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CURRENT ISSUE

    Dave's Universe
    Dave Eicher, editor of Astronomy magazine and science popularizer, brings you thoughts about astronomy, cosmology, nature, the hobby of astronomy, the sometimes disturbingly pseudoscientific culture we live in, and more.
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    Dave Eicher to speak at Okie-Tex Star Party

    Posted 11 years ago by David Eicher
    Tomorrow, I’ll be on the road again as I travel to Camp Billy Joe near Kenton, Oklahoma, to speak at the 30th annual Okie-Tex Star Party. This is one of the best dark-sky events in the country, and the Oklahoma City Astronomy Club, led by members including Mike Dennis and David Higgins, has a battery of large Dobsonian telescopes on hand. The event, which began on September 28, will run through this coming Sunday. My talk, "Comets: Visitors from Deep Space," will be the last, taking place ...
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    Mineralogical expert Jolyon Ralph at the Natural History Museum

    Posted 11 years ago by David Eicher
    On Astronomy’s August tour of London, some 25 readers and I had the great pleasure of seeing many important astronomical sites in England. At the Natural History Museum in London, the famous mineralogist Jolyon Ralph met me for a few video walk-throughs showing highlights of the collection. Now, if you’re wondering what minerals have to do with astronomy, the universe makes minerals as elements and compounds that are attracted by electrical charges and form what most folks...
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    Barwell meteorite from London's Natural History Museum

    Posted 11 years ago by David Eicher
    On Astronomy’s August tour of London, some 25 readers and I had the great pleasure of seeing many important astronomical sites in England. What a great treat it was while I was in England to visit Caroline Smith, collections manager of the Earth Sciences Department, Mineral and Planetary Sciences Division of London’s famous Natural History Museum. Caroline graciously spent time showing treasures of the meteorite collection, and we shot video showing a number of representati...
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    A video tour of Herschel's Garden

    Posted 11 years ago by David Eicher
    On Astronomy’s August tour of London, some 25 readers and I had the great pleasure of seeing many important astronomical sites in England.One of the videos I shot shows a walk-through the celebrated garden of William Herschel in Bath, England. This is where Herschel set up his telescope and discovered the planet Uranus in March 1781. The house is now known as the Herschel Museum of Astronomy and is located at 19 New King Street. The Herschels lived in the house during two periods, fro...
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    Brian May's "The Cosmic Tourist" published

    Posted 11 years ago by David Eicher
    Every astronomy enthusiast knows Brian May — Queen’s legendary guitarist and a PhD. astronomer who studied dust in the plane of the solar system. Brian has recently published a second popular astronomy book, The Cosmic Tourist: Visit the 100 Most Awe-Inspiring Destinations in the Universe! (192 pp., hardcover, Carlton Books, London, 2012, $39.95; ISBN 978–1–84732–619–5). The book is distributed in the United States by Sterling Publishing Co. Brian co-wrot...
    2

    Serious dark-sky observing at Granite Gap

    Posted 11 years ago by David Eicher
    Tomorrow, Senior Editor Michael Bakich and I will travel to Tucson and then to Animas, New Mexico, to visit our friend Gene Turner. Gene is the man behind the Arizona Sky Village, Rancho Hidalgo, and the Granite Gap astronomy developments. We’ll be there for several days, doing some large-telescope dark-sky observing for several upcoming stories in the magazine. And when I say dark sky, I mean dark sky. The sky in this region is one of the best I’ve ever seen. Not as good as the summ...
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    A video tour of Herschel House

    Posted 11 years ago by David Eicher
    On Astronomy’s August tour of London, some 25 readers and I had the great pleasure of seeing many important astronomical sites in England. One of the videos I shot shows a walk through the celebrated house of William Herschel in Bath, England. The house is now known as the Herschel Museum of Astronomy and is located at 19 New King Street. The Herschels lived in the house during two periods, from 1777 to 1779 and from 1781 to 1784. As you may know, the German-English musician-turned-as...
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    Dave Eicher's "COMETS! Visitors from Deep Space" published

