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Can You Hear a Black Hole?

Recently I came across this story – this ten year old story – on Tumblr. Sept. 9, 2003: Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have found, for the first time, sound waves from a supermassive black hole. The “note” is the deepest ever detected from any object in our Universe. … Continue Reading →

SpaceCrafts: Build your own JWST costume!

For the past couple of years, we’ve run a Halloween costume contest – and we’ve seen some pretty amazing costumes! We also occasionally get a peek at costumes (in-progress and finished) on Twitter or Facebook… and when the Schoellner family tweeted a shot of their JWST costume, we knew we … Continue Reading →

Why infrared? (exoplanet edition)

I’m not sure I’ve yet to meet a person who didn’t find the idea of planets around other stars fascinating. I’m no different. I grew up in an era where the only planets we knew about were the ones in our own solar system. When I went to college to … Continue Reading →

Show us your space-themed costumes!

Unfortunately we’re not able to host our annual Halloween costume contest this year… but we still want to see your NASA/space/astronomy-themed costumes! We’ve set up a Flickr group that you can add your costumes to: add your photos here! We’d love to feature some of them in an upcoming blog … Continue Reading →

Special Guest Blog: Stunning Webb Model Transforms at NASA, Student Engineers Behind the Controls

  • By Maggie Masetti
  • October 17, 2013
  • Comments Off on Special Guest Blog: Stunning Webb Model Transforms at NASA, Student Engineers Behind the Controls

We have a guest blogger today! Laura Betz, a writer for the James Webb Space Telescope, wrote this article for us about the student-built 1/6 scale engineering model of JWST that was recently demoed at NASA Goddard. There are some moments of my life that I will never forget. Watching … Continue Reading →

Q&A with Women working on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope

  • By Maggie Masetti
  • September 17, 2013
  • Comments Off on Q&A with Women working on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope

EDIT 10/18/13, Here is a transcript of the Reddit Q&A on JWST’s website. You can also read the original thread, which is posted below. EDIT 9/26/12, Here is the thread with the Q&A: http://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/1n6r5d/qa_with_women_working_on_nasas_james_webb_space/ Ever wonder what the job experience is like for women working on NASA’s flagship astronomy mission? … Continue Reading →

Why infrared? (earliest galaxies edition)

  • By Maggie Masetti
  • September 12, 2013
  • Comments Off on Why infrared? (earliest galaxies edition)

This is the second blog in a series which asks the question, why infrared? Last time we looked at how infrared light could reveal baby stars hidden from visible-light observatories by opaque clouds of gas. In this blog I’m going to talk about (what else?) the James Webb Space Telescope … Continue Reading →

Happy birthday, Spitzer!

Seems like only yesterday we were celebrating the 5th birthday of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. As it turns out, there’s another space telescope celebrating a big anniversary – the Spitzer Space Telescope just turned ten on August 25th! I know talk a lot about JWST and how amazing it’s … Continue Reading →

Happy birthday, Fermi!

Recently we passed the 5th birthday of NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. And there was cake! Yup, this satellite is made of cake! And candy! Credit: Eric Winter We recently asked, why infrared? And we could just as easily ask, why gamma-rays? As it turns out, there are many strange … Continue Reading →

Why infrared? (nebula edition)

As someone who fields a lot of questions about the James Webb Space Telescope, a giant infrared observatory being built right now, I see a lot of “Why infrared?” questions. There are a lot of answers to this, but here’s one I think is particularly interesting and illustrative of why … Continue Reading →

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