NASA Logo, National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Awesomeness Round-up

Awesomeness Round-up – 12/27/10

You might be aware that last week on Earth there was a total lunar eclipse. That’s when the Moon passes into the shadow of the Earth; this is different that a solar eclipse, which is when the Moon moves between the Earth and the Sun, temporarily obscuring the Sun. Another … Continue Reading →

Awesomeness Round-up

Awesomeness Round-up – 12/20/10

It’s been very cold and windy here in Maryland lately – but not quite THIS cold. I guess the upside to extreme temperatures is that you can do experiments like this one, done at Mount Washington Observatory when it was nearly -35 degrees F. Do you know what happens when … Continue Reading →

Awesomeness Round-up

Awesomeness Round-up – 12/13/10

Credit: Photo by Drew Noel One of the James Webb Space Telescope’s many feats of engineering will be its actuators – tiny mechanical motors on the back of its primary and secondary mirror segments that will help the telescope focus by changing the mirrors’ curvature. You can’t see the actuator … Continue Reading →

Awesomeness Round-up

Awesomeness Round-up – 12/6/10

  • By Sara Mitchell
  • December 6, 2010
  • Comments Off on Awesomeness Round-up – 12/6/10

Image credit: NASA image created by Jesse Allen, using Landsat data provided bythe University of Maryland’s Global Land Cover Facility. The biggest NASA news this week was the astrobiology press conference that had people buzzing about what the new discovery could be. The press release, when it was finally announced … Continue Reading →

Awesomeness Round-up

Awesomeness Round-up – 11/29/10

Two colliding spiral galaxies triggered a burst of star formation called a “starburst” (not like the candy). This one is the brightest ever seen away from the center of a galaxy merger. This image of these two galaxies (which are collectively known as II Zw 096) is a combination of … Continue Reading →

Awesomeness Round-up

Awesomeness Round-up – 11/22/10

The Chandra X-ray satellite just found the youngest nearby black hole. At 30 years old, it’s the remnant of SN 1979C, a supernova in the galaxy M100 approximately 50 million light years from Earth. “If our interpretation is correct, this is the nearest example where the birth of a black … Continue Reading →

Awesomeness Round-up

Awesomeness Round-up – 11/16/10

This recently released image is basically a map of dark matter. It shows the distribution of the dark matter in the center of the giant galaxy cluster Abell 1689, which contains an amazing number of galaxies (about 1000) and trillions (!) of stars. Abell 1689 is 2.2 billion light-years from … Continue Reading →

EPOXI Mission's Close-Up Views of Comet Hartley 2

Awesomeness Round-up – 11/8/10

  • By Sara Mitchell
  • November 8, 2010
  • Comments Off on Awesomeness Round-up – 11/8/10

This past week marked a major milestone in mankind’s exploration and understanding of comets – the EPOXI mission flew just 700 km from the nucleus of comet Hartley 2 and snapped some amazing images! This close pass will give researchers incredible new insight into the structure of comets. As we … Continue Reading →

Awesomeness Round-up

Awesomeness Round-up – 11/1/10

  • By Sara Mitchell
  • November 1, 2010
  • Comments Off on Awesomeness Round-up – 11/1/10

Last week was apparently a great week for astronomy – the shared file where Maggie and I gather all of the images, videos, and stories that we see all week was absolutely overflowing with possible content for today’s round-up!  So we’ve distilled it to the best of the best, and … Continue Reading →

Awesomeness Round-up

Awesomeness Round-up – 10/25/10

There’s been a trend lately to have webcams or live streams in some of NASA’s cleanrooms so that you guys can see flight hardware being built and tested. And every once in a while, something unexpected happens! (At about 10 seconds in, in this case…) You can see a new … Continue Reading →

NASA Logo, National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Goddard