Archives for December 2007
2007 –> 2008
Published on 31 Dec 2007 at 7:10 pm.
1 Comment.
Filed under history, time.
Happy New Year!
The Earth has completed one more trip around the Sun since my last New Year’s posting. So, we increment the calendar by one year. January 1 has not always been the date marking a new year, but today it is. You can read my post from last year for more […]
EPOXI Passing
Published on 30 Dec 2007 at 6:56 pm.
2 Comments.
Filed under NASA, space exploration.
Tomorrow a spacecraft will pass Earth. But, not to worry, it is one of our spacecraft. The passing craft is the EPOXI spacecraft.
EPOXI is the former Deep Impact craft that got so much press attention on July 4, 2005, when it plunged an impactor into Comet Tempel 1 (9P/Tempel). The impactor created […]
JPL 2008 Rose Parade Float
Published on 28 Dec 2007 at 1:09 pm.
5 Comments.
Filed under NASA, history.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is located in Pasadena, California. (Actually, only a small portion of the facility is actually in Pasadena. The rest is in the city of La Canada Flintridge. However, the front gate is in Pasadena, and Pasadena is much easier to say than La Canada Flintridge.) Pasadena, though, […]
Read ‘JPL 2008 Rose Parade Float’
NGC 7252
Published on 27 Dec 2007 at 5:51 pm.
2 Comments.
Filed under galaxies.
NGC 7252 is located in the southern part of Aquarius, in the southern sky at Sunset here in the northern hemisphere this time of year. In a small telescope, it looks like just a blob, and it was long classified as an elliptical galaxy. Larger telescopes showed that NGC 7252 has large […]
Merry Christmas!
Published on 24 Dec 2007 at 7:53 am.
1 Comment.
Filed under blogging.
Merry Christmas, everyone! May you have a wonderful holiday time.
I will continue to be spotty with blogging for the next week, as I work around family holiday events. Indeed, I have been spotty all month. It has been a really busy time here in Astroprof land. I am hoping that 2008 settles down a bit […]
Moon and Mars
Published on 23 Dec 2007 at 3:13 pm.
5 Comments.
Filed under skywatching.
Tonight, if you go outside in the northern hemisphere, you’ll see the Moon and Mars very close together. The Moon moves its own with each hour. Over the course of a day, it moves about as far across the sky as the width of a hand held at arm’s length. So, last […]
They’re calling it Altair
Published on 22 Dec 2007 at 3:04 pm.
1 Comment.
Filed under NASA, space exploration.
In the 1960s, NASA furiously worked to design and build a lunar exploration program. Apollo was the result of that effort. The Apollo program was a wonder. A giant rocket, the Saturn V, lifted the moon craft on its way. Rather than land the entire craft, a Lunar Excursion Module (LEM), […]
