I’m a bit late getting to post tonight, but here we go!
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which I will henceforth refer to simply as the Roman Space Telescope, is quite an enigma as far as government space observatories go. Especially at a time when much of what the public knows as an example of a large-scale telescope is the long-delayed, long over-budget, but eventually launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). In the case of Roman, its design was refined over the years and it actually was delivered to NASA at almost 1,000kg lighter than originally intended.
That lighter design allowed NASA to put additional fuel into the telescope to boost its potential mission length. Then, things got good! When the engine made its burn to enter the L2 Lagrange point, the burn was 90% more efficient than expected; only burning 18 kg of the 200 kg engineers expected.
With all of that in mind, Roman now has enough fuel on board to potentially conduct science operations for 22 years! The potential boost to the mission’s lifespan really speaks to the engineering prowess and technical expertise of all the teams involved with this project. Personally, I’m excited to see what new mysteries Roman opens up for us!
In 1979, Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the newly refit USS Enterprise once again took to the stars to defend humanity against certain destruction in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The film, which has been a polarizing experience for Trek fans throughout the years, introduced the legendary antagonist of humanity’s own creation… V’Ger. The leviathan starship, shrouded behind a mysterious stellar cloud, returns to Earth in search of its creator and the Enterprise is sent to intercept. Over time, we learn that V’Ger is actually an old NASA probe, Voyager 6, that was discovered lost in space by a race of alien machines. The machine world saw V’Ger as a savior sent from the stars, so they fixed him and sent him back to his creator. When V’Ger returns to Earth, he is determined to find his creator, even if it means removing all of the humans from Earth to find him.
What we ultimately learn is that V’Ger’s creator is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) that put the first man on the Moon and that was getting ready to head back into space aboard the Space Shuttle. At the heart of the V’Ger cloud was a bowl-like structure designed to support and protect the Voyager 6 probe. The whole design is one of the most incredible alien creations in science fiction, even if the film itself is often considered one of the weaker entries in the franchise. Personally, it’s one of my favorites.
But the Star Trek production team did much more than simply look at photos of the Voyager 1 and 2 probes when bringing V’Ger to life. They actually reached out to the team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to gain additional technical insights into the vessel including a potential launch date and to gather ideas about potential advancements in technology that might be included in future Voyager probes. At one point, Gene Roddenberry tried to get the mockup Voyager probe from JPL so that the production team could use it for the film, but JPL ultimately refused because they were worried about the mockup being damaged during transportation. Eventually, JPL provided Roddenberry’s team with blueprints for the Voyager probes themselves, which allowed them to build a true-to-life replica for the V’Ger core.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a unique piece of science fiction from a time when it was generally transitioning from the clean and optimistic aesthetic of 2001: A Space Odyssey into the gritty and nihilistic feelings of Aliens and Terminator. Personally, I yearn for the 70’s sci-fi aesthetic to return. The sense of human optimism and desire for discovery was what always made me gravitate toward Star Trek over other franchises. In my opinion, TMP stands as one of the most honest and true representations of the optimism that Star Trek wanted to bring to the world.
There is a quiet revolution happening across the internet. In the early days, which is where nightShifted Astronomy originally found its footing, the web was a wild and wonderful collection of personal sites, forums, and internet relay chat. These days, it’s an algorithmic hellscape dominated by a few major players with the sole purpose of monetizing and controlling every pixel that appears on your screen. This isn’t conspiracy or hyperbole… it’s truth. I am pleased to announce that nightShifted Astronomy is joining the web revival which aims to reclaim the internet from these massive corporations and to build a parallel information ecosystem where creativity and individual flair can thrive.
In rebuilding this website to its Web 1.5 style and trying to reclaim the original look and feel, I found some amazing relics from throughout the years that I wanted to share with you all!
A very early header from 2008 before I came up with the windmill design.An alternate header used briefly in 2011.A 2011 header showcasing something that certainly didn’t work out as much as I expected it to…
You can see the most-used and classic nA header as the featured image for this post. And, with that, there are some things you can expect from this site going forward.
A collection of personally curated space, astronomy, and sometimes science-fiction related blog posts.
No social media connections or sharing beyond a link to my YouTube projects.
No data harvesting or meta data collection.
No connection to Jetpack or other mass market data control systems.
Full support for RSS protocols so you can connect to nA through your favorite news reader.
Eventually this site will have full mobile support, but it will always be a desktop-first experience.
Thank you all for years of support both as the director of nightShifted Astronomy and my Campfire Chess projects. Let’s do this!
Before we get started with this article, let me make one thing clear.
PLUTO is the ninth planet. We’ll reference a ninth planet in this article, but it would effectively be the tenth planet if discovered. That’s it. We can continue now…
Scientists have worked for decades trying to prove the existence of a ninth planet beyond Neptune using the same methods that were used to discover our two outermost planets. Asteroid clustering in the Kuiper Belt has along led astronomers to theorize that there could be undiscovered gas giants similar to Neptune and Uranus out there. While these efforts are often lumped into conspiracy theories about Planet X and Nibiru, the search for other gaseous bodies in the solar system is very real and serious work.
