The HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Oribiter captured this image of Mars' surface, showing the presence of three different dust devils in the same region. Dust devils are common during the springtime on Mars' northern hemisphere, when increased sunlight heats the surface and causes air to rise rapidly in spinning columns. The image was
Posted by Lights in the Dark
... have bonus value-added science?The first Getaway is September 16 – 20 of this year, and it'll be at the C Lazy U ranch, an all-inclusive l
Posted by Bad Astronomy
SATURDAY, May 12 ~ SUNDAY, May 13 Today's Radio Schedule at a GLANCE: SET #1: Discovery Now ~ Big Picture Science SET #2: EarthSky ~ 365 Days of.
Posted by My Astronomy Blog
#leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px;}#leftcontainerBox . buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px;}#bottomcontainerBox { width: 50%; padding-top: 1px;}#bottomcontainerBox . buttons { float: left; margin: 4px 4px 4px 4px;}As many of you already know space radiation is a huge problem. Aside from the fact that it can melt your brains faster than a mini-series upon Hulu, space radiation (whether from stars, black holes or planets) c
Posted by Colony Worlds
Saturn's 914-mile (1471-km) -wide Iapetus (pronounced eye-AH-pe-tus) has a particularly curious feature: a chain of 20-kilometer (12-mile) high mountains encircling the moon's equator. On the anti-Saturnian side of Iapetus, the ridge appears to break up, forming distinct, partially bright mountains. The Voyager I and Voyager II spacecraft provided the first knowledge of the peaks, and
Posted by Lights in the Dark
Well, it's official. After ten years of groundbreaking observation of our planet, ESA has declared the end of the Envisat mission after losing contact with the satellite on April 8, 2012. All attempts to re-establish communication with Envisat have so far been unsuccessful, and although recovery teams will continue to determine the cause of signal
Posted by Universe Today
Here's a great shot of Titan and Saturn acquired by Cassini on May 6, 2012 just after a pass by the haze-covered moon. It's a color-composite made from images taken in Cassini's red, green and blue color channels, and the resulting image was color adjusted a bit to appear more Saturny. Cassini also made some
Posted by Lights in the Dark
The way of the future is fusion. I dream of a world where humans have harnessed the power of the Sun. Clean, safe, energy. But there is no clear path to fusion. The most exciting possibility for a future with fusion may be the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor or ITER. ITER is not the only option of course. Previously, I have discussed the National Ignition Facility or NIF which has pioneered unique technologies is the field, but their success is not ensured. Many small research p
Posted by The Astronomist
On local TV last night, I somehow got reporter Dave Malkoff to take a stab at explaining quantum field theory: the world is made of fields, but we only notice the ripples within them, which we see as particles. Something about Angelina Jolie in there at the end as well.
Posted by Cosmic Variance
Hi All,Seeing as there are many types of people, who do different types of jobs, all working toward producing the ALMA Stand at this years SSE we thought it would be good see what they each do! So to kick this off it's me, Adam. I am a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Manchester, and my job title is Support Scientist at the UK ALMA regional centre node (or UK ARC Node for short). This means I typically spend my day providing support to UK astronomers who use ALMA, testing soft
Posted by ALMA Observatory
The latest installment of the excellent Symphony of Science series is out, and like every one of them it's a fun, inspirational and educational trip through the cosmos with voiceovers by leading astronomers and physicists. These are great, and if you haven't seen the others be sure to check them out on creator John Boswell's
Posted by Universe Today
Can't see the video below? Click here. The 15th and latest installment of the awesome Symphony of Science videos is out, and like all those before it it's a fun, inspirational and educational trip through the cosmos with voiceovers by leading astronomers and physicists. These are great, and if you haven't seen the others be
Posted by Lights in the Dark
It's well known that all of our evidence for dark matter (and dark energy too, but that's not the subject here) at the present time is indirect: it comes from observing the gravitational influence of the hypothetical stuff, not from detecting it “directly” (i. e., using some interaction other than gravitational). So it's natural to ask
