Starship Asterisk*

Owlice - great pictures. I especially like the picture of the jay. We actually had a family of scrub jays in our backyard this year. They are fun to watch - they seem to have a lot of personality. You'd see the young ones appear in late summer, still with partially grey heads. In our area we see Cal...

I managed to capture, at great personal risk, a rare and unprocessed image of kittenus napus upsidedownus:

I used to build model airplanes when I was a kid. My daughter is 9 and I thought she might enjoy the process of building and flying a model plane. So I picked up a beginners kit from Guillows, the Lancer. It's going well so far: 20200927_173607.jpg I also got a variety pack of tissue paper so she ca...

Thanks for the kind words, folks! Fortunately the variables affecting the fires are improving - increased humidity, winds are light and from the west (bringing moist air from the Pacific and moving away from populated areas), and every day more firefighters and equipment arrive. Here's a composite a...

Morning folks. Thought I would check in and talk about the fires happening on the West Coast right now. Things are pretty rough right now; we normally have a "fire season" but I don't remember anything quite like this in my life. 500,000 Oregonians have already evacuated (10% of our popula...

2001 is definitely one of my favorites. I’ve seen the film many times and read the book a couple times as well (apparently the book and film were made concurrently, which is kind of unusual). I grew up on Star Trek. When I was very young I saw the syndicated episodes of the original series; however ...

As folks with an interest in astronomy and science in general, I am curious about your thoughts on how science is portrayed in movies, games, and TV shows. Do you get irritated by things like ‘space bombers’ (Star Wars: Episode VII) and ‘red matter’ (Star Trek [Reboot])? Or are you generally able to...

I caught a glimpse of NEOWISE! It was still visible just above the horizon around 10:00. The comet just happened to end up in a gap between trees. The tall trees around my area can make it difficult to see objects that are near the horizon.

Has anyone had any luck finding C/2020 F8, SWAN? I have read that it will reach its closest point in late May. It sounds like it will be very low in the horizon from where I am, and of course it is rarely better than partly cloudy (if not raining) this time of year in the Pacific NW.

I am torn on this topic as well. As Chris pointed out we still don't know what the impact will be. What if the satellites could be designed to mitigate the potential negative effects on observation? Providing broadband to a vast number of people who wouldn't otherwise have access is undoubtedly a go...

Hey there folks, it's been a while. I thought I'd jump back in by sharing something I saw a last weekend while on a trip to the Oregon Coast (this seems like an appropriate thread). We walked down to see the "cobble stone" beach at Yaquina Head. There were seals poking their heads out of t...

I broke out the telescope a few weeks ago to show my daughter and nephews Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, and the moon. It worked out well as viewing could begin fairly early in the evening. It's fun to see people's reactions the first time they look through the eyepiece. It was also nice to be looking up a...

Heya folks, long time no post.. My daughter is now 18 months. She is quickly learning to use not only singular words but also combinations..."honey bee," "kitty cat," "all done," and one of my favorites: "all right!" I just thought I would share a couple of he...

There is the possibility of a comet visible to the naked eye in the northern hemisphere next year: http://news.discovery.com/space/new-comet-discovered-will-it-be-spectacular-120925.html In a nutshell: we can predict its path but not what will actually happen when it gets "good and close."...

Geckzilla, interesting idea for a topic. Soundtracks, to me, are hit and miss. Sometimes music is an integral part of a movie; other times the sound track feels like nothing but filler. One of my favorite movies is Everything Is Illuminated . It has a great soundtrack. I can't understand what they a...

I went camping last weekend. Beautiful, dark clear skies. A few of us stayed up Saturday night and saw some great Perseids. I'd say we saw - on average - one every minute or two. Quite a few "big ones" - that is, nice long debris trails lasting a second or more.

T'was a great show indeed!

I just watched it too...fantastic!

Roughly 1 day to go!

Normally I don't pay attention to the Lyrids; the odds we'll have clear skies this time of year are slim-to-none. This weekend the weather was warm and skies clear - beautiful spring weather. I stayed up Sunday night until after midnight hoping to catch a few meteors. Unfortunately when I went outsi...

The main computers on the shuttle had relatively low specs by modern computing standards. Even after a major computer upgrade in 1991, the primary flight system has a storage capacity of one megabyte and runs at a speed of 1.4 million instructions per second. The argument is that basic controls for ...

I heard some owls hooting the other night! Owls? Hooting, you ask? Not really that uncommon, I realize. I grew up not far from where I live now; I heard them all the time, talking - that is, hooting it up. I was always fascinated by them; one set of 'hoots' would be acknowledged by another, more dis...

Got a wee bit of snow recently: https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/380390_208259015935797_100002550992485_416161_1180106412_n.jpg Snow around here is very unpredictable. It is usually wet slimy stuff that melts away soon after it falls. We've had several dusting/melting sessions ov...

Once again, happy holidays everyone! Here's my tree lit up: https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/387897_195149327246766_100002550992485_378661_1292040993_n.jpg My cat doesn't levitate but he does have LASER EYES (pew pew!) https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/405288_1...

Owlice - Before she was born, I kept thinking of all the things I get to teach her and share with her - going to the beach, camping, hiking, first views through the telescope, ect. Then it occurred to me that I was wishing time away. I decided that I should focus on the "moment" and enjoy ...

Owlice - this is the first Christmas in a long time I have really looked forward to. Not that I don't normally enjoy it; any reason to get together with family and friends is fine in my book. I just always think of new experiences she'll have. I am told that next year will be really fun; she'll be o...