On this date 22 years ago, the Hubble Space Telescope was borne into space on Shuttle Discovery, the one that recently did its last flyby over DC (well, okay, it had help) before delivery to the Udvar-Hazy center. The Hubble will be retired
Category: Astronomy
Too cool, part 12: Won’t fit in the bag
Courtesy of NASA’s Astronomy Photo of the Day, I present one of the most interesting examples of unintuitive physics: the curvature of spacetime to produce a gravitational lens. The ring that you see here is not the shock wave from a supernova affecting the surrounding gases, as I first
Book Review: Big Bang
This was a book that, I admit, wasn’t on my reading list, but when I came across a copy I began reading it out of interest. It is a credit to the author that I stayed with it, and chose to throw it into the review lineup.
Big Bang by Simon Singh is named in a very straightforward way,
Frustrations, part seven: Still not clean
I actually got out last night for the Leonids meteor shower, braving the cold like a dedicated nature photographer… well, okay, to a small extent, anyway. I was unable to travel very far, so it meant trying to find a darker sky spot in an area not particularly known for it. The cities aren’t big around here, but they’re spaced just right to mean traveling a long distance to get
We get what we pay for
This is something that’s been bugging me for a while, and while I started on a post some months back, I never finished it. I need to, especially in response to a new article. More below.
Let’s say you have heard of a new species of fish in Lake Tanganyika, and your job entails studying rare fish breeds. Your boss
Pluto’s posse
I’m not following the latest breaking astronomical websites like I used to, so this news is a little old to those that do. But recently, astronomers confirmed that Pluto has another moon, bringing its total to four (counting Charon, known since 1978, and Nix and Hydra discovered in 2005.) For the time being, this one is simply called “P4” until a name is agreed upon.
It was found
35 years ago, Viking 1 shakes hands with Mars
On this date in 1976, the NASA Viking 1 lander touched down on the surface of Mars, becoming the first manmade object to contact that planet. The US space program, until that time dealing largely with the moon missions, satellites, and Skylab, had now extended its reach phenomenally.
Now, I’m going to put a damper on nationalism in the interests of accuracy, for a moment. The Soviet Union had
But how? Part two: Designed just for us
Walkabout podcast – But how? Part 2
This continues a new trend that I began here, where the concepts that support a religious (or at least, in this case, deistic) worldview receive critical examination. The topic of discussion this time around
Half a century
Fifty years ago today, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into space, as well as the first to orbit the planet, beginning what is widely considered the Space Age of human development and accomplishments. For the first time, we left the planet and set foot among the stars.
Well, okay, that’s being a bit dramatic. We’d been leaving the planet for quite a while, just not very
Too cool, part nine: A star is born
As wintertime drifts away here in the northern hemisphere, we’ll lose the opportunity to see the most recognizable constellation on earth in the universe by human standards still visible in the evening sky: Orion. Shown here, but technically not in its entirety (there are