What was new at Bad Astronomy in 2000?

December 21,2000:
The New York Times (!) has an article in today's issue about pseudoscience. The article quotes me and mentions the Bad Astronomy site! My name is misspelled though. ;-) To use that link, you will need to sign up on the New York Times website. It's free.

December 19,2000:
A new Mad Science question is online: Why does comet dust get spread out along the comet's orbit?

December 18,2000:
My new article about black holes in Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has been published.

December 8, 2000
Did a meteor cause fires in New Hampshire on December 4? Well, no. But it's an interesting story anyway!

Also, I was interviewed by a student newspaper at Kent State University about astronomy misconceptions in movies. The interview is online now.

December 6, 2000
A new Mad Science answer has been added to the list. It answers a very common question: can Hubble point at the Earth?

December 6, 2000
A new Mad Science answer has been added to the list. It answers a very common question: can Hubble point at the Earth?

November 20, 2000
Yes, that is indeed an ad you see at the top of every page of this site. I was initially reluctant to put advertising here, but a friend of mine convinced me that a group of astronomy-related websites can put advertisements up that are actually relevant and not annoying, so I went for it. ;-) The Discovery Channel will be airing a documentary about the International Space Station December 10^th. To find out more, click the ad!

November 14, 2000
Now playing: The Bad Astronomy ``Red Planet'' movie review.

Also, a new column of mine has been posted in Die Zeitung.

November 13, 2000
The Leonid meteor shower may storm again on Thursday and Friday nights. Check out this page (NOTE: link disabled; no longer exists) for more info and links!

November 9, 2000
Do you think that NASA faked the Apollo mission, and that we never went to the Moon? Well, you're wrong. Check this new page out to see why.

November 8, 2000
The St. Louis, Missouri Post Dispatch has an article about the Mad Scientist Network, and they quote me about my own work with the Mads.

November 1, 2000
A Yahoo!News article grossly overestimates the space station's brightness. Read about it in the Bad News page.

October 24, 2000
Alert readers may have noticed a new edition to the menu for this site: Die Zeitung, which is a link to an astronomy column I am writing for the German newspaper die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Read all about it!.

October 17, 2000
The prestigious scientific journal Nature chose Bad Astronomy as one of their highlighted astronomy websites. I am deeply honored to have my website on their list.

September 20, 2000
The magazine Popular Science picked Bad Astronomy as one of their top 5 Eclectic Science sites on the (entire!) web in the October 2000 issue. I am honored and pleased by this distinction. I am also thrilled; I am getting quite a few page views from it! You can read about it here!

August 15, 2000
I have reviewed the movie ``Space Cowboys'' as part of my Bad Movies section of the website.

August 9, 2000
This year, the usually great Perseid meteor shower will be washed out by the Moon, which will be up almost all night. The shower peaks in mid-August. For more info, click on over to Gary Kronks's Meteor Site. You can also check out the Sky & Telescope Website, or the American Meteor Society site.

August 3, 2000
Has faster than light travel been shown to be true? No, despite the claims of much of the media.

August 2, 2000
Uno's Pizza discovers a tenth planet! Okay, not really.

July 24, 2000
Bad News: The San Francisco Chronicle grossly underestimates the year of the comet.

June 13, 2000
I will be attending a ``Space:1999'' convention from September 1-3 of this year, giving talks about astronomy based on the show. Read more about it here, or you can check out Main Mission:2000, the convention's website. I just found out (July 18 2000) that Academy Award winner and star of the series Martin Landau will be attending. That's very cool. For a complete guest list of the con, go to the Main Mission confirmed guest page.

June 10, 2000
Regular Bad Readers will see something very new at this site: the whole thing has been redesigned. I have removed the javascript menu, which was cool, but slowed downloads. I have added new pages (including 1999 and 2000 to my Mad Science pages), and plan on adding new sections as time goes on. There are still a couple of bumps in the road which I will hopefully smooth out in the coming few days. If you encounter problems (like a link that takes you to the wrong place) please let me know!

May 31, 2000: The Home Shopping Network is not a good place to buy a telescope. I usually don't use language this strong, but in this case it's warranted: The HSN lied about the capabilities of one of their products. Yup, false advertising, pure and simple. Read all about it.

May 17, 2000: The tightest arrangement of planets (despite doomsayer's cries) was actually today, and again, no effects. However, on every cool thing about it: Venus and Jupiter passed each other in the sky from our viewpoint, and they got very close together (the astronomical term is ``appulse'' for such an event). You can see this firsthand from the vantage point of the SOHO satellite. It's an amazing animated GIF. One warning: it's big; choose the 1/4 resolution image. It'll still take some time to download, but it's worth it. You can see the Pleaides in the image too! (For more details, check the entry below for May 3).

May 5, 2000: Surprise! The alignment came and went, and hopefully the only damage was to Richard Noone's and the Survival Center's reputations. I have a prediction of my own: the shameless people spreading this bit of Bad Astronomy will recoup and say it's May 17 that's the doomsdate now, when the planets actually align as tightly as they can this time (May 5 was chosen initially because the Moon was in he configuration as well). Then, when May 17 comes and goes with no incidents, hopefully those folks will dry up and go away. I do a lot of hoping, of course. I wonder what the next silly bit of business will be for these types? Oh well, there's always a comet or asteroid that might hit us.

NEW(and very cool)!
May 3, 2000: The telescope SOHO is positioned between the Earth and Sun, and take images of the Sun continuously. At the SOHO website they have images and animated images of the Sun, where you can see it give off streamers and all sorts of fun things. You can actually watch the planets get closer too as they get ready for the ``alignment''! Go to http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/gif/ and click on the far right image labeled ``C3''; an animated GIF will load and you can see the planets moving. The planets are the bright stars with horizontal lines through them (an artifact of the detection device). The Sun is located behind a mask which blocks its light, and a white circle is drawn where it sits and also shows its size. check out this image for an identification of the planets in that image.

More info: I was interviewed by Alexandra Witze of the Dallas Morning News about the alignment too!

April 18, 2000: Even in today's supposedly enlightened society, women are underrepresented in the sciences. I don't blame diapers, but they can be a curious indicator of the real problem. Read about this topic to find out what I mean.

March 27, 2000: Have you seen ``Mission to Mars'' yet? I've written a Bad Astronomy review of this flick on my Bad Movies page.

March 23, 2000: A newsletter by the Chevron Corporation admirably tries to teach astronomy to kids, but gets tripped up a little by some common astronomical errors.

March 10, 2000: By popular demand, I have (finally) reviewed the movie ``Contact''.

March 2, 2000: The Vernal Equinox occurs on March 20 at 7:35 a.m. Greenwich time this year. Do you have your eggs ready?

February 18, 2000: I have written a piece for the space.com opinion section. It's about Hollywood movies and Bad Astronomy.

February 2, 2000: Regular readers know my opinions about people who say a planetary alignment in May will destroy the Earth. An article appeared today on the web quoting me about these doomsayers. Please give it a read!

I have added two books to the Bad Astronomy bookstore: Astronomy for Dummies by Stephen Maran and Magnificent Universe by Ken Croswell. I was the technical editor for both books and I am very proud to have been a part of their creation.