Archives for the 'Earth' Category
Earth Day 2008
Published on 22 Apr 2008 at 8:54 pm.
2 Comments.
Filed under Earth, politics.
April 22, 1970, I went to school as on any other day. Only that day, many of the lessons were on Earth and the environment. That was the first Earth Day. I remember that we had an aluminum recycling contest going on in the school that had been going on since Christmas […]
Earth and Luna
Published on 12 Mar 2008 at 7:02 pm.
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Filed under Earth, moon.
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) left Earth August 12, 2005. It arrived at Mars about two years ago, March 10, 2006, joining a flotilla of other spacecraft studying the red planet. Last October, the MRO turned its HiRISE camera towards home, capturing the image above. The HiRISE camera (High Resolution Imaging Science […]
Big tides
Published on 24 Nov 2007 at 5:53 pm.
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Filed under Earth, moon.
Today is Full Moon. This Full Moon also falls on the same day that the Moon reaches perigee (the closest point in its elliptical orbit to the Earth). That means high tides. I’ve blogged about tides twice before: here and here. You can read those postings to find more about […]
Aphelion
Published on 6 Jul 2007 at 1:39 pm.
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Filed under Earth, astronomy, planets.
Earth is currently at aphelion (or will be just a few hours after I write this). Like all the planets, Earth’s orbit is somewhat elliptical. Johannes Kepler studied planetary motion in the early 17th Century. His first law of planetary motion, based upon his analysis of Tycho Brahe’s observations, was that planets […]
AIMing at Earth
Published on 26 Apr 2007 at 1:10 pm.
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Filed under Earth, atmosphere.
Well, that is an ominous sounding title. No, I don’t mean that alien space battlecruisers are aiming destructor beams at Earth. Rather, I am refering to yesterday’s launch of the Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) spacecraft aboard a Pegasus XL rocket.
Almost all of Earth’s clouds form in the troposphere, the lowest […]
Vernal Equinox
Published on 20 Mar 2007 at 11:05 am.
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Filed under Earth, astronomy.
It happens in a few hours. At 00:07 UT, March 21, the Sun will be directly over the Earth’s equator. That time works out to be 7:07pm (CDT) on March 20 here in Texas. We call this the Vernal Equinox. The word “equinox” suggests equal times of day and night, and that […]
Mars isn’t the only planet with dust storms!
Published on 28 Feb 2007 at 1:45 pm.
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Filed under Earth, Mars, space exploration.
Saturday, I was at a convention in Dallas. That afternoon, I came out of a session and looked out the window. During the day, the wind had been increasing. Well, by the afternoon, there were whitecaps in the hotel swimming pool! But, more disturbing was the fact that the Sun was […]
