Olson and his colleague Russell Doescher have made a name for themselves pioneering a field they call 'astroforensics.' Poring over historical texts (in this case Caesar's Commentary on the Gallic War), the two piece together bits of astronomical information that were recorded around the time of the event in question — phase of the Moon is a common one, as are the locations of Venus and the Sun, often recorded in paintings. In Shakespeare's "Hamlet" a 'bright star' is mentioned, and that was enough to get Olson thinking that it wasn't a star at all, but a Supernova that lit up the skies in 1572.

Knowing the phase of the Moon, Olson could calculate exact dates when, say, the tides would've been right in 55 BC for Caesar to make his landing near Dover. As it turns out, those same lunar and tidal conditions only present themselves once every few hundred years or so, and August 2007 was one of those dates. So Olson and company went to Dover, chartered a boat, and floated through the English channel, just as Caesar had done. Riding the same currents as the Romans, Olson showed that the evening of Caesar's arrival must have been August 22-23 in the year 55 AD rather than August 26-27, as generations of scholars before him had thought.

Caesar's landing was under duress — thousands of Celtic tribesmen greeted him with arrows and spears. But the Romans prevailed, and began an invasion that would lead to the formation of England.

Not all of Olson's work has as much historical import — he also likes following in the footsteps of Ansel Adams, and predicting when the waterfalls in Yosemite National Park will be moonlit as just the right angle so that their spray produces a rainbow — and he's calculated every time that will happen for the next two years. But CSI's got nothing on this guy, who needs nothing but the night sky to solve his cases.

Source: Sky & Telescope

How many extrasolar planets have we found so far? 287 (as of April 1, 2008).

When was the first one found? Between 1988 and the early 1990s, several astronomers claimed to have found extraslar planets. However, the first confirmed planet was found in 1992, and the first orbiting a normal (non-pulsar) star was found in 1995.

Which one is closest to Earth? Epsilon Eridani b is a gas giant a little smaller than Jupiter that orbits a star 10.4 light years from Earth.

Which one is most likely to support life? Gliese 581 c is the smallest exoplanet found so far, and it orbits within the "habitable zone" of its star.

What is the largest planet? GQ Lup b has a mass of more than 21 Jupiters, or 70 percent of our sun's mass. In fact, there is some debate whether it is a planet or a brown dwarf star in a companion orbit to GQ Lup itself.

How do we detect extrasolar planets? It's almost impossible to find them by looking through a telescope - not because they are small, but because the contrast between the brightness of the star a planet orbits and the planet itself is too great for us to pick out the planet. We can measure the gravitational wobble induced in the star by the planet by looking at the shift in wavelength of light coming from the star (the Doppler effect) or we can examine the "gravitational lensing" effect produced when light from a background star passes through the distant solar system. In rare cases, a planet transits in front of its star (in relation to our point of view), allowing us to notice the dimming of the star.

What can we learn from these methods? By combining the data and doing some serious physics calculations, astronomers can figure out the mass and density of the planet and the characteristics of its orbit. We can even learn something about the composition of the planet and its atmosphere - the Hubble Telescope was able to detect methane in the atmosphere of a gas giant earlier this year.

Have we found any Earth-like planets? No. The majority of extrasolar planets found so far have been gas giants. We have found a few "terrestrial" planets, denser than gas giants, but they have all had five or more times the mass of Earth. Astronomers call them Super-Earths. Image by: NASA.

Extrasolar Planets. [Nature]

PlanetQuest: Exoplanet Exploration. [NASA]

Prof. Marscher is an astrophysicist with a sense of humor and a guitar. He's written a series of songs about physics, some of which he performs during the classes he teaches at BU. He even put a bunch of them on his website - you can go check out all his lyrics, plus listen to mp3s of the tunes as performed by the Professor himself.

Here are some choice examples of these mad rhymes:

Relatively Weird
Is it energy or mass? Well, E = mc2.
And if it goes really fast, put a gamma in there.

Superluminal Lover
Full of twisting magnetism, feeling hot inside.
Bursting forth with energy, ready for a high-speed ride.
Acceleration growing, focusing my beam.
The jet starts flowing, plasma shoots downstream.

Stars By the Colors
Red dwarf stars, a common sort, have low luminosity,
Living for hundreds of billion years in cool anonymity.
Luminous red giants are middle-aged, fat but not so hot,
With core collapsed to Earth-like size, hydrogen fuel is shot.

