200 grams
A TubeSat picosatellite lifts 200 grams of payload. That's about 7 ounces. Looked at one way, that's less than half a can of soda. But it's enough to lift an entire Nintendo DS game handheld into…
NGC-4945: A Lot Like Our Milky Way ...
A new image of nearby galaxy NGC 4945 shows that it looks a lot like our own Milky Way.
NGC 4945 seems to be a spiral galaxy with swirling, luminous arms and a bar-shaped central region, though NGC…
Discovery: Supermassive Black Hole Is One Billion Times The Size Of Our Sun
A giant galaxy, so distant that it is seen as it was 12.8 billion years ago, is as large as the Milky Way and contains a supermassive black hole with at least a billion times as much matter as our…
On Citizen Science, Citizen Journalism, and Satellites
This here, "The Sky By Day", is my science writing column. I write about current news and cultural issues in space and computer science. Very simple, very journalistic:
…
Music from Space
Dear Diary,
It was a secret for a while, but I'm going to launch my own satellite! It's going to make music from space. Curious?
It is dangerous to write about neat things. That makes you want to do…
Finding The Next Earth
I recently watched a show about alien planets orbiting distant stars. It emphasized the differences between these planets and Earth – too hot, too cold, iron rain, noxious gas – places where humans…
Music from space
Dear Diary,
I'm going to launch a satellite! I'm a bit nervous, but I finally committed. ProjectCalliope.com. Next week we officially announce! Also use twitter @skyday to track!
Debris Disks Around Some Stars Are Just Plain Warped
People sometimes think the space between stars is 'empty' but that's not the case. That area is filled with patches of low-density gas and when a relatively dense clump of gas gets near a…
Mythbusters Of Stellar Birth
A team of researchers say long held beliefs about how stars are formed have been just a myth, and they say this astronomy myth got busted using a set of galaxies found with CSIRO's Parkes radio…
The Petabyte Problem
What do you do with a petabyte of data?
The question came up during a lunch today with two NASA computing people, on in IT and the other in supercomputing. Modern satellites are returning…
