Keith Cowing has a nice essay on the current state of our knowledge of Martian history.

Jay Manifold’s comment on this post:

A few years back, when I lived in Dallas, the director of the planetarium at Fair Park told a Texas Astronomical Society meeting that when the planetarium announced that telescopes would be available for public viewing of the Tue 10 Jun 94 annular solar eclipse, they got calls from people asking why they hadn’t scheduled it on a weekend, when more people could drive down to see it.

These calls were from teachers.

…got me to thinking.

His power grows.

How did Glenn manage to schedule the opposition of Mars with his birthday? He moved an entire planet just so he could take the day off from blogging?

Be very afraid.

If the sky’s clear in your area, go check out the comet tonight after sunset. Thanks to Jay Manifold for the link.

I have no problem with looking for ET–I just object to making it the holy grail of the agency, while ignoring more practical goals that could make it fasterbettercheaper to not only look for ET, but to actually go out and sing Kumbaya with him, or use a disintegrator ray on him–and to figure out quickly which was appropriate to the circumstances.