Are you ready for the Great American Eclipse?

UPDATE (8/17/17): As the date gets closer, please check out my “Procrastinator’s Guide to the Solar Eclipse” on Skepchick!  I’m pretty darn excited. I’ve never seen a total solar eclipse, and I’m getting my first chance to do so, along with many, many residents of North America, on August 21st. I’m heading back to theContinue reading “Are you ready for the Great American Eclipse?”

SDO and Space Weather

The Solar Dynamics Observatory launched last week for the thrilled scientists and engineers who have worked for years on this mission, some happy #SDOisGO TweetUp participants, and countless other space fans around the world. (The who? The wha? Oh, pretty!) SDO’s EVE instrument (Extreme-ultraviolet Variability Experiment) is particularly interesting to me since these EUV photonsContinue reading “SDO and Space Weather”

SDO: Learning to Live with our Sun

I am such a happy girl right now. After some 13 hours in the car, (more for some!) George, Aleya, James and I made it to Titusville, Florida. We are here for the SDOisGO TweepUp event, and we’re catching the launch of STS-130 while we’re here! So what exactly is the SDO? SDO stands forContinue reading “SDO: Learning to Live with our Sun”

Happy (belated) Solstice!

I had a lovely weekend away from the computer (and new iPhone even!) celebrating the beginning of summer.  The solstice occurred at 1:45 am EDT (summer for us in the North, winter in the South!) and is the time in which the sun is the highest in the sky from the Northern hemisphere, thus givingContinue reading “Happy (belated) Solstice!”