Posted by Cosmic Variance
... and in my defense new science results from Zoo2, and a few other small (tiny people) things distracted me. I won't go back to explaining the whole thing again now, but one thing missing o
Posted by Beautiful Stars
... and in my defense new science results
Posted by Galaxy Zoo Blog
Since the first planet was discovered orbiting another Sun-like star in 1995, nearly 800 more have been discovered. Only a handful have been directly detected: most are discovered by their influence on their star, either by tugging it or blocking its light as the planet orbits (at the bottom of this post is a gallery of images of exoplanets detected in these ways). But some have been directly seen: either glowing by their own light, reflecting that of their star, or — ironically — se
Posted by Bad Astronomy
... am very happy to see a very unwelcome visitor go away: La Niña is dead. Over time, the pattern of ocean and atmospheric circulation changes. When cooler water in the eastern Pacific Ocean is brought to the surface at the Equator, it's called La Niña, and when that water is warmer it's El Niño. This changes the way winds blow and water evaporates, and during La Niña Australia gets torrential rains and floods, while the US gets drought conditions, especially in the sou
Posted by Bad Astronomy
... am very happy to see a very unwelcome visitor go away: La Niña is dead. Over time, the pattern of ocean and atmospheric circulation changes. When cooler water in the eastern Pacific Ocean is brought to the surface at the Equator, it's called La Niña, and when that water is warmer it's El Niño. This changes the way winds blow and water evaporates, and during La Niña Australia gets torrential rains and floods, while the US gets drought conditions, especially in the sou
Posted by Bad Astronomy
... am very happy to see a very unwelcome visitor go away: La Niña is dead. Over time, the pattern of ocean and atmospheric circulation changes. When cooler water in the eastern Pacific Ocean is brought to the surface at the Equator, it's called La Niña, and when that water is warmer it's El Niño. This changes the way winds blow and water evaporates, and during La Niña Australia gets torrential rains and floods, while the US gets drought conditions, especially in the sou
Posted by Bad Astronomy
My friend Sarah and I took a road trip to Marceline, MO this past weekend. For those that don't know, Marceline is Walt Disney's childhood home and we've been running a Disney blog since the beginning of this year. Sarah and I have been on quite a few road trips together and we always play the license plate game. If you're not familiar with it, the goal is to find license plates from as many states or other unique identifiers as possible (e. g. Ontario, US government, etc...). She always wins due
Posted by Angry Astronomer
You know why astronomy is cool? Because of things like this: Galaxy clusters are collections of galaxies held together by their own gravity. We see clusters all over the place, and they're among the largest structures in the Universe. We can find them at large distances, which means we see them as they (and the Universe) were young — it takes light a long time to travel across the cosmos. Astronomers went looking to find extremely distant clusters of galaxies, and found one at a staggering
Posted by Bad Astronomy
So, tonight is the so-called Supermoon, when the Moon happens to be full at the same time it's at perigee, the point in its orbit closest to the Earth. This makes it somewhat larger and brighter than normal, and that's getting a lot of attention in the press. I pointed out a few days ago that in reality, you almost certainly won't notice the difference between this full Moon and any other, mostly because the difference is small, and our eyes and brain are terrible at judging things like that wit
Posted by Bad Astronomy
Can't see the video below? Click here. If you think this weekend's full moon looks larger in the sky than usual, you're not a lunatic… it IS larger in the sky! 14% larger, to be exact. Why? This Saturday night, May 5, 2012, will bring yet another “Supermoon” to our night sky. As the Moon
Posted by Lights in the Dark
... simple but amazing science in his series, Science Off the Sphere. In his latest video, Pettit allows us to ‘see' sound waves in space. “I'm amazed at how much fun you can with something as simple as a set of speakers
Posted by Universe Today
... never get tired of listening to physicist richard feynman talk about... pretty much anything. here is part 1 of a seven part lecture series he gave at cornell. enjoy and then watch all seven lectures!
