Fireflies: Suns of the Terrestrial Night In the dry summer field at nightfall,fireflies rise like sparks.Imagine the presence of ghostsflickering, the ghosts of young friends,your father nearest in the distance. –Marilyn Kallet For me, one of the greatest parts about summer is the emergence of fireflies. For a month or two each year, I love to […]
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The Green Flash There was a rush for the surface and as eyes turned southward, they saw a tiny but brilliant green spot where the last ray of the upper rim of the sun hung on the skyline. It lasted an appreciable length of time, several seconds at least, and no sooner disappeared than
Comet NEOWISE The astrophotography world has been abuzz in recent weeks thanks to the spectacular emergence of Comet NEOWISE, which is one of the brightest visible objects in the northern hemisphere since the famous 1997 edition of Comet Hale-Bopp. Before March of this year, we didn’t even know this comet existed. Astronomers picked up an
The Summer Solstice Tuesday, 21 June, marks 2023’s summer solstice. The word solstice comes from the Latin solstitium, which combines sol (sun) and stit (stopped or stationary). Technically defined, the summer solstice is the point when one of Earth’s poles is tilted maximally toward the sun. Broadly defined, it is the day on which the sun reaches the highest position
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Skywalker and Depthdiver The Dr. Seuss book Oh, the Places You’ll Go! is a fairly common graduation gift and for some people it is prophetic. If the book, published in 1990, had been around in the 1960s you might have been a true Nostradamus had you given a copy to Kathryn Sullivan. A couple of weeks ago she
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Mediocre Amateur Today I was feeling the wanderlust in a large way. The last quarter-year has been difficult for many of us who love traveling and exploring the outdoors in locations that aren’t necessarily in our areas. The desire for travel, however, doesn’t simply vanish during a quarantine. One benefit of modern life is the
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Plastics are amazing. Since the first man-made version was patented in 1856, plastics have brought forth countless benefits. But very few materials exist downside-free and plastics are no different. One of the main positives can also be a drawback. That tub you use as a storage bin will last forever,
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The Mother of Modern Physics Maria Salomea Skłodowska entered our orb in Warsaw, then part of the Russian empire, now the capital of Poland, on 7 November 1867. Her parents were both teachers, whose families had histories of involvement in Polish independence movements, and probably envisioned an erudite future for their youngest child. My guess,
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Prime-Period Cicadas Depending on where you are in eastern North America, every 13 or 17 years something magical happens, figuratively and literally. Out of the soil emerge broods, all at once, of Magicicada, otherwise known simply as cicadas. For most of the lives of these insects, they exist underground, sucking up the juices from deciduous trees. When
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Documenting Demise As we explored in the previous issue, Mt. St. Helens began to display activity in March 1980, a string of action that led to the largest recorded landslide and an incomprehensible lateral blast on May 18. This two-month period allowed geologists and amateur scientists time to study the mountain in the buildup. Many volcanologists
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