Hubble has captured a visible-spectrum image of a planet revolving around Fomalhaut. Previously planets had only been observed indirectly, such as when the planet passes between Earth and the star. Fomalhaut is close enough that Hubble was able to catch a glimpse of the highly reflective giant planet, which is about three times the size [...]
Posts Tagged ‘space’
Fomalhaut B
Posted: 13 November 2008 in UncategorizedTags: extra-solar planets, fomalhaut, hubble, nasa, planets, space
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Mars Phoenix gets a lame-ass epitaph
Posted: 5 November 2008 in UncategorizedTags: epitaphs, mars, nasa, phoenix, space, space exploration, twitter, wired
Well the Wired contest to come up with an epitaph for the Mars Phoenix lander has ended and the final choice blows, in my opinion. Veni, vidi, fodi. (I came, I saw, I dug) The number three choice wasn’t so bad: It is enough for me. But for you, I plead: go farther, still. My choice, [...]
RedOrbit Blog of the Day
Posted: 6 June 2008 in UncategorizedTags: awards, blagoblag, blog of the day, blogs, redorbit, science news, space
RedOrbit named me one of their blogs of the day today. Go me! I had come across them a time or two before. They are a space/tech news site. Not bad for that sort of thing and certainly less spammy and clunky than Space.com.
The Enormity of Space
Posted: 26 February 2008 in UncategorizedTags: enormity, language change, prescriptivism, richard branson, space, spaceflight, virgin galactic
Whenever I hear the word enormity used to describe how gi-freakin-normous something is, I always willfully misinterpret it to mean an act of extreme evil or extreme wickedness. Now before you start screaming prescriptivist and throwing Kleenexes drenched in the snot of sociolinguistics at me — I’m not being a prescriptivist. Of course people have [...]
Finders Keepers
Posted: 8 January 2008 in UncategorizedTags: humor, lunar base, moon, moon treaty, space, space exploration, space station, spaceflight, t-shirts
This T-shirt just cracked me up: Of course, it actually could have been this way. I think the US even had a defacto assumption that the moon was ours. This is very much not the case. With the recent Japanese and Chinese probes to the moon, the upcoming German probe, and rumors of more probes [...]
Phaethon Cometh
Posted: 7 December 2007 in UncategorizedTags: asteroids, astronomy, celestia, comets, geminids, meteor showers, meteors, phaethon, space
One of the dark horses of the inner solar system makes its closest approach to Earth since it was discovered in 1983 soon. Phaethon is an asteroid (perhaps the burnt out core of a comet). We pass through its debris trail every December, resulting in the Geminid meteor shower. This year, the Geminids will peak [...]
Celestia
Posted: 1 December 2007 in UncategorizedTags: astronomy, astrophysics, celestia, dreams, open source, physics, software, space, space visualization
When I was around 12 or 13, I first got a hold of my stepfather’s physics text book. It was magic. The rules that governed the physical world were right there in the form of equations on a page. I was totally captivated. Newton’s laws of motion, gravity, angular momentum, and the theory of relativity. [...]
Rosetta
Posted: 14 November 2007 in UncategorizedTags: asteroids, earth, esa, minor planet center, probes, rosetta, space, spacecraft
The second fantastic photo of Earth from space I’ve come across in as many days was taken by the Rosetta comet probe sent up by the European Space Agency (ESA). The Rosetta craft made big news recently when it was mistaken for an asteroid that was going to make a near-Earth pass. The Minor Planet [...]
