Escape Velocity: Chapter 1 – Moonlake
Dan WildTales from the Outer Rim: Book 3 They filed out of the hall, bustling with excitement. A bearded young man in hipster jeans, brows furrowed, chatted to a young Sirian woman, who gave him her full attention. Everyone gives Zeen Crawdex their full attention. Crawdex looked around as if someone had called his name, or …
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Alpha Centauri: Two bright princesses and a red dwarf
Dan WildI remember as a teenager, blinking though binoculars, excited that I could just make out Alpha Centauri as a double star. Then I borrowed a low-end refractor telescope and could more easily make out the binary nature of the pair. It was the Jesuit, Father Jean Richaud (1633-1693), who first determined the binary using his …
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Epsilon Eridani: Already in the sights of asteroid miners
Dan WildAlthough known to early star gazers, Epsilon Eridani does not figure heavily in myth. Claudius Ptolemy was the first astronomer to pay this star any sustained attention, cataloguing it in his famous 2nd-century Almagest. Indeed, it was Ptolemy that named the constellation Eridanus, after the ancient Greek word for ‘river’ (Ποταμού). Epsilon Eridani famously entered …
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The Human Factor: Greene’s existential world of espionage
Dan Wild“A crumb could contain a microdot.” (129) The first Graham Greene book I read, Our Man in Havana (1958), followed the adventures of a vacuum cleaner salesman after being recruited by British Intelligence (and his increasingly outlandish ways of meeting their expectations). The Human Factor is decidedly less light-hearted, but no less a solid read. …
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Teegarden’s Star: A nearby red dwarf with two rocky planets
Dan WildWhile Teegarden’s Star is rarely talked about at dinner parties, it’s only a matter of time. Why? Two words. Habitable planets. At only 0.09 solar masses, Teegarden is a very small star. With less than 1/10th the mass of the sun, Teegarden is lucky to be a star at all – any less mass and …
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The Luhman 16 twins: Why brown dwarfs are cool
Dan WildIf you’ve heard of Luhman 16AB then I salute you. And if you haven’t, then I despair at the state of astronomy education in schools today. What? They don’t teach astronomy at school? Well, if they did, how would your teacher explain Luhman 16AB? “Today we’re going to talk about brown dwarfs, stellar objects that …
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John Pilger – Voice for the voiceless, champion of the oppressed
Dan Wild“It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understanding the hidden agendas of the message and the myths that surround it” This is the strap-line on the X (Twitter) account of John Pilger, who sadly passed away on 30 December 2023. The world has lost one its kindest, compassionate and …
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You can’t be Sirius? Actually, I’m Sirius B
Dan WildSirius is really two stars. A faint white dwarf, Sirius B, is locked in a dance with Sirius A, and it takes 50 years for them to orbit each other. Sirius B used to be a big guy: it was once a red giant. Except it doesn’t have quite the same mass as Betelgeuse, a …
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Betelgeuse: Life as a Red Supergiant
Dan WildYou’ve heard of Betelgeuse if you’re an amateur astronomer. It’s that flickering red star at the bottom right corner of the constellation of Orion, as viewed in the southern hemisphere, and top left viewed from the northern hemisphere. Those born in the 1980s would have heard of it via the surreal Tim Burton film, Beetlejuice. …
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Space Juice: Chapter 40 – Great Elevator
Dan WildPrevious Chapter.. “Damn! By the red sludge of the Zorgons, where am I?” Chuck Marley thought he must have slept 20 hours. Or overdosed on Gelsem X, the equivalent of falling into a coma. His previous record asleep was 18 hours. The reflection in a metal cabinet shocked him. “My hair, my priceless haircut! I’ll …