shows it’s riffing on.
- Star Trek: Picard - Season 1 ★★★☆☆ I have mixed feelings about the first season of Picard. But later seasons have given me a new appreciation for it.
- Star Trek: Picard - Season 2 ★★★☆☆ Hard to pin down, with a weird start, then a few good time travel episodes, before throwing in not just the kitchen sink but everything in the sink.
- Star Trek: Picard - Season 3 ★★☆☆☆ If season one was like The Last Jedi, this is The Rise of Skywalker, complete with gratuitously resurrected villains, young characters freaking out about their genetics, a family/found family theme that only sort of makes sense, and a galactic-level threat that can only be defeated by taking out that one resurrected villain.
- Star Trek: Section 31 ★★☆☆☆ As a Star Trek pilot it’s merely OK. As a stand-alone movie, it’s a mess. It could have been retooled as a good heist film, but wasn’t.
- Star Wars: Andor - Season One ★★★★☆ A more serious take on Star Wars, with a bit more personal scope showing how oppression grinds people down, and what sacrifices rebellion can require.
- Star Wars: Attack of the Clones ★★★☆☆ I think it’s the weakest of the prequels and of the six that George Lucas was actually involved in.
- Star Wars: Dark Forces (Remastered) - First Impressions ★★★★☆ The remastered Dark Forces is the game you remember playing back in the day, not the game you actually played.
- Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett ★★★☆☆ The flashbacks were great! But I couldn’t get into the present-day story.
- Stellaris - First Impressions ★★★★☆ An empire-building game, like Heroes of Might and Magic in Space, but more complicated, with diplomacy, espionage and alliances along with base building and battles.
- Subspace Rhapsody ★★★★☆ The first time through my reaction was: OK, that was fun. The second time I really appreciated the way it was put together and immediately went looking for the soundtrack.
- Tales From The Bully Pulpit
A sci-fi comedy graphic novel featuring a time-traveling Teddy Roosevelt and the ghost of Thomas Edison, battling a descendant of Adolf Hitler. On Mars. Wearing mecha armor. - The Telling
★★★★★
Ursula K. Le Guin
A thoughtful tale of discovery, as an observer from Earth struggles to find and understand fragments of the lost cultures hidden beneath a society that’s thrown away its past in favor of a single vision. - Under Alien Skies
★★★★★
Philip Plait
A fun look at what it would be like to visit other planets or star systems, weaving together sci-fi scenarios, the science behind them, and the history of how those discoveries were made. - Vaster Than Empires And More Slow
★★★★☆
Ursula K. Le Guin
An intriguing story of a dysfunctional crew dealing with each other and a planet that, at first glance, appears to have no sentient life, only plants. - The Wind’s Twelve Quarters
★★★★☆
Ursula K. Le Guin
A collection of short stories from early in Le Guin’s career, spanning her first sale through the time when she’d begun to be recognized as a major force in the genre. - The Word for World is Forest
★★★★☆
Ursula K. Le Guin
Infuriating to read…and that’s the point. A story of colonial exploitation, asymmetric warfare, dehumanization and environmental destruction. - Worlds of Exile and Illusion
★★★★☆
Ursula K. Le Guin
Interesting to see Le Guin as she’s developing her craft. Not the best place to start with her work, but absolutely worth reading.
Blog Posts
- Eclipses and World Building
I can go with your scifi/fantasy story’s super-impossible thing being associated with an eclipse. It’s activating or deactivating people’s super-powers? Sure! Certain magic spells can only be cast during an eclipse? Sure! The moon transforms into cheese? OK, whatever. (pun not intended) But please, please get the basic mechanics right!
- Cis is Just A Description
Imagine a small village near a valley, so isolated that they just call themselves “the people.” One day they find out about another village on the other side of the valley, and they start calling them “the people across the valley.” They can keep talking about “the people,” but sometimes they need to make a […]
- Lost Cities and Alien Skies
You wouldn’t think that books about astronomy and archaeology would have a lot in common, but Four Lost Cities and Under Alien Skies pack some odd similarities.
- Blue Sunsets on Mars
One of many cool facts brought up in Phil Plait’s new book, Under Alien Skies is that Martian sunsets are blue! On Earth, nitrogen scatters light randomly, with bluer colors scattering more than redder colors, so the ambient sky is blue, but when you’re looking toward the sun at a shallow angle (like sunrise or […]
- Venus and Jupiter Conjunction 2023
A photo of Venus and Jupiter close together in tonight’s sky, and a close-up that appears to have very blurry images of Jupiter’s moons.
