Stella Cinis Observatory

03/20/2020

It has been almost 23 years since we last saw a comet visible to the naked eye (Comet Hale-Bopp). Could this be the next one? 🤞🔭

Will Comet ATLAS become a stunningly bright object, or will it fizzle out?

02/13/2020

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

A recent update to this historic portrait shows Earth as a tiny speck surrounded by the vastness of space.

12/01/2019

“I don't think science is hard to teach because humans aren't ready for it, or because it arose only through a fluke, or because, by and large, we don't have the brainpower to grapple with it. Instead, the enormous zest for science that I see in first-graders and the lesson from the remnant hunter-gatherers both speak eloquently: A proclivity for science is embedded deeply within us, in all times, places, and cultures. It has been the means for our survival. It is our birthright. When, through indifference, inattention, incompetence, or fear of skepticism, we discourage children from science, we are disenfranchising them, taking from them the tools needed to manage their future.”

― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

07/17/2019

The last date that all living humans were together on Earth was November 2th, 2000. Since then, there has always been someone onboard the International Space Station. That date may stand forever.

04/10/2019

You're not technically seeing a black hole, but the event horizon around it. Check out the scale!

That black hole you see trending today is very, very big. Here it is compared to the size of our solar system.

Credit: m.xkcd.com/2135/

06/05/2018

After 3 nights of attempts, I finally have a worthy image of Jupiter, albeit in monochrome for now. The planetary imaging process involves capturing around 1000 frames from video and stacking the best 15% to reduce image noise and atmospheric distortion. The learning curve lies mostly with the software (I'm getting there).

06/03/2018

Attempting to image the Moon's eastern mountains near Mare Crisium. Not sure if the whiskey helps or hinders...

05/25/2018

FIRST LIGHT!!!

05/24/2018

Construction