Popular Posts

• The Sun Kings: The Unexpected Tragedy of Richard Carrington and the Tale of How Modern Astronomy Began

  In September of 1859, the entire Earth was engulfed in a gigantic cloud of seething gas, and a blood-red aurora erupted across the planet from the poles to the tropics. Around the world, telegraph systems crashed, machines burst into flames, and electric shocks rendered operators unconscious. Compasses and other sensitive instruments reeled as if struck [...]

• California State University

  History Today’s California State University system is the direct descendant of the California State Normal School (now San Jose State University), a normal school established by the California Legislature on May 2, 1862. The California State Normal School was itself derived from the City of San Francisco’s Minns Evening Normal School (founded in 1857) a [...]

• Death Stars, Weird Galaxies, and a Quasar-Spangled Universe: The Discoveries of the Very Large Array Telescope

  In 1931, Karl Jansky was hired by AT&T to search for sources of static that might interfere with radio waves for transatlantic communications. Jansky identified static from thunderstorms and random radio noise from devices on Earth, but he also found a radio hiss from the Milky Way galaxy. After World War II, astronomers constructed more [...]

• First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong

  On July 20, 1969, the world stood still to watch thirty-eight-year-old American astronaut Neil A. Armstrong become the first person to step on the surface of another heavenly body. Perhaps no words in human history became better known than those few he uttered at that historic moment. In a penetrating exploration of American hero worship, [...]

• Smithsonian Book of Mars (Smithsonian Library of the Solar System)

  From 1985 to 2000 Joseph Boyce provided scientific leadership to NASA as its Mars exploration program scientist. He has lived much of the history of the planet’s exploration, and his findings have helped to determine what we know about Mars today. The Smithsonian Book of Mars is truly a firsthand account. Boyce draws his clear [...]