The red curve is the shortest route between them.
Category: astronomy
Leap babies
Leap day coming on Monday. Here are a “common” year and a leap year side by side. Continue reading “Leap babies”
On the tip of your tongue?
Names such as “Sirius” and “Rigel” are traditional, Continue reading “On the tip of your tongue?”
Mars dead ahead
It occurred to me to plot the EDOT in both ways and see how much they differ.
The EDOT is Continue reading “Mars dead ahead”
Venus Valentina
Valentine’s morning (tomorrow) will be toward the last for seeing the two inner planets together as they stoop toward the Sun.
Wild Carrot Galaxies
White spirals: that was the cover-painting theme for my Astronomical Calendar one year (1994). On the front was a hurricane called Hyacinth, its violent spiral spanning several hundred miles; inside was the Whirlpool Galaxy, otherwise known as Messier 51, forty thousand light-years wide; and on the back was the plant called Queen Anne’s Lace, painted at true scale, I think, its flowering head six inches wide.
I remembered about this because I’ve found five other drawings I must have made of that plant in South Carolina.
Trios, if you count Pluto
Peering to the right of the Sun – that is, being out on the morning side of our spinning planet – is still the way to see planetary activity.
The stories told by satellites’ names
There will have to be a new printing before long of Albedo to Zodiac, my astronomical glossary, so Continue reading “The stories told by satellites’ names”
Jupiter before midnight
Jupiter has departed from the company of the pre-dawn planets (Mars, Saturn, Venus, Mercury) and has begun coming up over the eastern horizon well before midnight.
Planet Nine discovered, maybe or even probably
There may be a planet at an enormous distance from the Sun: Continue reading “Planet Nine discovered, maybe or even probably”