…because you live in the northern hemisphere.

I’m at it! I’m doing a poster on some of my research and also “covering” the event for Slacker Astronomy. Check out our play-by-play!

I posted a video on my Starhouse Blog about a recent experience being filmed for a PBS documentary based on the book “Seeing In The Dark”. You can view the post here or click the image to the right.

It will be on PBS in a year or so I’m told.

I just posted an interview on Slacker Astronomy that I did with Dr. Doug Welch, one of the researchers working on the MACHO project. Check it out!

I’m personally glad that the IAU un-classified Pluto as a planet. Remember, folks, we shouldn’t expect scientists to be sentimental about this. We are not naming puppies here, we are trying to find rational definitions for physical objects in the universe. Pluto is vastly dissimilar from the “classical planets” and very similar to a lot of non-planet objects. As we find more and more of these things it would be silly to give Pluto some special status just because we’ve known about it the longest.

Welcome to the new solar system! Don’t worry, Pluto isn’t going anywhere. We haven’t “lost” it, it is no more or less important than it was yesterday.

The other night I was lucky enough to catch the optical afterglow of a gamma-ray burst (GRB). You can see the meager tale unfold over at the Starhouse Blog on 4/17/06 and 4/18/06. There are only a handful of GRB’s which have been detected by amateurs. I was always hoping one would pop while I was at my observatory. Fun stuff!

I made a little web site for my observatory, the Starhouse Observatory. Check it out!

I was doing what hardcore astronomers call “an engineering run” at my observatory last night, which means dinking around with screwdrivers and multimeters and such. I did get a chance to take some pictures, though. Check out this one of the Orion Nebula (also shown in the thumbnail to the right).

The Orion Nebula (or M42) is a large region of gas and dust where new stars are forming. It is very bright and can be seen with the naked eye. It is part of the sword of Orion’s belt.

That’s NOT a misspelling of ASS. It’s the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington, DC, and it’s going on right now and I am lucky enough to be here.

Want updates? Check out Slacker Astronomy’s notes from the trenches. Lots of cool (and/or boring) astronomy stuff.