• Television: The Silent Sea

    Netflix’s new series from South Korea, The Silent Sea, was released right before Christmas and did not get a lot of attention. It may not deserve a lot of attention, and would have probably been better as a short film (which is how it started) rather than an 8-part series, but it was passable as…

  • Disarming Space Will Have to Wait

    Politico reported this week that Russia has asked that next week’s discussion at the United Nations (U.N.) about arms in space be delayed. It is possible the Russians are busy preparing for war in Ukraine and have little time to look up. But it should be possible to resolve matters here on the surface and…

  • Chinese Space Debris Clean-up or Something Else?

    Phys.org reported the success of a Chinese mission to retrieve a dead satellite, a hopeful sign given the increasing number of satellites and related debris in orbit. The story, “A Chinese space tug just grappled a dead satellite,” discusses how the Chinese spacecraft, Shijian-21, retrieved a dead navigation satellite belonging to the Chinese CompassG2 network. The…

  • Pic of the Week: Distant Dancing Galaxies

    The image above is from the Hubble Space Telescope and shared on NASA’s site last month under the title “Hubble Spots a Starship-Shaped Galactic Pair.” While the author of the story below sees the USS Enterprise from Star Trek, I see a decloaking Klingon Bird-of-Prey. Here is the full description from NASA: The subject of…

  • Space Quote: We Have Come A Long Way

    “No competent thinker [can] maintain any single nebula to be a star system of coordinate rank with the Milky Way.” –Agnes Mary Clerke, Irish astronomer, founding member of the  British Astronomical Association, and honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society, commenting in 1890 on the likelihood that other galaxies existed beyond the Milky Way. This comment…

  • Sidebar: The Artemis Mission

    With all the previous posts about NASA’s Artemis mission, I should have outlined the three stages ahead as we return to the Moon: Artemis I: This stage involves an uncrewed flight test around the Moon. The new Space Launch System carrying the empty Orion spacecraft will launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The…

  • Follow-Up: SpaceX and Others Impacting the Night Sky

    In an earlier post I discussed Elon Musk’s belief that low Earth orbit (LEO) can host billions of satellites, but don’t tell that to astronomers. The satellites already in orbit are corrupting telescope images, so the problem can only get worse. And should we really put up tens of thousands more (forget billions), we may…

  • Private Space Missions: Is Venus Next?

    NBC news reports that a privately-funding space probe could visit Venus as early as next year as phase one of a three-part mission. The goal of the Venus Life Finder Mission, involving MIT alumni and Rocket Lab, is to search for signs of life or microbial-type life. This effort is another encouraging sign of increased…

  • Video: Cool Worlds and Exoplanet Moons

    We have located exoplanets (planets around other suns) and even free-floating planets (planets without a sun), but what about exoplanet moons? A recent video from the YouTube channel Cool Worlds titled “We Discovered a New Exomoon Candidate! A Survey of 70 Cool Gas Giants,” discusses efforts by the Cool Worlds Lab to find these new…

  • Where is This?: The February 4, 2022 Quiz

    Take a look at the image above. Can you determine where this image originated? Take a guess and then check your answer by going to the menu and selecting the “Where is this?” page.