A common misconception about telescopes is that their main purpose is to magnify objects. This is false: in fact what a telescope does is capture more light than is possible by the naked eye. The Hubble Space Telescope is one of the world’s most important telescopes. Situated in orbit around Earth, but outside of its atmosphere, the Hubble gets a clearer view of the Universe and what lies within than any ground-based instrument. In this video, WatchMojo.com learns how the Hubble works.
Good call Buzz. From The Tech Herald:
Legendary Moon walker and NASA spaceman Buzz Aldrin has said the race to establish a permanent Moon base should be the result of international cooperation with the real focus on a manned mission to Mars.
Speaking in a lengthy interview with Popular Mechanics magazine, Aldrin said the next race to be the first to host a manned presence on the Moon should not be a financially damaging “space race” but an international effort combining the resources of China, Europe, India, Japan and Russia.
“By renouncing our goal of being first on the Moon (again), we would call off Space Race II with the Chinese and encourage them to channel their ambitious lunar efforts into the consortium,” Aldrin said.
He added that the Mark II mission to the Moon is, in fact, a “damaging” detour from what should be NASA’s principal objective — namely, the preparation for a manned mission to Mars.
“The agency’s current Vision for Space Exploration will waste decades and hundreds of billions of dollars trying to reach the moon by 2020 — a glorified rehash of what we did 40 years ago,” he said. “Instead of a steppingstone to Mars, NASA’s current lunar plan is a detour.”
Approaching his 80th birthday, Aldrin was in no mood to hold back on criticism of the American space administration’s plan. In its place, Aldrin proposed a radical program he named the “Unified Space Vision,” which, controversially, calls for a permanently manned presence on Mars by 2035.
“Here’s my plan, which I call the Unified Space Vision,” he told the magazine. “It’s a blueprint that will maintain U.S. leadership in human spaceflight, avoid a counterproductive space race with China to be second back to the moon, and lead to a permanent American-led presence on Mars by 2035 at the latest.”
“That date happens to be 66 years after Neil Armstrong and I first landed on the moon — just as our landing was 66 years after the Wright Brothers’ first flight,” Aldrin said.
The findings of a planet outside the solar system, orbiting a dying, puffed-up star, could help researchers better understand the fate of our solar system.
Astronomers were able to capture, for the first time ever, planets that were outside the solar system.
San Francisco’s Morrison Planetarium, the new $20 million dollar facility that’s a part of the recently reopened California Academy of Sciences, is a technological marvel.
The Morrison Planetarium allows “astronomers not only to show traditional star charts, but to guide visitors through an immersive fly-through of our universe – realistically rendered in real-time. ”
Here are some links to the stars for while you’re at home.
Here’s a photograph that three University of Toronto scientists were able to capture images of the star 1RXS J160929.1-210524 from a distance of about 500 light years away. This image is making history as the first ever photograph of a planet in an alien solar system around a sun-like star.
This photograph will challenge currently accepted theories about star and planet formation because the “planet” is quite a distance from its parent star.
I think it’s a safe statement to say that the average person knows very little about our planet. Well, just in case, here are some facts for you about the Earth. Put your thinking caps on:
- The Earth is smoother than a billiard ball.
- The Earth is an oblate spheroid
- The Earth isn’t an oblate spheroid.
- OK, one more surfacey thing: the Earth is not exactly aligned with its geoid.
- Jumping into hole through the Earth is like orbiting it.
- The Earth’s interior is hot due to impacts, shrinkage, sinkage, and radioactive decay.
- The Earth has at least five natural moons. But not really.
- The Earth is getting more massive.
- Mt. Everest isn’t the biggest mountain.
- Destroying the Earth is hard.
Read more if you need to make sense of this (Cause I sure do…)
A white arrow points to a faint object detected by chance in 2006 as astronomers scanned the skies for distant supernovae.
The object, which resembles a tailless comet, traces a long, elliptical orbit that takes it as much as 150 billion miles (241 billion kilometers) from Earth, astronomers announced in August 2008.
The object, dubbed 2006 SQ372, is a kind of tailless comet that’s currently some two billion miles (three billion kilometers) from Earth, a bit closer to the sun than Neptune.
But the lump of ice and rock is moving on a long, elliptical orbit that will take it on a round-trip journey lasting about 22,500 years. Read more…
According to Brian Handwerk
An artist’s impression shows the trio of super-Earths discovered by a European team and announced on June 16, 2008.
The three planets are 4.2, 6.7, and 9.4 times more massive than Earth and orbit the star HD 40307 every 4.3, 9.6, and 20.4 days, respectively.
According to Anne Minard
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