Space

Water And Silver? The Moon Just Got A Lot More Interesting

When a NASA rocket slammed into the Moon last fall, scientists knew they would get information about the composition of the lunar soil at the poles that has never been sampled. The findings from that NASA mission, called LCROSS for Lunar CRater Observing a ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 21 2010 - 6:08pm

HR 7162- Astrometry Win Could Force A Rethink Of Gas Giant Planet Formation

49 light years away from Earth in the constellation Lyra is a binary star that may cause a rethink on how gas giant planets were created.   ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Oct 23 2010 - 12:26pm

Watch The Live Dissertation Defense About Citizen Sky

Last year, DPR AmSci Journal wrote about a great new citizen science program called Citizen Sky [read from August 26, 2009]. This project is collecting observational data on the current eclipsing of the variable binary star system  epsilon Aurigae. The pri ...

Article - Matthew T. Dearing - Oct 26 2010 - 9:38pm

Space Jellyfish and Other Photos

National Geographic's Space Photos This Week is akin to dangling a shiny object in front of a kitten- the kitten may not knowledgeably be able to discuss the refractive index of said object, but it can think "oooh, pretty" 1 and play with it ...

Blog Post - Becky Jungbauer - Oct 25 2010 - 8:41am

Was There Cosmic Climate Change Too?

Astronomers say they have found evidence of an intense warming period in the Universe’s early history, which they describe as a form of 'cosmic climate change'. The findings were made by researchers measuring the temperature of gas that lies in b ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 2 2010 - 2:04pm

Early Galaxies Reionized The Universe After The Big Bang

Like our own world history, the Universe had its own cycle of events.    After the initial Big Bang (though 'Bang' is a confusing word, it may have been rather dull), there were no light sources in the Universe. ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 3 2010 - 1:03pm

Hanny's Voorwerp- Ghostly Glow Of A Dead Quasar

In our many accolades of citizen science, nothing stands taller among discoveries than the strange object Hanny van Arkel found in archived images of the night sky in 2008. After catching sight of it, courtesy of Hanny and Galaxy Zoo, astronomers were dete ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 3 2010 - 9:28pm

Cosmic Alignment- Not Just For Ancient Religions Any More

The Herschel Space Observatory is the largest telescope in space.   It's capable of detecting longer-wavelength light than the human eye can, light in the far-infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, which is the type emitted by galaxies line ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 21 2010 - 11:16am

Picosatellites Are Cute

I finished building my test Picosatellite!  It's a working skeleton, using the real PCB boards but without the electronics wired in.  In short, it's 'real enough'.  Were I to put in half of the $264 worth of electronics I bought at Digi ...

Article - Project Calliope - Nov 9 2010 - 11:15pm

Chunky monkey galaxy to be put on South Beach diet, NASA says

This story about the "chubby" galaxy cluster Abell 1689 and dark matter made me laugh out loud. Here's the title: Chubby Galaxy Cluster Suggests Dark Energy Was Stronger Long Ago Then, later on in the story: The new dark matter map reveals t ...

Blog Post - Becky Jungbauer - Nov 14 2010 - 1:53pm