Astronomy

10 years ago, I proposed 2 new courses to be taught here at UG, and thankfully, both of them were accepted and Astronomy and Meteorology came to be. If your student has had, or is taking either class, it will have been taught by me. I feel very proud about that and am lucky to teach about such awesome subjects.

Astronomy is a 9 week long class, and we cover a wide range of topics that will touch a bit on philosophy (our place in the universe), stars, planets, moons, asteroids, and the history of rocketry.

This is truly one of my favorite topics in the whole world (no pun intended.) I absolutely love learning about space!

Without a doubt, one of the neatest things I have ever seen happen in my life was the very first landing of the SpaceX Falcon 9 orbital class booster landing. Space travel changed forever on December 21st, 2015 when SpaceX launched, landed, and put satellites into space. While it isn't the goal of SpaceX to land their rockets (payload deployment is), this has allowed for them to drastically reduce the costs of space travel, and put huge pressure on other companies, like Blue Origin and Rocket Lab, to do the same.

We also read a book from Canadian Astronaut Chirs Hadfield. The book follows his life and how he came to be Canada's first space-walker. You can order the book here. A lot of the students enjoy the book, and between Chris and myself, the students get to hear about a wide range of life lessons. My teacher copy of the book is full of post it notes and additions to the book that I have added over the years. Click the image below to learn more about the amazing Chris Hadfield.

Chris also wrote a children's book called The Darkest Dark, which is about his fear of the dark as a kid, and how he got past it. If you have a young child, it's a great book! My kids both enjoy reading it.

The future of heavy lift vehicles is here! The Space X Falcon Heavy has launched multiple times, SLS Block 1 had its first successful test flight, and the SpaceX Starship will be launching for a second time soon! We live in an amazing time for space flight!!!

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