Archives for January 2008
High def Pluto
Published on 25 Jan 2008 at 4:52 pm.
No Comments.
Filed under Kuiper belt.
Pluto, one of the largest known Kuiper Belt objects, is the target for the New Horizons spacecraft, launched January 19, 2006. New Horizons will fly past Pluto and its moon Charon in July, 2015. One of New Horizons’ chief instruments is the LORRI (LOng Range Reconnaissance Imager), a telescope with a very highly […]
Colorized Mercury
Published on 24 Jan 2008 at 9:15 pm.
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Filed under Mercury, planets.
Per a request from a geology professor at my college, I am posting another image of Mercury taken by the MESSENGER spacecraft during its flyby of that planet earlier this month.
Mercury has no appreciable atmosphere, so its surface shows eons of impacts. Erosion does not cover up the craters as it does on Earth. […]
Carnival of Space #38
Published on 24 Jan 2008 at 11:33 am.
1 Comment.
Filed under blogging.
This week, the Carnival of Space is hosted by Sorting Out Science. Check the carnival out here.
For new readers, blog carnivals are a collection of a number of interesting blog posts over the last week or so. Normally, they are simply a listing of posts, with a short description about them. Sam […]
The Stephenville, Texas, UFO
Published on 23 Jan 2008 at 6:31 pm.
7 Comments.
Filed under public science.
Last week, I posted about the UFO seen near Stephenville, TX. Then, a number of days later, a photograph surfaced and was prominently displayed in the local Dallas / Fort Worth area media purported to be a picture taken of the UFO by a trucker’s cell phone. I wrote about that, too. […]
Read ‘The Stephenville, Texas, UFO’
Science Cafes
Published on 22 Jan 2008 at 11:54 pm.
1 Comment.
Filed under public science.
I ran across an interesting comment that led me to a new story about science cafes. Put simply, a science cafe is an informal way of promoting science to the public. A scientist meets at a cafe, coffee shop, pub, or some other informal setting to say a few things about his or her area […]
30 Years of Progress
Published on 21 Jan 2008 at 8:24 pm.
2 Comments.
Filed under space exploration, space station.
Thirty years ago yesterday, January 20, 1978, a Soyuz rocket booster lifted off from the Soviet Union carrying a craft that looked very similar to a Soyuz manned spacecraft. However, this craft had no crew, nor was it designed to ever hold crew members. It could never return to Earth intact. Instead, […]
Braille astronomy
Published on 19 Jan 2008 at 5:53 pm.
2 Comments.
Filed under books.
This is the supernova remnant N49. It is a composite image created from combining images from the Spitzer infrared telescope (the red image), the Hubble space telescope (the white and yellow parts), and the Chandra X-ray telescope (the blue features). It is a wonderful image. It shows the nebula across many wavelengths […]