Another Planet
On Mercury we'd roast all day & during the night we'd freeze.
We'd gasp for air to no avail with no atmosphere to breathe.
On Venus we would suffocate from CO2 gas so dense,
The greenhouse effect would bake our hide, the heat would be so intense.

Songs with Science Themes by Prof. Alan Marscher. [Prof. Alan Marscher]

Scientists with the European Space Agency experimented with marigolds grown in crushed anorthosite, an Earth-rock that is a close analogue to the lunar surface. Just potting the flowers in anorthosite was not effective. They didn't grow. But adding certain bacteria made a huge difference. The marigolds didn't exactly flourish in the faux moondirt, but they did grow and even blossomed. The bacteria facilitated the transfer of nutrients from the anorthosite to the plants.

Of course, the area where the plants were grown would need to be domed (they still need air) and watered, but they could be part of a water filtration system or even provide food for a self-sustaining lunar colony. While the ESA has no actual plans to go to the moon anytime soon, some scientists think we could send a robot to plant lunar veggies before the first colonists arrive. Photo by: BBC.

Plants 'thrive' on Moon rock diet [BBC]

Here's a recent satellite photo of the same area of Mars, taken by NASA in 1998.

And here's another, more colorful depiction of the same area, created in the late 1870s.

Channelling Martian Maps [BilbliOdyssey]

Most of the 280 or so exoplanets discovered so far have been searing gas giants that orbit their stars closer than Mercury is to the Sun. But GJ 436c is the latest in a growing class of rocky exoplanets called 'super-Earths' that are getting smaller by the day, thanks to a new method planet-hunting astronomers are using to measure stars' gravitational wobble:

Ignasi Ribas, lead author of the study from the Spanish Research Council (CSIC), says: "After final confirmation, the new exoplanet will be the smallest found to date. It is the first one to be identified from the perturbations exerted on another planet of the system. Because of this, the study opens a new path that should lead to the discovery of even smaller planets in the near future, with the goal of eventually finding worlds more and more similar to the Earth."

Photo: Wikipedia

The reasoning's simple — all missions to the Moon or Mars spend most of their fuel lifting off and landing. Fuel is expensive to burn and expensive to carry, so the less you need the better. Phobos and Deimos have very little gravity of their own (about 1/1000th that of Earth), and a convenient Martian atmosphere to slow your spaceship down in. Earth's Moon's the opposite, so despite the distance, it turns out you need about the same amount of fuel to land on the Martian moons as you to for a safe touchdown much closer by.

Can you picture yourself in a crater-side apartment complex? 9-km wide Stickney crater is the largest feature on Phobos, and with a view of Mars 80 times as big as the full Moon seen from Earth it's bound to be prime property some day.

Using the Extreme-Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph mounted on the Hinode spacecraft, astronomers pinpointed the pressure fluctuations in the immense magnetic fields that send the gases spewing out into the sun's corona. In a press release, Dr. Michelle Murray of the Mullard Space Science Laboratory at University College London had this to say:

When a new section of magnetic field pushes through the solar surface it generates a continual cycle of fountains, but new magnetic fields are constantly emerging across the whole of the solar surface and so our results can explain a whole multitude of fountains that have been observed with Hinode.

New Views On The Sun's Startling Magnetic Fountains. [Science Daily]

Micro-lensing is a refinement of techniques used to spot objects that would normally be invisible to us. In this case, astronomers at St. Andrews University in Scotland detected the two planets as the light reflected from them was deflected by the gravity of a star. This refraction brightened and magnified the image. Even planets with less mass than Earth can be found by astronomers using this method.

Dr. Martin Dominik of St. Andrews told the BBC:

"It looks like this may have formed in a similar way to our Solar System. And if this is the case, it looks like [our] Solar System cannot be unique in the Universe. There should be other similar systems out there which could host terrestrial planets."

Solar System's 'look-alike' found. [BBC News]

Earlier this week I pondered whether dark energy is just a new version of an outdated theory, but a team of astronomers in Antarctica is doing the hard work of trying to find out. The South Pole Telescope (SPT) uses 1,000 advanced optical sensors to peer at distant galaxy clusters looking for subtle variations in the cosmic background radiation. Those variations will give scientists a better idea of the structure of the universe, and whether or not dark energy is part of it.

