The Galactic Times Newsletter Index

The Solar System

  • Solar System – General
    • Planetary occultations – 24D
    • It was Cosmically Cloudy and Cold About Two Million Years Ago – 26
    • The Grand Line-Up in the Dawn! – 25
    • The Silver Link to the Early Solar System’s Late Bombardment – 25
    • The Weakest Atmospheres (Pluto’s Hazes, Mercury’s Magnetosphere Border) – 17
    • How our Solar System Will Look in 5 Billion Years Plus – 11
  • Sun
    • The Total Eclipse from North and South (and Inside and Outside the Shadow) – 24G
    • What Can You Do With Solar Viewers After April 8th? – 24D
    • Eye Spy on the Sun – An experiment on naked-eyesunspot watching (Cover Story) – 24D
    • Solar Disk-o – Watching the Sun’s surface or Eclipses without a viewer or telescope – 24D
    • Shadow Travels – Where will the next solar eclipses be viewed before 2045? – 24D
    • Links (and 31-page PDF) to Solar Eclipse articles in The Classroom Astronomer – 24B, -24C
    • April’s Hybrid Eclipse – 43
    • The Coronal Rains on the Sun – 40
    • Observing Sunspots from Mars – 40
    • An Angry Sun? (Sun is in an X-ray Tear Recently) – 24
    • Have a Corona, NASA! (Parker Probe goes inside Corona) – 15
    • Annular Eclipse June 10 – 3
    • Information and How to Observe -2
  • Inner Planets
    • Mercury Has Its Moment (March/April observing] – 24E
    • AAS: Where Life Could Be on Venus? – 27
    • Does Mercury Look Reddish to You? – 26
    • Venus – 11
    • Exploration of Hot Venus Heating Up – 11
  • Earth
    • Mars Influences Earth’s Weather and Oceans…and That’s Not News An InDepth Story] – 24E
    • Odessa Meteor Crater – 42
    • AAS: Why is Our Day a Day Long?  – 41
    • The Oldest Part of Earth Caused by Cosmic Impacts – 30
    • AAS: Sunrise, Sunset (USNO Checks on Accuracy of Predictions) – 27
    • Go Trojans! (Earth Gains One, Moves up to 4th place) – 17
    • When IS the Shortest Day of the Year, Really? – 15
    • Earth’s Weight Gain (Cosmic Smoke increases our Mass) – 15
    • The Answer is (Water) Blowing in the (Solar) Wind – 14
    • Hurricanes, Sunspots and Climate Change, Oh My! – 9
  • Meteors and Showers
    • The Meteor Drizzle, But That’s Okay! – 25
    • A Possible Meteoric Outburst May 30th? – 24
    • Observing the Perseids, and More – 6
    • It is always a meteor shower season now -2
  • Moon
    • March 25th Penumbral Lunar Eclipse – 24D, 24E
    • Super and Mini-Full Moons – 24C
    • Thirsty? Have a Glass of Sea of Tranquility Glass Beads! – 44
    • Lunar Water, Good, Lunar Soil for Plants, Not So Much – 24
    • A Clouded, Dark Eclipse – 24
