Instead of Suns, the Earth. Another kind of science fiction by Christopher Cokinos IN HIS ACERBIC COLLECTION of essays, The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World, writer and critic Thomas Disch says that “there can be no question that the rocket ship is the genre’s primary icon. . . . It is an identifier, like the cross or the hammer and sickle, with a single all-encompassing meaning, one that transcends all distinctions of class, taste, or even logic.” The similes Disch chooses are apt, for science fiction’s upward gaze has all the hallmarks of faith, religious or secular. It is a kind of dreamy frontierism in which the Earth is our past, the suns our future. “The Earth is man’s cradle, but one cannot live in the cradle forever,” wrote Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the Russian rocket visionary; the quote is famous among the starry-eyed. Even during the 1940s and 1950s when pulp science fiction ruled—especially John W.
Astronomy. Astronomy Resources at STScI. Current Night Sky. The Sky At A Glance There is a total lunar eclipse on April 15. The entire total phase will be visible from most of North America and western South America. (See "What's New") There is an annular solar eclipse on April 29. The annular portion of the eclipse will be visible only from Antarctica; partial phases of the eclipse will be visible in southern Australia. The Moon & Planets On April 6, the First Quarter Moon passes about 6° below Jupiter. Evening Planets (after sunset) Jupiter, WMars, SE Visible at Midnight Jupiter, WMars, SSaturn, SE Morning Planets (before sunrise) Mars, WSaturn, SWVenus, EMercury, E (early April)Neptune, E Comets There are no comets brighter than magnitude 8.0 visible in April.
Meteors The Lyrid meteors peak on April 22. Magazine: Space. Origins. GRIN. Gallery. Learn More at Space.com. From Satellites to Stars, NASA informat. MODIS Website. Our Solar System. NOAA / NWS Space Weather Prediction Center. Origins. Origins: Back to the Beginning September 29, 2004 NEIL deGRASSE TYSON (Astrophysicist): A hellish, fiery wasteland, a molten planet hostile to life, yet somehow, amazingly, this is where we got our start. How? How did the universe, our planet, how did we ourselves come to be?
Right now, we're all eavesdropping on the birth pangs of the cosmos. DAVID SPERGEL (Princeton University): ...how big it is, how old it is, what's it made of, and what were the processes that made galaxies, that made us. NEIL deGRASSE TYSON: So a furious race is on to solve the ultimate mystery. ANTHONY READHEAD (California Institute of Technology): The spirit of competition is one of the things, of course, that drives scientists. Keep our fingers crossed. NEIL deGRASSE TYSON: And as our new vision of the universe emerges, strange ideas reveal themselves. STAN WOOSLEY (University of California, Santa Cruz): Stars are the ultimate alchemist.
NEIL deGRASSE TYSON: Those elements are the building blocks of life. Hello. NASA Spitzer Space Telescope. The Astronomy Center. Science News for Kids: Home Page.