Beyond Bones

By Ralph Phillips, Docent at HMNS Sugar Land, introduction by Chris Wells A few years ago everyone’s heart went out to our littlest neighbor when Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet. This sentimental feeling was interesting because it revealed a burgeoning sense of extraterrestrial community among us earthlings. Instead of only identifying ourselves as […]

  Jupiter is almost due south at dawn; it outshines all the stars we ever see at night.   Mars is in the south-southeast at dawn.   It brightens a little each morning as moves away from Jupiter and towards Saturn.    Saturn is in the southeast at dawn this month.     Venus is lost […]

It’s Throwback Thursday and today we are going all the way back to 2009 to discuss a scientific fail. Galileo Galilei is famous for his astronomical observations and discoveries, but he could have been famous for one more thing! He was technically the first astronomer to observe Neptune while studying Jupiter’s moons in 1612 and […]

As planetarium astronomer, my job includes fielding astronomy related questions from the public.  A couple of weeks ago, I received in the mail several perceptive questions from Madison, a third grader in Lawrence, Kansas.  After answering them, I realized that the answers, and the questions that elicited them,  might benefit many of our BEYONDbones readers. […]