    • The May 15-16th Total Lunar Eclipse – What to View – 23
    • Where to Build Lunar Bases (S. Pole locations) – 14
    • The Longest Lunar Partial Eclipse (Nov. 19, 2021) – 13
    • New Moon Probes – 6
    • The Lunar Dispatch (Historical and Literary Newsletter) – 6
    • May 26 Total Lunar Eclipse – 3
    • Photograph -2 Information
    • Shadows near Moon’s South Pole -1
  • Mars
    • Mars Influences Earth’s Weather and Oceans…and That’s Not News An InDepth Story] – 24E
    • The Rivers of Mars Ran Dry–When? – 24B
    • The Glaciers of Mars – 43
    • The Waters of Mars – 42
    • Observing Sunspots from Mars – 40
    • The Weather for the First 250 Sols on Mars – 39
    • Powering a Mars Base Using Winds – 38
    • The (Dust) Devil You Say! (Audio and Video!) – 37
    • Mars Explorers! Need Oxygen? Zap – 30
    • A Roundup of Mars Discoveries (Aurorae, Glaciers, Solar Power vs Nuclear) – 23
    • You Think YOU Have Flooding Problems?? – 10
    • Snow on Mars – 8
    • Mars: The Future (The JAXA Sample Return Mission, ExoMars 2022, and Future Missions to other planets, too) – 7
    • All Mars Probes’ Landing Sites -6
    • Mars: The Present (What We Know to Date from All Active Missions) – 6
    • Mars’ New Rover from China -2
    • List of active landers, orbiters and other probes -2
    • Mars’ Probes and Ingenuity’s Sounds -1
  • Outer Planets
    • Jupiter’s Crazy Clouds and JUICE – 44
    • The Red Trojans of Neptune – 44
    • A Shallow Sea Under the Surface of Europa? – 23
    • Moons Around an Exo-Jupiter, and Water Around One of Ours – 11
    • Where is Planet 9? – 11
    • Getting Breezy on Jupiter – 10
    • Observing Jupiter and its Moons at Opposition – 7
    • Finding Uranus – 7, -16
    • Watery Ganymede – 6
    • Observing Saturn at Opposition – 6
  • Other Objects
    • Two More Night (and One Eclipse Day) Chances to See Pons-Brooks -24F
    • A Night to See Comet Pons-Brooks – 24E
    • Comet Pons-Brooke – 24D
    • Citizen Scientists Solar System Discoveries (3 Asteroids Turn Cometary) – 24B
    • Two Meteor Showers Radiate from Taurus – 34
    • Dangerous NEA Nearby? – 34
    • Throwing a DART Successfully, Part 2! Or, How to Defend A Planet – 33
    • Throwing a DART Successfully – 32
    • Where Did Ryugu Come From? – 30
    • The Perseids and Comet K2 (Summer 2022) – 29
    • DNA in Meteorites – 23
    • Comets PanSTARRS and Leonard Fizzle Out and Die – 23
    • Comet Leonard Before Dawn – 14
    • Touring the Asteroid Bennu—the Awesome Video – 7
    • A Drunk Comet – 5
    • Largest Comet Ever? –  4
    • Oort Cloud origin – 3
    • You Want a Piece of Asteroid? (Vesta Fragments) – 1

