I’m here at the 215th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington, DC, which is poised to pop open like a scientific pinata starting Monday!  With over 2500 registrants, the AAS has billed this as “the largest meeting in astronomy history.”  The meeting is stuffed chock full of amazing astronomical announcements, many of which you’ll see [...]

Dennis Brutus, who was jailed in the 1960s with Nelson Mandela, instrumental in South Africa’s suspension from the Olympics, and called Africa’s most important poet, died yesterday at the age of 85.  He was a Professor of Poetry and Black Studies at Pitt and Northwestern for some years, before returning to South Africa after Apartheid [...]

It’s Black Friday, the annual tradition where families of vampires awake before dawn and then shuffle in zombie-like shambling hoards through the parking lots to the gates of hell.  Or at least Macy’s.  Hey, that actually sounds like fun when put like that! But this holiday season, I’d like to recommend one gift that doesn’t [...]

We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens . . . The diversity of the phenomena of Nature is so great, and [...]

While I still have to write more about the details about my summer internship in Tucson, this morning I’ll share a story I heard there about… Pittsburgh. I spent my summer sheltered from the blazing Tucson sun in an air conditioned room filled with big glossy-screened iMacs.  I was using software called SPECTRE and MOOG [...]

Scientists, liberals, libertarians, conservatives, housewives, extraterrestrial migrant workers, Mole People  – just about anyone who has two neurons to rub together should be up in arms over the hyper-ridiculous Creation Museum, located in suburban Cincinnati (cringe).  In case you haven’t heard about this place, it is a $27 million facility headed up by hairy creationist [...]

It’s January 1st!   Time to celebrate the year of the Ox, Gorilla and Katie Couric! But the real party this year is in the stars.  2009 is the International Year of Astronomy, celebrating the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first observations with his telescope.  The year will be filled with all kinds of activities drawing attention [...]

Pop that toast, grab your mouse, and settle into some tasty astronomy Sunday reading via Ian over at Universe Today.  He reports about fledgling efforts of David Kipping and other British astronomers to start detecting moons around the extrasolar planets that we keep discovering around other stars.  Like that wasn’t ambitious enough, Kipping wants to [...]

Hey-yo! I’m back from the dead like a George Romero Zombie! Between homework, lab reports, weekly exams, daily floggings with slide rules (yes, that’s what they do with them now) a few projects that fell into my lap, trying to spend a few quanta with my overworked 32 hour shift resident-bride, and working on my [...]

Lately, I’ve been connecting with a lot of old friends on Facebook from my Buhl Science Center days, where I got my start in science centers, planetaria and science education.  Our collective escapades there deserve their own blog post one of these days.  One of my old friends who is a whiz with analog keyboards, [...]