The SPT is the largest Antarctic telescope. Despite the frigid cold of the region, the optics are further shielded from background heat by being chilled to a temperature not far from absolute zero. Photo by: The University of Chicago.

Cosmologists Probe Mystery Of Dark Energy With South Pole Telescope. [Science Daily]

Minton, who already created vector maps of the islands in this sea, writes:

I went ahead and digitized the shoreline of the unnamed methane sea . . . It is one of the largest bodies of liquid known to exist on this moon of Saturn. This body of liquid methane, ethane and nitrogen is about the size of Lake Superior.

The orange opacity of Titan's atmosphere makes the moon appear bigger than it actually is - astronomers have since distinguished between permanent cloud cover and surface, and downgraded it from the first- to the second-largest moon in our system, after Jupiter's satellite Ganymede.

Not until the flyby, in 2004, of the Cassini-Huygens mission could scientists confirm the speculation, first ignited by both Voyager missions and then heightened by Hubble observations, that Titan is the only heavenly body (save Earth) to contain large liquid surfaces - or seas, as non-astronomers would call them. For they seem a bit too small to be labelled oceans.

These seas, or lakes, most probably consisting of methane or another hydrocarbon, can be seen on this page of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

EVS-Islands [via Strange Maps]

Here is our Martian woman's spec:

First, our woman is tall, a little pear-shaped, with really thick legs. This shape compensates for the reduced gravity.

She has a very lightweight exoskeleton covering her whole body. The exoskeleton has to keep her warm, keep her pressurized, shield her from solar wind, and absorb lots of sunlight. So it can be thin, but laced with heated mesh. It should have a nanofabric outer shell laced with lead to repel x-rays and other cosmic rays. And the upper half should have super bendy, ultra-thin solar cells that are constantly sucking up solar energy.

In her boots and strapped to her thighs, she has water drilling/processing packs. A cannulated drill can extend out of it, go deep under martian crust, suck up water, run it through a filter to get the salt and acid out, and then store it close to her body to keep it liquid so she can sip from it.

She also has a photosynthesis rig on her back. This is a light, thin backpack that converts the C02 from the atmosphere and some of the water from her leg pack into sugars and oxygen for our Martian. So it's a combination breathing apparatus and feeder.

Image by Stephanie Fox. Additional reporting by Nivair Gabriel.

International Studies professor John Hickman sums up his article thusly:

If and when interplanetary and interstellar trade develops, it will be novel in two respects. First, the distances and time spans involved will reduce all or nearly all trade to the exchange of intangible goods. That threatens the possibility of conducting business in a genuinely common currency and of enforcing debt agreements incurred by governments. Second, interstellar trade suggests trade between humans and aliens. Cultural distance is a probable obstacle to initiating and sustaining such trade. Such exchange also threatens the release of new and dangerous memes.

Problems of Interplanetary and Interstellar Trade [Astro Politics] (Thanks, Chris!)

Dvorsky points out that there are nice things you can do with probes, like using them for communication as in the Bracewell Probe model. Says Dvorsky:

Christopher Rose, an electrical engineer at Rutger's University, has suggested that we should actually look for these probes in our own Solar System. He argues we should be checking the mail instead of waiting for a phone call.

Multiple Bracewell probes could also be set up as a distributed array of communication relay stations. Such a set-up was portrayed in Carl Sagan's Contact. In this story, a dormant Bracewell probe was lying in wait in the Vega system. It began to transmit a strong signal after it received a radio signal from Earth. The device itself was part of a larger network of probes, as witnessed later by Ellie's journey from probe to probe.

If we are going to embark on megascale engineering projects, we're going to need robots. Lots of 'em. Projects like Dyson Spheres, Ringworlds and Alderson Disks would require fleets of specialized and artificially intelligent probes working in concert to construct these truly massive structures.

Probably the most truly hardcore probe is the Berserker probe, sort of an anti-terraforming device, used to spread death and destruction across the galaxy:

Berserkers could be disseminated with the sole purpose of sterilizing every planetary system it encounters, forever eliminating the possibility for life to emerge and evolve. Should it encounter an inhabited planet, it could use any number of schemes, including nanotech instigated ecophagy, to quickly destroy all life in a matter of hours. By using a scorched galaxy policy, a civilization could sterilize the Milky Way in about 500,000 years.

Alternately, berserker probes could be disbursed across the entire Galaxy and lie dormant, patiently waiting for signs of intelligence.

