Rendezvous with Pluto

This morning, 9.5 years and 3 billion miles after launching from Earth, the New Horizons spacecraft will zip past Pluto, coming within 7800 ...

The Asteroid Belt

As the sun formed, 5 billion years ago, surrounding gas and debris gradually coalesced into the planets, four inner solid planets and four o...

Blood Moon over the Rockies

Looking west from our Littleton farm this morning, I saw a darkened, reddish moon with a bright, bluish rim along its top edge; the time was...

Nature's Year

As we approach the end of another human calendar year, we realize that it has no direct relationship to the solar cycle, which defines natur...

The Rosetta Mission & Climate Change

Today, ten years after its launch and at the end of a 4 billion mile journey, the Rosetta spacecraft successfully landed its Philae probe on...

Perseids & Fiddlers

On the past few nights, I went out back to observe the annual Perseid meteor shower, which generally peaks from August 11-14.  Produced by r...

Hunters in the Night

Last night, I was awakened by the call of a great horned owl on our Littleton farm.  Long enamored with those raptors, I stepped out back to...

Geminids over South Florida

Since the annual Geminid Meteor Shower was forecast to peak overnight, I got up early this morning to watch the display before dawn.  Produc...

Trillions of Earths

As reported by news agencies yesterday, a study of data from the Kepler Space Observatory suggests that there may be 40 billion Earth-like p...

Voyager 1 & Politics

Though not officially acknowledged by NASA until yesterday, Voyager 1, launched in September of 1977, likely reached interstellar space late...

Moonrise over Thunderstorms

Last evening, massive storms blossomed east of Denver, their thunderheads lit by the setting sun.  Rising 50,000 feet into the atmosphere, t...

The Nature of Comets

Comets are small astronomical bodies composed of rock, ice and frozen gases; they range in size from 1000 meters to 30 miles or more in diam...

Cosmic Missiles

Yesterday's spectacular meteor explosion over Russia and the near miss of a sizable asteroid (which passed closer to Earth than our comm...

Major Meteor Showers

As we hurtle through space on our annual journey around the sun, the Earth is constantly impacting debris from asteroids and comets.  Igniti...

Planet, Moon & Suns

On this dark, chilly October morning, the air was crystal clear and the night sky had the brilliance of mid winter.  Bright Venus gleamed hi...

Season of the Hunter

On these chilly, dark, early mornings of September, Orion reappears in the southern sky.  Though this well-known constellation is a visual i...

Evolution on Mars

Now that Curiosity has safely landed on the surface of Mars, its future discoveries are greatly anticipated though, it seems to me, fairly p...

Life in the Universe

Current scientific evidence indicates that the Universe is 13.7 billion years old and that the galaxies formed 12 billion years ago.  Yet, o...

Racing Past the Solstice

Last evening, the Northern Hemisphere crossed the summer solstice, its annual maximum tilt toward the sun.  Over the next six months, the su...

Moon over Venus

Last evening, a crescent moon gleamed in the southwest sky, its southern point tipped toward the horizon. Below the moon was Venus, its pos...