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GRB all-sky map

Back to School with GRB 101

Up until a few years ago, gamma-ray bursts (or GRBs, for short) were arguably the biggest mystery in high-energy astronomy. Basically, gamma-ray bursts are brief, extremely bright bursts of gamma-rays (as the name implies). They appeared at random across the sky. But what are they? What causes that burst? And … Continue Reading →

Swift birthday cake

Happy Birthday, Swift!

This is our third Happy Birthday post for a satellite in the last year or so – which is pretty cool actually, to have satellites that are hitting significant milestones and have had the longevity to still be doing great science. We had Fermi’s 5th birthday in August 2013, followed … Continue Reading →

Jazz sequence (GRB 130427A)

The Nexus of Art and Science, Part 2

We recently blogged about students from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) making animations inspired by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Another student, Turner Gillespie, also from MICA, spent the summer working on an animation of the “sound” of a gamma-ray burst (GRB). A scientist was working on turning … Continue Reading →

Bringing Astrophysics to YouTube: An Interview with Jessica Few

  • By Sara Mitchell
  • November 22, 2013
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Earlier this year, Blueshift contributor Koji Mukai sent us a link to a series of astronomy videos produced by Jessica Few, a student at Durham University in the UK. We loved the videos, and knew we wanted to share them… and find out a bit more about Jessica and her … Continue Reading →

Awesomeness Roundup

Awesomeness Round-Up – 12/7/2011

  • By Sara Mitchell
  • December 6, 2011
  • Comments Off on Awesomeness Round-Up – 12/7/2011

Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech While scientists have discovered hundreds of extrasolar planets over the past decade, finding Earth’s twin (an Earth-like planet in a similar orbit to ours around a Sun-like star) has been much more difficult. But a recent discovery by the Kepler mission has brought us one step closer – … Continue Reading →

Awesomeness Round-Up

Awesomeness Round-Up – 6/21/11

As Maggie mentioned in her intriguing post last week, things have been quite busy around here recently. So here is a bit of a catch-up edition of your weekly Awesomeness Round-Up. Enjoy! Historically, astronomy has always required a great deal of patience as astronomers spent long, cold nights at the … Continue Reading →

Awesomeness Round-up

Awesomeness Round-up – 4/11/11

Sorry we were slow with posts last week – we were swamped with preparations for the government shut-down that (thankfully) never happened. We’ve got a bunch of things in the works, but we’ll start with a link round-up. Gamma-ray Bursts (GRBs) are huge explosions in space, and scientists think they … 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 →

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 – 7/19/10

Want a real behind-the-scenes look at the James Webb Space Telescope’s mirror segments being prepared for cryo testing?

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