Podcast: NuStar: NASA’s Newest X-Ray Eyes
- By Sara Mitchell
- October 12, 2012
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Click to listen! (7.5MB MP3, right-click to save) Transcript (Text, PDF) It’s an exciting experience for any space geek to watch a new satellite launch into orbit. Even through an online video feed, it’s thrilling to see something that Earthlings worked for years to create headed for its new home, … Continue Reading →
Exploring the Galaxy with Mass Effect 3
- By Sara Mitchell
- July 31, 2012
- 1 Comment
The fictional Kite’s Nest from Mass Effect 3 Image provided by EA/BioWare The first time I caught a glimpse of the astronomical imagery in the Mass Effect video games, I was blown away by how realistic everything looked. While the plot of the games is solidly science fiction, the setting … Continue Reading →
Awesomeness Round-Up – 4/20/2012
- By Sara Mitchell
- April 20, 2012
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Credit: NASA, ESA, D. Lennon and E. Sabbi (ESA/STScI), J. Anderson, S. E. de Mink, R. van der Marel, T. Sohn, and N. Walborn (STScI), N. Bastian (Excellence Cluster, Munich), L. Bedin (INAF, Padua), E. Bressert (ESO), P. Crowther (University of Sheffield), A. de Koter (University of Amsterdam), C. Evans … Continue Reading →
The Helix Nebula in New Light… Again!
- By Sara Mitchell
- February 8, 2012
- 3 Comments
Credit: NASA, ESA, C.R. O’Dell (Vanderbilt University), and M. Meixner, P. McCullough The Helix Nebula is an iconic astronomical object – it’s been imaged again and again, by a variety of satellites. It’s one of those objects that gets turned into desktop wallpapers, posters, and postcards. It was even featured … Continue Reading →
Awesomeness Round-Up – 1/31/2012
- By Sara Mitchell
- January 31, 2012
- 12 Comments
This is a doozy of a round-up, thanks to the American Astronomical Society meeting mid-month! Maggie already blogged about some of the interesting exoplanet news that came out at the meeting. Here, we’ll cover some of the other big astrophysics releases at AAS! But first… a gorgeous image from the … Continue Reading →
What’s This? #3 – The big reveal!
- By Sara Mitchell
- January 3, 2012
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Our last post of 2011 was another in our What’s This? series – we posted a mysterious image (or three, this time) and asked for people to guess what they were looking at. Our first two challenges were reasonably easy, and I think our hints helped a lot of readers … Continue Reading →
What’s This? #3 – December 29, 2011
- By Sara Mitchell
- December 29, 2011
- 7 Comments
We’re closing out 2011 with another mysterious What’s This? contest! We’re making this one a little more challenging than the last two. Check out the three photos below and try to figure out… what’s this object? Post your guesses as comments to this post, comment on our Facebook wall, or … Continue Reading →
Awesomeness Round-Up – 12/7/2011
- By Sara Mitchell
- December 6, 2011
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Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech While scientists have discovered hundreds of extrasolar planets over the past decade, finding Earth’s twin (an Earth-like planet in a similar orbit to ours around a Sun-like star) has been much more difficult. But a recent discovery by the Kepler mission has brought us one step closer – … Continue Reading →
Awesomeness Round-Up – 11/10/2011
- By Sara Mitchell
- November 10, 2011
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Pulsars are fascinating stars. They’re neutron stars – objects so dense that a teaspoonful of their matter weighs as much as Mount Everest – and they emit periodic bursts of energy as they rotate, like lighthouse beacons in space. Scientists watch for the tell-tale pattern of emissions, which typically show … Continue Reading →
What’s This? #2 – The big reveal!
- By Sara Mitchell
- November 7, 2011
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Last Friday, we posted this photograph and asked our followers (on the blog, Twitter, and Facebook) to tell us what they thought they were seeing in the picture. Nearly all of the guesses were actually quite close, and a couple of people got it totally right! Maybe our clue was … Continue Reading →
