After the Sun sets over the Atacama Desert’s Valley of the Moon, the 19,400-foot volcano Licancabur catches the last rays of sunlight. Richard Talcott I recently returned from a 9-day trip to Chile — one of more than 30 participants in a tour sponsored by Astronomy magazine and organized by MWT Associates. We all had a great time, despite long plane rides from the States down to Santiago. Our two main reasons for going were to experience...

In this screen shot, Google profiles the constellation Orion. Google Last week featured the rare occasion when an astronomy-related announcement resonated with skywatchers and the general public. Did SETI make contact with extrasolar life? Nope. Did astronomers find an asteroid on a collision course with Earth? Not even close. Instead, the Goliath of search engines released a beta version of Google Earth with a "sky" function. This enhanced...

Once upon a time, barnstorming over the countryside in a biplane was sufficiently thrilling and expensive for the idle rich. Then, the only thing that would do was taking a steamer to Africa to blast away at lions for the season. Then there was (and remains) the curious habit of paying a small fortune for the privilege of expiring on Mt. Everest from hypothermia, oxygen deprivation, or stumbling into a crevasse. Much later, attempting to circumnavigate...

In this blog and my next, I'm going to try to demystify the magnitude system — the scale astronomers use to measure the brightness of a celestial object. Let me start with a little history. The first known observer to describe and catalog differences in star brightnesses was Greek astronomer Hipparchus (ca. 190–120 B.C.). He divided his catalog of roughly 850 visible stars into six brightness ranges, or magnitudes. He called the brightest 1st...

Early morning steam rises from numerous geysers and fumaroles at El Tatio — the world’s highest-altitude geyser field. Evelyn Talcott I've just returned from a 9-day trip to Chile & one of more than 30 participants in a tour sponsored by Astronomy magazine and organized by MWT Associates. We all had a great time, despite long plane rides from the States down to Santiago. Our two main reasons for going were to experience the clear...

An interesting question hit my inbox this week. How far south can an aurora be seen? Specifically, are the “northern lights” ever visible from Timbuktu? A 2004 New York Times article about medieval Arabic manuscripts triggered the question. The city of Timbuktu, Mali, was one of Africa’s intellectual hubs when the Renaissance was barely a twinkle in Europeans’ eyes. The article focused on efforts to rescue the ancient manuscripts. One 16th-century...

Earlier this week, I wrote about an auction to benefit the Stellafane telescope-making convention, held each year in Springfield, Vermont. Last month, Springfield hosted another noteworthy gathering: The Simpsons movie premiere. The July 22 extravaganza featured celebrities, costumed characters, and a yellow carpet matching the family's skin tone. Vermont's Springfield beat 13 other namesake cities in an online vote to host the premiere. The...

I'm starting something new today: a weekly collection of interesting articles and blog entries I see during the week but don't blog on myself. First, to give credit where it is due, I got the idea from astronomer Pamela Gay's Star Stryder blog . Every week, she posts a "best of the blogs" feature called Space Carnival . Here are a few of my recent picks: Would your head explode in total vacuum? If you watch science fiction on...

If you like reading about and/or observing the universe's biggest blasts, you'll be interested in a book that just crossed my desk. Supernovae and How to Observe Them by Martin Mobberley is, as the title suggests, a dual-purpose book. In "Part 1 — Supernovae: Physics and Statistics," Mobberley gives a bit of supernova history, introduces the types of supernovae, and tells us what astronomers have learned by studying these massive...

Ever hanker to take a gander at the lunar crater Zwicky? If so, just click over to a slick new site on the web called The-moon . There, you will quickly learn that Zwicky is a 94-mile-wide (150 kilometers) crater at latitude 15.4° south, longitude 168.1° east. You can also find out that Fritz Zwicky (1898–1974) "was an American-based Swiss astronomer. He was an original thinker, with many important contributions in theoretical and observational...