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3I/Atlas coming to a planet near you!
https://www.space.com/news/live/interstellar-comet-3i-atlas-closest-to-earth-flyby-week-dec-18-2025 Discovered on July 1 by the NASA-funded ATLAS telescopes in Chile, 3I/ATLAS is only the third confirmed interstellar object known to have passed through our cosmic neighborhood, following 1I/‘Oumuamua in 2017 and comet 2I/Borisov in 2019. Its trajectory shows that it originated from beyond our solar system and will eventually travel back into interstellar space. https://www.space.com/astronomy/comets/interstellar-comet-3i-atlas-makes-its-closest-approach-to-earth-on-dec-19-heres-what-you-need-to-know […]
Geminids, Geminids, Geminids!
It’s been several months since I last posted…too much work and no play! Until this past Sunday. Whew. After a morning lecture about ancient Japanese myths and “deliberately forgotten” kings (maybe), I was grateful to be able to take a quick power nap… …so that the family could go up a nearby mountain and watch […]
Life on Trappist 1e?
In two separate papers published Monday in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, astronomers zeroed in on the TRAPPIST-1 system, which consists of seven rocky planets that orbit a single star. Both studies outlined initial results from observations by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, suggesting that one planet in particular, known as TRAPPIST-1e, may have a nitrogen-rich atmosphere like Earth’s, […]
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© Matthew Apple and Taking Leave, 2009-2020. Duplication of this material without express and written permission is strictly prohibited. If you would like to post or copy brief excerpts from the blog, please provide a link to the original URL along with an author’s credit.
Tag Archives: shinkansen
Daddy-daughter vacation (kind of)
Friday, my two daughters (aged 7 and 4) and I set off on a four-hour bullet train (Shinkansen) ride without my wife. She did see us off at the Shin-Osaka bullet train station, but since she had a week-long business … Continue reading
Posted in family outings, holidays, Japan, Japanese, Japanese culture, parenting, Uncategorized
Tagged cross-cultural, fathers, Kagoshima, shinkansen
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Home for the holidays (Part 1)
After a series of fairly serious blog posts related to an ongoing complaint against Amazon (which was somewhat, but not entirely, resolved), I thought it was about time to post about a slightly more innocuous topic: Making pottery at the … Continue reading
Posted in family outings, holidays, Japan, trips
Tagged bullet train, child-raising, Japan, Japanese, Kyushu, New Year's, shinkansen
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