Seven Ways to Control the Galaxy with Self-Replicating Probes [Sentient Developments]

NASA administrator Doug Cooke says, "We now know the south pole has peaks as high as Mt. McKinley and crater floors four times deeper than the Grand Canyon." So your Moon condos could have beautiful mountain top views, or lie snuggled at the base of a sweeping canyon. Plus, there are more advantages, according to NASA:

The location has many advantages; for one thing, there is evidence of water frozen in deep dark south polar craters. Water can be split into oxygen to breathe and hydrogen to burn as rocket fuel—or astronauts could simply drink it. Planners are also looking for "peaks of eternal light." Tall polar mountains where the sun never sets might be a good place for a solar power station.

New Radar Maps of the Moon [NASA]

According to an early release about her scientific paper:

Scientists have long known that most compounds in living things exist in mirror-image forms. The two forms are like hands; one is a mirror reflection of the other. They are different, cannot be superimposed, yet identical in their parts.

When scientists synthesize these molecules in the laboratory, half of a sample turns out to be "left-handed" and the other half "right-handed." But amino acids, which are the building blocks of terrestrial proteins, are all "left-handed," while the sugars of DNA and RNA are "right-handed." The mystery as to why this is the case, "parallels in many of its queries those that surround the origin of life," said Pizzarello.

Years ago Pizzarello and ASU professor emeritus John Cronin analyzed amino acids from the Murchison meteorite (which landed in Australia in 1969) that were unknown on Earth, hence solving the problem of any contamination. They discovered a preponderance of "left-handed" amino acids over their "right-handed" form.

"The findings of Cronin and Pizzarello are probably the first demonstration that there may be natural processes in the cosmos that generate a preferred amino acid handedness," Jeffrey Bada of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, Calif., said at the time.

The new PNAS work was made possible by the finding in Antarctica of an exceptionally pristine meteorite. Antarctic ices are good "curators" of meteorites. After a meteorite falls — and meteorites have been falling throughout the history of Earth — it is quickly covered by snow and buried in the ice. Because these ices are in constant motion, when they come to a mountain, they will flow over the hill and bring meteorites to the surface.

"Thanks to the pristine nature of this meteorite, we were able to demonstrate that other extraterrestrial amino acids carry the left-handed excesses in meteorites and, above all, that these excesses appear to signify that their precursor molecules, the aldehydes, also carried such excesses," Pizzarello said. "In other words, a molecular trait that defines life seems to have broader distribution as well as a long cosmic lineage."

ASU Researcher May Have Discovered Key to Life Before Its Origin on Earth [Eurekalert]

Above, you can see Titan's dunes. Below, there are dunes from an Earth desert. The sand formations are remarkably similar. Images via NASA.

According to Anneila Sargent, a Caltech professor and ALMA Board member:

Most of the photons in the Universe are in the wavelength range that ALMA will receive, and ALMA will give us our first high-resolution views at these wavelengths. This will be a tremendous advancement for astronomy and open one of our science's last frontiers.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory explained ALMA's capabilities in greater detail:

The millimeter and submillimeter wavelength range lies between what is traditionally considered radio waves and infrared waves. ALMA, a system using up to 66 high-precision dish antennas working together, will provide astronomers with dramatically greater sensitivity, the ability to detect faint objects, and resolving power, the ability to see fine detail, than has ever before been available in this range . . .

Astronomers expect ALMA to make extremely important contributions in a a variety of scientific specialties. The new telescope system will be a premier tool for studying the first stars and galaxies that emerged from the cosmic "dark ages" billions of years ago. These objects now are seen at great cosmic distances, with most of their light stretched out to millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths by the expansion of the Universe.

In the more nearby Universe, ALMA will provide an unprecedented ability to study the processes of star and planet formation. Unimpeded by the dust that obscures visible-light observations, ALMA will be able to reveal the details of young, still-forming stars, and is expected to show young planets still in the process of developing. In addition, ALMA will allow scientists to learn in detail about the complex chemistry of the giant clouds of gas and dust that spawn stars and planetary systems.

Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array [Official Site]

This is the "fan" filled with stair-like formations: The scientists figured out that it was caused by gushing liquid by setting up an experiment on Earth where they recreated the "gushing water" conditions in a sand bed and observed the structures the water carved out. Here's the Earth experiment: Images via ESA, NY Times, and Reuters.

