A gorgeous new image from the tag team effort of the Herschel and Spitzer Space telescopes shows a rainbow of colors within the Orion nebula. The different colors reflect the different wavelengths of infrared light captured by the two space observatories, and by combining their observations, astronomers can get a more complete picture of star [...]
: . Home Suggest Stories About Us Staff Contact Us Log In Register to Comment NYTimes Science Times : Yoga makes chastity harder Valley talk linguistics Our handy hands IUD comeback etc Canadian Press : Mines on the moon gaining stature in business and science . circles It had to be there ah yes , Helium-3 in paragraph 16, nearly half way through a story on setting up mining camps on the moon and that comprises a paragraph break after almost every sentence . He-3 is an isotope that could be valuable many years from now . That’s if something like the Int’l Tokomak Experimental Reactor under construction in France actually shows how in principle to get competitive , abundant fusion energy out of magnetic bottles of plasma . The energetics and low neutron flux of fusing deuterium and He-3 are
An observatory camera is set to broadcast a free, real-time feed of the “Mars opposition” on Saturday, March 3rd. The Slooh Space Camera feed starts at 04:00 UT; 8:00 p.m. PST; 11:00 p.m. EST. Slooh will provide multiple observatory feeds, including feeds from Arizona and the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa. The Mars [...]
Changing seasons in Mars’ northern hemisphere brings a change in the weather, and the clouds have rolled in to cover part of the polar surface in this intriguing image from the Mars Odyssey spacecraft. (...)Read the rest of Today’s Martian Weather: Partly Cloudy (122 words) © Jason Major for Universe Today, 2012. | Permalink | [...]
The Moon is a witness plate of a time when asteroids pummeled the Earth and Moon 4 billion years ago. New lunar data has revealed evidence about that process so long ago. Using information gleaned from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter — an instrument on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) now operating in orbit around [...]
Subscribe Today Renew Give a Gift Archives Customer Service Facebook Twitter Newsletter SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS Q BA : The Science of Science Fiction I’ll be on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson on Wednesday night Pump up the galaxy This is a galaxy Yup . It is Click to galactinate . This is the dinky Antlia Dwarf Galaxy located in the southern constellation of Antlia , the pump technically called a dwarf elliptical . It’s so faint and sparse that it wasn’t discovered until 1985 and confirmed as being a galaxy in 1997 even though it’s only 4 million light years from Earth not terribly farther than the Andromeda Galaxy , which is so big it’s visible to the naked eye Antlia may be a
Today SpaceX today released an image of the fully assembled Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket inside their facility at Cape Canaveral. This means the first test launch of a commercially built spacecraft to the International Space Station is just a bit closer. The exact date of the launch has not yet been announced after [...]
This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by Brian Wang at Next Big Future. Click here to read the Carnival of Space #238. And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an [...]
: Subscribe Today Renew Give a Gift Archives Customer Service Facebook Twitter Newsletter SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS Zen Pencils and words of wisdom Pump up the galaxy Q BA : The Science of Science Fiction On Sunday , February 26, 2012, I did one of my Q BA live video chats on Google+ This one was a little different than usual : it was part of the online convention Dot Con Fest 2012 celebrating geek life . In honor of that , the topic was The Science of Science Fiction I talked about time travel , faster-than-light travel , Star Trek , Contact , Ringworld , Dyson spheres , artificial gravity , and a lot of other fun nerd topics . I got a lot more comments than usual , which was fantastic
: Home Suggest Stories About Us Staff Contact Us Log In Register to Comment AP to The Daily Activist : The devolution of news from triumph of discovery to so disgusting a zombie lover shudders Vacuna contra la heroína en México : Dónde están los periodistas de ciencia mexicanos AP : NASA getting earful from its Mars crew Back to the Future : Mars , as viewed from here by Hubble The last two weeks or so have seen a lot of news on NASA’s nearly-flat budget which , while not hit as hard as those of many other agencies , as proposed by the White House would call a nearly full stop to the agency’s long-running saga of Mars probes . The US has landed a small parade of rovers with the biggest-yet due to touch down later this year , plonked other stationary instrument packages on the surface and
Subscribe Today Renew Give a Gift Archives Customer Service Facebook Twitter Newsletter SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS Frosty blue dunes on Mars Q BA : The Science of Science Fiction Zen Pencils and words of wisdom I’m a big fan of Carl Sagan of course . His books are simply amazing , and they are all worth your time reading . He had a way with words that made them not just profound , not just inspiring , but also warm and rich and . enveloping He was a dreamer , an optimist , willing to look beyond the immediate problems we have now and see a better future , if only we could change our ways just a little bit . I’m not the only person he affected . Zen Pencils the nom de plume of young artist
Subscribe Today Renew Give a Gift Archives Customer Service Facebook Twitter Newsletter SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS Special Q BA tonight at 8:00 p.m . EST Zen Pencils and words of wisdom Frosty blue dunes on Mars It’s been a while since I’ve posted a jaw-dropping high-res picture from Mars , so how about this one a gorgeous shot of frost coating dunes on the surface of the Red Planet Oh yes , you want to click that to enaresenate . This picture was taken by the HiRISE camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter , which takes extremely detailed images of the surface of the planet . It shows wind-driven sand dunes on Mars , rippling in a similar way as on Earth . The sunlight is coming
Welcome to your Monday morning weather update, in which I’ll attempt to sum up the immediate past, present and future of weather on the bayou. PAST Houston got a short taste of early summer-like weather this week. Thursday’s low temperature of 69 degrees at Bush Intercontinental Airport broke the previous record for a high minimum, [...]
