Sunday, August 8, 2010

Planets and Meteors August 12

This Thursday, August 12, is a good night to have an amateur astronomy party.  Every summer the Perseid Meteor Showers dazzle us with their show, but this summer, they have an opening act.

Venus, Saturn, and Mars will all be appearing in the western sky just around twilight along with the crescent moon.  They will be in tight conjunction and easy to see--you won't even need a telescope.

Just as the planets are disappearing, around 10 pm, the meteors will begin.  And with the moon being but a crescent, they will be very easy to spot.  If you rise early, during the darkness just before dawn Friday morning, you could enjoy seeing dozens per hour. 

You can read about it on the NASA blog.

Monday, August 2, 2010

Versatile Blogger Award

Thank you, Annie, from Learn At Every Turn, for this award! She has a great blog with lots of science resources, as well as stuff for other subjects.

For this award:
  • Tell 7 things about yourself
  • Pass it on to other versatile bloggers
 Here are my 7 things:
  •  I love writing; that's why I am a blogger more than anything else in the social media world.
  • I very much enjoy teaching, especially through inquiry.
  • I could spend all day working on a new Zome model design.
  • I would like an iTouch but not until they come down in price.
  • I think the most versatile machine would be a tablet PC the size of a netbook--like a laptop and an iPad all in one--and still priced around $300.
  • Streaming instrumental music from Pandora is my constant companion at the computer.
  • I am Catholic, humbly faithful to the Magisterium, who thinks Evolution is a solid scientific theory that well explains the origins of species to the best of our scientific knowledge today.  That does not make me a deist; God is very much involved with His creation, and has been from the beginning.
I mentioned a lot of great blogs in the recent Blogger of Substance award.  This time, though, I will pass it on to a few, and simply list some other outstanding blogs I love to read but are not really candidates for award memes:

Rockhound Place
Academia Celestia
LaPaz Home Learning

Unity of Truth
The Deeps of Time
Science Notebooking
Notice the Universe