Research Explains Origin of Martian Fans [NY Times]

• 
  
• Richard Cook, designer of MSL, said that it's three times heavier than Spirit and Opportunity, the two rovers currently on Mars right now. It's powered by nuclear energy, designed to last 20 years, travel 10 km, and comes equipped with a laser for vaporizing rocks so it can do chemical and mineralogical analysis on them. "We call it the death ray," he confessed. Joked NASA Jet Propulsion Lab Director Charles Elachi, "In a few years people will be visiting Mars and see bullet holes all over the place [from the laser]."
  
• When Cook and his team were designing Spirit and Opportunity, they wanted to do what he called a "built to print," meaning to the specs on paper. They wanted to base it on the model they'd developed for Sojourner, the previous generation Martian rover. But immediately they figured out that wouldn't work, especially with the more-complicated MER rovers, since they still had to fit inside a small lander. "it's hard to take a rover and put it inside a tetrahedron," Cook said with a laugh, referring to the shape of the lander.
  
• The MSL rover, which will blast off next year, will be able to do experiments that tell us a lot more about Martian water sources. It can do gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GCMS). It has an onboard camera.
  
• Steve Squyres said he was disappointed when Spirit landed in Gusev Crater, which he hoped would be a lakebed. Instead, it was covered in a layer of lava rocks. "I believe the lakebed is there, but it's covered in lava," he said. Luckily, Spirit was able to make it to the Columbia Hills nearby to study a wide variety of rocks.
  
• Some of the rocks that Spirit studied show strong evidence of having been saturated by water, probably steam. Most likely, the hit that created the Gusev Crater shot a bunch of superhot rocks out to the Columbia Hills, and these melted ground water into steam.
  
• "When we talk about water on Mars, what we really mean is sulfuric acid," Squyres explained with a grin.
  
• There is absolutely no doubt that there has been water on Mars, Squyres said, but the fact is that the ratio of water to rocks has always been very low. One piece of compelling visual evidence he showed us was from a study of the sorts of patterns water leaves in soil over years of flowing on it. He compared images of a characteristic, smile-shaped pattern created by waters from the Colorado River with images from rocks on Mars. The smile shapes and sizes were nearly exactly the same.
  
• The rover Opportunity is currently at the Victoria Crater, where it is studying layers in the cliffs to learn more about the geological history of Mars. Some layers make it clear that water did at one point saturate the planet's surface. The walls of the crater are so steep that scientists have to pilot the rover based on satellite images taken by a recently-arrived spacecraft. He showed us images from the spacecraft, which are so high-resolution that you can see Opportunity and the shadow of its antenna at the edge of the crater.
  
• About the Victoria Crater mission, Squyres said, "It takes a lot of guts to drive an 8 hundred million dollar piece of equipment along the edge of a cliff on another planet."
  
• Andrew Knoll said that the real question isn't whether there has been water on Mars, because surely there has been. The question is whether that water is habitable for life as we know it.
  
• Unfortunately for people who want to meet alien life, the prognosis is not good. Chemical and mineral evidence suggests that water on the planet is so salty and acidic that it wouln't support any organisms we know. "Water on Mars would be challenging for life as we know it," he said.
  
• Knoll added that water could have flowed on Mars if it was extremely salty because salt lowers the freezing point of water. Or it could have flowed as a result of asteroid hits that temporarily melted ice.
  
• MSL will do more definitive mineral analysis to determine what the chemical composition of Martian water might have been (or might be).
  
• There has been a lot of debate over the Martian "gullies," structures that look like they were cut into the Martian surface with water. Squyres said, "Some were created during the last five years and look like they've been created by water. But all the ones we've looked at have slopes that suggest they were probably caused by avalanche not water."

[Special note to Moff and Blakeley: Just try making dick jokes about this picture! It can't be done!] Image courtesy of NASA/JHUAPL/CIW NASA Spots Mystery Spider Scar [Space.com]

This richly-illustrated book by Robert Bruce Thomopson and Barbara Fritchman Thompson covers everything from how to take pictures of globular clusters, to hints on how to custom-cut foam for your astronomical instruments case. The book has two goals: to teach you how to read star maps, and to help you create beautiful images of the stars you see. In many ways the former is crucially important. Knowing how to identify constellations and locate yourself relative to them is one of the earliest ways explorers found their way across continents and oceans.

