Starship Asterisk*

Those eyes are way to close together and unsettling!

I remember back in the 1950's how enthralling it was to look up at the contrails of the early jets. Now contrails intrude on nearly every sunset and skyscape. Today's APOD struck me as a prelude to the possibility that someday it will be hard to stare at the night sky without the intrusion of dozens...

Having been raised un the U.P. in the 40's and 50's [also in Newberry] I have empathy for those poor folk huddled up der in Houghton trying to remember what da sky looks like in da middle of winter, aye? A couple of hundred inches of snow can addle da noggin. So forgiveness is perhaps in order, or a...

Light pillars aren't created as a result of upward-pointing light sources. In fact the pillars aren't really columns of light streaking up from the light sources at all. They are reflections from oriented ice crystals at very oblique angles, meaning they occur between the light source and the eye wh...

Kilimanjaro Nebula

What's with the return to earth-centric thinking? Just because WE couldn't resolve a laser from a background star's output doesn't mean THEY couldn't. On the one hand we are constantly developing new techniques and technologies to improve our ability to resolve images - have indeed resolved stars wi...

My geologist son just related to me his witnessing of the recent Pennsylvania fireball falling directly down on his position while driving on the PA Turnpike. Except for the absence of arcing in his case and no rendering of the terminal explosion, this painting relays to the eye the aura of the even...

The appearance of a "column" doesn't warrant a notation that a column actually exists. No differently than an apparent "column" of light seems to rise vertically from a cold winter night lamp post, this light pattern is created in horizontal space over some distances. In this cas...

I am of the mind that scholars, like clerics and twelve-year-old boys, need an occasional scolding. This site is an avenue for me and many others to once again lay on our little-boy backs and stare at the stars, to look through film-negative covered binoculars at sun spots, and to pause in mouth-aga...

With an artist's eye I note the great care of the calligraphy and its ease of stroke contrasted with the off-handed, almost careless illustration and very unskilled illumination. This tells me there were multiple hands of widely varied skill levels involved in this illustration's creation. All were ...

As for the factuality of dad's story, one would have to know his character in order to accept it at face value - not that we Yoopers aren't above a good practical joke now and then. He was an educator so I can't imagine him permitting me to use that meteorite for classroom discussions were the story...

Friends, I have an interesting story I'd like to relate. As a young boy my father and I were walking some railroad tracks that had once belonged to my grandfather. As we were passing by a certain spot my father stopped and stared around. He told me he and his brothers had been walking in just this s...

I'd like to point out that we are talking about evidence of light pollution. Lights that point downward or are otherwise shielded to direct their lighting only toward the ground do not produce light pillars. Only those light sources which permit light in strong sideways or upward directions give us ...

Since this is photographed at night I suspect an exposure of some duration. If, during the exposure time, slight air currents tilted the horizontally aligned ice crystals a bit left then right (or if they were falling similarly to autumn leaves) the reflections would then appear to come from directi...