- Impact Contrast (meteor impacts, that is)
One of the things I find fascinating about the Tunguska and Chelyabinsk impacts is that in one case it took decades of scientific research and multiple theories to settle on what probably caused it, while in the other we have video footage and the actual meteorite. But there were eyewitnesses to Tunguska despite its remoteness, […]
- Looping Around Orion
Photo by Andrew Klinger via Astronomy Picture of the Day The first time I saw a picture of Barnard’s Loop (the arc running through Orion), I was astonished at the scale of it in the sky. I always had it in my head that (aside from the Milky Way, anyway), most of the astronomical features […]
- A Great Eye, Lidless, Wreathed in Flame
How cool is it that we now have an actual image of the event horizon of a black hole! More precisely: it’s the glowing accretion disc of matter falling into the black hole, and the event horizon’s silhouette. The Event Horizon Telescope, actually a worldwide array of telescopes, used interferometry to effectively create a planet-sized […]
- Lunar Eclipse, January 2019
The evening was hectic, and I almost forgot. I had literally just put my son to bed when I remembered, “The eclipse!” We went out to see if the sky was clear. Clouds were rushing across the sky, but for the most part, it was clear, and we had a perfect view of the moon […]
- Super Blue Blood Moon Blur
I woke up way too early to see if the Super Blue Blood Moon* eclipse would be visible or blocked by clouds. (You never know, and I didn’t want to wake up the kiddo in the middle of a school night if there wasn’t anything to see.) I had a clear view, but the street […]
- SpaceX Rocket Launch Over LA
Yesterday’s Falcon 9 rocket launch from Vandenberg AFB, seen across Southern California. I walked outside and saw a bright spot (presumably the rocket) moving across the sky, trailing an expanding shell of vapor. I ran back inside shouting âcome see this, fast!â and grabbed the better camera, but it wouldnât focus, so I snapped the […]
- Achievement Unlocked: Total Solar Eclipse!
I’ve always wanted to see a total solar eclipse, but until now I never had the opportunity. I’ve caught a number of partial solar eclipses over the years, and quite a few lunar eclipses. This year’s “Great American Eclipse” was perfect: it passed close to Portland, where we have family, and we could visit friends […]
- Pixar, the Space Shuttle, and Kids’ Museum Memories
Went with the family to see Space Shuttle Endeavour and a Pixar-themed exhibit on computer animation at the California Science Center. The 6YO loved the Pixar exhibit, which broke down all the steps to creating a computer-animated movie into separate hands-on centers where you could do things like… Apply different textures and bump maps to […]
- Eclipse on the Hill
Neighbors gathered at the top of a hill to watch the eclipsed moon rise above the city, through a frustratingly cloudy sky.
- Venus and Jupiter Conjunction: Three Views
On June 30 2015, Venus and Jupiter lined up more closely than the edges of the moon. Here’s what they looked like that night, 2 nights later, and 10 before.
- Working Around a Solar Eclipse (Oct 2014)
I couldn’t go anywhere special for this partial eclipse, but I did check in on a grove of trees near the office for a few minutes here and there.
- Lunar Eclipse = Front-Yard Astronomy (Photos)
One of the nice things about lunar eclipses is how easy they are to watch. No special equipment needed, just a clear view, even from the city.
- Gray Moon Rising
A few nights ago I watched the moon rise. Normally it’s yellow or orange when it’s at the horizon, but to my surprise, this time it just looked gray.
- Planetary Triangle
Last night I had a clear view of the Mercury, Venus and Jupiter conjunction, but no camera. Power lines crossed my view tonight, but at least I got a photo.
- St Patrick’s Day Moon and Jupiter
I almost missed this near-approach, but fortunately I had to make an early-evening grocery run and looked up at the sky.
- Photos: Comet Watch LA
An evening watching the sun set above the clouds, a crescent moon pop into existence, Jupiter through a telescope, a red moonset, and of course a comet!
- Moon and Jupiter Conjunction
Two views of the moon/Jupiter conjunction of January 21, 2013, one taken with a phone and the other with a somewhat better camera.
- Visiting Endeavour on its Final Journey
Spotting the space shuttle from a mile away, then walking out to see it up close while it sat in a Los Angeles parking lot.
- Watching Endeavour’s Final Flight Through LA
Half of the people at my office turned out to watch the space shuttle’s final flight around Los Angeles.
