Several months ago I discovered Astroterm, a terminal-based astronomy program that can draw the night sky with ASCII characters. It’s fun. Open it up on a workspace, let it run, and when I need a mental recharge I can kick over to it and see where the planets and major stars are. One really neatContinue reading “Visualizing the Milky Way”
Tag Archives: Milky Way
On Moments of Cosmic Awareness
I don't know that I want to live forever. Forever is a really long time. Maybe the Big Rip happens 22 billion years from now or the universe avoids the Big Rip and suffers the Big Crunch many billions of years later or the universe suffers heat death sometime around the year 1 Googol. InContinue reading “On Moments of Cosmic Awareness”
On the Universe We Live In
Sometimes, I really wish I could live to see the world three billion years hence. Okay, I take that back. It’s not just sometimes. I wish that all the time. In three billion years, give or take a few hundred million years, astronomers believe that the Milky Way, our home galaxy, and M-31, better knownContinue reading “On the Universe We Live In”