Name an exoplanet!
The International Astronomical Union (IAU), faced with challenges to its authority in naming astronomical objects, is instituting a contest allowing the public to name the 305 most studied exoplanets.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The International Astronomical Union (IAU), faced with challenges to its authority in naming astronomical objects, is instituting a contest allowing the public to name the 305 most studied exoplanets.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Are they going to take their ball and go home if this doesn’t work?
IAU = Irrelevant Astronomical Union
Only if they don’t get to name it.
I seem to recall some years ago the IAU overuled the actual discoverer of the first large trans-Plutonian Kuiper Belt object which he had named Xena, after the warrior princess character on TV. The IAU apparently found this to be too undignified or something and gave it another name, which I don’t remember for sure at the moment – Sedna, maybe? Anyway, that little incident suggested that naming astronomical objects had just become way too important to be left to the tight-assed twits at IAU. Fight the power, people!