Tomorrow night (September 27-28) we will have a total lunar eclipse beginning around 9:07 and lasting until 12: 27. This event will be safe to watch without any special equipment. This eclipse is the final in a series of 4 total lunar eclipses half-year apart. Our minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Greensboro has asked … More The Shape of Night
What a fantastic time we had Friday night at the 2015 edition of HPUniverse Day. Sponsored by High Point University’s Department of Physics, we open Congdon Hall, our science classrooms building, for adults and children of all ages, Many science demonstrations and activities were provided, and this was my second year of “cooking” comets. With … More Making Comets for HPUniverse Day
One of my favorite astronomy labs, making a scale model of our solar system, tends to be a real eye-opener for my students. Maybe that’s why I like it so much; our preconceptions become obvious misconceptions and we are given a new model, a more accurate view of our home. We began with a table … More “One Planet and Some Debris”
Here’s an image of Uranus I took Friday, September 4, 2015 at 10:42 pm with the Prompt 1 telescope in Chile. Uranus was 19.2 Astronomical Units from us, at apparent magnitude of 6.02. The first planet to be discovered in modern times, Uranus has five large moons and 22 known small moons, all named after … More The Planet Middle School Teachers Hate
We probably all have them. Maybe we learned them from a classmate who really didn’t know what s/he was talking about. Or maybe we didn’t understand every word the teacher said in the simplified description meant to help us pass the End Of Course test. One common misconception is that we on Earth experience warmer, … More Preconceptions…Misconceptions
Was it there yesterday morning? Last week? Last month? What is it? Why does it shine so bright? What does it mean? I can imagine our distant ancestors wondering about the lights in the sky; some of them seeming to slowly shift positions compared to the other lights that seem static, that move together in … More Bright Light in the Sky
