Science

Chilling New Home Video of the Challenger Disaster

I still remember sitting in the formal living room of my fraternity house watching the Challenger launch back in 1986 (hard to believe it has been 26 years now). If I had the chance to go to watch it live, I would have done it in a heartbeat – my family was vacationing in Florida a few years back, and the schedule was supposed to have us there for a launch, but it was pushed back. We still got to see the shuttle being moved towards the launch site, and that was thrilling to behold. But of course Challenger ended…

Reviews

What’s My Heart Rate Measures by Just Looking at the Screen!

This morning I was feeling great after we got a lot of outdoor time and exercise due to the unseasonably warm weather this weekend, and I really pushed myself on my morning jog (based on my speed I can’t bring myself to call it a ‘run’), and so by the time I got home I was really winded. I checked my heart rate to be sure I was in my normal range before doing my indoor workout. Imagine if I could just check my heart rate anywhere I went using my smartphone and just having it look at my face!…

Gear Bits

The Best of Fake Science Celebrates Two Years of Being Not Even Remotely Correct!

I hae always had a natural curiosity for everything scientific … which likely makes sense given my day job! But as I have grown up and see my kids learning science, there are many things that were thought to be true back then that have changed since: things like our view of how dinosaurs lived and moved – and even what they were based on has shifted from lizards to birds! As we learned more and more arcane and esoteric topics, it became fun to fashion some incorrect but plausible explanation to amuse ourselves – or really outlandish ideas just…

Gear Bits

Real Men Don’t Wear Pink; They Can’t, Because It Doesn’t Exist!

The color pink, technically called Magenta, is in theory a blend of Red and Violet. That is wonderful for mixing paints … but in terms of the electromagnetic spectrum it makes no sense. Why is that? Because colors are based on a continuum, that means that in order for a color to exist it needs to follow some progression of wavelength shortening from red to violet. Color is visible to us based on the wavelength of light, and aside from the so-called ‘primary colors’ ROYGBIV’ (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet), all other colors are merely combinations of…

Gear Bits

Wood Boring Worms Look Like Tiny Evil Aliens

Kev was splitting wood today, when he stopped to bring me something he’d found. To back up for a moment, if you have a wood-burning stove then you may have noticed how certain woods — in this case, mesquite — can have these weird “tunnels” bored through them. I had never given what caused them a second thought … until today.

Gear Bits

How Big is Big? How Small is Small? Find Out on The Scale of the Universe 2 Website

“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.” – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Yes, space IS big, but that is only one side of the coin of the known Universe—there are items known and believed to exist that are incredibly small. Cary and Michael Huang have created a fascinating web page, The Scale of the Universe 2 that permits the scientifically voyeuristic to view a large number of items in the Universe…

Gear Bits

Meet Winston Kemp, Lightning Strike Survivor and Lichtenberg Figure Owner

“What does your boyfriend do when you go out of town? Well, [mine] gets struck by lightning.” – Daphne Cheek We’ve all heard stories about people getting struck by lightning — usually as some sort of cautionary tale, but how many of us have ever seen the effects of lightning on a human? The Lichtenberg Figures it can leave? Winston Kemp, a 24-year-old electrician, has had first-hand experience, and now he also has a unique and possibly permanent bit of body art — a Lichtenberg Figure — to go along with it. As Winston tells it … I went outside…

News & Features

Astrological Signs Hit Their 5,000 Year Recalculation

I always thought of astrology as a fairly fixed field of “study”. If you were born between certain dates, then you were born under a certain sign. As it turns out, astrology is heavily influenced by astronomy, and therefore as the earth spins the astrological calculations may need adjustments. The upshot: every 5,000 years or so your sign may need changing! I wonder if there’s an astrological version of the oil change sticker; “Every 5,000 years or 35,000,000 earth rotations, please recalculate Astrological chart” If you’re wondering if you are now under a new constellation, here’s the breakdown: NEW ZODIAC…

News & Features

Did You Catch Last Night’s Lunar Eclipse?

Last night Kevin and I watched the lunar eclipse. It was cold but clear outside as we watched the earth’s shadow pass over the moon, and I was able to snap a few photos with my Canon G11. I didn’t have a special lens attachment, I wasn’t using a tripod, these aren’t going to win any awards, and I sure wish that I had planned ahead and got a camera mount for our telescope … but even so, we had a lot of fun watching our fully moonlit yard go dramatically black. How about you? Did you catch the eclipse?…

News & Features

No, Despite What That Email Says, Mars Won’t Be Riding Down the Highway in White Ford Bronco!

