Bob Moler
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mrephemeris.bsky.social
Bob Moler
@mrephemeris.bsky.social
88 followers 99 following 270 posts
Retired computer systems engineer, programmer; current amateur astronomer, volunteer radio program producer. Most posts point to my blog postings, which illustrate my short Ephemeris radio programs on astronomy and space.
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mrephemeris.bsky.social
Ephemeris: 11/28/2025 – What will AI's effect be on the future of society?
bobmoler.wordpress.com/2025/11/28/e...
Credit: Dick Wright, PoliticalCartoons.com / CTNewsJunkie via Cagle Cartoons / ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
November 28, 2025 at 7:19 AM
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Ephemeris: 11/27/2025 – AIs, apparent knowledge without wisdom
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From an MIT stock image by Christine Daniloff.
November 27, 2025 at 5:05 AM
mrephemeris.bsky.social
Ephemeris: 11/26/2025 – Checking out the naked eye planets
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Jupiter, Saturn and the Moon along with the zodiacal constellations in this panorama at 9 PM tonight, November 26, 2025. Created using Stellarium.
November 26, 2025 at 5:05 AM
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Ephemeris: 11/25/2025 – AI is not your friend
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Just some of the AI corporate logos.
November 25, 2025 at 5:04 AM
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Ephemeris: 11/24/2025 – Off topic, musings about Machine Intelligence
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Credit: Xpert.Digital
November 24, 2025 at 5:04 AM
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Ephemeris: 11/21/2025 – Finding Taurus the bull
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Taurus with Orion rising at 8 PM tonight, November 21.
November 21, 2025 at 5:05 AM
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Ephemeris: 11/20/2025 – Venus is disappearing from the morning sky
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The Venus Cycle as seen by the Mayans.
November 20, 2025 at 5:01 AM
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Ephemeris: 11/19/2025 – Taking our weekly look at the whereabouts of the naked-eye planets
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Jupiter, in the east, among the rising winter stars and Saturn in the south southwest at 10 PM tonight, November 19, 2025. Created using Stellarium.
November 19, 2025 at 5:01 AM
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Ephemeris: 11/18/2025 – What other cultures see in the Pleiades
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The mostly naked eye stars of the Pleiades with the Anishinaabe hole in the sky in the bowl of the tiny dipper shape of the Pleiades. Also, the stars themselves are considered the seven stones heated for the sweat lodge ceremony. Created using Stellarium and LibreOffice Draw.
November 18, 2025 at 5:05 AM
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Ephemeris: 11/17/2025 – More about the Pleiades
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The Pleiades, at 9 PM tonight, with Orion rising to chase them. While he's seen holding a club, that's not for the Pleiades. In between Orion and the Pleiades is the constellation of Taurus the bull, whose lines I've omitted in this image. His face is the sideways letter V of stars, with Aldebaran at one end. Taurus is either attacking or being attacked. Created using Stellarium.
November 17, 2025 at 5:53 AM
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Ephemeris: 11/14/2025 – The Leonid meteor shower peaks Monday morning
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The dome of the sky at 5 AM Monday November 17, 2025, showing the Leonid Radiant at the head of Leo the lion. It is marked with the tag LeoR. Click or tap on the image to enlarge it. Created using my Looking Up app.
November 14, 2025 at 6:51 AM
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Ephemeris: 11/13/2025 – Looking at the Pleiades or Seven Sisters
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Finding the Pleiades at about 8 PM or 3 hours after sunset for mid-northern latitudes, showing the eastern sky with annotations.
November 13, 2025 at 5:06 AM
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Ephemeris: 11/12/2025 – Taking our weekly look at the whereabouts of the naked-eye planets
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Saturn in the south southeast with the nearby zodiacal constellations at 8 PM tonight, November 12, 2025. Created using Stellarium.
November 12, 2025 at 5:17 AM
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Ephemeris: 11/11/2025 – The difference between a nova and a Type 1a supernova
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NASA artist's depiction of a recurrent nova. In this case the white dwarf is buried in the disc of gas surrounding a red giant star. This is a generic representation and may not depict the state of affairs of T CrB.