But of course, many of us will only use this book because we are curious to see and photograph what lies beyond our naked eyes in the heavens. To ease you into uranography, chapters are arranged by constellation. You learn to make images while learning sky maps at the same time. And luckily the Thompsons are able to make even the most alarmingly complex maps legible to a layperson. Before you know it, you'll be reading the skies like a pro, and creating amazing images of the Pinwheel Galaxy (at left). It's the perfect passtime for those long winter nights.

And if you manage to observe most of the objects in the book, there's a chance you'll get a prize! The Thompsons have picked the constellations in the book to meet the requirements most "observing club entities," which they point out generally give a certificate or "a lapel pin." W00t! I'll wear it next to my pin that says "I <3 Robots." Image courtesy of NASA.

In 1959, Philip Shockey wrote an essay called "The Ultimate Necessity of Space Travel," which was about how humans would never survive unless they left the planet. Shockey's daughter has posted the article in its entirety (which we found thanks to Paleo-Future), and it's fascinating to see early Space Age writing on a topic that has become almost a cliche in science fiction — and a nonstarter as a political platform.

Shockey points out that the sun is going to go red giant and destroy the Earth in the next 50 million years, and therefore we must start prepping now to get all our valuable Earth culture off the planet where it will be safe. What's interesting is that his ideas take a decidedly political turn once he's made this point:

The project is so huge in scope that no single country will be able to carry it through; the physical and mental resources of all the world will be required. This unified effort should produce nonviolent political and religious revolutions terminating in world harmony . . . It is difficult to see how any of the existing formal religions or political plans, except democracy, will survive scrutiny by a world population applying the scientific method to all phases of life.

If you want to hear a more contemporary plea for offworld planning, check out Carl Sagan's Cosmos miniseries, which is airing again on the Discovery Channel starting Jan. 8.

"The Ultimate Necessity of Space Travel" [Space Journal]

• Wind power may not be a clean energy source of the future after all. Though Sweden has just built a massive wind farm at sea, most countries have found wind an inefficient and unreliable energy source. [New York Times]
  
  Why brain damage is okay and MySpace experiences white flight after the jump.
  
  

• Just because you're brain damaged and lose a huge part of your memory, it doesn't mean you don't care. A study published today shows that people with profound memory loss can still empathize with other people and figure out what they are feeling. In other words, you don't need specific memories of your life in order to have social skills. So that whole subplot about the hot, romantic amnesiac on Gray's Anatomy is based in scientific fact, OK? [Scienceblog]
  
• Apparently, your race and parents' educational background are the main things that determine whether you'll join MySpace. Researchers at Northwestern found that Latinos prefer MySpace, as do the children of people with less than a high school education. White kids whose parents went to college prefer Facebook. Could mass social network abandonment for Facebook be the white flight of the future? [Northwestern University]
  
• Mars doubled in brightness over the past month, and backyard astronomers are taking pictures of its blue-white polor ice caps. Meanwhile, it turns out the sun may be smaller than we thought. [NASA and New Scientist]

Space.com reports:

Io's volcanoes spew out sulfur dioxide, which is a gas that stinks of freshly lit matches and almost entirely makes up the moon's atmosphere. As Io rotates from daylight into darkness, chilling the yellowish rock down to -226 F (-143 C), the gas freezes into a solid, much like dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide gas). About 1 to 3 percent of Io's dayside atmosphere, it turns out, is created by the volcanoes. The rest is generated from frozen sulfur dioxide turning directly into gas which, over eons, has accumulated on Io's surface.

New Horizon also got a cool image of Io's "aurora," which is caused by all that volcanic gas getting hurled into the air. Looks awesome.

The Space Age is dead, it died of starvation and neglect, somewhere around 1980. Yes, we fed it and gave it money while it was young, and exciting, and sexy, while our love for it was bright and new, but when it got older, and needed more expensive care and more of our time and understanding we guided it to a comfy chair over on the far side of the room, made it a cup of tea, handed it a magazine and left it to look after itself

Atkinson, who founded the Cockermouth Astronomical Society, says we got distracted by the allure of the Information Age. Soon we were out partying with our shiny iPods and googling ourselves in the corner, while the Space Age faded away. (Mostly I just wanted an excuse to say "Cockermouth.")

John Seiler has another explanation: "Funny how the "Space Age" ended about the time that alien creature burst from the guy's chest in "Alien" in 1979."

Space Age: RIP [via Cumbrian Sky] [Image by Getty Images]