Space

Scientific Clogging A recent story about NASA's water recycling system is clogging Google search results.  Apparently, excess calcium in astro-urine is clogging the International Space Station's…

A doctor's office in nearby Virginia, just one state down from me, got clobbered by a 'mango-sized' meteorite this week.  Where others see disaster, I see envy. My envy.  My favorite…

In a recently released report the National Research Council lays out several options NASA could pursue in order  to detect more near-Earth objects (NEOs) – asteroids and comets that could pose a…

An international team of astronomers has viewed two distinct "tails" found on a long tail of gas that is believed to be forming stars where few stars have been formed before. The new observation was…

I enjoyed presenting on Project Calliope two weeks ago, at the 215th AAS meeting.  I have a partial podcast of my talk in preparation, but in the meantime, here are the visual slides from my…

Wednesday 6 January 2010 There have been only two standing ovations at the AAS in his memory, said Society president John Huchra, and the other heralded a presenter who later won the Nobel Prize.…

University of Iowa (UI) astronomers have made the first clear, rainbow-like, radio telescope images of a distant stellar coronal loop, at the eclipsing, non-nova binary star Algol, found in the…

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has just released a new image of NGC 6334, an emission nebula discovered by astronomer John Herschel in 1837 and dubbed the Cat's Paw Nebula.  This new…

Tuesday, 5 January 2010 There are several ways to spot an exoplanet.  The two most common are the radial velocity and transit techniques.  Radial velocity measurements detect changes in the…

You can (and should) listen to my first ever podcast, at "365 Days of Astronomy", which is either about a) why we put telescopes on mountains and in space or b) why science in Antarctica rocks!…