    Posted 11 years ago by David Eicher
    You know, most of the book projects you take on are long, arduous projects. The book I wrote this year about comets was not. “This is the shortest contract to-published-book I’ve ever done,” says my editor at Cambridge University Press, Vince Higgs. Cambridge has just published the book nine months after we signed a contract, and I spent all of three months writing the text. Of course, all this happened in anticipation of Comet ISON, which a month from now will be brighten...
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    Robert Gendler's "Lessons from the Masters"

    Posted 11 years ago by David Eicher
    Every once in a while, a really important book rolls out that will stand as a great reference for amateur astronomers for a long time to come. Such is the case with imaging guru Rob Gendler’s book Lessons from the Masters: Current Concepts in Astronomical Image Processing (387 pp., paper. Springer-Verlag, New York, 2013, $44.99, ISBN 978–1–4614–7833–1). Gendler serves as editor of this volume, which contains contributions by Ken Crawford, R. Jay GaBany, Rogelio Ber...
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    A visit with Owen Gingerich, part 2

    Posted 11 years ago by David Eicher
    While I was at Harvard late last week, I had the chance to visit with quite a few astronomers. Many thanks again to Harvard’s David Aguilar and Christine Pulliam for scheduling this and making it all happen. You will see some exciting work from some of Harvard’s astronomers showing up in the pages of Astronomy magazine soon. As I was walking through the halls of the venerable institution, they took me aside to the office of none other than Owen Gingerich, the preeminent American hist...
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    A video tour of Stonehenge

    Posted 11 years ago by David Eicher
    On Astronomy’s August tour of London, some 25 readers and I had the great pleasure of seeing many important astronomical sites in England. One of the videos I shot shows a walk-around of the great Neolithic site Stonehenge. (“Hewn into the living rock” — yes, you know the movie.) This great prehistoric monument dates to roughly 2400 B.C., and current scholarship suggests it was far more a ritual burial site and center of ancestor worship and social gathering tha...
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    A video tour of the King's Library

    Posted 11 years ago by David Eicher
    On Astronomy’s August tour of London, some 25 readers and I had the great pleasure of seeing many important astronomical sites in England. One of those majestic places was the British Museum, and I shot some videos during parts of the trip.One of these shows a walk-around tour of the so-called King’s Library, the room that in essence once held what expanded into the British Library, now its own separate enormous collection and buildings. The portion of the British Museum th...
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    A visit with Owen Gingerich, part 1

    Posted 11 years ago by David Eicher
    While I was at Harvard late last week, I had the chance to visit with quite a few astronomers. Many thanks again to Harvard’s David Aguilar and Christine Pulliam for scheduling this and making it all happen. You will see some exciting work from some of Harvard’s astronomers showing up in the pages of Astronomy magazine soon. As I was walking through the halls of the venerable institution, they took me aside to the office of none other than Owen Gingerich, the preeminent American hist...
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    Dave Eicher appears in "Where Do You Celestron?" video

    Posted 11 years ago by David Eicher
    The Los Angeles telescope manufacturer Celestron is producing a series of outreach videos promoting amateur astronomy, microscopy, and appreciating nature around us. In their second such video, Celestron talked to a range of industry professionals, including me.The video also features interviews with astroimager John Davis, field ornithologist Tim Schreckengost, Tony Berendsen of Tahoe Star Tours, bloodstain pattern analyst Anna Cox, and Mike Simmons of Astronomers Without Borders. Enjoy! cs_s...
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    Adventures at Harvard