- Celebrating Curiosity at Planetfest 2012
Timed for the Mars Curiosity landing, Planetfest featured mock-ups of capsules and landers, space art, meteorites, robots, speakers and of course a party.
- Missed Transit
No luck catching the transit of Venus, but hey, at least I got to see the eclipse last month!
- Photos: Solar Eclipse from Los Angeles (May 2012)
I went up into the hills to view the eclipse and ran into dozens of other people with the same idea…and got to look through their telescopes, welding helmets and more.
- Lunar Eclipse and Sunrise (With Photos)
I woke up early this morning to catch the lunar eclipse. I watched it move into totality from home, then drove down to the beach to watch it set, and stayed out to watch the sun rise.
- Mercurial View
I’m 90% certain that I managed to (barely) spot Mercury below and to the left of Venus from the grocery store parking lot just after sunset. Appropriately enough, the one other time I think I spotted Mercury, it was also from a grocery store parking lot. It was like trying to spot one slightly brighter […]
- Watching the Space Shuttle Land in 1988
When I was 12, I went to see the Space Shuttle land at Edwards Air Force Base. I took an SLR and telephoto lens. With the shuttle program ending, I’ve scanned the photos.
- Recent Links: Moon and More
Linkblogging: SMBC, XKCD, space pics, Flash Forward, mobile web usability and more.
- Southern Lights…from SPAAACE!
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?
- Venus and Mercury!?
At the age of 34, I’ve finally seen the planet Mercury. It’s close to Venus for a few days, and I managed to spot it from a grocery store parking lot.
- Writer’s Block: Search for intelligent life
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 […]
- Look to the Western Sky after Sunset
In a world full of airplanes and helicopters, why do people jump past mundane explanations when they see a light in the night sky and assume it’s aliens?
- Galaxy and a Twist
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!
- Outer Planets: Viewing Neptune
When I was younger, astronomy books only had paintings of Neptune. Now, they have photos – but they show weather from one visit way back in 1989.
- Touring the Mt. Wilson Observatory in 1992
With the observatory threatened by the Station Fire, I dug out my photos from a tour my family took 17 years before.
- NASA and Aliens
If NASA really knew about aliens, wouldn’t publicizing it be the best way to solve their chronic budget problems?
- Night Sky
There’s something to be said for a night sky with so many stars that Sirius doesn’t stand out quite so much.
- No Comet For You!
I had hoped that the darker skies near San Simeon on the central California coast would have made it easier to spot Comet Lulin, but no such luck. First the clouds rolled in around sunset. I checked around 9:45 and they’d cleared enough to see very clearly out toward the ocean, but the lights of […]
- Leo, Saturn… and Comet Lulin?
I figured I’d try spotting Comet Lulin from my back yard. I found Leo and Saturn easily enough, but just couldn’t see anything that looked like a comet. It should be a little to the right of Saturn, going by Sky & Telescope’s chart. Too much light pollution, I guess. And unlike the Bad Astronomer, […]
- Waitaminute
Listening to “Into the West” (end credits song from Lord of the Rings: Return of the King). Lyric, “Across the sea a pale moon rises.” It’s all about crossing the sea into the west to go to elf heaven. Presumably the speaker is standing at the Grey Havens, waiting for the ships to arrive and […]
- Stellar Triangle
I managed to get a few shots of the near-conjunction of the crescent moon, Jupiter and Venus tonight before they sank into the haze. The first two shots were taken at twilight (well, dusk, really), around 5:05–5:10 PM PST, while the third was taken at 5:30, after night had fallen.
- Jupiter and Venus
This is actually from a couple of nights ago, but the view as I left the office tonight was about the same (though the lights were just starting to turn on in this picture). It’s really odd to walk out of the building into a lot that’s normally lighted (even when I head in to […]
- Exoplanets: Say Cheese!
