Solar Eclipse in Retrospect
The two minutes and six seconds of totality I experienced were otherworldly. Time had paused and I was submerged into an ethereal reality. I had spent so much time preparing for this, and yet it passed by so quickly. As the Moon's shadow had approached from the...
Solar Eclipse, Part 6 of 6: How I’ll Spend My Two Minutes of Totality
This will be my first total solar eclipse. What I am planning on doing is not necessarily what I would recommend everyone to do. Nevertheless, perhaps these plans can inspire some ideas and spark conversation. I'll be in the path of totality somewhere near the...
Solar Eclipse, Part 5: Temperature Drop
Bring a sweatshirt with you on August 21! During the eclipse, the temperature may change 1/2 or 3/4 as much as it regularly does at night, based on your location and climate. This will likely be 10-15 degrees, but it could be more. When the Moon blocks sunlight from...
Solar Eclipse, Part 4: To Scale and Not To Scale
To scale or not to scale, that is the question; Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of disproportions Or to take a ruler to that sea of troubles And, by measuring, correctly depict them. ... ...
Solar Eclipse, Part 3: Eclipse Glasses
Looking at the Sun is usually a bad idea. Over the weekend I chatted with an optometrist, and he made it clear that permanent damage can be done to your eyes even if you don't feel any pain. Safe ways to observe the solar eclipse include making a pinhole projector or...
Solar Eclipse, Part 2
Will the sky get dark enough during the eclipse for us to see other stars in the sky? During totality, yes! When the eclipse is total, the light that reaches us from the Sun is thousands of times dimmer than a partially eclipsed Sun. (This is why you should wear...
Solar Eclipse, Part 1
Oh wow! This August 21, the Moon's shadow, a mere 60 to 70 miles wide, will flee across the United States in a reverse-Oregon-trail and continue through Charleston, South Carolina. If you are in the path of totality for this solar eclipse, you'll see the Moon blot out...
Einstein’s First Forerunner: St. Augustine
Today, August 28, the Catholic Church ordinarily celebrates St. Augustine's feast day. This year, however, his feast is liturgically overshadowed since it fell on a Sunday. Nevertheless, it's still an appropriate occasion to recall the contributions of St....
Connecting Space to Village
NASA and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) have teamed up and have brought the world an initiative called SERVIR. Using satellite images of the Earth and other technology, SERVIR works with organizations in developing countries to forecast climate...
Recalling the Importance of Wonder
Last night I had the privilege of speaking about astronomy to the boys at Sacred Heart Apostolic School in Rolling Prairie, Indiana. After telling them a bit about myself, I narrated the story of the cosmological revolutions of the past century, answering the question...
Fine-Tuning in the Cosmos
This image is a three-color composite of the Chandra Deep Field South. Take a moment just to look at it in wonder. Pretty much every object in the photo is a galaxy, containing billions of stars. The area of space in this photo takes up only one part in 375,000 of...
Trip with UIAS to Yerkes Observatory
Last weekend I had the opportunity to travel up with the Astronomical Society of the University of Illinois and visit the University of Chicago's Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin. Yerkes Observatory has a few telescopes, including the world's largest...