Astronomy

‘Strawberry moon’ will greet sky watchers across the Pacific Northwest Wednesday night.

The absence of lunar glare will boost the brightness of this year’s mid-November display, said astronomer Michael Allen of Washington State University’s department of physics and astronomy.

The three WSU scientists collaborated with other members of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration in multiple ways to make this unique discovery. One of them was to characterize the detectors in order to improve their sensitivity to these weak gravitational-wave signals.

By Will Ferguson, College of Arts and Sciences

PULLMAN, Wash. – Three billion years ago in a distant galaxy, two massive black holes slammed together, merged into one and sent space–time vibrations, known as gravitational waves, shooting out into the universe.

By Linda Weiford, WSU News

PULLMAN, Wash. – Parts of Washington state will be treated to an extraordinary show during what NASA is calling the “Great American Eclipse” on Aug. 21, even though the sun won’t completely disappear.

PULLMAN, Wash. – If you are anything like me, you like watching the night sky. The stars we see are a lot like our nearest star, the sun. They are just much farther away. That makes stars look like small twinkly things instead of a big, furious thing like our sun.

VANCOUVER, Wash. – Just the other night, I grabbed my binoculars and looked up to the starry sky. At first the stars looked white, but when I looked closer I noticed some appeared more blue and red.

PULLMAN, Wash. – No matter how still we stand, or if we’re in Scotland, Malaysia or the United States, we are always spinning. Our Earth spins at a constant, very fast speed as we make a trip around the sun.

By Linda Weiford, WSU News

PULLMAN, Wash. – The Palouse offered some of the best seats in the house for stargazers during the recent Perseid meteor shower. The convergence of warm temperatures, cloudless skies and scant light pollution made for prime viewing.

OLYMPIA, Wash. – Our sun is really one big star. And there are billions and billions of stars in our universe.