astronomy
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Science
NoisyAstronomer’s Holiday Telescope Buying Guide
We’re coming up on the gift-giving season, and every year I get a few folks asking me, “what kind of telescope should I get for an X-year-old?” I thought it was high time to write up my own easily shareable list of tips and recommendations. That department store scope? It’s a trap First things first. DON’T buy a no-name brand,…
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Quickies
Quickies: Catch up on impeachment, or just a good book…
It’s Friday! There are so many threads to the impeachment story, so I’m quite glad that NPR’s Up First podcast put together a nice, logical, timeline of the events that led up to now. Or at least til Nov 2, when it posted. As the NPR Politics Podcast always reminds us, “Things may have changed by the time you hear…
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Quickies
Quickies: Stunning Astronomy paired with Cute Animal Friday
No intro this time… just the stories! The MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa catches our galaxy’s supermassive black hole “blowing bubbles” in an image that I find stunning from a technical standpoint AND beautifully ethereal. (If you want to get really nerdy, a freely-available preprint of the scientific journal article can be found on arXiv.) Remember ‘Oumuamua, the asteroid…
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Science
Spacelink, the Sky, and Colonialist Attitudes
Rebecca already posted an excellent video critique of Elon Musk’s Starlink concept, but as Skepchick’s resident astronomer, I thought I’d expand upon it a bit. You all might know that I’m a radio astronomer, but I have at least a little bit of experience with visual observing as well. As an astronomy professor at a small college, I also run…
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Science
Procrastinator’s Guide to the Solar Eclipse
I love to procrastinate. Actually, no. I hate it. But my brain is just SO good at getting me into that mode. So I totally understand if you are just now realizing that one of the biggest astronomical events of a lifetime is happening just a few days from now. If you’re not already tuned in to all things astronomy,…
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Book Club
The Feel Good Bar and Grill A Book About Robots You Can Color
You guys! I made my first book! It’s called The Feel Good Bar and Grill and you can color it if you want! From my Book Baby page: The Feel Good Bar and Grill is a fictional, illustrated story for all ages about a robot named Lina who builds a restaurant on the moon Enceladus. The Feel Good Bar and…
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Meta Stuff
It’s the Skepchick Sundaylies! Investing in Women, Corporate Cosplay, the 12 Days of Parenthood, and more!
Sunday Funny: Too happy (via PHD Comics) Teen Skepchick Investing in Women for Women’s Day It’s in everyone’s interest to invest in women. What is it? Stellar Classification According to They Might Be Giants, stars are a miasma of incandescent plasma. But there is more to it than that. Mad Art Lab Corporate Cosplay Why spend so much time on…
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Featured
Pluto’s Apparent Planethood
New stories about the former planet Pluto popped up in my news feed again this week. It has now been over a decade since the definition of what qualifies as a planet was voted over, but this is still a controversial issue to many. I too got a special place in my heart for Pluto, but should what astronomers classify…
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