. Subscribe Today Renew Give a Gift Archives Customer Service Facebook Twitter Newsletter SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS The rocket , the laser , and the northern lights Frosty blue dunes on Mars Special Q BA tonight at 8:00 p.m . EST This weekend I’ve been participating in Dot Con 2012 an online convention celebrating the geek lifestyle see my previous post for moreinfo For my part , tonight I’ll be doing my Q BA live online video chat on Google+ at 20:00 EST 01:00 UTC Since this is part of Dot Con , I’m going with the theme of The Science of Science Fiction a favorite of mine . Got a question about astronomy , time travel , rockets , aliens , whatever from something you saw on a TV show or
Perched on the outside of the sprawling International Space Station, the $2 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer is sifting through cosmic ray particles at twice the rate eager physicists estimated when the “big science” experiment was launched last year to sort out the mysteries of the big bang — the theorized enormous explosion that created [...]
, , Subscribe Today Renew Give a Gift Archives Customer Service Facebook Twitter Newsletter SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS See Venus in broad daylight today Special Q BA tonight at 8:00 p.m . EST The rocket , the laser , and the northern lights Some pictures just have it all . Like , say , a rocket and a laser and an aurora OK , that’s awesome All it needs is a rampaging T-Rex to be the greatest single picture ever taken . Click to enalfvénate . So what you’re seeing here is a wide-angle lens time exposure of a rocket launch on February 18, 2012, from Fairbanks Alaska at the Poker Flat Research Range . The aurorae are obvious enough they’re the green glow in the sky . The bright streak is the
Subscribe Today Renew Give a Gift Archives Customer Service Facebook Twitter Newsletter SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS A boy and his dog The rocket , the laser , and the northern lights See Venus in broad daylight today Venus is the third brightest natural object in the sky after the Sun and the Moon and today is one of your best chances all year to see Venus in broad . daylight I took this pic of the two together last November Venus is so bright it can be seen even during the day when the Sun is up . I’ve seen it many times before even at noon but it ain’t easy . The problem is that the sky is big and bright , and Venus is small , just a dot , and can be very difficult to find initially . And
Subscribe Today Renew Give a Gift Archives Customer Service Facebook Twitter Newsletter SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS Dot Con 2012 See Venus in broad daylight today A boy and his dog I actually got a note on twitter recently asking me why I haven’t posted a picture of my dogs recently . That was a refreshing idea since I get complaints when I don’t write about astronomy So here you go : nothing profound or deep or cosmic or philosophical . Just me and Canis . Minor Happy Caturday and as for the title of this , Harlan Ellison fans know what I’m talking about I think I showed marvelous judgment , if not particularly good . taste Share February 25th , 2012 7:00 AM Tags : Canis Minor by Phil Plait
This weekend space enthusiasts will hold the 2nd Annual SpaceUp Houston Unconference to discuss space exploration and radical ideas for how we might go about doing this. The event will feature eight discussion sessions held over two days, a Space Show & Tell as well as feature innovations from Johnson Space Center and the community. [...]
