King Harvest Has Surely Come

Play this as you read this post:



Last week was the harvest moon (the closest full moon to the autumnal equinox, when farmers could stay up late to pick their crops by the light of the moon), and it was particularly spectacular.  Our own harvest has been delicious, and I'm excited to have tomato and squash well into the fall.  Fall!  Yay!  My favorite season, filled with pumpkins, and festivals, and swirling leaves and crisp temperatures and amazing food.  I just got super excited thinking about it. And Halloween!  The best holiday EVER.

Anyhow I tried to take pictures of it with my cell phone, and they all turned out terribly.  So instead, I collected other people's awesome pictures of previous harvest moons to share.

Beautiful photographs of observatories

Astronomers build their observatories in the most remote places in the world, often high above the heat and lights of civilization, where the air is still and clear. Consequently, a tour of world observatories would bring you to some of the most beautiful vistas on Earth, from glittering European mountain peaks, to tropical paradises. Here are some of my favorite scavenged photos of observatory domes from around the world.

My hometown observatory, Griffith, looking down over the sprawl of Los Angeles.

Sphinx Observatory perched high in the Alps.

The dome of the 36-inch at Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton in California, framed by what look like Mariposa lilies.  Taken by Laurie Hatch.

Another photograph of Lick, the 120 inch dome, by the talented Laurie Hatch.

Mauna Kea (White Mountain) Observatory, Hawaii, HI.  Those are the two Kecks in the center, and I think the one on the left is Gemini.

Blackrock Castle Observatory in Cork, Ireland.  See the dome peeking up out of that castle tower?

El Caracol, also known as "The Observatory," at Chichen Itza, Mexico.  Thought to have been used by the Mayans to observe the cosmos.

8 Sites that Would Have Made High School Science Way Cooler

Not listed in order of awesomeness.

1. Astronomy: In-browser interactive planetarium app.   There are a lot of these popping up right now, and they are really cool.  The planetarium program I had in high school was limited, expensive and came on five or six floppies. 

2. Planetary Science: Duh, Google Mars.  Pretty much the best map of another planet I've come across.  I have the iPod app too.  

3. Science and Society: A recreation of the Apollo 11 released for the 40th anniversary last year by the JFK library.  In addition to the top-notch simulations of every stage, they have incredible pictures, audio, and even video.  One of my favorites was someone (I think maybe Aldrin?) playing with a blob of water on the capsule.  Listening to the audio from this incredible mission never fails to bring tears to my eyes, it's kind of pathetic.  

4. Physics: A game from the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.  You help this cute little creature named Twitch collect little parts for a robot using simple machines (incline plane, fulcrum etc).  A super simple way to introduce physical concepts.  I love it!

5. Cellular Biology: Chock full of animations about cell biology.   A little clicking around will eventually get you to some very cool but simple animations of what goes in our bodies on a microscopic level.

6. Zoology: An online, interactive version of Swiss Naturalist Conrad Gesner's famous work, known as the starting point of modern zoology.  My favorite entry is the Unicorn.  Let's just say zoology has moved forward a bit in the past few centuries. 

7. Genetics: An instant eye color calculator.  It turns out the likelihood of my parents having a blue eyed kid was 1.8 percent!  That makes me feel special.  Play around with genotypes and phenotypes to see what color eyes your kids will have.  

8. Chemistry: An interactive periodic table. .  Depending on your choice of source in drop down menu at the top left, clicking on an square in the table will bring up all kinds of information, photos and videos about that element.  One of my favorite features is the temperature scale, which you can move up and down to change the states of all the elements.