orion
gregladen | December 5, 2014Watch the Orion test flight:
Splashdown:
Why is it great? Well, speaking as a Gemini (not my horoscope sign, but the space program going when I first gained sentience) ...
First, it is big, fast, cool looking. It actually looks like a rocket that might have been designed a decade before they ever actually made any rockets. It is almost Deco.
Second, they got a guy from the 1960s -- with that slightly, nasal, black and white voice people spoke in back then -- to call the race launch.
Third, Orion is really good at taking selfies.
Fourth, it didn't take long. The whole thing was like…
esiegel | December 2, 2013"Give me a man who says this one thing I do, and not those fifty things I dabble in." -Dwight L. Moody
While star clusters may dabble in a number of physically interesting things, there's one thing that they do above all others, and that is shine. For today's Messier Monday, where we spotlight one of the 110 deep-sky wonders of the Messier catalogue, let's take a look at one of the brilliant open clusters of stars that's recently formed in our neighborhood of the galaxy and that will appear all winter long: Messier 50.
Image credit: Greg Scheckler, using the robotic telescopes of http://…
esiegel | December 10, 2012"My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all." -John Lennon
Welcome to the latest edition of Messier Monday, where each week we take an in-depth look at one of the 110 deep-sky objects in the Messier Catalog. These objects, all of which are visible from certain northern latitudes at certain times of the year, were catalogued explicitly to prevent comet-hunters from confusing these static objects with potential comets.
Image credit: SEDS Messier…