Neil deGrasse Tyson

Partial shot of the Mare Imbrium

In light of the Neil deGrasse Tyson seminar last night, I thought I'd post this pic. I took this with my cell phone by holding it up against my telescope lens. My real interest in the Mare Imbrium stems from a book I read entitled "Circumference". I found out the main character ( Eratosthenes ) has a crater named after him on the edge of the Mare Imbrium. I learned that Archimedes and Plato also have craters named after them in this area. I learned of the nearby crater named after Copernicus, who let's face it, is legendary. All of the above mentioned I find to be very interesting people.

So now, let's get to Tyson's seminar last night. I will say Tyson is very funny and entertaining. He did a great job and I would not take that away from him. Afterwards I had personal wishes he would have elaborated on some different subjects. Today after conferring with some of my colleagues that also attended, I found they shared the same sediment. Toward the beginning of the show Tyson admits his part in the demotion of Pluto as a planet. It would have been nice to hear more of the explanation. The fact that Pluto does not "Clear its neighborhood" and how that is criteria for a planet. On that subject you could get into the topic of the Kuiper belt itself and New horizons. Then again, I may hold a slight bias about this topic, apparent by the name of my blog. There was no talk of dark matter or dark energy. I suppose that because the subject was "The search for life on the universe" it's not surprising these topics were not discussed. There was talk of Europa, Titan and Enceladus. Mars was discussed quite a bit along with Saturn and its probe(s) Cassini - Huygens. Perhaps due to the fact my go-to website when I'm free is Space.com, it was basically stuff I've read about in detail. There was a segment on the Rosetta probe. I would have liked to have heard elaboration on the 10 years it spent chasing an asteroid around in deep space. Some of the gravity assist moves and maneuvers Rosetta performed are quite impressive. But again, "The search for life on the universe" would probably stray from this subject. There was short segment on the Hayabus probe and Ryugu which is always an interesting topic. All in all seeing Tyson in person and hearing him speak was awesome. Even though it left me with more to be desired, I am happy that I attended.