Has it REALLY been seven years already? Back on August 27th of 2003, Mars came the closest it had to the earth in 60,000 years. It was an amazing astrological event and I watched through my telescope and had a wonderful time waking up my young kids and sharing it with them (and no, they don’t remember it anymore). But even back then misinformation was spread: the truth was that as Mars came ~56 million kilometers from Earth it would be approximately 1/75 the size of a full moon, so using a 75x telescope lens you would get a wonderful…

Reviews

The Wicked Lasers Blu-Ray Sonar Advanced 100mW Violet Laser Review

I am not sure exactly why, but lasers fascinate me. Maybe I’ve watched too many Jedi movies over the years or maybe it’s a by-product of the times in which I grew up, but lasers, and the idea of what some of them are capable of doing, give me a thrill. Wicked Lasers, a company that was recognized in the 1997 Guinness Book of World Records for producing the world’s most powerful hand-held green laser pointer (they also have a flashlight under consideration for being the brightest and most powerful), has long been synonymous with professional quality, high-powered lasers. These…

News & Features

The Imaging Source Allows Amateur Astronomers to Take Amazing Photos

What an amazing thing! The Imaging Source has introduced a line of low-noise astronomy cameras that provide amateur photographers with the necessary tools to take amazing photographs using their telescopes. Priced from $390 to $640, the monochrome and color camera models are available “with and without an IR cut filter in three resolutions: 640×480, 1024×768 and 1280×960. The astronomy cameras deploy low noise CCD chips from Sony, which have an exposure time of up to 60 minutes and a maximum frame rate of up to 60 fps.” Granted, the quality of your pictures will also depend upon the strength of…

Reviews

NASA for iPhone/Touch App Review

What geek does not love space?!?! Over the past few months, my iPhone has gained a handful of apps for space enthusiasts. My 5 year old son and I love to sit and look at these apps to learn about the planets and solar systems. One night this summer he asked why we cannot look at space ships while we were looking at the stars using pocket universe. I did not really have an answer. NASA has come out with their own FREE app to follow current space missions.

Reviews

Techlasers Infiniti II 95mW 532nm Green Laser Pointer Review

Back in late June Judie reviewed the SKYlasers 125mW green laser pointer, providing a fun look at some of the interesting things you can do with a laser such as that. Soon thereafter, TechLasers provided us with one of their 95mW Infinity II 532nm Green Laser Pointers to evaluate for review. Judie also sent me the SKYlasers pointer, so I could do a bit of comparing. I will also attempt to answer a slightly more serious question – why the heck does someone need a 95mW laser pointer?

Reviews

Planets Review for iPhone/Touch

Developer Description: Is that dot in the sky a star or a planet? Answer that question with this application. Discover when you can see your favorite planet, and where to look in the sky in relation to the stars. Provides lots of interesting information: location of the sun, moon, and planets in the sky maps of stars and constellations rise and set time of the sun, moon, and planets current and future moon phases 3D globe view of all planets and the moon facts sheet for each planet, including moon names The Low Down: Recently my family attended a star…

Reviews

The SKYlasers 125 mW Green Laser Pointer Review

Not long after I received this rather benign looking kit containing a 125mW Green Laser Pointer and a pair of Laser Protective Goggles from SKYlasers, I started really paying attention to all of the reports regarding people with lasers – red and the stronger green, interfering with pilots flying passenger airplanes. In February 2009, there were already 148 reported incidents of laser attacks, and just last week a plane arriving at Sea-Tac was lasered no less than 20 times. What’s the big deal? Well to start, shining a high powered laser at a plane creates the possibility of messing with…

Reviews

Star Walk for iPhone / iPod Touch Review

If you ask my wife, the money she spent buying me a telescope a few years ago was wasted. If you ask me or my sons, we’d disagree. It isn’t that we use it all that much, but I chalk that up to living in the Northeast – it is hard to hit that small window when the temperature is right for standing outside at night and it gets dark early enough that we can all enjoy it together. The folks at Vito Technology have a great solution – Star Walk, an educational astronomy app for the iPhone andiPod Touch…

Editorials

The Amazing Hubble Space Telescope in Action

According to astronomer Lyman Spitzer’s 1946 paper “Astronomical advantages of an extraterrestrial observatory”, there were two main advantages that a space-based observatory would have over ground-based telescopes. The first advantage was that “the angular resolution (smallest separation at which objects can be clearly distinguished) would be limited only by diffraction, rather than by the turbulence in the atmosphere, which causes stars to twinkle and is known to astronomers as seeing.” The second advantage was that “a space-based telescope could observe infrared and ultraviolet light, which are strongly absorbed by the atmosphere.” The United Kingdom launched the first orbiting solar telescope…

Reviews

Review: Wicked Lasers Executive Series

Sure we’ve all seen laser pointers; they are a favorite for playing tricks on people, playing with your pets at home and even for pointing out details during a presentation. However, not all laser pointers are created as equals, and I am here to say that Wicked Lasers have NO parallel in the laser pointer arena. Wicked Lasers are huge step above any laser pointer I have ever seen; in fact, what they create are not just laser pointers, but a tool that can be used in various situations. I was sent the 95mW version of the Executive Series direct…

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