Category: Just for Fun

In Which I Ask Conan O’Brien His Thoughts On Space Exploration

Can’t see the video below? Click here. On Monday afternoon, Team Coco — that is, the Google Plus page for comedian and late-night TV host Conan O’Brien — posted a video contest where five lucky “Plussers” would be able to participate in Conan’s first-ever live Google Hangout. All you needed to do was record and post a…

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How Big Is The Solar System?

“You may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.” – Douglas Adams Standard classroom models and textbook illustrations of the Solar System, regardless of how pretty they are, all share one thing in common: they’re wrong. Ok, maybe not wrong, but definitely inaccurate… especially in regards…

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“Wonders” App Takes You on a 3D Tour of the Universe

Can’t see the video below? Click here. If you’re a fan of space, you may have seen the BBC/Science Channel series “Wonders of the Universe”, hosted by the award-winning physicist Brian Cox. Professor Cox’s natural enthusiasm for astronomy is nothing short of infectious, and his explanations of far-out concepts help bring the amazing mysteries of…

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Lights in the Dark: 2011 in review

Thanks to all my readers and subscribers for making 2011 another great year! Here’s to more exploration in 2012! Here’s an excerpt: The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 150,000 times in 2011. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 6 days…

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Happy Birthday to LITD!

Today is Lights in the Dark’s second birthday! I published my first post two years ago today, in an attempt to carry on what Bill Dunford had started with his similarly-themed blog Riding With Robots. When Bill had to step away from his blogging for a while, I asked if he’d be cool with me…

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A Sense of “Scale”

Here’s a very cool animation by motion designer Brad Goodspeed, showing what our night sky might look like were some of the other planets in our solar system at the same distance from us as the Moon. (About 240,000 miles / 384,000 km.) Wait for Jupiter to make quite an entrance… While watching the video…

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Lesson Learned

Another good one from the awesome that is xkcd. Brilliant. The Stingray Nebula (Hen-1357) is one of the youngest known planetary nebula – the result of a dying star shedding its outer layers and illuminating the expanding gas with radiation. Located in the southern constellation Ara (the Altar) the Stingray Nebula is 18,000 light-years away….

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Photo Trivia Answer

The answer has been posted to the first LITD Photo Trivia! Check it out on the original article. I think I gave everyone enough opportunity to guess… 🙂

Photo Trivia

In the tradition of Universe Today’s “Where in the Universe” series, here’s a little space exploration-based photo trivia for you: what is pictured in the above image? It’s something that many of you are already familiar with, and it’s not outside of our solar system…..but that’s all the clues I’m giving! 🙂 I know one…

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