Here’s to a great transition for you at this end + beginning of old / new trips around the sun … “party fact” of note: TODAY, January 2, 2024 (as I write this), we’re actually at our CLOSEST to the sun for the whole year . . . in fact, more than 3 million! miles closer than • Read More »
What’s going on in the night sky? This week (Wed.,12/7 in U.S. time zones) the full moon “backslid” across bright Mars, so an “occultation” was visible in much of the country (where the sky was clear enough). As the earth rotates west-to-east on its axis, the sky appears to turn east-to-west — but the moon’s • Read More »
something’s happening today that is likely unprecedented in our lives: the time of sunset hereabouts, today, is almost exactly the same as the actual moment of solstice!
[ You may have seen my earlier blog-ravings about “cross-quarter days”, and except for a couple of NEW illustrations and analogies in this best-yet XQ rave, the following’s the same old stuff — but stay tuned!, for farther below, the NEXT part: EXCITING SKY HAPPENINGS coming up VERY SOON now! *** ] As we approach May Day (about three months since Ground • Read More »
Halloween, the BOO! (Blue) Moon, the Sun & those Bright Dots in the Sky . . . Halloween is one of four “cross-quarter days” of the year: approximately mid-way between an equinox and a solstice. (Imagine the solstices as 12 and 6 — December and June — on a clock face. Then the equinoxes are • Read More »
Astrophysicist Martin Gaskell discusses—at virtually the same time as its publication to the word—what has been called the “greatest astronomical discovery of all time.” The conversation ranges from science to intriguing notes on spirituality. Dr. Gaskell is a professor of astronomy at the University of California Santa Cruz. Dr. Gaskell shares fascinating insights about Black • Read More »
Post #1 — Summer Solstice 2020 We could all use a little “cosmic relief” now and then — especially these days! … So, here‘s some for you. ….. TODAY (Sat.,6/20), at 2:44 PM Pacific Daylight Time — our hero “Mr. Sun” will be directly overhead for some lucky fish (or maybe boat) in the ocean • Read More »
Monterey Bay Salmon and Trout Project Executive Director Ben Harris talks about the importance of salmonids—salmon and trout— in maintaining the ecological health of ocean and land. Harris explains how and why Pacific salmon populations have drastically declined, and describes efforts underway to help native Monterey Bay populations of Coho and Steelhead recover from the • Read More »
Nuclear Winter, first described by Drs. Brian Toon, Rich Turco, Tom Ackerman, James Pollack, and Carl Sagan (“TTAPS”) equates the plume of smoke from a comet impact that covered Earth causing the great extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago with the global winter that could extinct most life on Earth in the event of • Read More »
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2018 predicts far more dire and rapidly escalating consequences of Climate Change than any IPCC analysis thus far, and calls for a historically unprecedented transformation of the world economy to avert the worst of the damage. Two of the IPCC’s authors, Dr. Nathalie Mehowald of Cornell and • Read More »