Losing the Dark
For all of human history the night sky has been a source of inspiration and wonder. Our nightly encounter with the stars has done much to influence art, philosophy, science and religion. Yet in the last century humanity has been increasingly lighting up the night and removing the stars from view. It is difficult to calculate what the loss of the stars is doing to our sense of wonder or to know what great works of art we’ve lost, never having been inspired by the night sky. We do know that this problem, known as light pollution, is growing. Yet...
Hooked on Training Teachers at McDonald Observatory
What was the first thing in science that motivated you as a student? What experiences stick with you even until this day? For me getting hooked on astronomy started at a young age. I remember stargazing as a young child with my grandmother and having talks with her about stars and planets. She, who was an avid reader and astronomy enthusiast, gave me my first real memories related to science and helped ignite in me the drive to want to be an astronomer. From there, experiences at school coupled with visiting museums and summer science camps, all helped fuel my...
5 Coolest Features of Distro Astro, Linux for Astronomers
Now that Windows XP is retired, many people will upgrade to newer versions of Microsoft Windows. An adventurous few may explore alternative operating systems. If you are an astronomy fan, one such alternative is Distro Astro, a Linux-based operating system made especially for astronomers and astronomy enthusiasts. Here are five of its most interesting features. 1. APOD wallpaper Distro Astro has lots of astronomy-themed wallpapers, but the best is probably the APOD wallpaper. If you choose this wallpaper, it changes everyday to the image from NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day . The screenshot below shows how to change from...
Telescopes in Exotic Places
The atmosphere is rather handy for us as humans because it allows us to breathe, keeps us warm (warmer than space at any rate) and shields us from harmful radiation from the Sun, cosmic rays, small meteors and other things that go bump in the night. So I don’t want to sound ungrateful but it’s a pain in the rear for us astronomers. Faulkes Telescope North Opening. Credit: LCOGT Astronomy is virtually unique amongst the sciences because the only way we can unravel the mysteries of the Universe is by deciphering information locked away in light rays. To be an...
Communication challenges
At it's most basic, the science of astronomy involves nothing more than collecting the faint photons emitted by distant objects, and using that information to try to understand the physics and chemistry (and, one day perhaps, biology?) of what we see out there. Most of us have had the exhilarating experience of seeing a distant object, be it a planet, a star cluster, or a distant galaxy, through the eyepiece of a telescope and realising that the light has travelled through space for an unimaginably long time before finally coming to rest on the retina in the back of your...
