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: Too Cool
Too cool, part 13: I’m a spider, raargh!
Since I have yet to obtain any images illustrating this (and because there may not even be examples of such within this country, I may not ever, sniff,) I refer you to Alex Wild of Myrmecos fame, guest-blogging on Scientific American’s site, for his post on “The fly that banks on arachnophobia.”
If you wish, pause for a second and try to imagine how a fly might benefit from something
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
Too cool, part 11: Sylvan Heights Bird Park
As I indicated in the previous post, we had a trip planned that might produce some new images, and while I’d like to build the suspense to the point of frustration, I find this a hard thing to do, especially when I lead the post off with a header photo. So yes, we did get some useful stuff, and this will be another multiple post.
Nature photographers, as well as amateur naturalists and simply
Shhhh! TV…
I know it’s short notice, but I just found out about it myself, courtesy of The Manatee. If you get Discovery Channel, there is a new show premiering tonight right after Mythbusters, going by the pseudonym of Penn & Teller Tell A Lie, and it sounds like it should be pretty cool. I’ll be recording it, so if you miss it, come on by and bring popcorn.
But not beer…
See?
Just for fun
I actually get chills when watching the following video – it’s just too cool seeing this all come together:
I’ve known this video for a couple of years now, and there’s a decent chance you’re familiar with it at least with the tour that culminated from it. That, however, was only the lead-in for this. Turn your volume down if you’re someplace public:
Seriously,
Too cool, part 10: Bang!
I’ve related this in part elsewhere on the site, but I thought it deserved its own post, especially since it was one of the more memorable experiences from a few years ago.
When I lived in Florida, I started “maintaining” a small saltwater aquarium to house photo subjects and interesting marine critters. Being close to both the ocean and the Indian River Lagoon, a large isolated
Rock Beyond Belief, back on!
I just got word that the secular military event, “Rock Beyond Belief”, has been re-approved and is scheduled for March 31, 2012! As you no doubt remember because you’ve read everything I’ve ever posted (snerk!),
Doing it right
I’m back from the trip, having extended the stay by a few days, and found that you all began tearing up the comments while I was away. I guess I expected no less.
The Girlfriend and I spent some time with friends in the Savannah, Georgia area, and got around a bit to check out some interesting items in the vicinity. The first thing we visited, and thus the first I’ll talk about, is the
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