Astronomers using a spectrograph on the ESO’s 3.6 meter telescope in La Silla, Chile have discovered 32 new planets orbiting other suns. 32! The new planets push the number of known planets outside our solar system. or exoplanets, to nearly 400. The planets range in size from about five times the size of Earth to [...]
From 2003: Earth and Jupiter as seen from Mars Nature: Researchers create portable black hole
Sky and Telescope: Your 2012 defense kit
Astronomy Beat: 2012 and cosmophobia ..(read more)
Mount Everest is the highest mountain on Earth. Everybody knows that. It rises to 29,029 feet (about 5.5 miles) above sea level. That’s respectable. Olympus Mons on Mars, however, stands about 88,600 feet (16.7 miles) above the surface. That’s “respectable” three times over, and is the tallest known mountain in the solar system.
Olympus Mons (upper [...]
Kind of following up yesterdays post.
The video mentions the impact thought to have killed the dinosaurs 65-million years ago. Just the other day the news was released that Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech University and a team of researchers are looking at the Shiva Basin as what could be a much larger impact site. More [...]
Set out to observe the end of an occultation of Io by Jupiter, which my Astromist software said would occur at 7:15pm. The time went by and no moon appeared. An hour later there was still no sign of it, even though my TheSky6 software suggested it should have been further from Jupiter by then -- and brighter -- than Europa which was clearly visible on the other side. Then finally after looking up at the sky and then back into the eyepiece, there it was -- well separated from Jupiter. It had of course remained in eclipse after the end of its occultation. Half an hour later I saw Europa being covered by the planet, disappearing (to my eye, in poor seeing) less than a minute before the advertised time on Calsky. Above is a sketch I made during the eclipse of Io. 
I’ve seen this little galaxy and I’ve tried to image it, problem is from here, Barnard’s is pretty far down on the horizon so atmospheric distortion can be a problem, still it’s a nice target. Of course, seeing the wonderful nebulosity we can see in this gorgeous image from the ESO is pretty much out [...]
NASA is holding a science update meeting today at 2:15 pm EDT to discuss the new data collected by the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (or IBEX). NASA television and the agency’s website will show live coverage, and have it recorded in the archive videos, if you’re interested in watching.
Here is an artist’s rendering of the IBEX [...]
Have you ever wondered what was the biggest diamond known to science? The Hope Diamond (45.52 carats)? The Star of Africa or Cullinan I Diamond (3,106.75 carats uncut)? How about BPM 37093, nicknamed “Lucy”, after the Beatles song (ten billion trillion trillion carats)?
Yes, I said “ten billion trillion trillion carats”. That’s a “one” followed by [...]
N.Y. Times: The collider, the particle and a theory about fate
USA Today: Was Einstein wrong about general relativity?
The Onion: Oil-covered otter accused of laying it on thick
Cosmicomics: A curious blend of astronomy and romanticism We Are All in the Gutter: Carnival of Space 124...(read more)This time it isn’t us!
Our host is moving our server to a new (physical) location. The move is expected to take between 1.5 and 3 hours beginning at 8 pm PDT October 14th. During the move the site will be unavailable.
There is a possibility they could do the move a day early, so if you [...]
Home Technology Science Science Web MSNBC Cosmic Log ABOUT COSMIC LOG Quantum fluctuations in space , science , exploration and other cosmic fields . served up regularly by MSNBC.com science editor Alan Boyle since 2002. Alan Boyle covers the physical sciences , anthropology , technological innovation and space science and exploration for MSNBC.com . He is a winner of the AAAS Science Journalism Award the NASW Science-in-Society Award and other honors a contributor to A Field Guide for Science Writers and a member of the board of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing Check out Boyle's biography or send a message to Cosmic Log via cosmiclog msnbc.com A smashing view from Hubble Posted : Tuesday , October 13, 2009 4:00 AM by Alan Boyle A . Evans Stony Brook U . NASA ESA Click for : video A Hubble image shows two galaxies merging into one beautiful mess known as NGC 2623. Click on the image to watch a Hubblecast . video Long ago , a galaxy far away smashed into another galaxy creating a beautiful , terrible knot of cosmic chaos The view of that galactic collision , captured by the Hubble Space Telescope , serves as a preview of what might well happen when the Andromeda
Telegraph: 'Spider pills' for your insides | BBC video (via Slashdot)
Science News: The why of sleep When sleep goes awry Scientific American: DARPA tries to tap vacuum energy
National Geographic: 50 years of space exploration
Space Coalition Blog: Flight test at N.M. spaceport...(read more)
October 2009 is pretty interesting up in northern hemisphere, because all seven planets can be seen during one night. This is not very usual. Read more about planets in October 2009 and find all the planets during one night.
An illustration of LCROSS heading for lunar impact. Credit: NASA
The NASA LCROSS spacecraft, and part of the upper stage of its rocket, are due to deliberately crash into a crater (known as Cabeus) close to the Moon’s south pole on Friday (12:31pm UK time). Scientists are hoping that the huge plumes the impacts create will [...]
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Here’s another one of those stunning planetary images that really stops you in your tracks. It’s just been released by the Cassini mission imaging team and shows Saturn (and a few of its moons) as seen by the Cassini spacecraft, just last month. The eery illumination of the rings is due to [...]
Astronomy Blog You are : in Astronomy Blog archive First Light An astronomy blog usually but not always based in the UK . Pondering questions such as Is it a space probe or spacecraft First Light First light Those two words have been echoing around my head for the past few weeks but reached a crescendo today with the release of the first images from the European Space Agency's Planck spacecraft In astronomy , first light is that special moment in the life of a new instrument or telescope when it does its first observation of the Universe . It is like a moment of . birth For Planck astronomical photons have been entering the telescope since it was released from its Sylda cocoon shortly after launch . But at that point the instruments weren't turned on and the whole spacecraft had to be checked and cooled down over several weeks . Even after they were switched on , the instruments had to be tuned and tweaked to make sure that they were working as well as possible in this new environment of space . It was only on around August 13th that the instruments were declared ready and the first astronomical observations could truly begin . That date marks first light for Planck In the case of
I know I seem to mention LookUP a lot but I'm quite proud of it and it keeps improving. I made it as a meta service which looks through Simbad, NED, Skybot etc. in an attempt to find any astronomical object by name rather than just a subset of the Universe.Now Rob Simpson has made use of the XML output to add LookUP on Twitter. If you have a Twitter account you can send a message of the form: "@lookupastro Mars" and it will reply back to you with the coordinates (Right Ascension and Declination) and a link to more info. Of course it is probably quicker to just use LookUP online, on your iPhone or normal phone but what Rob has done is very neat. - taken from Astronomy Blog (www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/)
Most of the world doesn't speak English as a first language. That isn't surprising although it can be if you don't leave the English-speaking parts of the web. One of the things that's been tried on the Jodcast is to translate the news segment into different languages. This is good because it allows non-English speakers to hear the content and it could also help with learning as you can hear the same content in different languages. Over the years there has been news in Chinese, French, Portuguese, Hindi and even Farsi but none of these have lasted for more than a few months as the students providing the translations get busy or leave. Now we're trying again with the wonderful Lizette Ramirez translating the latest astronomy news into Spanish. If you speak Spanish, please check it out. - taken from Astronomy Blog (www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/)