science
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Radio Astronomy
Ever seen one of these before? Yeah, it’s a bit bigger than your average radio antenna. That’s because its job isn’t to direct radio signals to your house. It’s a radio telescope, and its job is to collect as many radio…
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Telescope Imaging Systems
Have you ever seen an image like this? Okay, maybe you have…online. What with the spread of the internet these days, I’m guessing that at one point you have seen something like this on a page of image search results.…
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Interferometry
Imagine you have an image like one of these. This object is faint and faraway, so you can’t make out much more detail. You know that other stars like it — closer, brighter stars — have looked like this and…
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Telescope Powers
Have you seen one of these guys before? You probably have, even if you don’t recognize this brand-new innovation. This is the European Extremely Large Telescope, or the E-ELT. I know, imaginative name, huh? Anyway, it’s not all that different…
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Refracting & Reflecting Telescopes
Right next to light, the telescope is an astronomer’s most valuable tool. There are so many different varieties of telescopes, it can be hard to keep them all straight. But they can all be sorted into a few basic types,…
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The Spectrum of Light
Does this look familiar? People think of rainbows as a symbol of happiness and fortune. There are even myths that leprechauns hide gold at the end of a rainbow. That’s more of a tease than good fortune, if you ask…
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Einstein: Space-Time Curvature
When you hear about “space-time,” it’s just a way to say that space is related to time. And the curvature of space-time, as Albert Einstein predicted, is the way space and time alike literally bend around a mass such as the…
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Einstein: General Relativity
Albert Einstein may have been the genius among physicists, but like all others before his time, he stood on the shoulders of giants. Einstein did not propose that the sun was the center of the solar system; that idea was…
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Einstein: Special Relativity
Albert Einstein’s name literally sends shivers down my spine. This is the man who discovered physics as we know it. This is the man who filled in the gaps where even Newton’s laws of motion went wrong and expanded our…
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Moving with the Tides
Have you ever been to the beach? If you’re from California like me, then I’m betting you have. If you’re from a place that’s not near an ocean and you’ve never been near the water all your life, then I’ll…
