Astronomy: Search The Galaxy

Did this phenomenon foretell the coming of the earthquake? No, of course not. I knew right away what these were: high altitude icy clouds. Sunlight passing through them gets diffracted, broken up into colors like a rainbow. …

Original post by The Bad Astronomer

The common perception that a rising or setting Moon is magnified by the atmosphere is an optical illusion: Click link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_illusion. The apparent angular diameter of the Moon actually increases slightly as …

Original post by Centaur

The 55th Carnival of Space is up at Catholic Sensibility. As usual, lots of good blog links there for your spaced-out Thursday. Also, if that’s not enough, the 87th Skeptics Circle is up at Action Skeptics, too! Some NSFW language there …

Original post by The Bad Astronomer

Jupiter’s three big red storms seen in a Hubble picture. The Great Red Spot is a vast, planet-sized hurricane that’s been blowing on Jupiter for hundreds of years. In 2006 it was joined by a smaller storm — though still thousands of …

Original post by The Bad Astronomer

“The outdoor seating area has been part of our long-range plan for community outreach at the Rafes Urban Astronomy Center. It will make our facility more attractive for community groups wanting to hold ’star parties’ at the center,” he …

Original post by La Azteca

She asked her sixth grade students to send me questions they had about astronomy, and I answer them on camera. There were so many I had to split this into five parts! I’ll be posting one part every day, first thing in the morning. …

Original post by The Bad Astronomer

With all that is going on, with the Phoenix Mars Lander getting ready to touch the surface of Mars and Discovery getting ready to take a trip to the International Space Station, you’d wonder how anything else could possibly be going on. …

Original post by Tom

Mysterious bands of shadow which sometimes pass across the ground during an eclipse might be produced by sound pulses, according to a new theory. “Shadow bands” have been observed travelling across the ground before and after totality …

Original post by Sticks

After listening to the Wave/Particle Astronomy Cast, and hearing the obvious passion you have for the subject (Afshar’s experiment in particular), I thought I’d try my luck with a question/idea in this forum. …

Original post by Robert Noel

I noticed that blog entries have links to slash dot and Dig-it and possibly others. How about adding, “Add to Facebook” and also a straight forward “Email this page to a friend”

Original post by Sticks