• Pic of the Week: Supermoon Beyond the Temple of Poseidon

    This week’s image comes from NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day site. This beautiful photo taken by photographer Alexandros Maragos shows the recent blue supermoon in all its glory with the Temple of Poseidon in Greece in the foreground.

  • SpaceX Grounded Before Start of the Polaris Dawn Mission

    For the second time in two months, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch has had problems, leading to a temporary grounding of the rocket by the Federal Aviation Administration. In the latest case, a rocket booster crashed into the Atlantic Ocean after a successful launch of Starlink satellites. As a result of the malfunction, the…

  • Space Stories: The Search for Super Civilization, Students Sought for Lunar Mission, and Kilonova Seekers

    Here are some recent stories of interest. —SETI Institute: “SETI Institute Starts First Low Frequency Search for Alien Technology in Distant Galaxies“ The SETI Institute, the Berkeley SETI Research Center and the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research announced a groundbreaking study using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) in Western Australia. Led by Dr. Chenoa Tremblay…

  • Where Is This? August 26, 2024 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 “Where is This? The Answer Sheet” page.

  • Summer Positions at the Vatican Observatory

    Does a summer studying astronomy in Rome sound interesting? If so, you might want to consider applying to be part of an astronomy program at the Vatican Observatory. The 440-year-old institution will be accepting 25 new applicants for the summer 2025 program. Next summer’s program is titled “Exploring the Universe with JWST.” Here is a…

  • Space Quote: NASA’s North Star Means Boeing Astronauts to Return to Earth on SpaceX Capsule

    “Spaceflight is risky, even at its safest and most routine. A test flight, by nature, is neither safe, nor routine. The decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring Boeing’s Starliner home uncrewed is the result of our commitment to safety: our core value and our North Star…I’m grateful to…

  • Pic of the Week: Sparkling Candy Floss

    This week’s image is from the Hubble Space Telescope. It shows a cluster of stars that are about 160,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud that orbits our Milky Way. Here is the full story from NASA: A bubbling region of stars both old and new lies some 160,000 light-years away in the constellation…

  • A Day in Astronomy: The Birth of Ray Bradbury

    On this day in 1920, Ray Douglas Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois. Mr. Bradybury would grow up to be a famous American author and screenwriter. One of his science fiction works,The Martian Chronicles stories, tells the story of mankind’s colonization of Mars and the ultimate effect on the colonizers. He wrote numerous other famous…

  • Television: The End of The Acolyte

    I cannot say I am surprised that Disney’s new Star Wars television series The Acolyte has been cancelled after only one season. I watched a few episodes and gave up. Given that Disney has decided to spread the Star Wars series very thin over multiple storylines, it seems that the goal has been more TV…

  • Space Stories: Oceans on Ariel, Dinosaur-Killer Asteroid from Beyond Jupiter, and the Launch of the Polaris Dawn Mission

    Here are some recent stories of interest. —Forbes: “NASA’s Webb Telescope Finds Evidence For An Ocean World Around Uranus“ New observations by the James Webb Space Telescope suggest that an icy moon around Uranus may have an underground liquid ocean. Ariel is one of 27 moons around Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun and the…