Wednesday, November 25, 2020

Assign a Number to it, said Lord Kelvin

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“When you can measure what you are speaking about,  and express it in numbers,  you know something about it;  but when you cannot measure it...
Sunday, November 22, 2020

Viewing epsilon Lyrae

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I do not remember where I read of  epsilon Lyrae  as a viewing target, but I have it in my notebook between 12 and 14 November as a possible...
Saturday, November 21, 2020

Viewing Mars

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On October 13, 2020, at  23:00 UTC (6 PM CDT), Earth passed directly between the Sun and Mars. And given the eccentricity in the two orbits,...
Tuesday, November 17, 2020

New Cat: Sunny

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We knew that Désirée had feline leukemia when we adopted her four years ago. After she passed away, we waited a few months to take in a fami...
Tuesday, November 10, 2020

Redshift: Six Years with Astronomy

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My wife and daughter bought me a telescope for my birthday in 2014. Today, I reviewed by notebook. It was disappointing. Overall, I made ver...
Thursday, October 29, 2020

Clear Nights, Full Moon

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The full Moon on the 31st is a problem, but the nights are clear and cold. So, I took out my Explore Scientific First Light 102-mm refractor...
Saturday, October 24, 2020

New Telescope: Explore First Light 102 mm Refractor

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The problem with consumer goods is that at the designers are not you. Everything is always a matter of trade-offs. The decisions that other ...
Thursday, October 22, 2020

Galileo and Saturn: Epistemology not Optics

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It is commonly claimed that Galileo did not perceive the rings of Saturn because the telescope he was using was not capable of magnifying th...
Sunday, September 27, 2020

Celestial Mechanics

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I first got interested in celestial mechanics in 1978. I enrolled in three independent study classes at two schools, New Mexico State Univer...
Thursday, September 17, 2020

Hail to the Spartan Victors?

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I do not remember where I was driving when I saw this banner. The incongruity prompted me to stop and take a picture. I found it again in my...
Tuesday, September 8, 2020

Pencil Notes: Reflections on Henry Petroski’s "The Pencil"

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“Yet, perhaps in part because specialization was no doubt as common in ancient times as it is today, the written history of engineering is s...