Stars, The Milky Way, and Beyond

  • Stars
    • The Watch for T Cor Bor (Recurrent Nova about to erupt) – 24G
    • Filtering M-dwarf Stars for Habitable Exoplanets – 24B
    • Never to Old to Smoke (red giants in Milky Way’s center spraying metals into space) – 24B
    • Help for Your Cavities from the Stars – 24A
    • G and K Stars With Magnetism Have Interesting Personalities – 24A
    • Starspots Measure Age and Magnetism – 40
    • A Strange Star That is…REALLY Strange… – 35
    • In the Current Night Sky: That’s No Star You See, That’s a Star’s Inner Core. – 35
    • Boys and Girls, Would You Like a REAL Gold Star? -35
    • Supernova Warning System in Nature? – 34
    • The More Metal, The More Wonderful (Mira Variable Stars) – 26
    • And the Weather on Betelgeuse Was Cooler with Clouds…. – 25
    • The Fireball Flash of a Nova, Before It Goes Nova, Is Finally Observed – 24
    • Yes, Dying Stars Do Cause New Stars To Be Born – 17
    • Two Stars Tearing Each Other Apart? (Z Cma) – 16
    • The Demon Star May Have a Family (Algol) – 16
    • Finding and Measuring Algol’s Brightness, a Simple Way for Beginners – 16
    • Speaking of Coronal Activity… (A distant solar-type star with superflares shows it has coronal mass ejections, too!) – 15
    • Are White Dwarves Solar System Post-Mortems? – 13
    • The Rosetta Stone of Supernovae -12
    • Predicting a Supernova 16 Years From Now – 10 & 9(Venus’ phases, and conjunction with) Delta Scorpii—a gas blowing star – 10
    • A Rare (and Barely Naked Eye) Nova – 7
    • Betelgeuse’s Dimming -3
    • Red Giants in Spring Skies are Pulsing -1
  • Exoplanetary Systems
    • The Demographics of Exoplanets – 39
    • A-stars and Exoplanets – The Two Rarely Meet, Why? Have We Found The Exception? – 30
    • AAS: Exoplanets in Binaries, Around A, B or AB? – 28
    • AAS: How Do Planets and Systems Form? – 27
    • Hiding in Plain Sight (A Multi-Planet System 32 ly Away) – 26
    • The Layers of the Atmosphere of a Hot Exoplanet – 17
    • Finding b Centauri, binary with a planet (with sky chart – 15
    • Water Elsewhere, Trapped in Trappist-1 – 14
    • Moons Around an Exo-Jupiter, and Water Around One of Ours – 11
    • A Diversity of Exoplanets, Are We Not The Standard? – 7
    • Moon Dust – 6
    • Harmony of the Worlds (Turning the orbits of Exoplanet orbits into sounds – 6
    • Who Can See US? – 5
    • Distribution of giant planets around other stars -2
  • Nebulae and Clusters
    • Water in a Nebula – 43
    • When A Member of Your Family Commits a Messy Crime…. (Multiple Star in a Planetary Nebula ) – 37
    • Pleiades Lost and Found – 17
    • The Local Bubble, and the Nearby Local Interstellar Clouds (The Fog Lifts on Our Solar Neighborhood) – 16
    • 3D Printing of Molecular Interstellar Clouds – 10 & 9
    • Interstellar Dust from Planetary Nebulae -3
    • Nova Cass 2021 -3
  • Our Milky Way
    • (Galactic) Halos Are Not a Single Ring, but Many Fragments (Star Streams are the Remnants of Clusters and Galaxies the Milky Way has Absorbed) – 16
    • Knock, Knock. No, You Can’t Come In (Galactic Cosmic Rays in the Core) – 13
    • A Whole Lot of Gas, or a New Spiral Arm? – 10
    • A Lot of Spilt Milk Made Our Galaxy – 5
    • The Shape of the Milky Way Galaxy as seen outside it, from pulsars – 4
  • Galaxies
    • Black Holes in the Centers of….Dwarves? – 35
    • Getting the License Plate of That Colliding Galaxy – 19
    • A Nearly Complete Einstein Ring – 10
  • Cosmology
    • What Turned on the Universe’s Lights? – 26
    • Largest Rings You Can’t Have or See – 24A

