Mike Brown, astronomer and "pluto killer," welcome to the Boing Boing guest blog!

51TBG7G9IeL.jpgWe are delighted to welcome author and astronomer Mike Brown (Twitter) as a visiting guest-blogger this month. He is the author of How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming, which, in fact, comes out on this very day!

Mike is the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor of Planetary Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology, where he teaches classes from introductory geology to the formation of the solar system. He is a native of Huntsville, Alabama, where he grew up listening to the test of the Saturn rockets preparing to go to the moon. He and his research group spend their time searching for and studying the most distant objects in the solar system and drinking coffee.

His guest posts here will pass through a full set of lunar phases, and the solstice, "every astronomers favorite pagan holiday." We've never done that before with a guest blogger— come to think of it, I don't believe we've ever had an astronomer join us as a guest blogger.


As the grand-daughter of an amateur astronomer myself, I'm very excited that with Mike, Boing Boing will boldly go where no blog has gone before.