The Violet Crown City of light, with thy violet crown, beloved of the poets, thou art the bulwark of Greece. –Pindar, Fragment 76 The drawing-rooms of one of the most magnificent private residences in Austin are ablaze of lights. Carriages line the streets in front, and from gate to doorway is spread a velvet carpet, […]
The Blue Hole of Abisko We learned that blue holes are nexuses of past and present, a mixing of geological processes related to land and sea. These sinkholes produce stunning features, including the Great Blue Hole of Belize. But there’s another type of blue hole, too, one that brings skies into the party. In Sweden, the village of Abisko
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Devil Horn Sunrise After many North Americans were treated to a stunning total solar eclipse in 2024, the partial solar eclipse slated to transpire in spring 2025 might have seemed trivial in comparison. While nothing can approximate the experience of totality, this partial eclipse promised something more than the run-of-the-mill crescent. The 29 March event was visible
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American Stonehenge: The Newark Octagon In entering the ancient avenue for the first time, the visitor does not fail to experience a sensation of awe, such as he might feel in passing the portals of an Egyptian temple, or in gazing upon the silent ruins of Petra of the desert. –Ephraim George
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STEVE Have you ever seen STEVE? I’ve never seen STEVE, but I wish I could. At TMAC Headquarters, it’s no secret we’re big fans of aurora borealis (or australis, we don’t discriminate). We’ve studied its causes, we’ve explored some of the biggest solar storms to ever hit Earth, and we’ve even followed them to other planets. Any time a strong batch of
The Great North American Eclipse On 21 August 2017, around 2:30 in the afternoon, I sat in a baking parking lot at The Ohio State University. It was a Monday, and my wife had emerged from the Mathematics Tower to join me during a break between teaching classes. Wispy clouds hung in the sky but did
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Manhattanhenge The clock that stands still is right twice per day. Over the years, in our studies of the seasons and equinoxes, we’ve encountered various human-made edifices with connections to the Sun. The ancient Irish sepulcher Newgrange features an aperture that aligns with the rising star on the winter solstice, dripping light into the funerary passageway. Famously,
The Night the Stars Fell When I was a young man in Illinois I boarded for a time with a Deacon of the Presbyterian church. One night I was roused from my sleep by a rap at the door, & I heard the Deacon’s voice exclaiming ‘Arise, Abraham, the day of judgment has come!’ I
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The Chelyabinsk Fireball This week the newsletter touched on a couple of important points in the study of meteorites. We started with a sharpshooting rock in Benld, Illinois, that left an interesting path to its final resting place in 1938. At the time it was the closest a human had been to a strike in recorded history.
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Sylacauga In the last issue, we traveled to the strangely-named Benld, Illinois, to investigate a close encounter with a meteorite. In 1938, some humans had the closest recorded brush with a meteorite impact. Just 50 feet away, a space rock hit a garage, went through the ceiling of a car, its cushion, its floorboard, bounced