Miscellaneous

  • Observatories and Tools
    • Blinking the Moon (Seeing the crashed Japanese SLIM Lander from orbit) – 24B
    • EAS: Updates on Missions and Observatories (Parker Solar Probe, ELT on Earth) – 30
    • Gaia, Cataloger of the Universe – 29
    • The Future of Arecibo – 29
    • Missions and More Missions (ESA’s, and Future Habitability Probes Beyond Mars) – 29
  • Historical Astronomy, Modern Astronomy, and Related
    • A Whale of a Border Crossing! – 43
    • Don’t Make Telescopes Without Glasses (Huygens Eyesight 300 Years Later) – 43
    • Happy New Year…but WHICH Year?? – 38
    • The Black Hole Donut – 36
    • The 13th Constellation of the Zodiac Houses the Sun! Teach With It! – 35
    • Pieces of the Earliest Star Catalog Found – 34
    • Resources on Modern Astronomy’s Issue from Nature Astronomy – 31
    • The Image of Astronomers – 31
    • AAS: When Did Kepler Realize Ptolemy Was Wrong? – 27
    • Cetus and Other Zodiac Constellations, and Jupiter – 26
    • Will You Love Me in the Spring? Or Kill Me? (A Dinosaur’s Bad Spring Day) – 19
    • Galileo’s House in Padua for Sale – Half Price! – 15
    • A Career in Shipping (Ships named Astronomer) – 14
    • Special Report: Dr. Fauci’s Sign? (The Astronomy of Ophiuchus) – 13
    • Mercury’s NOT Retrograding THAT Way! – 10
    • Moon phases, and Earth Seasons in the Calendar, how they relate to Kepler’s Second Law – 9
    • Harmony of the Worlds (Turning the orbits of the planets into Sounds) -4 Exoplanet orbits – 6
  • Extraterrestrial Life
    • We Aren’t There Yet; Neither May Be Anybody Else – 24A
    • A Proposed Scale to Evaluate the Communication of Finding ETs -12
      • An Example of the Above, Today (concerning a “signal” from Proxima Centauri b) – 12
  • Humor
    • Equipment for Helping Eclipse-phobes – 24E
    • What If We Use Earthly Objects for the Night Sky? – 24D
    • Winter Stars on Earth -24C
    • The Highs and Lows of Astronomy (Businesses with Astro Coordinate Names) – 24A
    • Earthliness in Universe Life – 43
    • Moon Cheese! – 40
    • Starry Starry Drink – 39
    • The 400-Year Old Baseball Player; Jupiter as Slingshot – 33
    • Because We Need Some MORE Humor (Killing Birds with one stone — Chicxulub) – 32
    • Because We Need Some Humor (Illustrations of different worlds’ gravities, Artemis) – 31
    • Scientific Cereal – 30
    • Worst Quote EVER Heard at an Astronomy Conference – 28
    • James Webb and Buzz Lightyear–The First Five Images by Distance and Your Space Ranger Name! – 28
    • Random Observations (A Truck and an Actress with Astronomical Names) – 25
    • Lunar Eclipse “Products” – 23
    • Space – In the Dog House (Meteorite and the Dog House it Hit Auctioned Off) – 19
    • Valentine’s Day is Coming, Be a Goat, er, GOAT….. – 17
    • Merry Obliquity NOT <sigh> (A University gets the reasons for the season wrong) – 16
    • You Think? (Bad Newspaper Astronomy Headlines) – 13
    • GoFundMe. Please? (Car named Polestar) – 12
    • Ouch! (meteor on Canadian woman’s pillow) – 11
    • Signs of the Times? – 11
    • Delicious Space Dust – 7
    • Meghan’s Jewels – 7
    • Texas Representative said What??? -3
    • Eclipse Fashion for Young Astronomers -3
    • Sci-Fi sounding Research Paper Titles -1


  • Travel
    • Star Wounds Along the Moon’s Shadow Path – 24C
    • Eating and Clubbing at the Planets #2 – 42
    • Odessa Meteor Crater – 42
    • Eating and Clubbing at the Planets – 41
    • Astronomy Art in Birmingham, AL – 38
    • Arabic New Moon and Stars in the Air- 34
    • The Starry Streets of Mobile – 10
    • Halting Steps for an Outdoor Planetarium in Ireland – 8
    • A Visit to Orion. Orion, AL – 4
  • Science and Society
    • Moon Music – 24C
    • Drinking in the Moon (beverages with a Moon Motif!) – 24B
    • Astronomy is a Sweet Science – 44
    • Astronomy Art in Birmingham, AL – 38
    • EAS: Detriments…and Benefits(!)…of Satellite Constellations – 28
    • Astronomy on Tap – 28
    • The Impact of Astronomy on Healthcare and More – 28
    • Observatory Fire – 27
    • A Book on Astronomical Moms and the Pandemic – 24
    • Sailing, Sailing…..(Using Light Sails to Travel to Alpha Centauri) – 17
    • Bezos’ Plans – 6
    • Mr. Branson’s Space Flight – 5
    • Solar Stamps – 4

  • Other
    • Commentary on MSU Shooting – 41
  • Towards Cosmic Awareness – Astronomy Education Column
    • The Watch for T Cor Bor (Recurrent Nova about to erupt) – 24G
    • Livestreams of the April 8th, 2024 Total Eclipse – 24F
    • Four Educational Projects You Can Do with Eclipses – 24F