Author Archive

  • Insta-winter

    It’s that time again! A time where the weather can’t seem to make up it’s mind – and Ohio’s weather is schizophrenic. A few short weeks ago I made this post about how beautiful the Fall weather in Ohio was. And today, we get hit with a snow storm bad enough for the kids to not have […]

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  • Five Worlds

    This is the view from the surface of five different worlds in our solar system. I ran across this on the internet and cannot find the original creator, sorry about that. It’s so magnificent though that I thought I’d share… (click to embiggen)   -Venus, Earth, Moon, Mars, Titan…

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  • Inside Track

    Inside Track My last two posts were describing – very basically – how orbits work. They described how when something is orbiting around the Earth in space, it’s really just continuously falling, but going fast enough that the ground drops away underneath it as it goes. They also talked about how two objects – regardless […]

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  • Back To Earth

    Back to Earth. In my last post we talked about why the astronauts appear to float in space even though there’s just as much gravity in space as there is on the ground. (Well technically, the effect of gravity is less the further from the Earth you get, but we’ll save that for another post.) […]

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  • Falling with style

    The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy states: “There is an art to flying, or rather a knack. Its knack lies in learning to throw yourself at the ground and miss. … Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, that presents the difficulties.” When you see astronauts floating around on the International Space Station, they’re […]

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  • 2014-10-26

    05:00:00 – 07:00:00 7°C Woke up early to get an image of Jupiter with the webcam. It’s prime viewing/imaging conditions right now: early morning, no moon, still cold calm air… best I can ask for anyway. It’s Sunday morning so it’s very quiet and peaceful out. Very nice… I captured ~5000 frames of Jupiter high […]

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  • Striking Autumn

    Here are a few pictures I took with my phone on my latest trip to Chestnut Ridge Metro Park, south-east of Columbus. It’s definitely Fall here and I’m loving it! It’s been more wet here than usual… I think that’s why the grass is still so green. Such a nice contrast with the colors of the […]

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  • Melancholy

    Down. Stuck in a rut. Glum. Uninspired. Melancholy. Hey, at least it’s not depression, right? -I mean absolutely no offense to the actual depressed folks out there. Depression must be miserable. I feel for those folks. I’m aware of how debilitating it is and even how life-threatening it can be, and I’m sorry that anyone […]

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  • Primal Astronomy

    On the way to an annual family get-together hosted by the wonderful Sisinger’s at their lakeside cabin, my dad and I were discussing the differences between certain types of telescopes. Since there are so many different types of backyard telescopes out there, the question was posed as to why so many variations existed and what service each […]

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  • Quintessential Autumn

    The last week or so has been perfect with respect to weather – especially for star gazing. It has been an amateur astronomers dream for sure. Highs in the mid 70’s, lows in the 40’s and 50’s, cool dry air, literally not a cloud in the sky for days on end… Amazing. Combine that with […]

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