American Astronomical Society wrap-up
- By Sara Mitchell
- January 18, 2013
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Each December, there’s a bit of a lull in astronomy news. Not only do the holidays slow things down, but astronomers are also getting ready for the winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in January. These AAS meetings (there’s also a summer meeting in May or June) are … Continue Reading →
The Strange Case of “Zombie” Planet Fomalhaut b
- By Sara Mitchell
- November 26, 2012
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The timing couldn’t have been more perfect – just days before Halloween, NASA released a story about a planet that had returned from the dead. The exoplanet, Fomalhaut b, was discovered in 2008 using data from the Hubble Space Telescope. More recently, other researchers suspected it might be a dust … Continue Reading →
Awesomeness Round-Up – 8/24/2012
- By Alexe Helmke
- August 24, 2012
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Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Curiosity has successfully made it to Mars! While it’s gotten a generous amount of press in recent days, we wanted add our own nod to the successful landing of the Mars Science Laboratory aboard its rover, Curiosity, (after its Seven Minutes of Terror) at 1:32 a.m. EDT, Aug. … Continue Reading →
Anatomy of an Exosolar System
- By Jillian Brown
- August 3, 2012
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A good chunk of the exoplanets that we’ve detected so far are huge, Jupiter-sized and larger. A lot of them are orbiting their stars at very short distances – it might seem strange to think that planets bigger than Jupiter are orbiting their stars closer than Mercury orbits the Sun, … Continue Reading →
Awesomeness Round-Up – 7/27/2012
- By Alexe Helmke
- July 27, 2012
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Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) Hubble captured this wonderful image that looks very much like an outer space firework explosion. Herbig-Haro 110 is a geyser of hot gas being blown away from a newborn star that ricochets off the dense core of a cloud of molecular … Continue Reading →
Exoplanets, Tech, and Space Travel
- By Jillian Brown
- July 24, 2012
- 3 Comments
Fomalhaut + Fomalhaut b; courtesy of NASA, ESA, UC Berkeley, NASA GSFC, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and NASA JPL-Caltech) For a lot of people, exoplanets are some of the most exciting discoveries in current astronomy. The first exoplanets were detected in 1992 orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12, all three of … Continue Reading →
Awesomeness Round-Up – 7/6/2012
- By Alexe Helmke
- July 6, 2012
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Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Voyager is soon to be the first man-made object to leave the solar system. Data from NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft indicate that this deep space explorer has entered a region in space where the number of charged particles from beyond our solar system has significantly increased. This could … Continue Reading →
Awesomeness Round-Up – 3/5/2012
- By Maggie Masetti
- March 5, 2012
- 2 Comments
Credit: NASA, ESA, CFHT, CXO, M.J. Jee (University of California, Davis), and A. Mahdavi (San Francisco State University) Astronomers have observed what appears to be a clump of dark matter left behind from a wreck between massive clusters of galaxies. The result could challenge current theories about dark matter. The … Continue Reading →
Awesomeness Round-Up – 2/13/2012
- By Maggie Masetti
- February 13, 2012
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Credit: ESA/Herschel/PACS/SPIRE/Hill, Motte, HOBYS Key Programme Consortium This beautiful, infrared image shows a new view of the Eagle nebula captured by the European Herschel Space Observatory. In 1995, Hubble famously captured a visble-light image of the “Pillars of Creation,” a region of star-formation. That image is below – in the … Continue Reading →
Blueshift ponders… what would you like to find on an exoplanet?
- By Maggie Masetti
- February 3, 2012
- 1 Comment
We just recently blogged about some of the strange and wonderful planetary systems recently discovered. From Saturn-like rings, to miniature scale, to systems practically right out Star Wars, it seems that there are an indefinite number of possibilities out there. Our questions to you are this: Blueshift ponders: What kind … Continue Reading →
