Awesomeness Round-up – 6/28/10
- By Maggie Masetti
- June 28, 2010
- 3 Comments
Check out this gorgeous new zoom! It begins with a wide field view of the southern hemisphere sky, including both the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds and closes in on a star forming region of the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Credit: NASA/ESA, ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2, Akira Fujii and Eckhard Slawik. Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin
Scientists have simulated the sounds sub-atomic particles make when produced by the Large Hadron Collier. One reason they’re doing this is to give scientists a different way to look at the data. In this way, they might pick out the Higgs boson if/when they finally detect it. You can listen to some of the particles yourself!
Happy birthday to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter! It’s hard to believe that it’s only been up there a year and already done so many awesome things. Check out
Ten Cool Things Seen in the First Year of LRO!
Here’s one of our favorites – astronauts’ first steps on the moon:
There was recently an earthquake near Toronto, Canada. People in the area were invited to tell the U.S. Geological Survey if they felt it – adding thousands of citizen science contributions to the USGS data. Here’s a map of the results:
We’ve been following Stephen Colbert as he began his “astronaut training” at NASA Johnson. Colbert did get to visit his namesake, the C.O.L.B.E.R.T. treadmill. We actually named a podcast episode after him last year!
Part 1:
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Fallback Position – Astronaut | ||||
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Part 2:
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Fallback Position – Astronaut Pt. 2 | ||||
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Part 3:
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Fallback Position – Astronaut Pt. 3 | ||||
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On Thursday the 24th, we had Celebrate Goddard Day, an internal event for employees to learn more about opportunities and activities here on-center. There were all sorts of events including an “Astronaut Encounter” (not to be confused with a Dolphin Encounter) with Astronaut Paul Lockhart:
Despite the heat (which was intense), everyone seemed like they were having a good time. There were bands playing and information booths and food, among other things (like a parade and display of classic cars!).
Here are two quick pics showing you what’s up with the James Webb Space Telescope. Dan Patriarca, President of Quantum Coating Incorporated, is in the photo.
This is Webb’s tertiary mirror – it’s all coated with gold!
Credit: Ben Gallagher (Ball Aerospace)
This is one of the Near InfraRed Spectrograph detectors from the engineering test unit that is currently sitting in the clean room.
Credit: NASA/Catherine Lilly
[…] messages from space in this article. NASA Blueshift round up their favourate stories of the week in this blog entry and NASA’s This Week In Space released their latest video, which is shown […]
Incredible post and pics! Keep em coming!
Thanks, Jon! We appreciate it!