Joe Heafner

spectrumThe Wrong StuffWhen Apollo 17, NASA's final lunar-landing mission, ended 30 years ago this month, any-thing seemed possible. After all, it had taken only eight years to go from Yuri Gagarin's first orbit of the Earth to Neil Armstrong's first step on the Moon. Sure-ly by the dawn of the...

Unfinished Businessn 1964, when in the third grade, I made a poster showing the nine planets of our solar system. 1 could find decent photographs of only Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Astronauts wouldn't photograph the Earth from lunar orbit for another four years. Mercury and Venus showed phases like...

STCPHEN JAMES O'MEARAOne World, One HobbyOn September 4th National Public Radio aired a report on the overt racism sometimes encountered by foreigners in Japan, where those born elsewhere are called gaijin "outside persons." The broadcast perplexed me, because I had just returned from the Tainai...

Why Don't You Name Stars?Go ahead! There's nothing to stop you! You, anyone else, any enterprise has an equal right to moniker stars.It's widely, though incorrectly, believed that the International Astronomical Union has the prerogative to name stars. Yes, the lAU is officially recognized to name...