Posted by astropixie
We're very pleased to tell you that we've been awarded developer time from theÂCitizen Science Alliance to build a new, exciting Zooniverse project toÂdiscover gravitational lenses. What's a gravitational lens, you might ask? When a massive galaxy or clusterÂof galaxies lies right in front of a more distant galaxy, the light from theÂbackground source gets
Posted by Galaxy Zoo Blog
Just a quick note: if you're looking to expand your mind enough to make your head explode, then read this very interesting essay by my fellow Hive Overmind Discover Magazine blogger and theoretical cosmologist Sean Carroll on why there's something rather than nothing. That is, why does the Universe exist the way it does? I'm simplifying it a bit here. But it's similar to the question, why is there something rather than nothing, which Sean has also written about. There's some tech speak in the fir
Posted by Bad Astronomy
Overnight, Hubble got our first data on perhaps the most spectacular Voorwerpje host galaxy, the merging system UGC 7342. We have to wait until almost the end of the year for what we really wanted to see, the ionized gas. The telescope has particular time pressure in some parts of the sky (as if it
Posted by Galaxy Zoo Blog
Inspired by today's Astronomy Picture of the Day Image, here's a quick post about the beautiful nearby spiral galaxy, Messier 106 (or NGC 4258). M106 Close UpÂ(from APOD) Credit:ÂComposite Image Data -ÂHubble Legacy Archive;ÂAdrian Zsilavec, Michelle Qualls, Adam BlockÂ/ NOAO / AURA / NSF Processing -ÂAndr van der Hoeven This is a composite Hubble Space
Posted by Galaxy Zoo Blog
Can't see the video below? Click here. Here's a new video from the folks at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD that will make you fall in love with the Universe…for the first time, or all over again. It's a good reminder that, even though the shuttles are retired, NASA still has its
Posted by Lights in the Dark
... Rutherford said about science and stamp-collecting? It seems Shakespeare had much the same idea! Study is like the heaven's glorious sun, That will not be deep-search'd with saucy looks; Small have continual plodders ever won, Save base authority from others' books. These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights That give a
Posted by In The Dark
You may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space. — Douglas Adams Standard classroom models and textbook illustrations of the Solar System, regardless of how pretty they are, all share one thing in common: they're wrong. Ok, maybe notÂwrong, but definitely inaccurate especially in regards
Posted by Lights in the Dark
If you've read my blog for any amount of time then you're familiar with astronomer Neil Tyson. You may remember the speech he gave when asked about the most astounding fact he knew. It's an amazing passage, probably the best speech he's made. You may also remember Gavin Aung Than, who does the web comic Zen Pencils. He takes famous quotations and creates comics to go with them, reinterpreting the words with his art and adding extra depth to them. I wrote about him when he drew a series of panels
Posted by Bad Astronomy
We are very close to the end of the semester here at Penn, and the last couple of weeks have been the usual flurry of activity as teaching comes to an end, exam period begins, and a few late semester/early summer meetings all take place at the same time. A week or so ago, I
Posted by Cosmic Variance
Some of you may have been following a tiny brouhaha (“kerfuffle” is so overused, don't you think?) that has sprung up around the question of why the universe exists. You can't say we think small around here. First Lawrence Krauss came out with a new book, A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather
Posted by Cosmic Variance
I've been kicking around an idea for a paper for a couple of years. Every so often Stephen Hawking will announce that contact with an extra-terrestrial civilisation would be a Very Bad Thing. Therefore silence, … Continue reading →
Posted by AlunSalt: Ancient Science and the Science of Ancient Things
Can't see the video below? Click here. This is one for the OMG Holy Crap files… a passenger on board an airplane waiting at JFK airport captured this incredible video this morning as the space shuttle Enterprise landed on the adjacent runway! Talk about a once-in-a-lifetime shot! As you may have heard, the space shuttle
Posted by Lights in the Dark
As a follow-up to the previous Wonders of the Universe i-app released by Harper Collins, Fragile Earth brings us back from the farthest reaches of the Universe to our own beautiful blue world, whose surface is rapidly changing due to the effects of human civilization. With Fragile Earth those changes are brought to light with
Posted by Lights in the Dark
Here on Universe Today we often discuss things that exist on the atomic and sub-atmonic scale. Even though astronomy is concerned with very big things that happen over very, very large distances and time spans, the reality is that our Universe is driven by events occurring on the tiny atomic scale. We all know atoms
Posted by Universe Today
... worlds, and indulging in science fiction books and movies, it's a given: one day we'll find life somewhere else in the solar system or Universe. But are we being too optimistic? Two researchers say that our hopes and
Posted by Universe Today
Jorge Cham visits CERN, and comes back with tales of particles and mass.
