Space

Houston, We Have A New Camera On Hubble

Astronauts John Grunsfeld and Drew Feustel successfully installed the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) Thursday during the first of five scheduled EVAs, or spacewalks, to rejuvenate the Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble was "full of surprises" for the ast ...

Article - Dan Coe - May 15 2009 - 8:18am

The Daytime Astronomer at Career Day

8 classrooms in 5 hours. 30 minutes per class. Grade levels ranging from kindergarten to 6th grade. Unscripted, 1 index card of talking points. When I compare 'Career Day' at my kids' elementary school with my Ph.D. defense, that dissertatio ...

Blog Post - Alex "Sandy" Antunes - May 15 2009 - 7:28pm

WDJ1524-0030: World's Observatories Watch A Cooling Star

The Whole Earth Telescope (WET), a worldwide network of observatories coordinated by the University of Delaware, is synchronizing its lenses to provide round-the-clock coverage of a cooling star. As the star dims in the twilight of its life, scientists hop ...

Article - News Staff - May 16 2009 - 5:29pm

Spacecakewalk!

Astronauts blazed through their third of five spacewalks Saturday as they continued servicing the Hubble Space Telescope, installing the new Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) and repairing the main science camera of the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) wh ...

Article - Dan Coe - May 18 2009 - 8:06pm

'Astrophysicists Killed The Dinosaurs' (Neil DeGrasse Tyson On Science Communication)

"We have the habit, as humans, of only thinking that what we see is real", began Neil Tyson.  Our job as astronomers is to 'turn something invisible and make it real'.  His premise: space weather is important to study, but scientists a ...

Article - Alex "Sandy" Antunes - May 19 2009 - 7:58pm

Cosmic Mystery- Messier 87's Stripped Halo

Using ESO's Very Large Telescope, astronomers have succeeded in measuring the size of giant galaxy Messier 87- or what they thought there should be.    It turns out that its outer parts have been stripped away- and no one is yet sure how.   To add to ...

Article - News Staff - May 20 2009 - 10:47am

J1023 Identity Switch- Clark Kent Pulsar Into Millisecond Superman

Pulsars are superdense neutron stars, the remnants left after massive stars have exploded as supernovae. Their powerful magnetic fields generate lighthouse-like beams of light and radio waves that sweep around as the star rotates. Most rotate a few to tens ...

Article - News Staff - May 21 2009 - 9:18pm

No Space Chocolate Yet

This week's PhD Comic lists the 4 'research topics guaranteed to be picked up by the new media': Chocolate Robots Unrealistic Sci-Fi gadgets Experiments that might blow up the world ...

Blog Post - Alex "Sandy" Antunes - May 22 2009 - 11:33am

Live Now: Supernova Hunt With the Virtual Telescope!

http://www.coelumstream.com/ is broadcasting live images of galaxies, to be compared with reference images in search for supernovaes. A commentary is provided in Italian and English. Join NOW! Below is a screenshot of what is being shown now. ...

Blog Post - Tommaso Dorigo - May 25 2009 - 3:12pm

EPOXI And The Hunt For Alien Oceans

Astronomers have found more than 300 alien (extrasolar) worlds so far. Most of these are gas giants like Jupiter, and are either too hot (too close to their star) or too cold (too far away) to support life as we know it. Sometime in the near future, howeve ...

Article - News Staff - May 26 2009 - 1:11pm