Spooky Astronomy, part 2
- By Maggie Masetti
- October 31, 2011
- 1 Comment
Another Halloween is upon us and that means it’s time for some… [spooky voice] Haunted Astronomical Imagery! Consider, if you will, the Helix Nebula… Credit: NASA, NOAO, ESA, the Hubble Helix Nebula Team, M. Meixner (STScI), and T.A. Rector (NRAO) ….which hides a zombie at its core, visible when the … Continue Reading →
Hunting for Hints of Planets
- By Sara Mitchell
- October 26, 2011
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Last week, about 120 exoplanet-hunters from as far away as Japan and the Netherlands descended upon NASA Goddard for the Signposts of Planets conference, an opportunity for scientists to discuss cutting-edge research on the detection and study of extrasolar planets in the debris disks around stars. The three-day event included … Continue Reading →
A Fond Farewell to ROSAT
- By Maggie Masetti
- October 17, 2011
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It’s time for me to be nostalgic about another satellite. Last time it was the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer which I really started my career in websites/education/outreach on. This time, it’s the Röntgensatellit, or ROSAT, a German-led X-ray telescope. When I was an intern here, my first job was to … Continue Reading →
Try It At Home: Turning Light Into Sound
- By Sara Mitchell
- October 5, 2011
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Ever had a remote control that didn’t seem to work, and wondered if it was the remote control itself or just dead batteries? Well, thanks to the power of the electromagnetic spectrum (the fancy scientific name for all wavelengths of light, including ones our eyes can’t see), you can build … Continue Reading →
What’s This? #1 – The big reveal!
- By Sara Mitchell
- October 3, 2011
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Last Friday, we posted the first in our new series, What’s This? We put up a mysterious photograph, and asked our readers to make their best guesses about the content of the picture. We had a lot of fantastic guesses, in the comments and on Twitter! Here’s the photo, once … Continue Reading →
What’s This? #1 – September 30, 2011
- By Sara Mitchell
- September 30, 2011
- 9 Comments
Introducing another new Blueshift series: What’s This? We’ll post a mysterious photo… and invite you to guess what it could be! Post your guesses as comments to this post, or tweet them to us with the #whatsthis hashtag. So without further ado – what’s this? We’ll give you one hint … Continue Reading →
Try It At Home: X-ray Data: Light curves, Spectra & Images Activity
- By Maggie Masetti
- September 23, 2011
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Here at the Astrophysics Science Division, we have a large group that studies X-ray astronomy. X-ray astronomy doesn’t get as much press as observations from telescopes like the Hubble, but nevertheless is a very valuable tool for understanding how the universe works. In this blog entry we’ll talk about how … Continue Reading →
A Sight for Sore (Spaceflight) Eyes
- By Faith Tucker
- August 26, 2011
- 1 Comment
Preserving the extraordinary moments of history for progeny is all well and good, but so often it’s exactly the unexpected nature of such moments that renders them so priceless – like the spontaneous kiss of a soldier safely returned from World War II or a casual lunch shared while sitting … Continue Reading →
A Visit to Palomar
- By Maggie Masetti
- August 24, 2011
- 4 Comments
The last time I visited an observatory, it was an ancient Chinese one. This time I visited one a little closer to home. When I learned that I was going to be in Southern California (visiting my husband who was there for back-to-back science conferences), I knew I had to … Continue Reading →
Extraterrestrial Fun from Home
- By Faith Tucker
- August 19, 2011
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We here at Blueshift do our best to cover all things astrophysics, which we rather loosely define as ‘anything and everything outside the Solar System.’ Considering that the Universe just happens to be an absolutely enormous place filled with innumerable galaxies, each containing billions of stars, planets and other objects, … Continue Reading →
