Aug 14 2020 - Deciding between the Moon and Florida
It used to be that humans gazed toward the heavens, searching to put meaning and order to the universe around them. The movement of constellations were tracked, charted and predicted. That was astrometry - the measure of the sun, moon and planets.
Now it is the field of astronomy, full of fields of study - planetary, stellar, solar, galactic, and cosmology.
The hobbyist can be an astronomer. One can go to space.com and find out that "commencing a few minutes after midnight on Friday, and continuing during the wee hours of Saturday, Aug. 15, observers in the Americas can witness the rare event of a double shadow transit — accompanied by the Great Red Spot! At 12:06 a.m. EDT (or 04:06 GMT) Io's small shadow will join Ganymede's larger shadow and the Great Red Spot already progressing across Jupiter's northern and southern hemispheres, respectively. The trio will remain visible until Ganymede's shadow and the GRS move off Jupiter at about 1:53 a.m. EDT (or 05:53 GMT). Io's shadow will complete its transit at approximately 2:25 a.m. EDT (or 06:25 GMT)."
One can immerse oneself in the headlines of space-related events:
The Arecibo observatory in Puerto Rico suffered serious damage on August 10th 2020 when a support cable broke.
Scientists probe the weird, alien water inside of Uranus and Neptune
Falling fireballs crashed in chile last week. They weren't meteorites, experts say
One can become expert on the space business news:
Pentagon picks SpaceX and ULA to remain its primary launch providers
SpaceX launches Starlink and BlackSky satellites
It seems to me that there are many space jokes - hundreds of them. Mostly they are puns for 10 - 12 year olds. This one appealed to me:
Q. Which is closer, Florida or the moon? A. The moon. You can’t see Florida from here.
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