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First off, I wanted to wish everyone a happy new year! The last couple of months really threw a lot of work my way that unfortunately slowed down the writing of this blog. That said, I’m making it a goal this year to release a new blog post on (at least) a bi-weekly basis. I don’t know about you, but this winter has been a bit of a strange one. I slipped on ice on my driveway on Monday, I could have gotten away with shorts Wednesday, and today I’m worried about freezing rain on my commute home. But the...

GW170817. This jumble of letters and numbers represents one of the most important events in modern astrophysics. It refers to the gravitational-waves detected by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and VIRGO Collaboration on August 17, 2017. Gravitational-waves, first detected by LIGO in late 2015, were a groundbreaking discovery that promised to usher in a new era of astronomy. These waves are ripples in the curvature of spacetime and were predicted way back in 1916 by Albert Einstein in conjunction with his theory of general relativity. It took nearly 100 years after the prediction of their existence to detect them. This was...

We’ve been on a bit of a space kick recently, but, hey, there’s a lot of interesting stuff out there! This Friday, September 15 (about 1 day and 20 hours from now as I’m writing at 11:00am central time), NASA’s Cassini spacecraft will be concluding what’s been coined its “Grand Finale.” It will begin its final approach of Saturn then, this time on a direct collision course with its atmosphere where it will relay data back to us for as long as its antenna can point towards Earth before burning up like a meteor. These images will begin pouring in...

Monday was finally the big day. The solar eclipse was, without a doubt, one of the most awe-inspiring moments of my life. For one minute and forty-four seconds, the sun in the sky transformed into a bright, twinkling circle, and then, as quick as it came, returned to normal. My heart was inexplicably racing the entire time, and, once totality had passed, I sat and watched the receding partial eclipse wishing the moon would reverse direction.   Eclipse time lapse created from my photos.   On Sunday night, I sat anxiously refreshing the page on Weather.com, comparing my map of the...

I’m not sure that I can get across exactly how excited I am for the total solar eclipse this upcoming Monday. When we think of nature and its awesome sights, we often think about the weather, or geography, or the animal kingdom. We rarely, however, give second thought to the natural world outside of our own atmosphere. We might occasionally marvel at a comet or a meteor shower if we’re able and inclined to go outside at night, but the sun, beautiful in its own right, most often falls into the background of our day-to-day lives. That will not be...