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Jan 2, 2025 | 
patagoniaregionaltimes.org | Harold Meckler
“Forging a Sustainable Southwest” by Stephen E. Strom (University of Arizona Press) $35.00, Kindle $33.25Stephen Strom’s “Forging a Sustainable Southwest” provides the backstory, the science and a wealth of photographs and graphics that describe the efforts—beginning in the 1980s—to address and restore the historical and diverse landscapes of Southern Arizona and adjacent regions.
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Jan 2, 2025 | 
patagoniaregionaltimes.org | Harold Meckler
I have to stop taking stuff for granted. At a recent star party, I was asked how it was first determined that what looked like one of the many nebulae within the Milky Way Galaxy was actually something much, much farther away. How did it come to be known as the Andromeda Galaxy? I gave a mumbling answer that satisfied neither myself nor the questioner. In my laziness, I’ve simply always accepted that someone, somehow, just plain figured it out.
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Dec 5, 2024 | 
patagoniaregionaltimes.org | Harold Meckler
It’s fun to look for meanings when there are none. We do it all the time. We chalk up athletic victories to such things as aura and mystique. Chance meetings with old friends must be the work of fate, something “meant to be.” The list of variables willfully applied to any event can be so overwhelming that the 14th century English philosopher William of Ockham suggested that “entities are not to be multiplied without necessity.” Today, we call it Occam’s Razor.
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Oct 31, 2024 | 
patagoniaregionaltimes.org | Harold Meckler
If nothing else, this election season has caused me to look even more at the sky for answers. Now, I really don’t think I’m going to find them hidden behind some star or nebula or alongside a speeding comet, but the search has been so revealing, that I have, actually, found the very answer that’s been eluding my grasp for so long.
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Oct 4, 2024 | 
patagoniaregionaltimes.org | Harold Meckler
If you go outside on a moonless night, and if you can find a dark location away from all of the artificial light that robs the evening of its darkness, you can gaze upward at a hazy streak that we call the Milky Way even though it is but one part of the galaxy of the same name. As the monsoon leaves us, the night sky has become ours again. Its most remarkable feature is its totality. Sometimes, the big picture really is more impressive than the parts that lead to its sum.
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Aug 2, 2024 | 
patagoniaregionaltimes.org | Harold Meckler
Sometimes you need two speeches in your pocket because you’re just not sure which one will match with the facts or the audience once you get in front of them and read their mood. With that in mind and with some luck, you’ll be reading this before a binary star system in Corona Borealis goes nova. If not, well, here’s an afterword on what, as of right now, promises to be a fascinating celestial event. Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown, is a prominent constellation throughout the season.
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Jun 6, 2024 | 
patagoniaregionaltimes.org | Harold Meckler
Some celestial objects stand alone. Others pull us in with their complexities. Want to study astronomy without looking all over the night sky? Try the Summer Triangle. It is well up in the East throughout the next few months, moving slowly overhead as June and July give way. It is a science course unto itself. The Milky Way serves as a mottled background to the three constellations—Lyra, Cygnus and Aquila—whose alpha stars—Vega, Deneb and Altair, respectively—provide the contours for our attention.
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May 2, 2024 | 
patagoniaregionaltimes.org | Harold Meckler
April did not disappoint. Between its solar eclipse and the return—after 71 years—of Comet 12P Pons-Brooks, it gave us all we could ask for. It made us all kids again and turned kids into teachers. It showed us a way forward, a way out and a way to simply let go, leaving it up to us to decide which way was best. April illuminated our choices. My wife and I watched the eclipse through an old, discolored colander.
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Apr 4, 2024 | 
patagoniaregionaltimes.org | Harold Meckler
Every so often, when the moon crosses directly between the sun and Earth, we get to experience the magic of a solar eclipse. The resulting shadow briefly turns day into night and gives astronomers an opportunity to observe the Sun’s corona, it’s outermost layer. In parts of the U.S. a total eclipse will occur on April 8. Arizonans will see a partial eclipse—about a 75% blockage—of the Sun. The event should begin shortly after 10am and conclude over two hours later. Solar eclipses happen infrequently.
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Apr 4, 2024 | 
patagoniaregionaltimes.org | Harold Meckler
Halfway across the galaxy, hidden from us by the miles and the dust and the hundreds of millions of stars, is a small, rocky planet orbiting its sun much like we do our own. It has no name, at least to its outsiders. I call it Pilfer because I can, and because it has stolen my heart. Eons ago, while it was in its infancy, it was struck countless times by stellar debris, leaving it with scars and craters, and with the atoms and molecules that began to transform it.
