Of the grand order of folio leviathans, the Sperm Whale and the Right Whale are by far the most noteworthy. They are the only whales regularly hunted by man. To the Nantucketer, they present the two extremes of all the known varieties of the whale. As the external difference between them is mainly observable in their heads; and as a head of each is this moment hanging from the Pequod's side.
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Exploring the Universe
with Andrew Fraknoi
NASA announced this week that their archive of confirmed “exoplanets” — planets going around stars other than the Sun — now contains 5,000 confirmed worlds. This is an astounding number, given that in 1990, the number of known planets orbiting stars outside our own solar system was zero. And more planets are being discovered all the time. Remarkably, only 4% of the planets we have discovered so far are …
March 31, 2022
February 18 was the anniversary of the discovery of Pluto (in 1930), and thanks to the efforts of the outreach staff at the Lowell Observatory, where Pluto was found, the media have been calling it “Pluto Day” and urging celebrations and discussion. In San Francisco, I got a call from KGO radio (the city’s talk show station, where I am a regular guest) to come on and talk about …
February 19, 2022
Astronomers, using the Hubble Space Telescope and other instruments, announced today that they had seen something never before observed in a star — and they saw it in the bright reddish star Betelgeuse, found in the familiar constellation of Orion the Hunter. Andrea Dupree, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, called it a “surface mass ejection.” Betelgeuse is the only other star, besides the Sun, whose surface we can …
January 14, 2022
James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is to many astronomers the space observatory of the next decade. I am happy to report that the James Webb Space Telescope, our giant heat-seeking eye in space, launched successfully, on Dec. 24 or 25, depending on which continent your clock was in. It is now on its way to its stable position, about a million miles from Earth. If you want to follow …
December 28, 2021
1. What Is Happening? On Thursday evening Nov. 18 and Friday morning Nov. 19, an almost total eclipse of the Moon will be visible from throughout the U.S. (and North and South America). In a lunar eclipse, the Moon & the Sun are exactly opposite each other in our sky, and the Earth gets between them. This means the Earth’s shadow falls on the Moon, darkening it. It’s …
October 27, 2021
Explore the Universe in a Fun, Non-credit Class On-line for People Over 50 Come explore such cosmic sights as: NASA’s new helicopter drone on MarsThe moon of Saturn’s that has an underground ocean“The pillars of creation” where astronomers see new star systems being born right nowThe monster black hole in the center of the Milky Way that got two California astronomers the 2020 Nobel prizeThe undeniable traces of the …
September 14, 2021
This Wednesday evening and Thursday morning (Aug. 11-12), there will be one of the better meteor showers of the year for you and your family to watch – the Perseids. The Moon is a skinny crescent and sets by 10 pm, so it shouldn’t interfere too much with viewing. While the best night is the evening of Aug. 11th and morning of Aug. 12th, there could be significantly more …
August 6, 2021
I am happy to report that “Flash Fiction” magazine in England today published my very short, astrobiology-theme story “I Swallowed a Martian”: https://flashfictionmagazine.com/blog/2021/07/23/i-swallowed-a-martian/ They feature a new story each day, and today it was mine. Any resonance you might find in the story with the pandemic times we are living through is unlikely to be coincidental.
July 24, 2021
There will be a nice and conveniently timed total lunar eclipse (where the Moon goes dark) during the evening of Sunday, January 20, 2019, the night before Martin Luther King Day. This means many children will not have school the next day, and can stay up to enjoy the celestial show with their families. (The eclipse is perfectly safe to look at. In a lunar eclipse, the Earth’s …
January 3, 2019
NASA’s InSight lander on Mars has sent back its first “selfie” — a great mosaic of 11 images, taken by the color camera on the “elbow” of its robotic arm. You can clearly see the round solar panels (7 feet wide) which collect power for the lander, and, between them, the instrument deck for measuring weather, marsquakes, and other conditions on Mars. Eventually, the instrument package nicknamed the mole …
December 20, 2018
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