UCR Professor John Baez on mysteries of fundamental physics; How does the ANITA baloon experiment detect neutrinos?; UCI Professor Feng on developing FASER on shoestring budget

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

Well this week the blog is all about physics so you astronomical observers buckle up and get ready for the ANITA experiment looking for high energy neutrinos and FASER experiment searching for dark matter exiting the proton beam at the LHC.  Our next scheduled observing run is for the Transit of Mercury on November 11, so stay tuned for that and hope for clear skies.

Milky Way and M31 at Nightfall in Borrego Springs; November 11 Transit of Mercury; First try to lightup foreground sculptures with Milky Way in the background; Goodby, friend Kurt!

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

Well no sooner than we returned from the AAVSO meeting and observatory tours in Las Cruces, NM, it was time to drive to Borrego Springs for the annual Nightfall star party.  Nightfall is sponsored by the Riverside Astronomical Society and the event offers short courses and lectures during the daytime and dark skies at night.  Thanks to all the RAS volunteers who helped make it possible!

AAVSO 108th meeting concluded; Hooray, toured Sunspot and Apache Point Observatories

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

Well the 108th AAVSO meeting has finished up and today we drive 2 hours from Las Cruces  passed Holloman Air Force Base and Alamogordo and then passed Cloudcroft until we reached the Sunspot and Apache Point Observatories.

108th Annual AAVSO Meeting in Las Cruces, New Mexico; Types of Variable Stars; Radial Velocity of RR Lyrae and Cepheids; Importance of Novae; Large scale surveys; Spectra and light curves; Lobster Hands?

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

Ok, so here we are ready for the two day AAVSO meeting in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Waking up in Las Cruces, New Mexico; Clyde Tombaugh's Stained Glass Window; SM2 and WSMR; Hooray, the Milky Way!

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

Well this blog post is from offsite in Las Cruces, New Mexico for 108th AAVSO meeting.  But on this free day before the meeting begins we had a chance to Clyde Tombaugh's Stain Glass Window, tour White Sands Missile Museum and see some great views of the Milky Way.

Flat Earth? Do your first greenhouse warming calculation; Inside Bill's Brain with Terrapower; Vampire protection?

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

Well this blog post has me at the airport flying to Las Cruces, NM, for the AAVSO (https://www.aavso.org/) annual meeting and tours of the Apache Point Observatory.  So, no observing to report, but I do hope to get some pictures of the Milky Way in the darker skies in New Mexico.  More about the meeting later, but first let's review some other activities.

Has Gaia Data Resolved the tension in measurements of the Hubble Constant? Can Pluto be seen in city lights viewing?

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

Well here we are in another busy week.  We have upcoming conferences and also a chance to do some astrometry, which is now helping to maybe resolve the tension between two estimates of the Hubble Constant, in our search for finally trying ourselves to (though not yet) get an image of Pluto.

Astronomers' brains wanted: Night of the Living Dead; OC Physicists to search for vampire emanations; Primordial Black Holes, Dark Matter, Neutrinos and other deeply hidden things

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

Last week we talked about the search for ghostly particles from nuclear power plants and this week we continue exploring some illusive deeply hidden things.

Saturn, Jupiter and Moon under the stars with jazz; Hunting for Ghosts from Nuclear Reactors; Using opaque liquids rather than transparent; Sizes of Black Holes; Global CO2 and GDP; Robots and interactions in the Observatory

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

Well this week the scope remained packed up, but at least we spotted Saturn, Jupiter and the Moon close together and recorded the view with the iPhone.

Hooray, watch Elon go from Brownsville, TX!; Hooray, our eyeballs, but not our cameras saw the JWST!; More great free Coursera

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

Well we have had some rain and cloudy weather that cancelled this month's OCA star party, but looking up at the sky is what Elon Musk did in his annual review of the Starship and Super Heavy progress.