Astronomy magazine has published an article I wrote about the pump of curiosity. For fun, we can ask two questions. First, are the kind of solar eclipses we experience on Earth rare within the universe? Second, have solar eclipses had any impact on the development of nature? In a forthcoming paper in Proceedings of theContinue reading “Did solar eclipses help kick-start human curiosity?”
Author Archives: Graham Jones
Anne “reaches out to over a million viewers worldwide”
My timeanddate.com colleague Anne Buckle has been profiled in the Norwegian newspaper Solabladet, talking about tomorrow’s annular solar eclipse across the northern hemisphere. Meanwhile, I’m quoted in Andrew Fazekas’s excellent piece about the eclipse in National Geographic.
A citizen-science project for discovering exoplanets
Our timeanddate.com broadcast of yesterday’s total lunar eclipse included an interview with our streaming partners in Hawaii: Preethi Krishnamoorthy and Avinash Surendran, aka the Starry Knights. During the interview, Preethi told us about her work with the remarkable PANOPTES citizen-science project.
The May-June 2021 eclipse season
EarthSky has re-printed our timeanddate.com article about the forthcoming eclipse season: a total lunar eclipse on May 26, and an annular solar eclipse on June 10. Between the years 1600 and 2599, there are 2108 eclipse seasons. Of these, 126 seasons contain a pair of full eclipses: one total or annular solar eclipse, plus oneContinue reading “The May-June 2021 eclipse season”
Celebrating the Universe
Global Astronomy Month is in full swing… Led by Astronomers Without Borders — and supported by timeanddate.com — the event is a global celebration of the Universe. The biggest event in the sky during the month is a conjunction of the Moon and Mars on April 17.
Sharing the sky
Back in February 2017, an annular solar eclipse swept across the southern hemisphere, and ended at sunset in central Africa. I was privileged to be with a fabulous team of educators at the Instituto Superior de Ciências de Educação do Huambo (ISCED) in Angola. Recently, a teacher at ISCED, Eugênio Calei, contacted me about obtainingContinue reading “Sharing the sky”
Eclipses: a pump of curiosity?
Even though the wiring of the human brain evolved in an exceptional way, if novelty had remained below a certain threshold, early humans may not have received a sufficient trigger to begin forming the concept of reasons. My accepted manuscript for the Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union Symposium No. 367, 2021, is available underContinue reading “Eclipses: a pump of curiosity?”
Earth in a spin
The Earth … has been spinning unusually fast lately. 2020 included the 28 shortest days since 1960. Image: timeanddate.com Our timeanddate.com story on the Earth’s quickening rotation is generating a lot of interest, from the Daily Express to Live Science to USA Today. Update (17 January): There’s also coverage of the story in Spanish-language media,Continue reading “Earth in a spin”
Visualizing the music of the spheres
We have known for thousands of years that the sky is full of harmonies and rhythms. Pythagoras called it the “music of the spheres.” As part of the build-up to next week’s great conjunction, Steffen Thorsen (CEO of timeanddate.com) and I have written a piece for Sky & Telescope on the pattern of closer-than-usual approachesContinue reading “Visualizing the music of the spheres”
Extraterrestrial intelligence and the Fermi paradox
The Milky Way contains 100 billion stars. So where is everybody? (The spacecraft shown in this artist’s impression is one of ours: it’s ESA’s Gaia space observatory.)Image credit: ESA/ATG medialab; background: ESO/S. Brunier One of the highlights of IAUS 367 is Nikos Prantzos, from the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, on “the quest for extraterrestrial intelligenceContinue reading “Extraterrestrial intelligence and the Fermi paradox”
