- Posts tagged Astronomy
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Helping the Neighbour with Her Homework
Yesterday was a busy one. Between work, kid's baseball, and various errands around the city, there was plenty to keep your favourite wonderblogger occupied. (Don't steal that. Copyrighting it as we speak)
A Night Under the Stars
Last night was earth hour, and the Durham Regional Astronomy Association marked the occasion with a public outreach event at Whitby Marina. We had clear skies, and a great public turnout. Being a new member of the DRAA, it was the first such affair I had attended, but it certainly won't be the last.
An Astronomical Photo-Op
On this Leap Day, Don't be a Dummy Dad
Hello world! It's leap day! A day of profound celestial significance. A day of righting mathematical wrongs. A day so magical, so mind blowingly awesome, that it remains hidden during just 'ordinary' years. We couldn't handle a leap day every time around the Sun, so it banks up it's amazingness for a quadrennial visit. Leap day is sort of like the 12 Grimmauld Place* of the Gregorian calendar, and at this very special moment in time, it is revealed to us.
The Stars from Atacama
Look at this spacey poster. Then go look for yourself.
Some of you remember the skeptical posters that I've done in the past, and that I plan to continue doing as time goes on. What you see here today isn't really one of that series, because there's no skeptical quote attached to it, but I had a hankering to do another poster all the same. Most of what this poster conveys is just the following: "Isn't space cool!"
Impressed by Size, Are We?
Whoa. You people really like imagining how big things are, don't you?
How Far Away is the Sun? Another Visualization.
Alright, this one's a doozy.
After the reasonable popularity of last week's scale picture that illustrated the distance between the Earth and the Moon, I just had to take things to the next logical level. Today I've reduced the scale, and increased the image size dramatically, to represent one astronomical unit (AU), or the distance between the earth and the Sun.*
How Far Away is the Moon? A Visualization.
As discussed on a recent episode of the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, an asteroid named 2005 YU55 whipped past the earth on Nov 8 at about 29,000 mph. At 1,300 ft wide, things wouldn't have been pretty had it hit us. Terrifyingly, the asteroid came so close to our planet that it was within the orbit of the moon!
So did anybody feel the breeze as it passed?
The Gift of Apollo
