The Stellar Survey for January 1 - January 18

• Eclipses and meteors and moon missions, oh my. | Check out the CBC’s astronomical calendar for 2024.

• Colonizers gonna colonize. Is anyone surprised, really? | The new race to the Moon raises questions about the Moon’s resources (and how, as humans, we will probably wreck them).

• Like Norma Desmond, but older. | Check out this close-up of Io, one of Jupiter’s moons!

• Nothing to see here, no trouble at all. | Anomaly detected on lunar lander heading for moon with remains of Star Trek cast members and JFK’s DNA.

  Do you need more evidence that if we go back to the Moon, we should try very hard not to mess everything up? Yes? | Here you go.

• I was (very) late to this, but if by some radical impossibility you’re a Star Trek fan who hasn’t yet watched The Center Seat, you should. | Center is spelled wrong but what can one Canadian do.

• Baby, turn the lights down. | You can now add “dark sky approved” to your must-have list for lodgings when you go travelling.

• Rockstars…literally. | How to find and keep a space rock.

• I love the work of astrophysicist Marcelo Gleiser, self-prescribed “rational mystic”. | Here is a wonderful interview with him in last November’s issue of Nautilus.

• Far out in every sense of the word. | The James Webb Space Telescope shows that many early galaxies looked like pool noodles and surfboards.

• Who’s laughing now, redwoods? | Lichens are so tough they can survive in outer space.

• Space is all about moving from chaos to order and back again. Weeee! | Newly discovered cosmic megastructure challenges theories of the universe.

• Space, for the environmentally conscious! Maybe all is not totally lost. | This self-eating rocket consumes itself for fuel.

• SpaceX called off the launch of its rocket this Wednesday and rescheduled for today (the 18th), pending all looks okay. | Here’s hoping it’s a-go.

• Russians and Americans in space, but make it a movie! | What could possibly go wrong?

• When I was in Grade 6 I was learning about catechism. Not that I’m bitter, or anything. | GTA students take part in simulated rover mission.

• CANCON FTW. } A sample of an asteroid nicknamed Bennu is now being studied at the University of Winnipeg.

• Once upon a time we searched for exoplanets in vain. | Now, we’re finding them all of the time.

• Space is the new Wild Wild West, complete with macho cowboys who Have Issues. | It’s a whole new universe of diplomacy, amirite.

• THE ISS IS BEING DECOMMISSIONED. WHAT. | Actually its end has been planned for 2030 for some time. We’re entering a new age of corporate space travel. Which, as we all know, can only mean bigger and better things and lots of billionaire money flowing in all the right places and lots of appropriate safety measures. Right?

• And finally, for this week’s dose of incredible wonder. Let’s all sit for a moment and breathe, and take this in. | The James Webb Space Telescope has discovered the oldest and most distant black hole ever seen.