San Marcos Mercury | Local News from San Marcos and Hays County, Texas

Donald Olson

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Monday, June 22nd, 2015

Afternoon shadows shed new light on photograph that kissed World War II goodbye

For the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, a team of astronomers from Texas State University has applied its unique brand of celestial sleuthing to the iconic image.

Thursday, January 23rd, 2014

Monet’s striking cliff by the sea beckons Texas State’s ‘Celestial Sleuths’

Famed French Impressionist Claude Monet created a striking scene of the Normandy coast in his 1883 painting, “Étretat: Sunset.” Now, a team of Texas State University researchers, led by astronomer and physics professor Donald Olson, has applied...

Monday, March 5th, 2012

The iceberg’s accomplice: Did the moon sink the Titanic?

Texas State University's team of "celestial sleuths" is suggesting in an article to be published next month that an unusually strong "spring tide" a few months earlier may have caused the massive iceberg field that doomed the...

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010

Texas State researchers ID meteor storm in Whitman poem

Texas State researchers recently identified a mysterious meteor appearance from a poem in Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass," using a painting by Frederic Church as a clue.

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

Texas State astronomers say they’ve solved Walt Whitman meteor mystery

The researchers applied an unique brand of forensic astronomy to the question, rediscovering one of the most famous celestial events of Whitman's day--one that inspired both Whitman and famed landscape painter Frederic Church--yet became inexplicably forgotten by...

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