What was new at Bad Astronomy in 2001?

November 12, 2001: Will the Lion roar? On the evening of November 17/18, the annual Leonid meteor shower will peak. This year there may very well be a strong storm of meteors, as many as 7000 per hour in some locations! The favored locations/times are the U.S. west coast around 2:00 a.m. local time (10:00 Greenwich) on the 17/18, and the east coast of Asia about 7 hour later. The Asian peak should be the bigger of the two. However, no matter where you are, you should go out and look! The predictions may be off, and somewhere else will get a strong peak. For more info (including general meteor shower observing advice) check out the CCNET webpage (scroll down a bit). I also have a couple of Leonids pages from showers past: a general Leonids page (some of the links no longer work, but the main ones do), one about Leonids hitting the Moon, and another about a Leonid that exploded (no, there's no danger from something like that).

November 8, 2001 (2): I was interviewed on TechTV November 8th about this very website. See my calendar for more info.

November 6, 2001 (1): I am pleased and proud to announce that as of earlier today, this site has received 4 million page hits since January 1 of this year. I am amazed at the traffic levels! Much of this is due to the Fox Moon Hoax page, and from a Reuters interview in January. Thanks to all the folks out there who have supported this site and encouraged me to continue. [Note added January 2, 2002: The total number of page hits for the year 2001 was 4,540,498.]

November 1, 2001: An article of mine about aurorae was just placed on the FAZ website (in English).

October 30, 2001: If you came here from the Astronomy Picture of the Day, you may want to check out my description of crepuscular rays in an article I wrote about Sun Pillars. You can also search my site about crepuscular rays as well.

October 25, 2001: I am now writing a regular, monthly column for Astronomy magazine's website (I actually have the official title of "Contributing Editor"). The first column is now online, and is called "Everything's Under the Sun".

October 18, 2001: A Yahoo! news story is in the wrong orbit.

October 5, 2001: A new book has been added to the bookstore! The author may be familiar. ;-) Note: the book comes out in March, but you can pre-order your copy now if you'd like.

August 17, 2001: I will be making several local guest talks in the coming weeks. They are listed on my calendar.

August 14, 2001: I was interviewed in a local (for me) newspaper about this website; a sortof "local boy does good" story. It was really fun to do, and it's the first time that I have been interviewed specifically to do a story about the website (usually I am quoted about something else). This is strictly a blowing-my-own-horn thing, but what the heck. ;-)

August 8, 2001 NOTE:
The "What's New" item below (for August 7) is about Charlie Duke being on NBC's The Today Show talking about the Moon Hoax. Well, evidently, the segment featuring Charlie Duke was edited, and there was no mention of this website. Oh well. Still, over the next day or two, you can watch the segment on streaming video from the Today Show website. It's pretty interesting!

August 7, 2001 BAD ASTRO ALERT!
Tomorrow, on August 8, Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke will be a guest on NBC's "The Today Show" as part of their series "Truth or Conspiracy?". He will be speaking about the Moon hoax. He emailed me and said he will be mentioning this site by name! Another guest on the show is Hoax Believer Bill Kaysing, featured in the execrable Fox show, so it should be an, um, interesting segment.

While you're at it, you can read an article I wrote for Space.com about the Moon hoax. It's a bit longer and has more detail than what was published in their magazine (see the next listing below for more about that).

July 26, 2001:
An article I wrote about the Moon Hoax is now out in the magazine Space Illustrated, the print magazine for space.com. It's a fairly blunt dismissal of the arguments put forth by people who believe the Apollo missions were faked. Clicking the picture will take you to where you can order the magazine.

July 20, 2001: I will be interviewed on the RK Radio network in St. Paul, Minnesota on Monday, at 12:10 p.m. Pacific time. You can listen to the broadcast on the web by going to the Ruth Koscielak website, or if you are in the North Star state, here is a list of affiliates that broadcast Ruth's show. We'll be talking about-- of course!-- the Moon hoax.

