An Island In the Sea of Mystery

Adapted from “Let’s Talk Astronomy”  (12/16/2019 episode) Winners’ Periscope ID noted at the end of each answer. Listen live on Periscope at 8 pm ET  most Mondays and other times       A new model of the birth of our Moon explains how our Moon ended up containing mostly Earth-like materials. The Yale study … More The Moon

Dwarf Planets QUESTION: What is he name of the dwarf planet originally discovered in 1801? ANSWER: Ceres was listed as a planet, along with Pallas, Juno and Vesta. These were reclassified in 1883 as asteroids. @Pircano Pluto was discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh using a “blink comparator.” The discovered object was determined to be … More Dwarf Planets

Chapter 2: If At First You Don’t Succeed… The darkest days of the project were the early ones. I began by spraying a blob of white paint on the pavement where the shadow of the top of the pole could be seen. At Noon I’d step out into our street, and locate the shadow of … More The #ShadowAnalemma project Chapter 2

Do you know about the approaching Andromeda galaxy?   Are you familiar with stellar evolution?   How much do you know about the bright stars in the June night sky?      The location of Jupiter? Today we have challenging questions inspired by the content of the June 2019 issue of Sky & Telescope magazine. I created seven … More The Deep Sky

Do you know about nebulae? How much do you know about astronomy? How about the deep sky objects often called “fuzzy”?   Today we have challenging questions about nebulae based on the article “The Deep Sky –From Near to Far” by Louise O.V. Edwards in the Observer’s Handbook 2019.   I created seven questions that … More Let’s talk about Nebulae