I remember being bowled over when astronomers first detected planets around other stars. Now they’ve actually managed to get pictures! Of course, they’re about as detailed as pictures of the stars at a science-fiction convention panel taken from the back of the room, or the band on stage from the upper-top-fifth-tier seating (see! that dot […]
- Eclipse Ring
I found this while looking through a box of old photos, in an envelope marked Lunar Eclipse and developed in June 1994. Most likely the May 25, 1994 eclipse. I’m not sure, but I think the bright splotch near the bottom is actually the moon, and the clear image of the moon up near the […]
- Links, from the Astronomical to the Surreal
The Value of Space Exploration, via Phil Plait. Neil Gaiman on The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke, a painting by a madman that’s inspired its share of stories. And from Comics Worth Reading, our WTF entry for the day: Paradise by the GoPhone Light. It’s a commercial done in the style of a music video, featuring […]
- Cities at Night, seen from Space
This is cool: a fascinating tour of the world’s cities as seen in visible light from the International Space Station. Cities at Night, an Orbital Tour Around the World It’s interesting to see how just lighting illustrates different patterns in city development. European cities have this star topology, US cities tend to stick to the […]
- Mauna Kea Sky Shadow
Today’s APOD features the shadow of a Hawaiian mountain against the sky at sunset. I was reminded of a similar photo from my own visit to Mauna Kea.
- Look! Up in the Sky!
On Sunday, I participated in the Great World Wide Star Count. The idea is to track light pollution and get people (especially kids) stargazing. They ask you to look at either Cygnus (northern hemisphere) or Sagittarius (southern hemisphere) about an hour of two after sunset, and match what you can see against a set of […]
- Lunar Eclipse pics
I decided to go for it, and set my alarm for 2:30 AM (ick) to see the eclipse. The moon was nearing totality at that point, with a too-shallow crescent near the bottom and the rest in slightly reddish shadow. My original plan was to lie down on the balcony and watch, but it turned […]
- Lunar Indecision
I’m still trying to decide whether I should set an alarm to wake myself up at ski-o’clock in the morning to see tonight’s/tomorrow’s lunar eclipse. I mean, I skipped the Perseid meteor shower a few weeks ago, but that would have required not only getting up in the wee hours of the night, but driving […]
- Stars
I used to see thousands of stars on frequent camping trips out in the desert. These days, living in a hazy well-lit suburb, I can typically see a handful.
- Pumpkin Moon
We were driving home from visiting relatives this evening, and noticed a dull orange ellipse on the horizon, appearing and disappearing between trees. It didn’t take long to realize it was the moon, just beginning to rise. As the freeway twisted and turned, and we went through areas full of houses, retail centers, and trees, […]
- Deja View
Follow-ups to two past blog entries. First, remember on our most recent trip to Las Vegas (last March) we repeatedly encountered a slow-moving, hand-painted truck labeled “Henry’s Moving” on the drive out. Well, after a trip to Fry’s this past Sunday, we spotted it again. Second, for the first time in 1½ years, I managed […]
- Wow
If you haven’t already, go over and look at today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day. It’s an incredible shot of the Moon and Venus during last weekend’s conjunction.
- Lunar Eclipse Tomorrow
There’s a lunar eclipse tomorrow. It looks like we’ll only get to see the tail end of it here in California, right at moonrise. Europe and Africa get to see the whole thing. Interestingly, the map of where the eclipse will be visible manages to cover the major land masses almost exactly. The only region […]
- Crescent moon and Venus
I walked out the front door last night around 5:50 to pick up the mail, and immediately walked back in to get the camera, because this is what I saw: My parents gave me a flexible mini-tripod for Christmas, and it proved very helpful here, as there was nowhere flat where I could set the […]
- Daytime… Comet?
Well, I tried again at lunch to see if I could spot Comet McNaughton during the day, just in case it was still bright enough. No luck, but I set my camera on max zoom and took a set of pictures in roughly the right area, just to see if I could spot something. And, […]
- Comet!
The skies were surprisingly clear today. Four of us at work walked outside after sunset to a bridge near the office, and saw Comet McNaught. It was visible from ~5:10/5:15 to 5:28, at which point it slipped below the line of hills to the west. We saw it against the red sky, slowly dropping through […]
- Atlantis home
Space Shuttle Atlantis has landed safely. *whew!* I’m getting more nervous about shuttle missions lately. In part, it’s the greater focus on all the things that could go wrong. In part, it’s the realization that you know, the shuttle fleet really is aging. But mostly, I think it’s the fear that, given reactions to the […]
- Pluto Needs Rocks
A bit of astronomy humor from WorldCon: Help donate rocks to Pluto so it can increase its mass, clear its orbit, and once again qualify as a planet!
- Hollywood and Space
Some interesting comments by Warren Ellis in today’s Bad Signal on film budgets, and Superman Returns in particular. $250 million puts you in spacelaunch-budget territory. For $250 million WB could’ve given Bryan Singer his own communications satellite and spent the change on a George Clooney movie. This is the absurdity of modern Hollywood; that taking […]
- Mauna Kea Star Trails
Today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day is an incredible long-exposure picture of star trails above Mauna Kea: I think the picture says it all.
