The Moon! (lunar eclipse)

If you have a clear sky right now you should go outside and look at the moon right now.

I SETI was an alien

In forty-seven years of signal-seeking, SETI twice detected signals of possibly intelligent origins– The "Wow!" signal in 1977, and Radio Source SHGb02+14a in 2004.

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Gigantic, Gorgeous Finale of Hubble Space Telescope's Photon-Hunting Trip

This is what happens when you turn NASA's Hubble Space Telescope loose for one year on a tiny slice of the sky above: A stunning view of 50,000 galaxies -- a massive 5600 x 9000 pixel, fully-high-resolution JPEG photo -- that'll leave you speechless. It's time to nominate NASA's Hubble Space Telescope for a Nobel Prize.

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Moon Images Available in High-Res Soon!

Hot on the heels of the remastering of the Apollo movie footage comes the news that every photograph taken above and on the surface of the Moon is being rescanned digitally and made available to the public!

The work is being done at Arizona State University, and is headed up by Mark Robinson, who is, not-so-coincidentally, the Principal Investigator for LROC, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, the workhorse camera on the next NASA lunar probe. Over the next three years he and his team will be scanning in the original lunar photographs at high resolution (some are 1.3 Gb per picture, at 100-200 pixels per film millimeter!) and high contrast.

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Interactive Sky Map - 500 million space objects

The main purpose of WIKISKY is to consolidate astronomical, astrophysical and other information about different space objects and astrophysical facts. The system can display about 500 millions the space objects of the star sky.

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Pale Blue Dot

Inspired by the words of Carl Sagan in 1991, as he presented to the world, the most distant image yet taken of ourselves.( from 4 billion miles )
What ever each of us believes in , this is something we all share, and through sharing ,we might some day learn humility.

Cosmic Rain

Intel interviewed Holly Batchelor of Scotland about her cosmic ray project.

Hubble Deep Field: The Most Imp. Image Ever Taken (Redux)

Watch... Listen...

More Than Your Eyes Can See

A wonderful online video which introduces the world of infrared light



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Hawking flies weightless aboard jet (Yahoo! - AP)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Free of his wheelchair and tethered only to heart rate and blood pressure monitors, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking on Thursday fulfilled a dream of floating weightless on a zero-gravity jet, a step he hopes leads to further space adventures.

The modified jet carrying Hawking, a handful of his physicians and nurses, and dozens of others first flew up to 24,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean off Florida. Nurses lifted Hawking and carried him to the front of the jet, where they placed him on his back atop a special foam pillow.

The jet then climbed to around 32,000 feet and made a parabolic dive back to 24,000 feet, allowing Hawking and the other passengers to experience weightlessness for about 25 seconds.
...
The astrophysicist hopes the zero-gravity flight is a step toward going on a suborbital flight, which may be offered by private space companies by the end of the decade.

"It's a test to see how well he can handle the g-forces that would be necessary in order to leave the atmosphere," said Sam Blackburn, Hawking's assistant. "That is very much one of the major purposes of this flight."

Awesome! I wish I could go! :)

TED Talks: Burt Rutan: Entrepreneurs are the future of space flight

In this passionate talk, legendary spacecraft designer Burt Rutan lambastes the US government-funded space program for stagnating: "Houston, we have a problem. We're entering a second generation of no progress." He calls for entrepreneurs to lead the next wave of space exploration, funding new crafts, new (manned) missions, and entirely new approaches to space exploration.

Bizarre Hexagon Spotted on Saturn

One of the most bizarre weather patterns known has been photographed at Saturn, where astronomers have spotted a huge, six-sided feature circling the north pole.Rather than the normally sinuous cloud structures seen on all planets that have atmospheres, this thing is a hexagon.



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(ESA Space Science) Hinode sees the dynamic and violent sun as sharply as never before.

Hinode, the newest solar observatory on the space scene, has obtained never-before-seen images showing that the sun's magnetic field is much more turbulent and dynamic than previously known.

--[ Link ]--

Mars' South Pole Ice Deep and Wide

Pasadena, Calif. -- New measurements of Mars' south polar region indicate extensive frozen water. The polar region contains enough frozen water to cover the whole planet in a liquid layer approximately 11 meters (36 feet) deep. A joint NASA-Italian Space Agency instrument on the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft provided these data.



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1300 black holes

A new image from the Chandra observatory found over 1300 black holes in the centers of galaxies billions of light years away. How can black holes be so bright?



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Pale Blue Dot - a Tribute to Carl Sagan.

Pale Blue Dot is a music video tribute to Carl Sagan made by YouTube user Ice Core Scientist.

Found on Neatorama.

We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Gyroscopically stabilized CD-player(s) in microgravity

Gyroscopically stabilized CD-player(s) in microgravity onboard the International Space Station.

(April 26, 2003) -- In his final episode of Saturday Morning Science, Expedition Six NASA ISS Science Officer Don Pettit demonstrates gyroscopic spin stabilization. Pettit floats several portable compact disc players in microgravity that are spinning and not spinning.

SOHO Planets and Comets

Comet McNaught approach the Sun

Here's a YouTube version of Comet McNaught passing in SOHO's view of the Sun.

The Sun at 19.5nm

SOHO observations of the Sun's outer atmosphere (FeXII at 19.5nm)