Archives for June 2007
The first parallax measurements
Published on 28 Jun 2007 at 1:01 am.
1 Comment.
Filed under astronomy, stars.
Early last week, I wrote about parallax and distance measurements. This is a follow-up post to that one.
Stellar parallax is very small, and thus correspondingly difficult to measure. The closest star has a parallax of 0.772 arc-seconds (that is nearly 1/4700 of a degree). That is a very tiny angle to measure, […]
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The 8 random thing meme
Published on 27 Jun 2007 at 10:40 am.
1 Comment.
Filed under blogging.
Hmm. CCPhysicist (aka Dr. Pion) tagged me with the 8 random thing meme. I haven’t done one of these things lately, so I might as well respond. The 8 random thing meme, like many memes, is a way to get to know a blogger. This one has the blogger posting 8 […]
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Has anyone seen my flying saucer?
Published on 26 Jun 2007 at 9:45 pm.
7 Comments.
Filed under Uncategorized, astrophotography, college teaching.
One of the things that comes from being an astronomy professor is that whenever anyone calls the college and asks about anything in the sky, the operators relay them to me. Also, if you do a search of the college faculty for astronomy faculty, my name is prominently displayed, along with my office number. Normally, […]
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Sunrise Sunset Calendar
Published on 24 Jun 2007 at 9:50 pm.
1 Comment.
Filed under calendars, time.
Mary Jo, over at Fly Away Cafe, has posted about a Sunrise Sunset calendar web site. This web site will compute and display sunrise and sunset times for an entire month for a wide variety of locations. It also computes moonrise and moonset times, and it will even compute twilight. It computes […]
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Mars Mission: The Human Factor
Published on 22 Jun 2007 at 12:29 pm.
8 Comments.
Filed under Mars, space exploration.
About three weeks ago, I posted about Bob Zubrin’s Mars Direct mission plans. He insists that the technology to go to Mars is either already here, or just about to be developed. However, one of the chief arguments against his Mars Direct mission is the human factor. Mars is a long way […]
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Math Moves U
Published on 21 Jun 2007 at 3:40 pm.
No Comments.
Filed under Uncategorized, college teaching.
Raytheon has come up with something that looks very interesting to me. It is called Math Moves U.  This is math contest for kids ages 10 to 14. The contest web page allows contestants to answer various mathematics problems related to a mission to Mars. The questions should be suitable for good math students […]
Parallax and Parsecs
Published on 18 Jun 2007 at 11:53 pm.
9 Comments.
Filed under astronomy.
Every now and then, I refer to astronomical distances such as Astronomical Units or Parsecs, but I don’t think that I’ve yet actually had a posting about the meaning of those terms. So, I thought that I’d write about these distance measurements today.
Basically, an Astronomical Unit is defined to be the semi-major axis of Earth’s […]