: . , . Home Suggest Stories About Us Staff Contact Us Log In Register to Comment SF Chronicle , Discovery News , etc : Nomad planets lost , cold , and alone in the dark , wander the galaxy . Probably . Sounds familiar , . too Christian Science Monitor : Wind power is green . But sometimes the turbine owners are mean , . too Gotta go , but just raced through a badly-needed story on the downside of wind energy . It doesn’t come from some climate change denying quarter that just things the whole thing is economic and politically-popular foolishness . This is a bipartisan piece of crusading journalism . Before the weekend commences for me , an urging to : read Christian Science Monitor Erik : Vance The wind rush’ : Green energy blows trouble into Mexico with Part II : Wind power : Clean
, , : , , , . . , . Home Suggest Stories About Us Staff Contact Us Log In Register to Comment LiveScience , New Scientist : Deepest non-microbe animal ever found down in a cave Or just farthest in Christian Science Monitor : Wind power is green . But sometimes the turbine owners are mean , . too SF Chronicle , Discovery News , etc : Nomad planets lost , cold , and alone in the dark , wander the galaxy . Probably . Sounds familiar , . too This is unexpected news about the things in the gloaming far from stars . A statistics-heavy extrapolation from the leading theories of how planets and small stars form , plus the growing count of known planets orbiting other stars , concludes that for every one of the billions of stars in the Milky Way there could be 100,000 planets and dwarf planets down
Subscribe Today Renew Give a Gift Archives Customer Service Facebook Twitter Newsletter SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS Debunking doomsday Dot Con 2012 Satellite tumblr While taking pictures for a night sky timelapse video , astrophotogrpaher Babak Tafreshi got a surprise in his field of view : a tumbling satellite He made a special video to highlight : it Pretty neat . A lot of people aren’t even aware that satellites are visible at night at all , but really on any given night dozens of satellites can be visible passing through the sky in fact the space station is so bright it’s actually now the third brightest object in the sky , surpassing even . Venus The satellites come in a lot of flavors 
A colleague of mine, Bill Gould, sent me a link yesterday and said, “You owe it to yourself to check this out, if you haven’t already.” Did I ever. The background information on the site is interesting as well. Nick Risinger said he stitched together the 5,000 megapixel image from 37,440 exposures and some 60,000 [...]
, : . . Home Suggest Stories About Us Staff Contact Us Log In Register to Comment Lots of babble about rare tongues : Endangered languages San Jose Mercury News , then more : California sea otters face a rising peril . . Sharks One has to think that any creatures big enough to be chewy and paddling around in the oceans any time in the last 150 million years ago have gotten the occasional painful surprise of a shark’s nip , or worse . But the sea otters of California , the San Jose Mercury-News s Paul Rogers reported a week ago are being attacked by sharks at a rate starkly higher in recent years , many if not most dying of their wounds . His story prompted wider reporting in other . media One authority said told Rogers that such attacks were known , but now have risen so high they are the
Bacteria-carrying planets may be wandering through space instead of orbiting a star. That’s the news from the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), a joint institute of Stanford University and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. A research team is suggesting that a new class of celestial objects – “nomad planets” — will affect [...]
It’s official: According to the latest iteration of the U.S. Drought Monitor just released, the drought is over for most of eastern Harris County. The remainder of the county remains in a moderate-to-severe drought, and most of the rest of the state, except for coastal southern Texas and west Texas, continues to make a modest [...]
Subscribe Today Renew Give a Gift Archives Customer Service Facebook Twitter Newsletter SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS Moon bites multicolor Sun from space The two tails of Comet Garradd Super-Earth exoplanet likely to be a waterworld As we find more and more planets orbiting other stars , we keep finding ones that are weirder and weirder . Enter GJ 1214b while much more massive than the Earth , it’s apparently mostly water Click to enhydronate this artists's illustration . The planet orbiting the star GJ 1214 at 40 light years from Earth was actually discovered in 2009 by the MEarth project which is looking for Earth-like planets around , cool , dim red dwarf stars . This is fertile ground for
Subscribe Today Renew Give a Gift Archives Customer Service Facebook Twitter Newsletter SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS Breaking news : Heartland leaker is scientist Peter Gleick , says documents are all real Super-Earth exoplanet likely to be a waterworld Moon bites multicolor Sun from space Earlier today , the Solar Dynamics Observatory had a front seat to a pretty nifty event : a partial eclipse of the Sun . For about 100 minutes , from its orbital viewpoint SDO saw the Moon pass in front of the Sun , partially blocking it . SDO semi-fictional mascot Camilla Corona created a really cool video of the event using footage from different wavelengths edited : together The false color images show
Subscribe Today Renew Give a Gift Archives Customer Service Facebook Twitter Newsletter SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS International Hollywood Star Registry Time lapse : Epic Skies A planet where men evolved from apes The next time some creationist starts talking smack about evolution being impossible and that humans aren’t animals and they’re not descended from apes , show them this : picture I was browsing uploaded pictures in the 500px app and this came up I added the white box and fuzzed out the other thumbnails . Sometimes , coincidence is pretty . funny Share February 19th , 2012 7:00 AM Tags : apes creationism humans by Phil Plait in Antiscience Debunking Humor Piece of mind Religion
Astronomers have reconstructed what they think is a galactic crash scene, with a rare breed of black hole left behind amid a dwarf galaxy's wreckage.
The president's 2013 budget, released Feb. 13, asks for modest increases to some federal science agencies but trims funding to NASA. The request also takes a deep bite out of Mars and outer-planet science exploration.
Astronomers are worried. It's not some new unexplained mystery of the universe or the upcoming launch of a space telescope that is unnerving them, though. The problems they currently face are much more down-to-Earth -- and the future of space exploration hangs in the balance.