Once at a party a good friend parked me in front of her mother, an intelligent and inquisitive woman who had deep connections with one of...

Portion of the Bayeux Tapestry showing Comet Halley One of the benefits of astronomy is time travel: I enjoy moving around in time,...

When as a middle schooler I got my first real telescope (a beautifully-painted 4 ¼ inch reflector) I was fascinated by the four bright...

My article in the August 2021 issue of Sky & Telescope magazine under the title Alas Babylon! When Mars Draws Near. . . is about the...

1858 Drawing of the Eclipsed Sun as Seen from Brazil We have been talking about the sun. With the European Space Agency’s and NASA’s...

Prowling in used bookstores can yield gratifying surprises. I’ve always had an eye for the musty treasures in the history of astronomy,...

Well whew it missed us. I think you are not surprised, though, because everybody who looked at its trajectory knew it would miss Earth by...

Welcome to Part II of our story. The picture above shows Charles Greely Abbot reading his pyrheliometer. I enjoy pictures of how science...

Charles Greely Abbot As we slowly climb out of the current steep sunspot minimum, it is worth reflecting upon some long-standing...

As Mars draws near, my thoughts turn to . . . Babylon. What’s this? Why Babylon? When the world absorbs the amazing photographs and data...

It's like something out of Children of the Corn. Everyone standing in the broad park at the top of a hill not far from my house looking...

On the occasion of our second interstellar visitor to our solar system, 2I/Borisov, I was reminded of a talk I gave a year ago to a...

A century ago in Washington DC, at a National Academy of Sciences’ symposium put together by George Ellery Hale, Heber Curtis and Harlow...

Earth occasinally gets in the way of big nasty rocky things travelling through space. It seems like that daunting reality hasn't been...