Star Party Tonight

Neil DeGrasse Tyson born October 5, 1958) is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, and science communicator. Since 1996, he has been the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space. Best viewed Full Screen “To Build A Home” Cinematic Orchestra There is a house built out of […]

Last week I headed out for a 6 day run at the observatory to shoot comet Lovejoy ( C/2014 Q2 ) . The observatory is located about 80 miles east of San Diego at 3800 feet in high desert terrain. Typically the wind blows quite a bit and to put together a few good nights […]

Down the road a bit, we Earthlings will become Marslings. Before the first colony is  established on Mars quite a bit of work will be done to prepare the way for the first settlers . Currently there are thousands of really bright people working on the challenges of reaching Mars. A recent article on ArXiv (at the Cornell […]

It’s the most wonderful time of the year — for spotting a Geminid meteor! The 2014 Geminid meteor shower is forecast to be a lively meteor shower with great views in the skies over Earth. The week of Dec. 8 is a good window for Geminid-watching, but the night of Dec. 13-14 is the anticipated […]

The Kuiper Belt object, Pluto since its discovery in 1930 has revealed little about its characteristics. The NASA/JPL probe New Horizons is now one month away from the start of mission observations of the dwarf planet. New Horizons has been travelling to Pluto for nearly 9 years. After  a journey of more than 8 years the spacecraft […]

Asteroids; traditionally, most have been bodies in the inner Solar System.[6] Main-belt asteroids, those following roughly circular orbits between Mars and Jupiter. These are the original and best-known group of asteroids or minor planets. Near-Earth asteroids, those whose orbits take them inside the orbit of Mars. Further subclassification of these, based on orbital distance, is […]