A Road Trip with Commander Chris

Happy Trails! Send me a postcard!

Asteroid 2024 YR4 Was Earth's First Real-Life Defense Test November 17, 2025
At this point in history, astronomers and engineers who grew up watching Deep Impact and Armageddon, two movies about the destructive power of asteroid impacts, are likely in relatively high ranking positions at space agencies. Don’t Look Up also provided a more modern, though more pessimistic (or, unfortunately, realistic?), look at what might potentially happen […]
DESI's Dizzying Results November 16, 2025
In March of 2024 the [DESI collaboration](https://www.desi.lbl.gov/collaboration/) dropped a bombshell on the cosmological community: slim but significant evidence that dark energy might be getting weaker with time.
Astronomers Detect the Early Shape of a Star Exploding for the First Time November 16, 2025
Swift observations with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) have revealed the explosive death of a star just as the blast was breaking through the star’s surface. For the first time, astronomers unveiled the shape of the explosion at its earliest, fleeting stage. This brief initial phase wouldn’t have been observable a […]
Remember That Paper Claiming The Universe Is Decelerating? Here's What A Nobel Laureate Has To Say About It November 16, 2025
So I got an email from Adam Reiss. You know, the guy who was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics along with Saul Perlmutter and Brian Schmidt for discovering the rate of cosmic expansion is accelerating. He pointed out a few issues with the decelerating Universe paper, and with his permission I'd like to […]
Sunday Night Doubleheader: Catch the 2025 Leonid Meteors and an Aurora Encore November 16, 2025
Keep an eye on the sky Sunday night and early Monday morning for the Leonid meteors, and a possible second auroral storm. Once every other generation, the Lion roars. If skies are clear Monday morning, keep an eye out for one of the best annual November showers, the Leonid meteors. Also as an extra treat, […]