What's the Obsession with Water?

A Perfect Balance >

The Mars Phoenix Lander finally made it. After years and years of planning and testing and engineering and innovation - and the most nail-biting 7 minutes in recent JPL history as it touched down - we have a robotic lander near the north pole of Mars.

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Posted by Mark Ritter at 2008.06. 1 10:48 AM | Comments (0)

Get Out Your Number 2's!

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'Tis the time of the year that our poor public school children are subjected to those dreaded California State Tests. To help us all feel their pain, if only for a few minutes, I'd like to subject you to some questions similar to those that are plaguing our children during these weeks. They are all astronomy related, so regular readers here should find all this easy like Sunday morning. Got your Number 2 pencils sharpened and ready?

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Posted by Mark Ritter at 2008.05.18 10:38 AM | Comments (0)

Saturn and Regulus Part 2 - Twinkle and Rings

Observing >

Last time here we took a deeper look into the great Lion of the Sky - Leo. We saw there a new spot on the celestial cat, a spot more familiar to us as Saturn.

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Posted by Mark Ritter at 2008.05. 4 10:31 AM | Comments (0)

Saturn and Regulus Part 1 - Brightness

Observing >

Those of us even slightly familiar with the night skies look up at this time of the year and welcome our old friend, Leo the Lion. It is one of those more easily spotted cats in the heavens, distinguished from the rest of the constellations by what seems to be a gigantic backwards question mark. Go out tonight, face south, look almost directly up and there it is.

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Posted by Mark Ritter at 2008.04.20 10:22 AM | Comments (0)

Big Boom by Bootes

Observing >

An explosion bigger than anyone has seen in recorded history happened a couple weeks ago and few seem to have noticed. There was March Madness, Democratic infighting, and Paris Hilton doing more nothing, but only a few humans on Earth were aware of what happened in the sky in the constellation Bootes.

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Posted by Mark Ritter at 2008.04. 6 09:37 AM | Comments (0)