The Rings of Uranus

Observing > More than 30 years ago this week, a discovery was made which all of six people in the world will celebrate - the discoverers and their moms. But it was a fascinating revelation, and in our attempt here to honor the disenfranchised niches of astronomy and to give you insight into the crazy, serendipitous things that happen in the land of science, today we will look at how the rings of Uranus were discovered.

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Posted by Mark Ritter at 2009.03. 9 06:17 PM | Comments (0)

The Perfect Speed of Light

A Perfect Balance > We take the instantaneous world around us for granted, to be sure. As we sit or walk or drive or fly, our environment seems to be there with us step by step; there is no apparent lag between the time some nearby event actually occurs and the moment it gets to our eyes.

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Posted by Mark Ritter at 2009.02.23 06:14 PM | Comments (0)

Little February

The Calendar > Once upon a time, over 2700 years ago, our calendar here in “The West” had a mere ten months to it. It began in March and ended in December. There were no winter months - no January, no February. The calendar lasted just over 300 days with those extra 60 dateless winter days tagged onto the end.

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Posted by Mark Ritter at 2009.02. 9 06:08 PM | Comments (0)

Those Ideals for Which They Lived

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This week we remember two tragic events in spaceflight, the fire onboard Apollo 1 and the destruction of the Space Shuttle Challenger.

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Posted by Mark Ritter at 2009.01.26 08:12 PM | Comments (0)

Lights Out!!!

Observing > The other night, after midnight, I went out to look at the skies. There above was mighty Orion surrounded on either side by Taurus the Bull and The Big Dog, Canis Major. And moving among the great constellations were some of the whitest clouds I had ever seen. The overall effect was ethereal.

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Posted by Mark Ritter at 2009.01.12 08:09 PM | Comments (0)