Review: NASA’s Moonbase Alpha.

 
    
  It’s hard to weld in a spacesuit… This week, we take a look at Moonbase Alpha. No, this isn’t a resurrection of the 70’s TV series Space: 1999 re-imagined, but NASA’s new online interactive game. We’ve been playing it for a few weeks now since its release in early July. Just how does its authenticity, educational use, [...]

AstroEvent of the Week: Spotting Iridium Flares.

 
Photo by Author.  
   Looking up at the dawn or dusk skies, it’s not uncommon to see a satellite brighten, flare up, and the abruptly disappear from view. What you’ve just seen is an Iridium flare, a glint of sunlight off of a refrigerator sized satellite panel. Motorola launched this series of 66 communications satellites in 1997 [...]

Astro event: A Close Planetary Conjunction.

 
   The dusk planetary action continues this week with a close conjunction of the planets Mars and Venus. Our two nearest planetary neighbors in space have been playing a game of apparent cat and mouse in the dusk skies, approaching each other within two degrees of arc July 31st, receding, and then approaching again. Closest [...]

Astro-Event: Venus at Greatest Elongation.

 
   Our nearest planetary neighbor is about to put on a brilliant dusk showing. The planet Venus reaches greatest elongation, or its maximum separation from the Sun as observed from the Earth on August 19th. From there, it will begin a long dive towards inferior conjunction with the Sun on October 28th, slendering in phase [...]

Astro-Event: The Perseid Meteor Shower.

 
 
   This week sees a yearly summer astronomical event that may be termed “The old faithful of meteor showers;” the Perseid meteors. Other showers are often fickle, on and off events, but the Perseids routinely perform with zenithal hourly rates around 60 per hour or about one swift moving meteor per minute. Like the Mars [...]

Review: Unscientific America by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum.

  
   All too often these days, we’ve heard it said that America is in danger of losing its competitive edge in the world scientific arena. This is inevitably blamed on education, political agendas, or general apathy. A quick sound bite will usually then proceed that claims X percentage of Americans do not accept evolution, or [...]

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