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In: On Exploring Photography, On Nature, On Science and the Cosmos, Photographic Documentation
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Photography, that is. Last week I was blessed with (a) a clear night, and (b) very little moonlight. This led to a brief astrophotography session outside, where I set up my tripod right in my driveway, set my camera’s focus for “infinity”, bumped up the ISO a bit, set the shutter for various lengths, and took photos. This resulted in a lot of clunker photos, but…not all! One thing I’m quickly learning is that the formula “take a bunch of photos during a session and maybe you’ll have a few keepers” is quite normal, even for really good photographers. IDown the rabbit hole….

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In: On Pies In Faces, On Science and the Cosmos
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Another year, another Pi Day that I didn’t observe with anything new…sigh…but here’s a repost of an earlier celebration! It’s Pi Day, everyone! It is also Albert Einstein’s birthday and, sadly, this year’s edition marks the passing of Stephen Hawking, about which I’ll have more to say later. But for now, let’s celebrate Pi!                     Calculate Pi yourself! NASA’s Pi in the Sky Challenge A few videos: (That one’s titled “Pi Day” but the video has nothing to do with Pi so far as I can see, but it’s a coolDown the rabbit hole….

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In: On Books, On Nature, On Science and the Cosmos
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This is a repost from a couple of years ago. I chose to repost this, about a book by astronomer Sara Seager, because it has lodged in my brain since I read it. I generally try to avoid reading grief memoirs, for various reasons that mainly boil down to…well, I’ve had enough grief in my life already and I know that more is on the way someday*, and it’s a subject I don’t much enjoy plumbing any more than I have to. But sometimes I find a grief memoir that piques my interest and I read it anyway. Smallest LightsDown the rabbit hole….

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In: On Science and the Cosmos
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Years ago I somehow wound up engaging a Lunar Landing Denialist–you know, one of those strange folks who insisted that there was no way anyone actually went to the moon, the whole thing was faked, it was a soundstage, yada yada yada. I tend to have zero patience for such nonsense and I shut it down pretty much as soon as the question “If we were there, why doesn’t the Hubble Space Telescope take pictures of the landing site!” came up. I might have provided a link to someplace somewhere explaining why that’s not possible, but I don’t remember. Luckily, though,Down the rabbit hole….

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The teeming stars of the globular cluster NGC 6544 glisten in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This cluster of tightly bound stars lies more than 8,000 light-years away from Earth and is, like all globular clusters, a densely populated region of tens of thousands of stars. (via)   Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

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From the James Webb Telescope, something really amazing: The rare sight of a Wolf-Rayet star – among the most luminous, most massive, and most briefly detectable stars known – was one of the first observations made by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in June 2022. Webb shows the star, WR 124, in unprecedented detail with its powerful infrared instruments. The star is 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius. Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

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In: On Books, On Science and the Cosmos
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This is a repost from a couple of years ago. I chose to repost this, about a book by astronomer Sara Seager, because it has lodged in my brain since I read it. I generally try to avoid reading grief memoirs, for various reasons that mainly boil down to…well, I’ve had enough grief in my life already and I know that more is on the way someday*, and it’s a subject I don’t much enjoy plumbing any more than I have to. But sometimes I find a grief memoir that piques my interest and I read it anyway. Smallest LightsDown the rabbit hole….