Space

NGC 300 Gets A Striking New Image

NGC 300 is one of the closest and most prominent spiral galaxies in the southern skies,  about six million light-years away and bright enough it can be seen with binoculars. NGC 300 lies in the constellation of Sculptor with only a few bright stars, but is ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 8 2010 - 4:03am

InterOrbital Rocket Sneak Peeks

I like rocket photos and was getting a little jealous looking at all the Copenhagen folk's photos. Where were my rocket's photos?  I'm launching the Project Calliope music satellite with Interorbital Systems (IOS) and even I don't know ...

Article - Project Calliope - Sep 13 2010 - 2:28pm

Asteroid Near-Misses Happen All Of The Time

In case you do not easily panic, you may have missed the story that two asteroids were passing close to Earth yesterday.  Not to worry, it happens all of the time, but because their existence was only discovered Sunday by the Catalina Sky Survey, people we ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Sep 9 2010 - 2:20pm

Green Pea Galaxies- Another Win For Citizen Science

Strange so-called Green Pea galaxies were first discovered in 2007 by citizen scientists and it has now been shown that these extraordinary and extremely compact star cities have low amounts of complex elements after being diluted by streams of gas and str ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 12 2010 - 12:17am

Doom From Space

I'm a nice guy launching a nice little musical satellite.  But what if I were a super-villain?  What if_you_ were a super-villain and launching your own satellite?  Think-- and listen (or read) too-- how much damage can you do from (pico)-space, my la ...

Article - Project Calliope - Sep 14 2010 - 11:37am

'Unexpectedly' Complex Molecule Found In Space

What is really happening in apparently empty areas of the Galaxy?   It may get a rethink because scientists have managed to find a molecule that has an unexpectedly complicated structure in interstellar clouds of extremely small density.  Translucent inte ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 17 2010 - 12:04pm

Analogy Watch: Gravitational Lensing

My last post about hydrogen bonding included a video about dogs as an analogy to the chemistry. This got me thinking about visual analogies, and how video or images can be used to convey something that perhaps print can't quite accomplish. This video ...

Article - Lauren Rugani - Sep 19 2010 - 3:40pm

Jupiter approaches Earth- catch it now or wait until 2022

A number of important things have happened since 1963.   In September, 1965, for example, Bob Dylan heralded in the modern rock album with "Highway 61 Revisited" (1) and my mother was so excited about a Sandy Koufax no-hitter for the Dodgers she ...

Blog Post - Hank Campbell - Sep 17 2010 - 2:40pm

IOS Launch Rail Photos

Ever want to build your own launch rail?  Interorbital Systems did, and sent me pictures. I know, I know, you're thinking "aren't all the cool kids building their own rockets instead?"  Yeah-- and what are they gonna launch them off, hu ...

Article - Project Calliope - Sep 23 2010 - 1:15pm

Journal of Cosmology

Cosmology has been crossing my transom.  I've been getting press releases from the new online Journal of Cosmology.  Below is a sample.  They have a respectible team and, frankly, a kick-ass background image for their website (shown below). And, they ...

Blog Post - Alex "Sandy" Antunes - Mar 6 2011 - 2:19pm