Moore's law for computers says that every 18 months, the number of parts on a computer chip doubles. And this has been going on for a long time. Keep in mind that it doesn't take many doubles before something very small is very large. If you put a penny on one square of a chess board, 2 on the next square, the last square in the row has 128 ( Read more... )

It's that time of year again. It's August 27th. And the email from 2003 has been modified and recycled again. Each time, it gets less factual. I didn't get a copy this year. But you can get the gist of it hereIn 2003, the claim was... in a 75x telescope, Mars appears the size of the Full Moon (naked eye). That wasn't a hoax. It was handy. Can ( Read more... )

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It's hard to believe, but i'm involved in producing a monthly half hour TV show. OK, it's aired on local cable, in the probably ignored "public access" slot. But, we've produced four episodes. Back in May, i called this the "super secret project". Not because we're trying to keep it under wraps. But more because we've been so busy producing the ( Read more... )

Without naming names or places, but we have an "In the news" segment at the club. And recently, one of the guys pointed out that between the 1st and the 6th of July, there were 30 distinct astronomy news stories. He then proceeded to read snippets from about 15 of them ( Read more... )

I'm giving a talk tomorrow at the Ford Club. It's just a short one. What software is available for free? All the software i use is available for free. But i start with my browser. I'm sure you have one. I use firefox (free) on Linux (free).

It's good to know when it's dark. So i go to heavens-above, look up the Sun, and discover that it's ( Read more... )

I've mentioned that i lurk on Yahoo! Answers (a complete waste of time), and answer questions from time to time. Here's an example where i attempted to not answer the question, while staying on topic, mostly. I should point out that other answers included the IAU's three points of the definition of a planet.


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This is extremely unusual. I was listening to an episode of the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast. I happen to finish listening to the March 16th episode just as i was getting home, at night, and it was clear out. It's so seldom clear out.

The episode is entitled Using the Sun to Find the North Star. It talks about how you can go out during the day ( Read more... )

This is more from my adventures on Yahoo! Answers. As i've said, a complete waste of time. Here's my answer:


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Every now and then, there's a news article where they talk about something that might be interesting for astronomy. There was the meta materials article where they talked about achieving, in the lab, a substance with a negative index of refraction. The work was done in microwaves, which are a good deal longer than visible light. So, although a ( Read more... )