Hint: A light-year is a unit of distance, not time.
AstroWoW by Christopher Crockett
Christopher Crockett of the EarthSky blog AstroWoW is an astronomer at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. He wants to know if there's life out there besides us and where those creatures might be, so he's decided to help out in the search for planets around other stars. By focusing on trying to locate planets around very young stars, he hopes to contribute to our understanding of how and where planets form. He began AstroWoW as the blog Astronomy Word of the Week before joining EarthSky in 2012. He is also a regular contributor to the 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast. He finds great joy in setting up a telescope on the sidewalks of Flagstaff and accosting unsuspecting passers-by with dazzling views of Jupiter, Saturn, and other celestial wonders. When not probing the depths of the universe, Christopher balances his scientific interests by pursuing a second life as a thespian and swing dancer.
Posts by Christopher Crockett
Blogs | Jan 11, 2013
The electromagnetic spectrum describes all the wavelengths of light. From dark nebulae to exploding stars, it reveals an otherwise invisible universe.
Blogs | Jan 02, 2013
Astronomers typically speak of distance in the universe in parsecs, not light-years. One parsec is about 30 trillion kilometers, or just over three light-years.
Blogs | Dec 13, 2012
Coronal mass ejections are powerful eruptions on the sun’s surface. Caused by instabilities in the sun’s magnetic field, they can launch a billion tons of superheated gas into space at over one million miles per hour.
Blogs | Dec 11, 2012
Wolf-Rayet stars make our sun look tiny. They can be hundreds of times more massive, millions of times brighter, and tens of thousands of degrees hotter.
Blogs | Dec 05, 2012
Elliptical galaxies are among the largest single star systems in the universe and are built by the collisions of many smaller galaxies.
Blogs | Nov 28, 2012
The interstellar medium is the stuff between the stars. Made up mostly of hydrogen and helium gas, it contains all the material needed to make stars and planets. It is shaped by stellar winds, dying stars, galactic magnetic fields, and supernova explosions.
Blogs | Nov 25, 2012
Sometimes the planets appear to change direction in the sky. This retrograde motion is entirely an illusion caused by the Earth passing the slower moving outer planets.
Blogs | Nov 23, 2012
The ecliptic marks the path of the sun. It’s the projection of Earth’s orbit onto the sky. And it’s an essential part of any stargazer’s vocabulary.
Blogs | Nov 13, 2012
The sun generates about 400 billion billion megawatts of power and it has done so for five billion years. Nuclear fusion – combining lighter atoms to make heavier one – is what makes it possible.