July 12, 2001: Alert! I will be interviewed live on the Montreal radio station CJAD 800 AM at about 12:30 a.m. tonight (Eastern time). You can listen on the web as well by going to the CJAD website. It's a call-in program so throw me a few softballs. ;-)

July 10, 2001: I was interviewed in the Orlando Sentinel about the Moon Hoax. It's a pretty good article, actually, and is available online.

June 29, 2001: A new book about Hubble images by astronomer Mark Voit has been added to the Bad Astronomy Recommended Reading list.

June 12, 2001:
Mars is getting bright in the night sky, but its glory is somewhat dimmed by a CNN article describing its orbit. [note added later the same day: CNN edited their article, correcting it. I have a more detailed note about this on my page linked above.]

June 6, 2001:
If I weren't a hard-headed scientist, I'd wonder if some cosmic force were at work sometimes. I went to a website that creates anagrams, that is, rearranges letters in a word to spell other words. I put in "The Bad Astronomer", and one the the anagrams was MOON TRASH DEBATER. If you don't get it, read this.

April 23, 2001:
Two new FAZ articles are now online; one about Mir falling and the other about the Apollo Moon missions.

April 9, 2001:
I was on a UK television program called "Destination Space " about the Moon Hoax last Saturday. If you missed it, read here for more info.

March 25, 2001:
This one slipped past me some time ago, so I'll point you there now: last month I was interviewed by Eric Jandciu of the University of British Columbia for an article about media astronomy errors. Give it a read!

March 21, 2001:
On Thursday morning March 21 I will be interviewed live on the Paul Harris show, a radio program originating from St. Louis. The topic, of course, is the Moon Landing Hoax. You can listen live from anywhere in the world by going to Paul Harris' website.

March 20, 2001:
Hey, do I smell something? Oh, it must be coming from Fox TV! They are replaying the awful Moon Hoax conspiracy show again on Wednesday night the 21st. Watch it a second time in case you forgot just how low Fox can go.

March 19, 2001:
According to the Naval Observatory website, the Vernal Equinox occurs at 13:31 Universal Time (8:31 a.m. Eastern) on March 20th. Do you have your eggs ready?

March 14, 2001:
A new FAZ article about dying in space was posted today.

February 19, 2001:
Now CNN joins the fray: they have a webpage about the hoax theory as well.

February 17, 2001:
The NASA Homepage (!) links to my debunking of the awful Fox TV program about Apollo Hoax Believers. I have also added an addendum to that page about some fallout from what I have said.

February 15, 2001:
Bad Astronomy Alert! Tonight, the Fox television network airs a program called ``Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land On The Moon?'' Needless to say, the program is full of errors, misinterpretations of basic physics and plain old bad thinking. I have a review of it in my Bad TV section. Also, Dan Vergano of USA Today has an article (with an interview of me) about the TV show on the USA Today website.

February 8, 2001:
A new FAZ article about misunderstanding of scale in astronomy was posted today.

February 1, 2001:
Bad Astronomy on the air! I was interviewed by Larry Jacobs of ABC News radio for a segment called Cybershake. It's a 1 minute RealAudio bit. If you want to hear it, go to http://www.abcnews.com. On the right you'll see a section called ``today on ABC News.com''. There is a link titled ``ABSNEWS Radio: News, sports and more''. Click on that, and a new window will pop up. Click on ``Technology News'' and it will stream automatically. I know this sounds complicated, but it isn't so bad.

January 27, 2001:
The alumni association of my alma mater, the University of Virginia, interviewed me for their online magazine. Local boy does good!

January 22, 2001:
A new FAZ article about meteors has been posted. Also, a new Bad News article gives you two Bad Astronomy bits for the price of one.

January 10, 2001:
I was interviewed by Reuter's staff reporter Deborah Zabarenko last night about this website. The article came out today, and it's very cool. You can read it at

space.com	Yahoo news	Excite news

The wide coverage of the article means I am getting a lot of email right now. Feel free to email me and ask questions, but bear in mind it might take me a few days to catch up! Thanks.

January 2, 2001:
The new F.A.Z. article: Is Pluto a Planet?