Posts

May 19, 2013

+

8:33 PM | Ep. 295: The Observable Universe

We understand our place in the Universe because of our direct observations. We can see the light that traveled billions of light years across space to reach us. This sphere of space is the observable universe; everything we can detect. But it’s really just a fraction of the larger, unobservable universe. Today, we’ll talk about [...]

+

12:00 PM | Explosion on the Moon! via jtotheizzoe: Pock-marked with craters...

Explosion on the Moon! via jtotheizzoe: Pock-marked with craters and splotched with long-cold beds of dark lava, our moon holds thousands of footprints from its violent past. But we don’t really think of it having a violent present. Well, it still gets its fair share of action. On March 17, 2013, NASA astronomers captured video of a meteorite striking the moon. It made an explosion bright enough to be seen with the naked eye, like a temporary star drawn on the lunar surface. It turns out that […]

+

7:45 AM | Weekly Science Picks

Greetings one and all, and a very happy science Sunday to you! This week’s generally been quite interesting. We’ve had good news, bad news, a little heated discussion… All the kind of things which keep the science community vibrant and [...]testThe post Weekly Science Picks appeared first on Australian Science.

+

2:27 AM | Let’s talk about the dark night. Yes this post is about...

Let’s talk about the dark night. Yes this post is about Batman. Our common assumption is that the night sky is supposed to be dark with only few dots of light. But then, aren’t there supposed to billions upon billions of stars in the night sky emitting light. Yes, they are very far away, but, there is nothing stopping (like air or glass) the light from reaching us. So, shouldn’t all those stars make the night sky (very) bright and not dark ? This is actually called Olbers’ […]

+

1:00 AM | Astronomy Cast Ep. 298: Space Stations, Part 3 International...

Astronomy Cast Ep. 298: Space Stations, Part 3 International Space Station Join Fraser Cain and Pamela Gay for your weekly facts-based journey through the cosmos. This week is the third installment of the “space station” series and is all about the International Space Station. Duration: 01:07:35 via Astrosphere Vids.

May 18, 2013

+

9:38 PM | Stars forming in the Rosette Nebula

Original image download (11 Mb jpeg). I think this is probably the best image from Herschel where the forming stars are truly pinpointed: The Rosette Nebula resides some 5000 light-years from Earth and is associated with a larger cloud that contains enough dust and gas to make the equivalent of 10 000 Sun-like stars. The […]

+

7:00 PM | Neil deGrasse Tyson: How the Moon May Have Formed How was the...

Neil deGrasse Tyson: How the Moon May Have Formed How was the Moon formed, and why doesn’t it have more iron or heavy metals? Neil deGrasse Tyson explains to Eugene Mirman how a collision with a Mars-sized object during the formation of the Earth may have led to the creation of the Moon. Enjoy this “Behind the Scenes video” from StarTalk Radio. via Star Talk Radio. newsletter: http://bit.ly/VppKWL iTunes Podcasts - http://bit.ly/SOHDg6 Twitter - […]

+

2:20 AM | The Search For Budget-Conscious Life

Lisa and I had dinner with Gregory Benford and his wife when I visited U.C. Irvine a couple of weekends ago, and he raised an interesting point. So far, radio searches for extraterrestrial life have only seen puzzling brief signals – not long transmissions. But what if this is precisely what we should expect? […]

+

12:32 AM | “Einstein’s Greatest Blunder” was REALLY a blunder!

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” -Albert Einstein Back when Einstein first proposed his theory of General Relativity, his revolutionary picture of the Universe was met with a mix of curiosity, awe, and intense skepticism. It isn’t every day that your most cherished of all physical theories — the…

May 17, 2013

+

2:08 PM | New BEER for planet-hunters

BEER is not the solution to life’s problems, but it might help astronomers characterize new exoplanets. As you probably surmised, BEER isn’t the beverage: it’s an observational technique standing for BEaming, Ellipsoidal, and Reflection/emission modulation. (That wins the award for the most awkward acronym I’ve seen in some time. As Mary Roach would say, it’s […]

