Category: Astronomy
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Thanksmas, What’s That?
How we solved the holiday-schedule math problem by inventing our own holiday. Let me explain why there’s a Christmas tree in my living room in October. With ornaments, lights and everything on it. It started, like most family traditions, with a problem that needed solving.When our two daughters married and started having kids, the annual…
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The Night I Finally Found Saturn
It took a pandemic, a once-in-20-years sky event, and two granddaughters willing to kneel in the backyard. Not many good things came out of 2020. But on December 21st of that year, something happened in the sky that only happens once in every 20 years, but on that night something happened that hadn’t occurred in…
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Two Minutes and Thirty-four Seconds
How two total solar eclipses — seven years apart — turned a casual backyard stargazer into someone who really needed to figure out his telescope. I have never been a particularly well-prepared astronomer. But in the last nine years, I’ve managed to be standing in exactly the right place — twice — when the moon…