The FAS Astronomers Blog

  • The Copernican Revolution

    FAS Astronomers Blog, Volume 31, Number 1. Back in the old days, people would look up at the sky. They noticed that the Sun and the stars would rise in the east and set in the west. From month to month the stars would follow a similar patter as they rose earlier and set earlier…

  • FAS Astronomers Blog – Year End 2022

    FAS Astronomers Blog, Volume 30, Year End. I hope you enjoyed the FAS Astronomers Blogs for 2022. Just in case you missed a few, below is a summary of the articles from the past three years. Look for more blogs in 2023, which will be posted to https://www.fas37.org/wp/category/club-heading/fasastroblog/. Observing the Night Sky Telescopes The Night…

  • A Map of the Universe

    FAS Astronomers Blog, Volume 30, Number 15. Earlier this year (2022), I posted an article about the history of the universe. I followed with a second article about the shape and future of the universe. The universe is big (really big). Estimates place the diameter of the visible universe at 92 billion light years. It…

  • Telescopes

    FAS Astronomers Blog, Volume 30, Number 14. Have you ever walked out at night and looked up into the night sky? If you live away from a city, the sky is filled with stars. If you’re lucky you might see the Milky Way stretch across the sky. From time to time a brighter object or…

  • Planetary Opposition and Conjunction

    FAS Astronomers Blog, Volume 30, Number 13. You might have seen some articles recently (September 2022) about Jupiter’s bright opposition. You also might remember Mars’ opposition of 2018, which was the closest since 2003. But, what you ask, is an opposition? Let’s find out. The eight (or maybe nine?) planets of our solar system orbit…

  • Geometry, Omega, and the Universe

    FAS Astronomers Blog, Volume 30, Number 12. Way back when we were in high school, many of us studied geometry. We learned about triangles, rectangles, and parallel lines. We found that the sum of the angles in a triangle equals 180o. What we didn’t know then is that this geometry was first described by Euclid…

  • Return to the Moon with Artemis

    FAS Astronomers Blog, Volume 30, Number 11. Humans last set foot on the Moon in December 1972 when Apollo 17 landed in the Taurus-Littrow region. After three lengthy EVAs on the surface, Eugene Cernan returned to the Lunar Module on the morning of December 14. They lifted off from the Moon later that evening. This…

  • The James Webb Space Telescope

    FAS Astronomers Blog, Volume 30, Number 10. Those of us in the Forsyth Astronomical Society spend a good deal of time (too much time?) staring at the night sky through our telescopes. There are many things to look at and I’ve summarized them in several previous articles. However, our view of the heavens pales compared…

  • The Higgs

    FAS Astronomers Blog, Volume 30, Number 9. It has been ten years since July 4, 2012. Yes, ten years since that massive discovery. With this discovery a weight was lifted off all of physics. (Puns intended). It was the discovery of the Higgs. The underlying structure of the universe is described by the standard model…