+

2:02 PM | crookedindifference: First Solar Eclipse Photograph Berkowski...

crookedindifference: First Solar Eclipse Photograph Berkowski made the first solar eclipse photograph on July 28, 1851, also using the daguerrotype process, at the Royal Observatory in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kalinigrad in Russia). Berkowski, a local daguerrotypist whose first name was never published, observed at the Royal Observatory. A small 6-cm refracting telescope was attached to the 15.8-cm Fraunhofer heliometer and a 84-second exposure was taken shortly after the beginning of […]

May 16, 2013

+

4:30 PM | Writing about Astronomy

My Life with the Firehose of Cosmic Information I have a new book coming out! It’s called Astronomy 101: From the Sun and Moon to Wormholes and Warp Drive, Key Theories, Discoveries, and Facts about the Universe, due out in a few weeks from Adams Media. I’ve been working with them behind the scenes on distribution and publicity, [...]

+

3:00 PM | Enormous Galactic Halo Seen Around Colliding Galaxies The...

Enormous Galactic Halo Seen Around Colliding Galaxies The Chandra X-ray Telescope has spied a gas cloud with the mass of ~10 billion Suns and spans ~300,00O light years. The system called NGC 6240 is the scene of two milky way-sized galaxies merging. Credit: NASA/CXC/J. DePasquale via Video From Space.

+

2:22 PM | Citizen Scientists Track Light Pollution as Humanity Loses Touch with the Night Sky

Step out into the darkness a few hours after sunset. What do you see overhead? If you live in a relatively unpopulated part of the world, you might see the broad stripe of the Milky Way splashed against a backdrop of black sky punctuated by countless stars. If, on the other hand, you live in [...]

May 15, 2013

+

9:37 PM | NASA’s Kepler Mission Endangered by Hardware Failure

The prolific planet-hunting spacecraft that has already discovered some of the most intriguing exoplanets known has abruptly lost the capacity to carry out its mission, NASA officials announced May 15. NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, which launched in 2009, relies on an array of flywheels, or reaction-wheel assemblies, to stabilize the pointing of its telescope toward a [...]

+

9:29 PM | The End of the Kepler Mission?

Not Yet, but Things Don’t Look Good NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, launched in 2009 to search out worlds around other stars, has likely reached the end of its current mission due to the failure of a critical component called a reaction wheel. The spacecraft has four of these wheels which help stabilize Kepler so that it can [...]

+

8:23 PM | RIP and good planet hunting, Kepler

A second reaction wheel failed on the exoplanet-hunting telescope

+

3:00 PM | The Sun is getting feisty via jtotheizzoe: The star at the heart...

The Sun is getting feisty via jtotheizzoe: The star at the heart of our solar system has released three X-class solar flares (the most powerful class of flares) and their associated waves of charged particles in the past 24 hours. Luckily for us, they have been pointed away from Earth, as seen in the upper left of the video above from NASA. NASA’s SDO and SOHO satellites captured the explosive magnetic arcs and bursts of plasma in stunning form in the video, which is full-screen worthy. By […]

+

11:05 AM | Orion in a new, submillimeter light

Image credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2 This dramatic new image of cosmic clouds in the constellation of Orion reveals what seems to be a fiery ribbon in the sky. This orange glow represents faint light coming from grains of cold interstellar dust, at wavelengths too long for human eyes to see. It was observed by […]

+

1:00 AM | Learning Space - Space Apps This week we talk with Jonathan...

Learning Space - Space Apps This week we talk with Jonathan Roberts about the Space App Hackathon and his winning entry from the New York region. We go on to explore Hackathons in general and his wonderfully geeky side job. Space App Challenge: http://spaceappschallenge.org/ SpaceCal App: http://spacecalnyc.com/ Intro video for SpaceCalNYC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ACQqKDbQMQ (Voting for the international challenge starts this week!) NYC Big Apps: http://nycbigapps.com/ “Brian Cox […]

May 14, 2013

+

4:51 PM | The Sun is getting feisty … The star at the heart of our...

