The largest meteor shower of this year is occurring now.  Above is an extraordinary  photo of the Perseid meteor shower on 12August2021 by Josh Drur y ( right ) over Stonehenge.  You also see our Milky Way.  The Perseids, associated with the Swift-Tuttle comet, started Monday morning and will continue for up to five nights.  The best time to watch is near dawn before there is any kind of sunlight.   However, the best night was the first one, partly because of Moon conditions.  From all indications, not worth a bother watching the Perseids anymore this year. These flaming particles burn up by the time they get as close as 50 miles from the Earth's surface. Note that this comet has a 133-year orbit, and what you see is the leftover particles from previous visits. John Denver's song  Rocky Mountain High  makes reference to this shower. Almost all meteor showers are associated with a passing comet or asteroid, and some are named after...

The Pandemic is over, and, while covid still lurks, this subject is swiftly becoming a non-newsworthy subject.  Mind you, don't be stupid about this virus, for it will yet return in various ways.  In the future, though, until this happens, Thursdays will thus evolve into my health and medical advances day.  So for today, from   Worldometer : Most cases this week ( 7 day period ): World  161,589  #1  S. Korea  106,642  ( 66% of all cases ) #2  USA  15,918 #3  Brazil  9,297 But many countries don't report anymore. Cases in past week per million population: World  20 #1  Tokelau  22,496 #2  S. Korea  2,078 #3  Barbados  1309 #18  USA  48 #30  Phillipines  20 Deaths this past week: World  577 Brazil  138 Canada  96 USA  81 Deaths in past week per million population: World  0.07 #1  Barbados  21 #2  Norway  6 #3  New Ze...

                      From  Worldometer  (new  COVID-19 deaths yesterday):     DAY     USA    WORLD      Brazil      India      South Africa June     9     1093     4732         1185        246       82 July    22      1205     7128         1293      1120     572 Aug    12      1504     6556        1242        835     130 Sept     9      1208      6222       1136       1168       82 Oct     21      1225      6849...

For my science Wednesday, I return to outer space.  It is more and more appearing that just about every star out there has a surrounding solar system, meaning planets, or, relative to us, extrasolar planets, or exoplanets.  In fact,  Forbes , speculated that for every star, there are from 100 to 100,000 planets.  Most of these are rogue planets in the spaces between stars.  The ones astrobiologists  are interested in for possible life must, of course, have a close-by star to provide energy. Any photos of them?   Actually one was announced  in April of this year, using the Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea, together with the Hubble Telescope.  Well, maybe not quite, as this a globe about 9 times the mass of Jupiter at an early stage of planet formation.  It was located circling star AB Aurigae located 508 light years away. If that counts as one, then now two, as the  James Webb Space Telescope  just reported imaging another. Ex...