Public Viewing of the Partial Eclipse of the Sun May 20, 2012
In the San Francisco Bay Area
Compiled by Andrew Fraknoi (Foothill College & Astronomical Society of the Pacific)
For eclipse information, see: http://www.astrosociety.org/2012eclipse
Berkeley
Scientists, researchers and volunteers from NASA Ames, the SETI Institute and other organizations are searching for fragments of the Sutter's Mill Meteor that illuminated the sky over the Sierra Nevada mountains at 7:51a.m. PDT Sunday, April 22, 2012.
Teams have searched for and found several meteorites and are now in the process of analyzing the fragments, searching for clues that could indicate how life might have began on our planet.
Allen Tough, a long-time promoter and participant in SETI, died on April 27 in his home town of Toronto. For more than a decade, Allen wrestled with multiple system atrophy, a progressive neurological disease. Despite the handicaps imposed by this condition, he remained an interested and active member of the SETI community.
There was a time—not too long ago—when talk of finding life outside the solar system was just that: talk. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) was an exercise in fantasy to many mainstream scientists. Now, after the discovery of hundreds of extrasolar planets, there is an ever-growing certainty among planetary scientists that it's just a matter of time before an Earth-like, habitable planet is discovered.