Posted by Cosmic Variance
Video Caption: This mesmerizing video unveils incredibly amazing sequences around Jupiter and Saturn from NASA's Cassini and Voyager missions set to stirring music by The Cinematic Orchestra -That Home (Instrumental)”. Credit: Sander van den Berg Don't hesitate 1 moment ! Look and listen to this mind blowing video of the Jupiter and Saturnian systems. If
Posted by Universe Today
Copyright 2012. Magnifying the Universe by Number Sleuth. Looking for a fun way to investigate the Universe? This interactive infographic from Number Sleuth accurately illustrates the scale of over 100 items in the observable Universe ranging from galaxies to insects, nebulae and stars to molecules and atoms. The feature includes some wonderful images, using real
Posted by Universe Today
... flowchart I put together for The Particle at the End of the Universe. Feel free to spread around, with appropriate attribution. Sorry for the tiny writing, there are a lot of particles! Click to embiggen and get a legible version.
Posted by Cosmic Variance
Like any science, Astronomy asks far more questions then it can actually recommend to users what there is no laser beam that can appear brighter.
Posted by My Astronomy Blog
Today is the 22nd anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope. I worked on Hubble one way or another for a decade or so, and it changed not just my life, but the lives of astronomers around the world, and of course forever altered — for the better! –how the public viewed of astronomy. To acknowledge this, below is a repost of my "Ten Things You Don't Know About Hubble", first put on the blog in 2010, and which I think still holds up. And what better way to celebrate this o
Posted by Bad Astronomy
If you're in or near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, this week, I strongly encourage you to participate in the annual Philadelphia Science Festival, which began on Friday and lasts through the coming weekend.
Posted by My Astronomy Blog
Good news: I just received a tweet from the American Airlines Twitter feed:Yay! They have decided to not air the audio version of the antivax interview. That's excellent, and I thank American Airlines for that. However, as far as I can tell, the interview is still slated to run in their in-flight magazine. I will hopefully have more news about that soon as well. Update: When I asked about the printed version, I got this reply back very quickly:Yay again! Again, I thank American Airlines for consid
Posted by Bad Astronomy
... become one of fields of science as stars provide a variety of advantages over telescopes and are not able to know how stars are formed and developed. Scientists routinely use ...
Posted by My Astronomy Blog
... questions for math/science classes pop into my head that are interesting (to me) at least to spend a few minutes thinking about. So I'm going to start posting them here under the tag STEM-Q so I can refer back to them. Here's the first one. Just got home from a quick roadtrip to Ohio today. On the way up there my family and I drove through some pretty heavy rain which reminded me of a question that I kick around in my head every so often:When plowing through a good rainstorm,
Posted by Angry Astronomer
Science keeps advancing, in fits and starts. It was a good week for intriguing results from experiments. The first bit of news, which has been the subject of the most internet buzz, is a new paper by Chilean astronomers C. Moni Bidin, G. Carraro, R. A. Mendez, and R. Smith, which claims that there's no
Posted by Cosmic Variance
Just a very quick post to direct you to aÂpiece by me on the topic of Open Access and the Academic Journal Racket, which appeared today in the Grauniad Guardian Science Blog. Here's a taster, but for the whole thing you'll have to go here.
Posted by In The Dark
Space Shuttle Discovery, the longest serving and most flown spaceship in human history, entered her eternal home today, Thursday, April 19, at the Smithsonian's National Air & Space Museum Annex in Virginia. Discovery thereby assumed her new status as a museum relic and monument to the promise and glorious dreams of space exploration, inspiring future
Posted by Universe Today
Astronauts have long reported the experience of seeing flashes while they are in space, even when their eyes are closed. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin both reported these flashes during the Apollo 11 mission, and similar reports during the Apollo 12 and 13 missions led to subsequent Apollo missions including experiments specifically looking at this
Posted by Universe Today
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