Cosmos
gregladen | September 16, 2008For a mere half a billion dollars, NASA plans to send a robot to the Red Planet in 2013.
NASA has selected a Mars robotic mission that will provide information about the Red Planet's atmosphere, climate history and potential habitability in greater detail than ever before.
Called the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft, the $485 million mission is scheduled for launch in late 2013. The selection was evaluated to have the best science value and lowest implementation risk from 20 mission investigation proposals submitted in response to a NASA Announcement of Opportunity…
gregladen | September 15, 2008
Gusev Crater is decorated by tracks made by dust devils that have been observed by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit, Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC), and HiRISE images. Dust devils are of interest because they may clean the solar panels that provide power to Spirit, and are partially responsible for dust transportation on the surface of Mars.
...
As the dust devil picks up material from the bright dust-mantled surface, it exposes the darker basaltic substrate. These scribble marks will follow the prevailing winds and tend to cluster together as the lower albedo surface heats up more quickly.…
gregladen | September 13, 2008According to a report in The Telegraph:
... as the first particles were circulating in the machine near Geneva, a Greek group had hacked into the facility and displayed a page with the headline "GST: Greek Security Team."
The people responsible signed off: "We are 2600 - dont mess with us. (sic)"
The website - cmsmon.cern.ch - can no longer be accessed by the public as a result of the attack.
Scientists working at Cern, the organisation that runs the vast smasher, were worried about what the hackers could do because they were "one step away" from the computer control system of one of the huge…
gregladen | September 10, 2008This is a very complicated machine, so it is very hard to say exactly when it "turns on." Some would say that the 'start' is when the first (of two) energy beams starts running around the track like crazed Einsteinian greyhounds, others would say that it 'starts' when there are two beams, they collide, and data comes flying out like eight graders from a large Middle School on the last day of the school year when the final bell rings.
Well, the first beam part has happened. The machine appears to work.
Naturally, this has all the physicist types creaming in their jeans,
Meanwhile, the…
gregladen | August 20, 2008Cosmos, the TV show by Carl Sagen, as in:
Anyway, Cosmos is now available on iTunes.
If you click this, it will open your iTunes store. So you may not want to click it. Up to you.
gregladen | August 19, 2008 It was supposed to start up in June, at which time the Earth would explicitly NOT be sucked into a tiny black hole. Or at least not quickly. Or at least not a black hole any different than the thousands that are already forming in our upper atmosphere more or less constantly.
Did it start up? No. There have been continued delays, or more accurately (perhaps), the exact startup depends on things that cannot be precisely measured mainly because they have never been done before and it is a good idea to take one's time. I'm pretty sure the legal challenges have not been part of the delays…
gregladen | August 15, 2008This sweeping mosaic of Saturn's moon Enceladus provides broad regional context for the ultra-sharp, close-up views NASA's Cassini spacecraft acquired minutes earlier, during its flyby on Aug. 11, 2008. See PIA11114 and PIA11113 for the higher resolution views.
This false-color mosaic combines Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) narrow-angle camera images obtained through ultraviolet, green, and near-infrared camera filters. Areas that are greenish in appearance are believed to represent deposits of coarser grained ice and solid boulders that are too small to be seen at this scale, but which are…
gregladen | August 15, 2008 This color image is a three dimensional (3D) view of a digital elevation map of a sample collected by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's Atomic Force Microscope (AFM). The image shows four round pits, only 5 microns in depth, that were micromachined into the silicon substrate, which is the background plane shown in red. This image has been processed to reflect the levelness of the substrate.
A Martian particle -- only one micrometer, or one millionth of a meter, across -- is held in the upper left pit. The rounded particle -- shown at the highest magnification ever seen from another world -- is…
gregladen | August 12, 2008This from JPL:
"Shorty after 9:03 p.m. Pacific Time, the Cassini spacecraft began sending data to Earth following a close flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus. During closest approach, Cassini successfully passed only 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the surface of the tiny moon.
Cassini's signal was picked up by the Deep Space Network station in Canberra, Australia, and relayed to the Cassini mission control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
"We are happy to report that Cassini's begun sending data home," said Julie Webster, Cassini team chief at JPL. "The downlink…
gregladen | August 7, 2008From NASA:
Fractures, or "tiger stripes," where icy jets erupt on Saturn's moon Enceladus will be the target of a close flyby by the Cassini spacecraft on Monday, Aug. 11.
