On May 30 observers all across the western hemisphere were outside, hoping to see a wonderful “new” meteor shower. The shower is actually not new. It is called the Tau Herculids, and it sends us dust particles from Comet Schwassmann-Wachman III.… Continue reading.
Milky Way Black Hole – An international collaboration of astronomers released the first detailed image of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, known as Sgr A*. Event Horizon Telescope consortium is the same that three years ago imaged the black hole at the center of galaxy M87, known as M87*.… Continue reading.
Milky Way Star Formation History – The sub giant phase of a star’s life occurs when nuclear fusion stopped in its core and it is on the way to becoming a red giant star. A sub giant star’s age can be calculated fairly precisely from measurable properties like its elemental composition.… Continue reading.
In the late summer of 1964 I was leaving the Observatory of the Royal Astronomical Society’s Montreal Centre with some friends, one of whom was David Zackon. I asked the group if they would like to drop by my house to observe with a 3.5-inch reflector.… Continue reading.
FRB Source Located – Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are powerful flashes of radio energy that last only milliseconds, and what causes them is not understood. Some of them repeat from the same source, but many do not. A research team led by scientists at Chalmers University of Technology and the University of Amsterdam linked up twelve radiotelescope antennas around the world to obtain extreme location precision on one FRB repeater.… Continue reading.
Over the last few months you must have read dozens of articles, online or in print, about the Omicron variant of COVID-19. Fortunately, this is not one of them. This article is about Omicron² Eridani. It is a faint star in the constellation of Eridanus, the River.… Continue reading.
DESI – The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) is only about 10 percent of the way through its five-year operation, but its team, led by astronomers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, has already produced the largest ever three-dimensional map of the Universe.… Continue reading.
Hydrogen Filament – A group of astronomers at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy has identified the radio signature of a giant filament of atomic hydrogen 3,900 light-years long and 130 light-years wide, located near the far side of our Milky Way galaxy.… Continue reading.
What crowd is this? What have we here? We must not pass it by;
A telescope upon its frame, and pointed to the sky…
– William Wordsworth, 1806
While I was working on my master’s degree at Queen’s University in Canada some 42 years ago, I came across this poem, loved it, and decided to include it in my thesis.… Continue reading.
We all got a special and thoroughly delightful present early on Christmas morning. Although I did not set my alarm, Wendee did get up around 5 am. I turned on our television set, and what I saw 15 minutes later was the most thrilling space view since 1969, when Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the Moon.… Continue reading.