The Sun is getting feisty … The star at the heart of our solar system has released three X-class solar flares (the most powerful class of flares) and their associated waves of charged particles in the past 24 hours. Luckily for us, they have been pointed away from Earth, as seen in the upper left of the video above from NASA. NASA’s SDO and SOHO satellites captured the explosive magnetic arcs and bursts of plasma in stunning form in the video, which is full-screen worthy. By viewing the […]

+

11:10 AM | The Search for another Earth

“Two possibilities exist: either we’re alone in the Universe, or we’re not. Both are equally terrifying.” - Arthur C. Clarke. This is the third in my series of posts at Things We Don’t Know about the many unknowns involved in the study … Continue reading →

+

1:00 AM | Exoplanet Diversity and Habitability Lots of great discussion...

Exoplanet Diversity and Habitability Lots of great discussion today! This week there was a special exoplanet edition of Science magazine and Dr. Sara Seager had an article published in it. Dr. Seager presents a new, expanded definition of planetary habitable zones. Here is a link to her paper: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/340/6132/577.abstract?sid=f1b791f3-9a70-4d2d-912e-09f40efa1deb Duration: 01:01:06 via Tony Darnell.

+

12:38 AM | Messier Monday: The Cigar Galaxy, M82

“How is it they live for eons in such harmony - the billions of stars - when most men can barely go a minute without declaring war in their mind against someone they know?” -Thomas Aquinas Welcome back to another Messier Monday here on Starts With a Bang! Each Monday, we take an in-depth look at one of the 110 deep-sky wonders —…

May 13, 2013

+

5:45 PM | 5 Sky Events This Week: Three-Planet Huddle, Lunar Wall

The lunar wall comes into view, three planets huddle, and the moon joins the Leo constellation in this week's best sky events.

+

4:01 PM | Saturn Hurricane Movie This movie, made from images obtained by...

Saturn Hurricane Movie This movie, made from images obtained by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, shows the clouds of a hurricane-like storm, which circulate around the north pole of Saturn out to 88.5 degrees north latitude. via JPL news. Mysterious Hurricane at Saturn’s North Pole Narrated video about a hurricane-like storm seen at Saturn’s north pole by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. via JPL news.

+

6:49 AM | Science Weekly podcast: life in a random universe

On this edition of the show Alok Jha meets Brian Clegg to discuss his latest book Dice World: Science and Life in a Random Universe. Brian is a celebrated science author and communicator and in his latest book he tackles the conflict between the very human desire to see pattern and design everywhere and the fundamental randomness of the universe.Also on the podcast, news broke this week of a potentially life-changing breakthrough in the treatment of what is known as modic-related lower back […]

+

2:13 AM | You guys like Saturn, right? Here’s a whole gallery of...

You guys like Saturn, right? Here’s a whole gallery of Saturn GIFs, from rings to moons, captured by the Cassini spacecraft. They’re part modern art and part science. Next to the Voyager twins, I think Cassini might be the best satellite NASA ever launched. Certainly takes the best pictures. Tumblr’s own staceythinx has an iPad app called Cassini HD that features even more photos, plus color, plus science.

+

2:13 AM | You guys like Saturn, right? Here’s a whole gallery of...

You guys like Saturn, right? Here’s a whole gallery of Saturn GIFs, from rings to moons, captured by the Cassini spacecraft. They’re part modern art and part science. Next to the Voyager twins, I think Cassini might be the best satellite NASA ever launched. Certainly takes the best pictures. Tumblr’s own staceythinx has an iPad app called Cassini HD that features even more photos, plus color, plus science. (GIFs by framesandflames)

+

1:00 AM | Weekly Space Hangout - 10 May 2013 Join our crew of space...

Weekly Space Hangout - 10 May 2013 Join our crew of space journalists and aficionados as we round up this week’s space news. We’ll have rocket launches, images of a solar eclipse, weird astrophysics and more! Hosted by Fraser Cain, produced by Nicole Gugliucci, and joined this week by David Dickinson, Nancy Atkinson, and Pamela Gay. Duration: 44:44 via Nicole Gugliucci.