Image credit: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)
According to a recent Space.com article, efforts by telescopes like the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile could help unlock some of the most distant solar system mysteries and help us identify potential candidates for Planet Nine. By using these high powered observatories, researchers are hoping to find patterns in the clustering and unusual travel patterns of Neptune-crossing objects. However, it will most likely take direct observation of such a planet in order to convince a majority of people that it actually exists.
Until then, Planet Nine remains similar to Planet X as a phantom wandering across the heavens, waiting to be discovered.
It isn’t the ending that NASA was hoping for, but it’s the one we’ll have to learn to live with. The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, which has been in orbit for 22 years studying gamma-ray bursts has an orbit that is quickly decaying and will soon burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. Earlier this month, a daring mission was undertaken in partnership with NASA by Katalyst Space Technologies to boost the telescope to a higher orbit. However, the LINK orbiter, as the Katalyst vehicle is called, began experiencing thruster problems as it approached within nine (9) miles of the observatory.
Artist’s Concept of LINK with the Swift Observatory (Credit: NASA/Katalyst)
Unfortunately, there is not enough time or resources for NASA to save the dying telescope, so they recently re-activated all of its science instruments and are attempting to get as much use out of it as possible before it plunges back to Earth. As of the time of this post, NASA doesn’t have an estimated date or time for when the telescope will re-enter the atmosphere, but preliminary estimates put the return between the end of October 2026 and early December 2026.
Imagine my suprise when I learned that this January was a remarkable anniversary for the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER)…
Space exploration in the early 2000s went through something of a minor renaissance with the launch of the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity along with the Cassini-Huygens Mission to Saturn and Titan. January 2026 marks 22 years since the MERs landed at two separate equatorial locations on Mars. Spirit arrived at Gusev crater on January 4, 2004 while Opportunity landed in Eagle crater on January 25, 2004.
This was the first time since the Mars PathFinder station with its Sojourner rover had beamed back photos of the red planet that humanity was poised to return to our nearest planetary neighbor. We came in search of answers to its multitude of mysteries and in hopes of gaining further understanding of our own world. We were a couple of years removed from September 11th and the destruction of the Space Shuttle Columbia, so there was a lot of public attention focused on the space program. It wasn’t just space nerds like me watching to see what tricks NASA was going to perform next. The MER program promised to be something special and the entire world was watching.
What wasn’t expected was how incredibly special the whole project would be.
Back to the Red Planet
I remember following various NASA feeds and watching news updates as Spirit approached Mars. This was the first time that the balloon-style airbag system had been used to put a rover on another planet. In fact, most of the technology associated with this mission was brand new, so everything was a new experience. I was elated as the telemetry data arrived at mission control and news began circulating that the rover had successfully landed. It would take some time for the airbags to deflate in a way that would ensure the landing platform was positioned appropriately on the plnaet surface, but once that was done, Spirit was free to begin exploring its new home.
It didn’t take long for Spirit and Opportunity to beam back their first high-definition photos of the red planet. This was the first time that real space exploration had truly entered into the high-tech digital age. Gone were the days of grainy, small images like we’d seen with Sojourner. And the images did not disappoint. Mars was as beautiful as it was imagined in science fiction with rolling hills, jagged cliffs, dust devils, and many other surprises.
Spirit’s Silence
There was a moment of panic during the early days of the mission, however. This was a major headline around the world because of the intense pressure on NASA to perform well with its projects in a post-Columbia world. For some unknown reason at the time, the Spirit rover entered into a fault protection mode, which is designed to secure the rover when a major onboard problem occurs. Instead of the steady stream of images received on Earth for the prior 18 days, instead, a basic communication tone was received, which alerted ground personnel to the critical failure.
Eventually the problem was identified as a software issue that was easily repaired by the control team, but it was certainly an anxiety producing moment. There were many of us nerds on the ground watching from afar as our hopes of exploring Mars were in jeopardy. But instead of a failed mission, we got to see a side of NASA that many of us felt was a relic of the past. The ground team identified the problem and was able to get Spirit working once again.
An Unexpected Journey
Once the communication problem from Spirit was solved, the MERs performed nearly flawlessly on Mars for the next several years! What was supposed to be a 90-day mission lasted almost fifty-five times longer than originally intended. During that time we got to see the first views of Earth from the surface of another world. We learned that Mars has regular dust devils, whose winds regularly cleaned off the MER solar panels and greatly extended their mission length. This all went on until around 2010 when Spirit began to fail mechanically. It started with the wheels and eventually the memory systems started failing. By March of 2010, the batteries on Spirit were so low that the rover entered into emergency protection mode and was no longer capable of responding to commands.
On the other side of the planet, Opportunity continued to explore Mars for another eight years before it was caught up in a massive dust storm that ultimately doomed the rover. Attempts were made by NASA to communicate with it until early 2019 before leadership decided that the mission had reached its completion.
