One whole year ago my fellow NASA tweeps and I were at JPL in Pasadena listening to Allen Chen give us live play by play updates as Curiosity descended to the Martian surface and the famous seven minutes of terrible possibilities unfolded. Even Neil deGrasse Tyson has since admitted he had severe doubts about the Rube Goldberg landing scheme. You can get an…

The Scope

60mm, f/6.6, <0.5A H-α, BF15.

And here's what all that technical mumbo jumbo means.



The telescope is a refractor and the diameter of the lens is 60mm. The f/6.6 means the length of the scope is 6.6 times longer than it is wide which makes it 396 mm long (but everyone says…

There is a hero. Everyone loves him because he is charitable and people’s lives tend to flourish under his watchful eye. But there is a nemesis, a huge and hideous reptile, the largest ever seen, who rises slowly from beneath the Earth bringing death and darkness and fear in his wake. The hero goes down to meet the terrible creature and to do battle with him.…