One reason [some US space personnel] won’t collaborate with China on space exploration.

[See Update 2, below for a brief explanation of why I’ve changed the title of this post from ‘One reason the US won’t collaborate with China on space exploration,’ to its current version.] I’m a big fan of China’s space program (any space program, really) and nobody cheers louder when it pulls off successful missions.…

Eclipse Eclipsed.

I spent the last 24 hours out in Sheshan, in southwest Shanghai, where I was covering the eclipse for a dispatch that should be out shortly. Below, an image of a few of the several hundred observers who gathered atop the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (built by the Jesuits in the 1890s, and operated by them until the 1950s). In…

Save the Eclipse: An Open Letter to the Honorable Han Zheng, Mayor of Shanghai

Dear Mr. Mayor: As you are no doubt aware, the longest eclipse of the century will pass over your city on Wednesday morning. This singular event is not exclusive to Shanghai, of course: the narrow path will wind over much of Asia, into the Pacific. But, needless to say, international media organziations with an interest in covering this singular event…