Of the grand order of folio leviathans, the Sperm Whale and the Right Whale are by far the most noteworthy. They are the only whales regularly hunted by man. To the Nantucketer, they present the two extremes of all the known varieties of the whale. As the external difference between them is mainly observable in their heads; and as a head of each is this moment hanging from the Pequod's side.
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Exploring the Universe
with Andrew Fraknoi
Recently, I was a guest on the Forum talk show on the San Francisco Bay Area public radio station, KQED, and got a chance to talk about astronomy news, what can be seen in the sky this summer, and the anticipation we all feel waiting for the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope. You can hear the 15-minute interview at: https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101889700/celestial-events-abound-in-julys-night-skies Among the news items we discussed …
July 7, 2022
The Hubble Space Telescope has taken a wonderful new image of a huge cluster of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy. Called Liller 1, after astronomer William Liller who discovered it, this group of more than a million stars is located in the direction of our Galaxy’s center. That’s a dusty region, from which regular light is absorbed. much as light from the city center on a smoggy day …
June 4, 2022
Some specialists in comet and meteor science are predicting that we COULD have a new, never-before-seen meteor shower on the night of Monday March 30th. (A meteor shower is when you can see a number of shooting stars in the dark sky over time.) Here is the full story. Meteor showers happen when an old comet (a chunk of dirty ice left over from the formation of our solar …
May 27, 2022
An international team of astronomers, working in the collaboration known as the Event Horizon Telescope, has announced the first image of the monster black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. The data were actually obtained in 2017 using 8 telescopes spanning the world, but it took until 2022 (and several supercomputers) to produce an image that shows the shadow of the black hole on the glowing …
May 12, 2022
On Sunday evening, May 15th, there will be a very nice total eclipse of the Moon visible from the U.S. (and most of North and South America). This is the kind of eclipse that you don’t need special equipment to see and is perfectly safe to watch for as long as you want. The Moon turns darker and darker, and eventually takes on a reddish glow (from red light …
May 1, 2022
I am tickled to report that one of my science-fiction short stories, about using a black hole to escape the pain of a relationship breakup, was published last week by “Theme of Absence” magazine. You can read it free online at: https://themeofabsence.com/…/slow-time-station-by…/ A short interview, with an explanation of the science behind the story, can be read at: https://themeofabsence.com/2022/04/author-interview-andrew-fraknoi/ One of my dreams has been to spend some of …
April 20, 2022
NASA announced this week that their archive of confirmed “exoplanets” — planets going around stars other than the Sun — now contains 5,000 confirmed worlds. This is an astounding number, given that in 1990, the number of known planets orbiting stars outside our own solar system was zero. And more planets are being discovered all the time. Remarkably, only 4% of the planets we have discovered so far are …
March 31, 2022
February 18 was the anniversary of the discovery of Pluto (in 1930), and thanks to the efforts of the outreach staff at the Lowell Observatory, where Pluto was found, the media have been calling it “Pluto Day” and urging celebrations and discussion. In San Francisco, I got a call from KGO radio (the city’s talk show station, where I am a regular guest) to come on and talk about …
February 19, 2022
Astronomers, using the Hubble Space Telescope and other instruments, announced today that they had seen something never before observed in a star — and they saw it in the bright reddish star Betelgeuse, found in the familiar constellation of Orion the Hunter. Andrea Dupree, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, called it a “surface mass ejection.” Betelgeuse is the only other star, besides the Sun, whose surface we can …
January 14, 2022
James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is to many astronomers the space observatory of the next decade. I am happy to report that the James Webb Space Telescope, our giant heat-seeking eye in space, launched successfully, on Dec. 24 or 25, depending on which continent your clock was in. It is now on its way to its stable position, about a million miles from Earth. If you want to follow …
December 28, 2021
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