Space

Swimming In The (astro) Pacific

As a newly minted, 1 year old professor, this is the deep end of the astronomy edu cation pool. I am swimming in the insights and experiences of people with more experience than me. I recommend attending an Astronomical Society of the Pacific meeting for t ...

Article - Alex "Sandy" Antunes - Aug 8 2012 - 12:04am

Now Broadcasting From Radio Jupiter

A project that investigated the planetary radio-frequency emissions of the Earth and Saturn also discovered a strange radio emission from the planet Jupiter. The Earth is loud. As in"radio-loud", which is how objects causing measurable radio emi ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 27 2012 - 3:31pm

Cosmological Salute To Neil Armstrong: A Blue Moon

Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, died last Saturday in Ohio at age 82 and his funeral service is tomorrow.  Like most everything else about him, the service is private. Yet the cosmos has decided to ignore the wishes of his family and so ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Aug 30 2012 - 11:50am

The First Kickstarter Satellites

We are in a new space revolution, and in the past two years, several people have used the Kickstarter crowd-funding platform  to try to get into space.  Not all succeeded.  Let's look at the current standings.  They are, in order of kickstarter: Team ...

Article - Project Calliope - Sep 9 2012 - 10:58am

MACS1149-JD1: Did Dark Matter Cause Detection Of Galaxy From The Universe's 'Nursery' Stage?

Gravitational lensing has found MACS1149-JD1, which was created less than 500 million years after the Big Bang, making it the most remote galaxy ever to be observed.  Our universe came into being approx. 13.7 billion years ago with a Big Bang. 400 to 500 m ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 19 2012 - 1:17pm

Sharpless 2-292: Seagull Nebula Gets Its Wide Field Imager Close-Up

Sharpless 2-292, a stellar nursery called the Seagull Nebula because it seems to form the head of the seagull, glows brightly due to the energetic radiation from a very hot young star lurking at its heart. Now it has gotten a new look courtesy of the Wide ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 25 2012 - 6:00am

4-D Space-Time Crystal May Be Built- Or Not

What to give the person who has everything?  A clock that will keep perfect time  even after the heat-death of the universe.  Such a "space-time crystal" has periodic structure in time as well as space. Why haven't we built those? With such ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 25 2012 - 9:00am

Sagittarius Discovery: S0-102's Blazing Fast Orbit Around The Milky Way's Black Hole

Black holes may not be so dangerous to stars after all. The discovery of a star named S0-102 may help reveal whether Albert Einstein was right in his fundamental prediction of how black holes warp space and time- it orbits the enormous black hole at the ce ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 4 2012 - 2:35pm

Thor’s Helmet Nebula Gets Close-Up During ESO 50-Year Celebration

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) is officially 50 years old today and this morning, for the first time ever, observations with ESO’s Very Large Telescope were made of an object chosen by the public. The winner of an anniversary competition pointed t ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 22 2012 - 9:39am

Space Travel: Pioneer Anomaly Solved?

The 100 Year Spaceship Symposium, an international event advocating human expansion into other star systems, has some crucial hurdles to overcome. Basically, interstellar travel will depend upon extremely precise measurements of every factor involved in th ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 10 2012 - 10:00am