Cassini will zoom past the tiny moon a mere 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the surface. Just after closest approach, all of the spacecraft's cameras -- covering infrared wavelengths, where temperatures are mapped, as well as visible light and ultraviolet -- will focus on the fissures running along the moon's south pole. That is where the jets of icy water vapor emanate and erupt hundreds of miles into space. Those jets…
gregladen | July 31, 2008On this day in 1971, on the second day of the Apollo 15 lunar mission, astronauts dug up a really old rock which, of course, they named "The Genesis Rock"
The so-called Genesis rock was found by lunar module pilots David Scott and James Irwin when they dug into the slope of Spur crater, on the flank of the Apennine Mountains.
They were there on the second "moon safari", traveling for the first time in a custom-built lunar rover vehicle.
The rover, which looks like a four-wheeled Jeep, has enabled the astronauts to spend more time away from the lunar module than ever before, and to go several…
gregladen | July 31, 2008A total Solar Eclipse will happen tomorrow, August 1st. Here is the map (click the map for the original version at NASA):
More details here.
gregladen | July 22, 2008Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.
Source
[Hat tip: Bunny]
gregladen | July 21, 2008
The Pinwheel galaxy, otherwise known as Messier 101, sports bright reddish edges in this new infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Research from Spitzer has revealed that this outer red zone lacks organic molecules present in the rest of the galaxy. The red and blue spots outside of the spiral galaxy are either foreground stars or more distant galaxies.
The organics, called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, are dusty, carbon-containing molecules that help in the formation of stars. On Earth, they are found anywhere combustion reactions take place, such as barbeque pits and…
gregladen | July 20, 2008It turns out that when you get up close and have a look around, there is a pile of evidence on Mars suggesting that the Angry Red Planet used to be the Disgruntled Wet Planet. Have a look at this photo of an unambiguous delta sitting in a crater.
A color-enhanced image of the delta in Jezero Crater, which once held a lake. Researchers led by CRISM team member and Brown graduate student Bethany Ehlmann report that ancient rivers ferried clay-like minerals (shown in green) into the lake, forming the delta. Clays tend to trap and preserve organic matter, making the delta a good place to look…
gregladen | July 18, 2008with a little thingie over the 'i' ... which I won't attempt in Movabletype.
George Lemaitre was the priest and scientist who proposed the BIg Bang (though it was not called that then) theory. By the way, for those of you now interested in this discussion of removing the phrase "Darwinism" from our vocabulary, you may find it interesting that "The Big Bang" was originally a non-complementary term used to describe this theory, by its detractors.
Lemaitre prenumberated Hubble's Law, and applied General Relativity to the Universe. He also did important theoretical work work with the atom…
gregladen | July 16, 2008On this day in 1969, three Earthlings were launched into space with the intention of landing on The Moon. From a BBC report of the time:
On board are three astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin. All have already flown in space during the Gemini manned space missions, and have been intensively training as a team for many months.
They carry with them goodwill messages from the heads of the member states of the United Nations and their flags.
Let's hope the goodwill messages were well received by the Moonies. (or would that be Moonlings???)
gregladen | July 4, 2008 Leavitt Henrietta Swan Leavitt
You were born on this day in 1868, in Lancaster, Massachuetts. You figured out how to use Cepheids with the ultimate result of understanding the size and, in the end, the fundemental nature of the Cosmos. The Big Bang theory is based in part on your contributions to Astronomy.
As a woman working in Astronomy in the early days of that science, nothing important will ever be named after you. Sure, there's an asteroid named after you, but for chrissakes, PZ Myers has an asteroid named after him. Sure, there's a crater on the Moon named after you, but I…
gregladen | July 3, 2008 The Earth Today The Earth has moved as far from the sun as it typically gets, and like a ball that has been thrown into the air, stopping at its maximum height before plummeting back to earth, The Earth has slowed down to as slow as it typically gets.
Starting some time today, The Earth will begin to fall back towards the sun. Hang on, its going to be a wild ride!
Astronomers call this moment in time Aphelion