astronomy
-
Watts Up
Redraw your conclusions The GDPR Enforcement Tracker "is an overview of fines and penalties which data protection authorities within the EU have imposed under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR, DSGVO)." And extremely interesting. Dig around. You'll see fines against dentists, cops, a password management company, finaincial institutions, municipalities, website operators, a coin dealer, a YMCA, Continue reading
-
Wedmessday
Be ready the next time the Sun burps It was overcast here in Indiana, but there is a good chance that auroras were visible the last couple of nights where you live, thanks to a big coronal mass ejection. Examples: Arizona, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Long Island, Texas, Brazil (see the “south Atlantic anomaly,” here). Your Continue reading
-
Go out and look up
There is a huge geomagnetic storm going on right now, producing auroras visible far south into the lower, um, maybe, twenty states, of the US. Note that auroras are a thousand miles high or so, so they can be seen far south of where they’re happening overhead. It’s overcast in Indiana right now, so I Continue reading
-
Our Chive
You start with a crater That’s how you make a town like this. Or, if you’re Canada, a reservoir. And exactly which one were you looking for? Anna’s Blog says Anna’s Archive has backed up Spotify’s entire music library: “This release includes the largest publicly available music metadata database with 256 million tracks and 186 million unique Continue reading
-
Cerebrations
Can you guess the two voices? Mr. Rogers meets the bass player. Still funny 50 years later. It burped in our direction How and why the Sun grounded 6000 planes last month. Watch out above As of 7pm ET, a solar storm is starting, causing auroras that may be visible in North America across many Continue reading
-
Hey look
Cluetrain is in an Epstein file, as are the names of its authors, mine misspelled. A cool space launch from Vandenberg is scheduled for Sunday at 9:02pm. That's an hour when it's likely to leave a "jellyfish" exhaust where sunlight hits it while it's night below. I just appended an update what I wrote about Continue reading
-
Look Up!
Surf’s up. North. Here is the auroral oval, right now: And here is the K Index, also via NOAA: Remember that the aurora’s curtains of light stand up to 800 miles above their base, about 100 miles up. So they are visible hundreds of miles away. Such as here, in Southern Indiana. So go find Continue reading
-
Monday 14 July 2025
Nor did I. And mine is #5. Did you know there were 20 top identity podcasts? Anyone listening? Q: How far has our first radio broadcast spread into space? A: Eighty-nine light years. Continue reading
-
Monday, 7 July 2025
Entrails. This vs. this. Bonus link. Earth is a tiny blue exception to it. Here is why space matters. Bargains. Amazon currently has the Airpods 4 for $89 and the Airpods Pro 2 for $149. They are [$179 and $249 at Apple](Amazon currently has the Airpods 4 for $89 and the Airpods Pro 2 for $149. Continue reading
-
Monday, 16 June 2025
Trying on times. I like shoes I can slip on, because bending over to use my crooked arthritic fingers as shoe horns is painful. So is tying laces. (Oddly, typing on a keyboard isn’t painful, so that’s a counted blessing.) The shoes I’m wearing now are beat-up Sketchers that I bought at Nordstrom for about Continue reading
-
Saturday
Blogging will be light. Big Granfalloon day. Everything, just not all at once. Ted Gioia gives ten warning signs that the "knowledge system" is collapsing. I'm in that system, as are all serious journalists and academics (I work in both worlds). So are all technologists. (I'm kinda that too.) What will replace it? Don't be Continue reading
-
Tonight’s Lunar Eclipse
They call it a blood moon, because it looks like this: But that came later. Right now still in the evening of March 13th in the Eastern time zone, the Moon is as full as it can get without moving into the shadow of Earth . Which it will. Shortly. Here is where Earth’s shadow Continue reading
-
Comet, second try
I shot the comet this time with a real camera: my Sony a7iv with a FE 70-200 mm F2.8 GM OSS II lens set at f3.5 at 135mm for 10 seconds on a shitty tripod I got at a thrift shop for $5. (I have good ones elsewhere.) This was at 8:40pm, just as the Continue reading
-
A Comet Hunt
Tonight was the first completely clear sky in a while, almost perfect for hunting Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, which for a few more nights will be gracing our evening sky. With a full moon high in the eastern sky, and plenty of light pollution from the town around me, the comet was hard to see. Fortunately, the Continue reading
-
Aviation vs. Eclipse
Contrails form behind jet aircraft flying through the stratosphere. Since high-altitude aviation is happening all around the earth more or less constantly, planes are painting the sky everywhere. (Here is one time-lapse. And another. And one of my own.) Many contrails don’t last, of course, but many do, and together they account for much of Continue reading
-
Saving Mount Wilson
This was last night: And this was just before sunset tonight: From the Mt. Wilson Observatory website: Mount Wilson Observatory Status Angeles National Forest is CLOSED due to the extreme fire hazard conditions. To see how the Observatory is faring during the ongoing Bobcat fire, check our Facebook link, Twitter link, or go to the HPWREN Tower Cam and click on Continue reading
-
A rare sky treat
Across almost 73 laps around the Sun, I’ve seen six notable comets. The fifth was Hale-Bopp, which I blogged about here, along with details on the previous four, in 1997. The sixth is NEOWISE, and that’s it, above, shot with my iPhone 11. There are a couple other shots in that same album, taken with Continue reading
-
Coming From Every Here
To answer the question Where are SiriusXM radio stations broadcasted from?, I replied, If you’re wondering where they transmit from, it’s a mix. SiriusXM transmits primarily from a number of satellites placed in geostationary orbit, 35,786 kilometres or 22,236 miles above the equator. From Earth they appear to be stationary. Two of the XM satellites, Continue reading
-
The universe is a start-up
“Pillars of Creation” is a live view of stars forming in a neighboring region of the Milky Way. (Inside the Eagle Nebula, 5,400 to 6,100 light years away.) The Solar System, formed 4.6 billion years ago. Earth became a planet .46 billion years later. That was 9.247 billion years after the Big Bang, which happened 13.787 billion years ago, meaning Continue reading
-
Venus, Moon, Jupiter and Mercury in the dawn’s early light
Walked out on the front deck this morning and grabbed a photo set of the Moon between conjunctions with Venus (that was yesterday), Jupiter (tonight and tomorrow) and then Mercury (Saturday), before passing next to the Sun as a new moon on Sunday. More about the show at EarthSky. Get up early and check it Continue reading