November 11, 2025 at 5:55 AM
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Ephemeris: 11/10/2025 – Waiting on a stellar explosion
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If T CrB goes nova around November 10, 2025, this would be the location of the nova in the sky at 7 PM for the Grand Traverse area of Michigan. This is about an hour and 20 minutes after sunset for most northern mid-latitude locations.
November 10, 2025 at 5:05 AM
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Ephemeris: 11/07/25 – GTAS meeting tonight, topic is Fighting Light Pollution
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A Satellite View Lights of the United States at Night. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center.
November 7, 2025 at 5:30 AM
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Ephemeris: 11/06/2025 – An astronomer thinks a nova will appear soon
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If T CrB goes nova around November 10, 2025, this would be the location of the nova in the sky at 7 PM for the Grand Traverse area if Michigan. This is about an hour and 20 minutes after sunset for most northern mid-latitude locations. Created using Stellarium.
November 6, 2025 at 5:05 AM
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11/05/2025 – Taking our weekly look at the whereabouts of the naked-eye planets
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Venus will be visible very low in the east-southeast, and Jupiter will be high in the south southwestern sky among the winter stars at 6:30 AM tomorrow morning, November 6, 2025. Created using Stellarium.
November 5, 2025 at 5:05 AM
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Ephemeris: 10/04/2025 – The Persephone Period starts tomorrow
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One of the many sculptures of Persephone and Hades. Uncredited.
November 4, 2025 at 5:05 AM
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Ephemeris: 10/03/2025 – Why is the universal expansion speeding up?
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This is an infographic of the evolution and expansion of the universe from the Big Bang to the present day showing the inflationary period when it increased in size extremely rapidly, faster than the speed of light, actually. About 380,000 years later light was finally decoupled from matter. Before then the universe was opaque. Light could not travel very far before hitting another particle. At 380,000 years the universe became cool enough so that electrons and protons in this Big Bang soup could find each other and become atoms. This caused the universe to become transparent. At that point is where we see, with our radio telescopes, the cosmic microwave background radiation. After that there’s a period where stars are being formed. There’s not much light being emitted because the stars are not radiating brightly because the hydrogen fusion in their cores had not started. This period is called the dark ages and may have lasted up to 400 million years. The period of the first stars and galaxies is the area that James Webb Space Telescope was primarily built to investigate. It is only visible in the infrared. All this happened 9 billion years before the Earth was formed. It is evolution on a scale Darwin could not have imagined! Click or tap on the image to enlarge it. Credit: NASA
November 3, 2025 at 5:09 AM
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Ephemeris: 10/31/2025 – Previewing November skies
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Star Chart for November evenings, 2025 (9 pm EST November 15, 2025). Jupiter is close to rising in the east-northeast at chart time.
October 31, 2025 at 4:07 AM
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Ephemeris: 10/30/2025 – Algol, the perfect Halloween star
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October 30, 2025 at 4:00 AM
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Ephemeris: 10/29/2025 – Looking at the whereabouts of the naked-eye planets for this week
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Saturn with Fomalhaut and the Moon tonight at 9:00 PM, October 29, 2025. Created using Stellarium.
October 29, 2025 at 4:49 AM
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Ephemeris: 10/28/2025 – The structure of the universe
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This is the 2 Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) which is an infrared survey of galaxies relatively close to us in an equal area projection. Each of the 30 by 30° squares has the same area. The horizontal dark area in the center it's called the zone of avoidance, that is where the Milky Way is blocking the galaxies behind it, due to its clouds of gas and dust. The plot shows that the galaxies are not uniformly distributed in space. They are seen to form along filaments. The plot is also color-coded from violet to red showing the red shift, which shows the galaxy's speed of recession, and increased distance.
October 28, 2025 at 4:03 AM
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Ephemeris: 10/27/2025 – Most of the mass in the universe is unseen
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This is called the Bullet Cluster. It's two galaxy clusters that collided. The pink is hot gas visible in x-rays. The blue is added to show where dark matter resides. It is detected by studying the far distant galaxies beyond for distortion caused by the gravitational lensing of dark matter. Most of the mass of the galaxy clusters is dark matter, which also contain hot gas and, of course the galaxies. When galaxy clusters collide the gas of the two clusters interact and are stripped out and the dark matter and galaxies go merrily on. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CXC, M. Bradac (University of California, Santa Barbara), and S. Allen (Stanford University)
October 27, 2025 at 4:04 AM