Mark R. Kelly
» Founder in 1997 and site-runner for 20 years of Locus Online (Hugo Award winner in 2002). Founder in 2012 and still site-runner of sfadb.com (Science Fiction Awards Database). Retired in 2012 after 30 years as a software engineer for a certain rocket engine factory.
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Meta
Category Archives: Astronomy
Phil Plait, BAD ASTRONOMY (the book)
Subtitled, “Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Astrology to the Moon Landing ‘Hoax’” Published in trade paperback by John Wiley & Sons, 2002.
Posted in Astronomy, Book Notes, Personal history
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Links and Headlines: Dark Skies; Misinformation; Critical Thinking; Empathy; Headlines
There have been a handful of SF novels over the years that include as breaks between the prose sets of futuristic news headlines, to indicate the state of the future world without having to explicate it in detail. Gunn’s The … Continue reading
Posted in Astronomy, Conservative Resistance, Lunacy, Politics
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Links and Comments: APOD; Trusting Science; Trusting Experts
Another amazing photo from APOD– Which as in previous photos like this that I’ve posted, shows a huge swath of sky, as we would see it with all the stars we *can* see, along with all the nebulae that we … Continue reading
Links and Comments: APOD: The Enormous Deep Sky
Here’s another amazing photo from APOD, Astronomy Picture of the Day, that illustrates how enormous some of the famous nebulae in the sky are, compared to constellations.
Links and Comments: Astronomical Photos from APOD
After seeing links to the site Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) occasionally on my Facebook friends’ posts over the past few months, I added it to my morning regimen of sites to check every day. Here’s today’s. Click for … Continue reading
APOD: This is Reality: The Origin of the Elements
Click for a text description, with many explanatory links (some technical, some funny).
My History with Astronomy
How did it start? There was a specific event: in the 6th grade, I noticed a row of textbooks in a closet, a basic astronomy text called A Dipper Full of Stars. (I already wrote about that here: http://www.markrkelly.com/Blog/2014/05/01/cosmos-and-my-amateur-astronomy/.) I … Continue reading
Posted in Astronomy, Personal history
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Frank: LIGHT OF THE STARS
Adam Frank’s LIGHT OF THE STARS: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth (Norton, 2018) asks, what can thinking about the prospect of alien civilizations tell us about our own fate? Currently our species’ story (by those of us … Continue reading
Posted in Astronomy, Book Notes, Cosmology, Species Reset
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Neil deGrasse Tyson, ASTROPHYSICS FOR PEOPLE IN A HURRY
This slender volume of magazine essays came out nearly a year ago, and I read it then, and thought it pleasant but nowhere near foundational. But since it still shows up on bestseller lists, nearly a year later, and has … Continue reading
Posted in Astronomy, Book Notes, Cosmology
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The Stars Have Names
Here’s an interesting article from the December 6th, 2016 New York Times, Twinkle, Twinkle Little [Insert Name Here], by Dennis Overbye (the print title was “Twinkle, Twinkle, Who?”), about how the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has finally sat down to … Continue reading
Posted in Astronomy, Personal history
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