    Posted 11 years ago by David Eicher
    What a fantastic day I had at Harvard on Thursday, and again I would like to thank Public Affairs Director David Aguilar and Specialist Christine Pulliam for their outstanding hospitality. They set me up with an ambitious schedule to meet with 11 astronomers throughout the day. By the time I delivered my talk at the monthly Observatory Night and then observed with the crowd using the historic 9-inch Clark refractor, the day stretched into beyond 12 hours of pure astronomy. What a great day it wa...
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    Speaking at Harvard this Thursday

    Posted 11 years ago by David Eicher
    Tomorrow I will fly from Milwaukee to Boston, and Thursday night I’ll be speaking at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The combined group of affiliated institutions — the CfA, Harvard College Observatory (founded in 1839!), and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) — offer monthly public outreach events. The group puts on “Observatory Nights” in which lecturers talk about a variety of astronomical...
    1

    A video walk-around at the British Museum

    Posted 11 years ago by David Eicher
    On Astronomy’s August tour of London, some 25 readers and I had the great pleasure of seeing many important astronomical sites in England. One of those majestic places was the British Museum, and I shot some videos during parts of the trip. This video shows one of the great treasures of the museum, the Nereid Monument, a tomb from Xanthos, Lycia, in present-day southwestern Turkey. The tomb dates from 390—380 B.C. and takes its name from the Nereids, sea nymphs who were featured in ...
    1

    Astronomy magazine's new website debuts Wednesday

    Posted 11 years ago by David Eicher
    Over the past year or so, a talented team of editors, designers, programmers, and thinkers has been working on a new website for Astronomy magazine. The improved version of Astronomy.com goes live this Wednesday. The new site, modeled after the architecture of the site used for a longer time by our sister publication, Discover, will not only modernize Astronomy’s web content, but will expand and improve it dramatically. First and foremost, the site will now be optimized across multiple pl...
    2

    A video walk-around of the Rosetta Stone — and more

    Posted 11 years ago by David Eicher
    On Astronomy’s August tour of London, some 25 readers and I had the great pleasure of seeing many important astronomical sites in England. One of the first days we were there, the group visited the British Museum, where I shot a video walk-around of the Rosetta Stone and the large Egyptian artifacts gallery. The Rosetta Stone is famous as being an ancient Egyptian stele that was discovered in building materials used in the construction of Fort Julien in Rashid (Rosetta), Egypt. It was fou...
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    Videos of John Harrison's famous historic clocks

    Posted 11 years ago by David Eicher
    On Astronomy’s August tour of London, some 25 readers and I had the great pleasure of seeing many important astronomical sites in England. One of those majestic places was the Royal Observatory Greenwich, and I shot some videos during parts of the trip. You may not know about one of the Royal Observatory’s most famous early astronomers, John Harrison (1693–1776). In Harrison’s day, one of the primary areas in which astronomy helped the world was in navigation on the high...
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    A video tour of the Royal Observatory Greenwich's Octagon Room

    Posted 11 years ago by David Eicher
    On Astronomy’s August tour of London, some 25 readers and I had the great pleasure of seeing many important astronomical sites in England. One of those majestic places was the Royal Observatory Greenwich, and I shot some videos during parts of the trip. This first short film shows you the famous Octagon Room and its contents in the oldest and most famous building of the Royal Observatory, Flamsteed House. Here John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, conducted his astronomical research...
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    An excerpt from Dave Eicher's COMETS: The Tunguska event

    Posted 11 years ago by David Eicher
    My book, Comets: Visitors from Deep Space, will be published October 1 by Cambridge University Press. Here’s a taste of an introductory chapter that describes the impact dangers from near-Earth objects, and specifically, in this chunk, the famous Tunguska event of 1908 . . . Enjoy! What’s come to be known as the Tunguska event occurred along the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in central Siberia, in the present-day subject of Krasnoyarsk Krai, a region occupying 13 percent of Russia&rsqu...
    2

