on alpha Centauri

2015 (October 12, to be exact) marks the hundredth anniversary of the discovery of Proxima Centauri by the Scottish astronomer Robert Thorburn Ayton Innes, the director of the Union Observatory in Johannesburg, South Africa. Proxima was quickly recognized to be the smallest member of the alpha Centauri star system, and is now known to be…

on Protostellar Disks

My wife made me this new quilt for the door of my office: It’s a star called DG Tau B, and she made an incredible likeness. But what, exactly, are we looking at here? If you’d like to know more about how the quilt was made, take a look at my wife’s blog. Read on…

on the Kissing Stars

Let’s talk about the Kissing Stars, a very massive binary system in the Large Magellanic Clouds that’s going to do SOMEthing exciting soon. Well, “soon” as in a couple hundred thousand years; this IS astronomy we’re talking about.