How far away is the farthest planet known? How close is the closest? Are they like ours? Simple questions with often complex answers. The questions excite a child’s wonder in us, and the answers, based on three decades of unprecedented exoplanet detection, gratify; the most satisfying fact is there will always be more to learn, […]
Ryan Spencer
Posted inArts & Culture
Black sky affair
It’s finally here, space cadets. After numerous delays, cost overruns, and a major redesign, the James Webb Space Telescope is scheduled to launch Dec. 22 atop a European-made Ariane 5 rocket. Space nerds like me have been salivating over this for years, but not everyone is so inclined; let’s therefore give a bit of background […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Black Sky Affair
The Geminids — mother of all meteor showers. While other showers are caused by Earth’s orbital intersection with cometary paths, Geminids result from our planet’s passage through debris accompanied by asteroid 3200 Phaethon, an atypical body just over three miles in diameter named for the son of Greek sun-god Helios. “Phaethon does not produce a […]
Posted inNews
Wrap up homelessness
Continuing a tradition seven years running, Oklahoma City’s Homeless Alliance program The Curbside Chronicle is embarking on its annual holiday season Wrap Up Homelessness campaign. Curbside Chronicle vendors will be offering an array of holiday-themed gift wrapping paper packages designed by local artists. The mission of The Curbside Chronicle, our state’s first and only street […]
Posted inNews
Survival is success
While COVID-19 has indisputably affected the entire Oklahoma City population, marginalized groups in the metro area such as the homeless, the indigent, the mentally disabled, and those recovering from substance addiction have experienced unique challenges over the course of the last twenty months. While formal data relating to these challenges can be scarce and much […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Black Sky Affair
Oh, my space cadets. We are in for one hell of a show this month. Pardon my hushed reverence, but a truly extraordinary astronomical event awaits us the wee morning hours of Nov. 19. A partial lunar eclipse. While that revelation may come off as somewhat underwhelming, allow me to explain… Lunar eclipses usually happen […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Black Sky Affair
“Light…travels so fast that it takes most races thousands of years to realize that it travels at all…” – Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Clever and true. In 1676, Danish astronomer Ole Roemer, noting discrepancies in the orbital period of Jupiter’s innermost moon Io in relation to its parent planet, became first […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Black Sky Affair
Let us focus on a cosmological topic fraught with no small measure of in- censed passion: Pluto. Confused, even angry expressions… At least that was the scene at my bar. Beloved Pluto, no longer a planet? Even in the ever-dynamic realm of science such banishment plucks the cords of our fondness for the “little planet […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Black Sky Affair
While many forms of pollution receive hefty doses of attention, one regularly gets short shrift: light pollution. Blooming encroachment of indiscriminate skyglow into the night over the last several decades in urban, suburban, and even rural areas must give pause. For the children of today, it’s hard to miss what they’ve never known, and if […]