    Check out my Huffington Post blog on Comet ISON

    Posted 11 years ago by David Eicher
    The appearance of a potentially dazzling comet always brings out the worst in people. During the Halley’s Comet era in 1985 and 1986, we actually had cults who were speculating on the supernatural meaning of the comet’s appearance, as well as throwback reminders to the idea that the comet’s tail could pass over Earth and kill us. Some of the talk about Comet ISON, which we all hope will be a nice naked-eye comet this fall, is almost as unfounded. At first, we heard proclamation...
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    Comet ISON: The real story

    Posted 11 years ago by David Eicher
    Ever since two astronomers discovered a potentially bright comet called ISON a year ago, excitement has built over the possibility of this comet being incredibly bright. Maybe historic. Maybe the brightest comet anyone now alive has ever seen. Maybe the brightest comet ever to appear in Earth’s skies. Soon after the first predictions for the comet were revealed, numerous news reports suggested ISON may, late this year, be “as bright as the Full Moon.” Well, in truth, the epheme...
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    Behind the scenes at London's Natural History Museum

    Posted 11 years ago by David Eicher
    My last day in London was Thursday, August 15, 2013, and I took advantage of an invitation to get together with my good friend Jolyon Ralph and his lovely wife Katya. If you don’t know about Jolyon Ralph, well, you should. He is the founder and editor of the mineralogical website Mindat.org, the Web’s most important and most consulted database for minerals. (And if by now you’re wondering what minerals have to do with astronomy, well, planets are made of minerals, and so minera...
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    An evening with London’s Baker Street Irregular Astronomers

    Posted 11 years ago by David Eicher
    On Wednesday, August 14, 2013, I originally had a surprise scheduled for my London trip, a visit with Brian May, Queen guitarist, PhD. astrophysicist, and Astronomy magazine editorial board member. But as it turned out, Brian had knee replacement surgery a few days ago (he is doing well), and his schedule shifted toward quiet rehabilitation. So the surprises we had for the Astronomy magazine readership will have to wait a bit longer.I took in some sights of London early in the day — ...
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    English Astronomers: Stonehenge and Bath, England

    Posted 11 years ago by David Eicher
    On Monday, August 12, 2013, our travel group of 25 Astronomy magazine readers, accompanied by Melita Thorpe of MWT Associates, set off with our guide to see two of England’s greatest historic and astronomical sites. First, we traveled from London to the Salisbury Plain to see Stonehenge, the neolithic stone monument dating to roughly 3000 B.C. that is aligned with the sunrise of the solstices and equinoxes. This is far short of an astronomical observatory, as the monument is sometimes desc...
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    English Astronomers: Oxford, England

    Posted 11 years ago by David Eicher
    On Sunday, August 11, 2013, our group of 25 Astronomy magazine readers took a new step in our exploration of English Astronomers by traveling from London to nearby Oxford, England, for a full day of adventure. The stark reality of the University of Oxford, the spectacular buildings of the institution — the Bodleian Library, Christ Church Cathedral, and more — were set against a literary backdrop seething with Harry Potter, Brideshead Revisited, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,...
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    English Astronomers: The British Museum

    Posted 11 years ago by David Eicher
    On Saturday, August 10, 2013, the travelers on Astronomy’s English Astronomers tour had a free day in London to choose from numerous activities. I opted for one of my favorite places in Europe, the British Museum, which has one of the greatest collections of antiquities on Earth. There’s not a great deal of astronomical content in the museum, as many of these instruments are in other museums in the area. But the course in archaeology, ancient cultures, and European history one gets o...
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    English Astronomers: The Royal Observatory Greenwich

    Posted 11 years ago by David Eicher
    Today our London group of Astronomy magazine travelers got up, had a hearty English breakfast, and headed off to a suite in our hotel to hear my lecture. I spoke for an hour and 20 minutes on "Comets: Visitors from Deep Space," which included many great questions from the group. The talk is based on the book I have coming out this October from Cambridge University Press. Following our discussion of many comets past and present, we boarded a bus and traveled to Greenwich, southeast of London. Th...
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