October 12-18 is Earth Science Week! PS 102 will be kicking off the Astronomy Club that week and unfortunately, we don’t have our first outdoor event planned until the following week on Oct 24 (see "Upcoming Events" in the sidebar). The week’s activities focus on in-school lesson plans (with suitable opportunities to do the "in-class" …

No Child Left Inside!Read More

Due to the poor forecast (complete overcast by 7pm), this event is CANCELED. The weather outlook for both Friday and Saturday is poor, so the rain date will not work. We will have another outing in December, to be announced later. Original announcement: In conjunction with the PS102 Astronomy Club, I’ll be hosting a brief …

CANCELED: Stargazing at Shore Road ParkRead More

On Monday, Oct 6, MESSENGER made it’s second pass around Mercury. The spacecraft doesn’t have enough fuel to just pull up to the planet Star Trek style, so it has to make a series of looping passes, shedding a little velocity and angular momentum each time. But it wasn’t all navigational changes; MESSENGER took the …

Mercury FlybyRead More

There is a short opinion piece at the NY Times web site called "A Little Less Light" which makes good reading.

Well, not quite, but if you’re in NYC and reading this tonight (Oct 3) go outside! I spent a few minutes on our front stoop around 7:15 pm and noticed how clear the sky seemed to be. Then using my hand to block out the street light at the end our our cul-de-sac, I let …

Mag 5 skies in Brooklyn?Read More

There’s an interesting article on the solar wind on Science News today. For those of you too young to remember (and, ahem, those of us old enough to start having trouble remembering), the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft launched back in the 1970s are still plugging away returning interesting data on the nature of the …

Lowdown on the sunRead More

I was asked to look into groupware for a grant project. Okay, I know there are several freebies out there that shouldn’t be too hard to set up. So I looked around and did a little reading and saw that really, it was hard to choose. I mean, there are some that are not well …

Linux Groupware FrustrationsRead More

In my quest to build a Linux replacment for DSLRFocus, I’m hitting a steep learning curve with Glade, Gtk, and gPhoto. I’m making progress, but it is slow. I’ve also come to realize that sometimes "best practices" can get in the way. What do I mean? Well, in the gPhoto library, a Camera object is …

Gtk, Glade, and gPhoto Steep Learning CurveRead More