Perseids against the Milky Way, Sigh

The Perseids are reliable, regular shooting stars, a meteor shower that shows up nights in late July every year.  I didn’t see the Perseids this year myself because Baltimore’s skies are a rich carnelian haze that hold nothing much and certainly not meteorites.  And Heather didn’t see them because, she thinks, of light pollution.  To [...]

Getting It Wrong, Not Minding One Bit

As soon as I got over the fainting spell from looking at the Planck satellite’s map – and if you haven’t seen it, look now, faint, and then click – showing the Milky Way, I had a burning question. Okay, true, the Planck satellite wasn’t intended to map the Milky Way.  It was supposed to [...]