- Daystar!
I saw the planet Venus four times on my walk to and from lunch today! Yes, in broad daylight! Someone on Slashdot mentioned it was possible last week. I took it seriously because back in high school, I used to watch Venus fade into the brightening sky on winter mornings. Often I could still find […]
- Venus Shadows
Venus is apparently so bright this month that it’s casting visible shadows. Now that’s cool! Unfortunately, while I can see Venus perfectly well, there’s way too much light around to see anything resembling a Venusian shadow. I don’t think I’ll have a chance to drive out into the desert by sunset in the next few […]
- The Moon and Venus, sitting in a tree
This view of the Moon and Venus was taken from our apartment balcony earlier this evening. I also took a picture yesterday, from the top of a parking structure near John Wayne Airport (we went to a show at UCI later that evening.) You can see the red trail an airplane left as it crossed […]
- That Belt of Venus Thing
About a month ago I posted about noticing the Belt of Venus—the red band that circles the entire horizon just after sunset—and the Earth’s shadow on the sky. I snapped this picture on the drive home this evening. This is looking east, away from the setting sun. If you look at the right edge of […]
- Global Warming vs. Ozone Hole
A quick question for people who discount the idea that global warming could be caused, in part, by human activities on the basis that we can’t possibly impact the climate as much as natural events and cycles affect it. Do you also discount the well-documented depletion of the ozone layer by interaction with CFCs and […]
- Look, up in the sky!
A few nights ago I was walking around sunset, and decided to look for something that had been mentioned last week on the Astronomy Picture of the Day: the Belt of Venus. Somehow I’d never noticed that after sunset, the band of red encircles the entire sky at the horizon. Even more amazing, if you […]
- Back in Space!
Discovery reaches orbit – we’re finally back in space! Here’s hoping the shuttle will be able to tide us over until a next-generation ship is ready.
- On Google Moon
Google Maps has been extended to the moon, with all the Apollo landing sites marked. Be sure to experiment with zoom for full effect.
- Mauna Kea
And now for something completely different: Hawaiian snow. On our second-to-last day in Hawaii, we took a tour up to the summit of Mauna Kea, the highest mountain in the state at 13,796 feet. And even in early April, they still had snow at the summit. We caught a somewhat hazy view of it from […]
- Reusable space travel is here!
SpaceShipOne has won the X-Prize! This morning it completed its second trip to the edge of the atmosphere within one week (the prize stipulates it must be within two weeks!) The Scaled Composites team made history in June with the world’s first privately-funded manned space flight, and last week they made a deal with Virgin […]
- Practicing my Spamish
Sometime around 1997 I started getting a lot of spam from Brazil. I don’t mean relayed through Brazil, everyone gets that these days, I mean spam from businesses and groups in Brazil, in Portuguese, intended for a Brazilian audience. I don’t know how they came up with my address, although I suspect an unscrupulous ISP […]
- Far-Flung Finances
In CNN’s report on the discovery that Mars once had liquid water – and thus may have once been hospitable to life – it mentions that the Spirit and Opportunity missions cost about $820 million. The IMDB estimates the budget for Spider-Man 2 at $200 million. In other words, each mission cost two big-budget summer […]
- Back to Space!
It seems NASA is hoping to resume shuttle flights by December 18. Interestingly, this is one day after the release of Return of the King. Coincidence? … Yeah, probably. On one hand, I’m glad we’ll be back in space soon. Even if it takes until next year, at least they’re trying to get going again […]
- Shooting the Moon
Some idiot is out there taking flash pictures of the eclipse.
- To the stars…
Well, the critics have started coming out, claiming that manned space flight isn’t worth the risk and space exploration (at least with human crews) should be written off as a bad idea. How can you look up at the night sky and not think it’s worth it? Or is it because so many of us […]
- Earth to the self-righteous….come in, people….
<RANT> Okay. For all you holier-than-thou smarty-pantses out there, here’s a question. If an average-sized couch cushion were to hit a brick wall at 15 mph, would you think at first glance that the brick wall might be damaged? I thought not. So leave me the FUCK alone with your judgmental snippetiness about how YOU […]
- Columbia
It’s taken me two days to collect my thoughts enough to write about this. The loss of the orbiter and its crew hit me as a complete shock on Saturday, and I immediately started checking CNN and press releases. On the web. Not on TV. I remembered watching the Challenger footage over and over, and […]