"All I need is the air that I breathe," to quote from a top-10 Hollies song from 1974. (Full disclosure: Love was also a required commodity for songwriters Albert Hammond and Mike Hazlewood.) But how did that air - or at least the oxygen vital to our existence -get into the atmosphere? It's a question that has troubled scientists for decades. At one level, it's pretty straightforward. More than 2 billion years ago, organisms suddenly...

Trail-blazing astronauts should be commended for enduring NASA’s early menus. According to the space agency, John Glenn, America's first man to eat while orbiting Earth, found the task of eating fairly easy, but found the selection limited. During the 1960s, other Mercury astronauts endured bite-sized cubes, freeze-dried powders, and semi-liquids stuffed in aluminum tubes. Most astronauts agreed the foods were unappetizing and they disliked...

“Why should people observe meteor showers?” A reporter writing a story about an upcoming meteor shower asked me this question. He seemed satisfied with my answer, but as I thought about the question, more reasons came to mind. Let’s see how many I can remember: 1) Meteor-watching is easy. This is not an expedition to a remote mountaintop in an attempt to detect an ephemeral galaxy at your telescope’s limit. For meteor showers, just set up a lawn chair...

I was watching my favorite sport, basketball, on television a few nights after NASA announced the fifth service mission to Hubble . UCLA legend and NBA great Bill Walton was the analyst during the game. As Walton made one of his trademark hyperbolic comments, I remembered a connection he holds with Edwin Hubble. Both played center on college basketball teams that won the national title. Although Hubble wasn’t as prominent as Walton, he was a...

On November 8, Mercury crossed the Sun’s disk in an event astronomers call a solar transit. Here at Astronomy magazine, the day was warm and clear, with only a few passing clouds blocking our view for brief periods. In our parking lot, the staff set up four telescopes — three with visual solar filters plus one Hydrogen-alpha scope. We observed from first contact, at 1:12 P.M. , until the Sun set behind our building, shortly before 4:30...

Dear Readers, I want to thank you for reading Astronomy magazine and let you in on some exciting news about additions that will be coming to our magazine and web site. Your loyal support has helped make Astronomy the world’s best-selling magazine dedicated to your passion — the science and hobby of astronomy. Leading the field with 137,688 * subscribers, more than 50,000 better than the competition, and with 247,838 ** readers altogether...

In these days of ever-quickening technology development and new gaming consoles, it’s a mantra we all seemingly embrace. But it seems a little harder this week, as we face the possibility that the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft may be nearing its end. Sure, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has just started returning glorious and detailed images of the martian surface, revealing objects 10 times smaller than MGS could. But it was...

Yesterday, we commemorated Apollo 12’s launch back in 1969. The lunar module landed on the Moon’s surface five days later. Over the past year or so, publishers have released a number of Moon-mission books in a rush that rivals the Space Race. Since President Bush’s call for a lunar mission, thoughts of the Moon, seemingly dormant since Gene Cernan’s return to the lunar module, again have a pulse. If you are feeling nostalgic...

When I read recently that the International Space Station received more than 2 tons of supplies, including food, water and fuel, I got to thinking how expensive some of that stuff is when you include the shipping. Keep in mind that it costs some $5,000 to $10,000 a pound just to get stuff in orbit. That would make a hamburger ring up the register at about $3,000. Super-size me, indeed. And a glass of that famous Tang orange drink that astronauts love...

3. Plan to be surprised by an astronomical event. My list's cryptic and somewhat variable item requires you to be in the right place at the right time. In such cases, you're either surprised by how terrific an astronomical event turns out, or you're surprised because something unplanned happens. Some examples from my recent past include viewing the aftermath of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 striking Jupiter, observing a brilliant daytime fireball...