We will miss the annular solar eclipse coming up on May 20 — we are too far east and the sun will already have set — but NASA’s map tells you if you are in the right place at the right time.
Posts Tagged: space
2
May 12
Get Ready for Transit of Venus
I can’t quite tell from the NASA illustration how well we will be able to view the transit of Venus across the face of the sun, but we are going to try. Because Venus’ transits occur in pairs, the last time this occurred was in 2004, the year our daughter was born, but it will not occur again until 2117. So this is it.
NASA's Chart of Venus' Transit
For more information, see NASA’s site.
And, of course, there’s an iPhone (and Android) app.
Here’s a site that offers local transit times.
29
Feb 12
Leap Days
We have them every 4 years, but not every 100 years, except when it’s every 400 years. The Bad Astronomer has the explanation. Here’s what it comes down to: our day is not really 24 hours long.
8
Feb 12
Dancing Droplets in the Space Station
Astronaut and chemist Dr. Don Pettit performs a wonderful demonstration using charged water droplets being dropped near a charged knitting needle. The velocity of the droplets makes them first spiral around the needle before eventually landing on it, thanks to the charge.
28
Jan 12
Deathmarch on Mars
I don’t know Warren Ellis’ work, but I like his verve. This Mother Board interview is quite good. His assessment of the political pandering to the current space industry strikes me as the product of a long-time observer who deserves a listen.
19
Dec 11
Comet Survives the Sun
The comet Lovejoy flew through the sun’s atmosphere a few days ago and survived. The event was captured by a whole fleet of Terran spacecraft: the comet’s survival was an open question. The NASA story has all the details, as well as Lovejoy’s history.
27
Sep 11
Trash bag air craft. Essentially it’s a variation of the weather balloons with digital cameras that a number of schools and individuals have lofted. This one goes the extra mile, in terms of cost savings, and figures out how to get lift out of trash bags. (Go, Manuja Gunaratne, go.)
18
Aug 11
Moon Younger than Previously Thought
The news out of Denmark, where scientists there have gathered around a lunar rock brought back by Apollo 16, is that the moon is 200 million years younger than was previously thought. That moves the age of the moon up from 4.57 billion years to 4.36 billion years.
By the way, in case you were wondering, I have no idea how this impacts the theory that the moon is basically a big magma spitball shot out of the ocean of magma that was the Earth as the solar system was first forming — it got spit out when something else hit the Earth.
Apparently this puts the moon’s crust at relatively the same age as the Earth’s crust from around Australia.
17
Aug 11
I want to work for SpaceX
SpaceX has a November flight to the International Space Station scheduled. This is totally cool. I don’t think I was alone in worrying that in ending the shuttle fleet, the USA would be in the dangerous position of handing over its LEO operations to the Russians or others.
It’s not that I am narrowly nationalistic, but I am also a lover of space, in particular the human exploration of space, and I didn’t want to see that opportunity slip so far away that I couldn’t dream a little dream.
So then I read this morning about the SpaceX scheduled flight, and I realized that I want to work for someone like that. Unfortunately, the only job opening they have available right now, for someone with my skills and experience, is copywriter. Hmmm. Not very appealing right now.
And so my plan is to get Genius Loci out, and get The Makers of Things underway and send Elon Musk a copy and suggest that what he needs is an official documentarian, an organizational ethographer, for SpaceX. Someone who can write about the company and its mission, as well as for it.
And, Mr. Musk, if you ever read this: I mean it.
15
Aug 11
A Meteor Seen from Space
Astronaut Ron Garan posted the photograph below to his Twitter account. It’s a Perseid meteor streaking towards the Earth, not quite how we usually see them.
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18
Jul 11
Brown Dwarves
Two new brown dwarfs have been discovered relatively close to to our solar system. Spotted by astronomers from the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP), the “failed stars”* are only 15 and 18 light-years from the sun. 15 and 18 light-years may not seem that close — after all, the nearest bona fide star to the sun, red dwarf Proxima Centauri, is a mere four light-years away. But if these discoveries continue it may not be long until a brown dwarf, and not Proxima, is found to be our nearest stellar neighbor.
Brown dwarfs are often referred to as “failed stars” as they are not massive enough to support nuclear fusion in their cores, and yet they cannot be called “planets” as they don’t exhibit chemical differentiation with depth and have convective flows — a very star-like quality. Therefore, they exist in a stellar hinterland, where they are neither a star or a planet, and yet exhibit characteristics of both.
27
May 11
NASA unveils manned “Deep Space Transportation System”
It looks like NASA is trying to get back into the game. I have no idea how this is different from the Orion system that was recently cancelled. It is, however, important to understand the significance of getting past low earth orbit, LEO: it’s a matter of getting out of our planet’s gravity well.
10
May 11
NASA Gravity Probe Confirms Two Einstein Theories
Too cool:
A NASA probe orbiting Earth has confirmed two key predictions of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which describes how gravity causes masses to warp space-time around them. The Gravity Probe B (GP-B) mission was launched in 2004 to study two aspects of Einstein’s theory about gravity: the geodetic effect, or the warping of space and time around a gravitational body, and frame-dragging, which describes the amount of space and time a spinning objects pulls with it as it rotates. … Gravity Probe B used four ultra-precise gyroscopes to measure the two gravitational hypotheses. The probe confirmed both effects with unprecedented precision by pointing its instruments at a single star called IM Pegasi. If gravity did not affect space and time, GP-B’s gyroscopes would always point in the same direction while the probe was in polar orbit around Earth. However, the gyroscopes experienced small but measurable changes in the direction of their spin while Earth’s gravity pulled at them, thereby confirming Einstein’s theories.
From Space.com.