-
Welcome!
I live in New Zealand Australia California Australia western Canada, and like writing and reading poetry. If you like poetry, or musings about astronomy, I may occasionally say things of interest, as per the older entries below. F-locked merely for basic privacy; quite happy to add if there's any overlapping interests. -
All things counter, original, spare, strange
S/1 90482 (2005) needs your help
One moon, comes with dwarf planet, looking for a name. All lovers of Etruscan mythology in particular urged to apply.
We can't just keep calling this lovely little world 'the moon of Orcus'...
Update: Moon is now to be called Vanth. Thanks to sovay for coming up with the suggestion!
-
such happy little fish
try feeding them with clicks... -
Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies! The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there
In honour of Clyde Tombaugh, and all things Kuiper and cold and far-flung:
Happy 79th day of discovery, Pluto.
May we find you many more brothers and sisters. -
the peaks too have names to suit their whiteness
Yesterday I found a listing in the USGS announcements of new planetary names: Punga Mare named on Titan.
Hmm, I thought: this sounds suspiciously Māori. Surely not. But indeed, named for the son of Tangaroa.
And that got me to thinking, what else is there in the Solar System named for Māori mythology? I knew of the asteroids Aotearoa and Aoraki, ( Read more... ) -
For us the land is matrix and destroyer
All my thoughts to those under the smoke-clouds in Victoria. Too many people I know are likely to have friends, or family, or family of friends in that area ( Read more... ) -
times of improvisation
Quince crumble: an experiment last night...
I picked up a quince from the nearby Armenian grocer a while back, and had been pondering how to bake it. The quince was not much smaller than my head. My recipe went something like this:
1. Have quince. Quince must be baked for eating. Ooo, crumble!
2. Quince enthusiastically turned into many thin slices of ( Read more... ) -
Some very dedicated partying
Yes. Exams are finished. Stellar structure a little less than satisfying, radiative transfer processes pleasantly as expected, and classical mechanics most amusing in that several questions were recycled in their entirety from the papers of previous years. I could have floated down the stairs with the happiness of just having everything done ( Read more... ) -
down in the crater is the lake
Very good talk this morning on the hunt for extrasolar planets by Debra Fischer of SFSU. I agree with her that the most important factors for determining if a planet is habitable are its mass (retain an atmosphere, oceans, stay tectonically active, etc) and distance from its star (correct degree of heating, etc.). Really, everything else is ( Read more... ) -
today I held a piece of star
Yesterday featured a fascinating lecture by the curator of the Vatican Meteorite Collection. We got to hold a meteorite with inclusions that at their centres are little spheres of pure r-process elements. Little pieces of other stars ( Read more... )