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esiegel | May 5, 2010It will shine still brighter when night is about you. May it be a light for you in dark places, when all other lights go out. -J.R.R. Tolkien
The night sky is no stranger to most of you. Once the Sun goes down in the west, the sky darkens, turning ever-deeper shades of blue until it approaches blackness, and stars and planets begin to come out against the fading backdrop.
Many things pollute the darkening sky, and can obscure your vision of the dimmest objects in the sky. Getting away from the city and light pollution is important, as is having clear skies without too many clouds in them.…
esiegel | March 3, 2008People love to speculate that Mars was once a great place for life to form, and claim that there is plenty of evidence that there used to be oceans and rivers there. But this isn't true. People used to claim there were big Canal-like features on Mars, and used this as evidence that Mars was very wet.
It was later realized that these weren't canals, but rather geological features caused by impact craters from astroids. But more recently, people have been claiming that images like the one above are examples of dried-up riverbeds.
But this turns out not to be the case. When we take a closer…