Archives for January 2008
Unidentified Flying Sundog
Published on 18 Jan 2008 at 11:27 am.
10 Comments.
Filed under atmosphere, skywatching.
Two days ago, I wrote about an UFO sighting over Stephenville, TX, that has been getting a lot of press attention. Well, the local news paper, the Fort Worth Star Telegram, has published a photograph purportedly of the UFO. It is an excellent photograph of a parhelion! Here is the photograph, courtesy […]
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New Images of Mercury
Published on 17 Jan 2008 at 12:57 pm.
1 Comment.
Filed under Mercury, planets.
The MESSENGER spacecraft is sending back the highest resolution images of the planet Mercury every taken. Many of these images are of portions of Mercury’s surface that have never been seen up close before. The Mariner 10 spacecraft that visited Mercury over three decades ago never got to see all of the surface, […]
UFO over Texas?
Published on 16 Jan 2008 at 6:20 pm.
31 Comments.
Filed under skywatching.
Several days ago, several people near Stephenville, Texas, apparently saw something in the sky that they did not recognize. For those who have not heard of Stephenville (and I expect that is almost everyone not from around these parts), it is a town SW of Fort Worth. With a population of about […]
Isolated Elliptical Galaxies
Published on 15 Jan 2008 at 8:35 pm.
No Comments.
Filed under conference blogging, galaxies.
While at the AAS conference last week, one of the posters that I looked at was being presented by Mike Fanelli, from nearby TCU, along with Pam Marcum (also at TCU), and a graduate student, Chris Fuse.
It has been a long standing debate about where isolated elliptical galaxies come from. For many years, it was […]
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Another semester starting
Published on 14 Jan 2008 at 11:46 am.
3 Comments.
Filed under college teaching.
Well, the break is over. Another semester is starting. Today is the first day of class at my college. The parking lots are jammed. They are doing construction that was supposed to be finished over the break, but it is nowhere near done, and so a significant number of student parking spots are no available. […]
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Mercury, finally.
Published on 13 Jan 2008 at 12:49 pm.
No Comments.
Filed under Mercury, planets, space exploration.
The MESSENGER spacecraft is now nearly to Mercury. It will pass that planet tomorrow, Monday, January 13, 2008, at about 1:05pm, Central Standard Time. I have published two other postings about MESSENGER (here and here). I am not going to restate all of that, so you can go back and read them […]
Conference Etiquette
Published on 12 Jan 2008 at 8:11 pm.
No Comments.
Filed under conference blogging.
I am home now from the AAS Meeting. I have a backlog of interesting things to blog about that I’ll be getting through over the next week. But, I thought that I’d mention something about some conference etiquette.
First of all, though, I need to explain about these meetings. There are basically three […]