I am sad to say that I stopped following the rover missions a few years after they landed on Mars. In fact, life became so hectic that my most distinctive memories of Spirit and Opportunity after 2006 are learning of their demise. The MERs are perhaps one of the most incredibly successful planetary exploration missions in the last 25 years. No other mission has provided us with the insight into an alien world like they did. And no other mission has exceeded its original projected lifespan like they did. Even the Perseverence and Curiosity rovers that followed them were unable to capture the magic of those early days of rover exploration on Mars. Any craft that lands on Mars without humans has immense shoes to fill. The red planet still has countless secrets to be unlocked and I hope that one day we’ll see something land on Mars that inspires the next generation of interplanetary scientists.
Welcome to the first of what I hope is a series of regular entries here on the blog. I’ve been creating content in one form or another on the internet since 1995 and my hope is that this place will evolve into a place to discuss my own personal thoughts and opinions on various topics as well as share some insight and history that I’ve experienced as a long-time content creator.
Many years ago when the internet was still in its infancy, I would regularly sit down at my computer and boot up a combination of applications which usually included Netscape and mIRC. It’s so difficult to describe what things were like back then. The internet was a goldmine of information and organic communication. Around the year 2000, the commercial internet we know today looked nothing like the corporate, sanitized, and monetized monstrosity it has become. Instead, it was a loose collection of independent web servers hosting internet relay chat, personal webpages, and web forums. With a little effort, you could find a chat room or web forum for whatever interested you. There were no algorithms, invasive or deceptive advertising, or corporate AI-overlords tracking and cataloging everything you did.
These days, my setup is much more complicated and I hate it. A combination of Edge for web browsing and watching YouTube, Discord, and more recently using PowerShell for Emacs and IRC. Interestingly, my recent foray into PowerShell and back to IRC came about because of the atrocious performance of the Windows 11 operating system. Maybe one day I’ll write an entry about how bad it really is, but let’s say that when it’s faster for a 40+ year old man to type to delete a file than to bring up the UI…something is seriously wrong.
By now you’re probably wondering…what is the point of this post? Well, it’s simple, really. This is HELLO WORLD! This is where I tell you about the reasons that I plan to write on this website. So, let’s break it down a bit, shall we?
I’ve reached a point in my life where I’m simply unhappy with the state of technology. While I realize that I long for the early days of the internet with rose-colored nostalgia glasses, I am searching for a way for us to return to a more organic web. Since 2009 I’ve been heavily active on social media and watched the corporate algorithms take over. As a YouTube content creator I’ve relied on the algorithm to push my content ahead of others, with moderate success. With this blog, I want something simpler, free of the algorithm. I want a place where readers can come to escape the corporate web and get a taste of easier times. There will be no comments section, no voting, or sharing buttons. I’d like to see my work shared on other platforms, but you’ll need to copy and paste the URL…the old school way. Advanced scripting and reactive elements will be minimal to ensure browser compatibility, but no flashing lights or unusual accents. I want the most technical elements of this blog to be the content.
My plan is to make this blog a weekly event, most likely on Fridays so that my readers have something to look at throughout the weekend. Some entries will be long, some will be short. The topics will cover whatever I feel like at the moment. It will mostly be tech and opinion, but I also plan to write about projects I’m working on and things that interest me. Despite the corporate stranglehold on today’s web, there is still so much possibility out there for us to make it great once again. There’s still time for the digital nomads of yesterday to reclaim cyberspace and make it the amazing world it was destined to be.
A team of astronomers has, for the first time, “weighed” dark matter haloes surrounding actively feeding supermassive black holes in the bright hearts of ancient galaxies.
These black hole-powered hearts, or quasars, are often brighter than the combined light of every star in the galaxies around them. These super luminous central regions are “fired up” when supermassive black holes, which can have masses billions of times that of the sun, start greedily feeding on surrounding matter.
Personally, I’ve always been a dark matter skeptic. There’s so much indirect evidence for its existence, but I’ve never seen anything presented that has 100% convinced me it exists. I view it much like scientists used to believe in the aether. I wonder if one day we’ll learn that our calculations were simply wrong and that we didn’t need to fill the universe with invisible “dark matter” to make it work.
And according to a new study, scientists suggest dark matter haloes around such active galaxies could help funnel matter toward the central black hole, acting as a cosmic delivery service helping feed the titans.
Still, it’s an interesting finding, for sure! Imagine the power flowing through these galaxies pushing that matter into their central supermassive black holes! With our ever-growing observation power, it’s only a matter (no pun intended) of time before we’ll be seeing up-close and personal images of these devouring beasts!
Welcome to nightShifted Astronomy, which also doubles as my personal home page. My name is Commander Exorcist and I’ve been creating web content in one form or another since 1995. In 2005 I started blogging about astronomy and science-related topics on my website nightShifted Astronomy. That project lasted until 2014 when I closed it to focus on a chess website. That site continues to this day, but I have decided to resurrect nightShifted Astronomy here on my home domain and combine it with my internet content creation projects.
Please check back regularly for updates on my progress and be sure to click the links to the left to check out my many different projects across social media related to gaming and art content.
See you out there!
UPDATE (SEPTEMBER 2026): Campfire Chess was retired in 2024 and moved to a permanent archive home here at Chess.WesleySurber.com. nightShifted Astronomy re-opened officially in 2022 but sat dormant for many years. I am working to restore it to its former glory in the Year of Our Lord 2026.
