Posts in the past four weeks
Thursday
Aug 12 2010
12:00 UTC
Galaxies come in lots of shapes and sizes, but in general, we can group them into four flavors: spiral, elliptical, irregular (no real shape), and peculiar (definite shape, but weird). We can also say lots of general things for each class: spirals are flat and have lots of gas and dust, ellipticals are spheroids with very
Posted by Bad Astronomy
Monday
Aug 09 2010
20:34 UTC
Viewing Space in Three DimensionsThese days you see the term “3D” attached to just about anything that somebody wants to sell you. It's kind of over-hyped for a lot of things — like toothpaste. Yep, I saw an ad for toothpaste that hyped it's “3D”-ness. And there are 3D movies and glasses and all that.
Posted by TheSpacewriter's Ramblings
Friday
Aug 06 2010
13:00 UTC
I'm a Craig Ferguson man, truth be told, but I have to give Jimmy Fallon major props for devoting major time to Milky J this week. C'mon, you remember Milky J: he's the Hubble Gotchu guy. He was on Fallon's show again this week, but this time got some bad news: Hubble will be replaced
Posted by Bad Astronomy
Thursday
Jul 22 2010
16:38 UTC
Hyper-Velocity Star Wanders in the Wrong NeighborhoodWhat happens when a little group of stars traveling together through the galaxy find themselves in the wrong neighborhood? If it's the hyper-velocity (meaning super-fast, moving at 2. 5 million kilometers per hour, or three times the Sun's velocity through space) hot blue, supermassive star HE 0437-5439, then the scenario
Posted by TheSpacewriter's Ramblings