Astronomy
Category archives for Astronomy
Messier Monday: A Hyper-Smooth Globular Cluster, M5
Posted by Ethan on May 20, 2013 
“The Milky Way is nothing else but a mass of innumerable stars planted together in clusters.” -Galileo Galilei Welcome back to another Messier Monday here on Starts With a Bang! With 110 deep-sky objects making it up, the Messier Catalogue is the first comprehensive, accurate catalogue of faint (but not too faint) fixtures in the night sky. Each object…
“Einstein’s Greatest Blunder” was REALLY a blunder!
Posted by Ethan on May 17, 2013 
“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” -Albert Einstein Back when Einstein first proposed his theory of General Relativity, his revolutionary picture of the Universe was met with a mix of curiosity, awe, and intense skepticism. It isn’t every day that your most cherished of all physical theories — the…
Messier Monday: The Cigar Galaxy, M82
Posted by Ethan on May 13, 2013 
“How is it they live for eons in such harmony - the billions of stars - when most men can barely go a minute without declaring war in their mind against someone they know?” -Thomas Aquinas Welcome back to another Messier Monday here on Starts With a Bang! Each Monday, we take an in-depth look at one of the 110 deep-sky wonders —…
The Far Future of our Solar System
Posted by Ethan on May 8, 2013 
“No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.” -Alan Watts “They do not see what lies ahead, when Sun has faded and Moon is dead.” -J.R.R. Tolkien One of the most amazing facts about the Universe is that, despite only having spent a few hundred years…
Messier Monday: The Youngest Star-Forming Region, The Trifid Nebula, M20
Posted by Ethan on May 6, 2013 
“Why I came here, I know not; where I shall go it is useless to inquire – in the midst of myriads of the living and the dead worlds, stars, systems, infinity, why should I be anxious about an atom?” -Lord Byron Welcome back to another Messier Monday here on Starts With a Bang! Messier’s…
Putting Einstein to the Test
Posted by Ethan on May 1, 2013 
“The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of experimental physics, and therein lies their strength. They are radical. Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will…
Messier Monday: A Real-Life Pi-in-the-Sky Cluster, M38
Posted by Ethan on April 29, 2013 
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” -W. Shakespeare Welcome to just another Messier Monday here on Starts With A Bang! Each Monday, we’re taking a detailed look at a different one of the 110 deep-sky objects that compose the Messier Catalogue, each one a different semi-permanent wonder of…
Weekend Diversion: I’m Writing for NASA Now!
Posted by Ethan on April 28, 2013 
“For I dipped into the Future, far as human eye could see; saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.” -Alfred, Lord Tennyson This weekend, the Sun is shining here in Portland, as we’ve gotten our first annual spell of warm, sunny days recently. It’s got me thinking of the…
How far away is stuff?
Posted by Ethan on April 24, 2013 
“Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.” -Douglas Adams Well, maybe “peanuts” isn’t going to do. When you look out at the night sky, all sorts…
Messier Monday: The Second Greatest Globular in Hercules, M92
Posted by Ethan on April 22, 2013 
“[T]he entire globe will soon be wrapped in a glowing envelope through which none of the magic of the Universe can be seen by the naked eye.” -George Eslinger Welcome to still another Messier Monday here on Starts With A Bang! Each Monday, we highlight a different one of the 110 deep-sky objects that make up the Messier…
