Bizarre Solar Systems at AAS
- By Maggie Masetti
- January 23, 2012
- 1 Comment
Apparently solar systems are also like a box of chocolates… As the saying goes, you never know what you’re going to get. At the recent American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in Austin, TX, I got to sit in on a press session on extrasolar planets, where three new systems were … Continue Reading →
Try It At Home: Scope It Out game
- By Maggie Masetti
- January 13, 2012
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Curious about why the James Webb Space Telescope doesn’t look like Hubble, or most telescopes you are familiar with? Curious about the differences between reflector and refractor telescopes? This game will teach you the basics of how telescopes work and compare a simple telescope to Webb and to Hubble. You’ll … Continue Reading →
Try It At Home: The RXTE Learning Center
- By Maggie Masetti
- January 6, 2012
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Happy 16th birthday to the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer! Though this mission is soon coming to a close, it’s had an incredible lifespan and so much great science has come out of it. RXTE has a Learning Center, which recently received a facelift. It has a terrific intro to X-ray … 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 →
Virtual Worlds for Learning Real World Engineering
- By Maggie Masetti
- December 27, 2011
- 1 Comment
This is the James Webb Space Telescope’s second year participating with the RealWorld/InWorld Engineering Design challenge. We interviewed the teacher behind the program, Sharon Bowers, last year, so we thought we’d do a little follow-up. Here are last year’s winners and participants talking about their experience: Real World In World … Continue Reading →
Try It At Home: Cosmic Distance Scale
- By Maggie Masetti
- December 19, 2011
- 2 Comments
Have you ever wondering why we aren’t visiting the nearest stars? Or why there are no photos of our galaxy from the outside? The short answer is that the Universe is really big. So big that even the things closest to us are really far away. Here is a little … Continue Reading →
Contest: Halloween Costume Contest Results
- By Maggie Masetti
- November 10, 2011
- 1 Comment
Thanks to everyone that entered our Halloween science costume contest – we were thrilled with the response! Here are our top three winners, who will each be receiving a prize pack of NASA goodies! Yuruany Arrieta as the Hubble Space Telescope:
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 →
What’s This? #2 – November 4, 2011
- By Sara Mitchell
- November 4, 2011
- 2 Comments
It’s time for another installment of What’s This? Check out the photo below and try to figure out what it is! Post your guesses as comments to this post, comment on our Facebook wall, or tweet them to us with the #whatsthis hashtag. Here’s your hint – it’s best to … Continue Reading →
