Saturday, December 22nd, 2012
By AJ Plunkett
If you had a telescope better than the Hubble, where would you point it, and what would you look for? Close your eyes and imagine what you could see. Think big.
Now, write it down and email it to NASA.
They’ve now got their hands on a couple of telescopes as strong or stronger than the Hubble Space Telescope, but with a wider field of view, and they want help deciding how to use them.
Friday, August 3rd, 2012
by AJ Plunkett
When Space Shuttle Challenger launched on June 18, 1983, Sally Ride earned the title as the first American woman in space. Read more.
Wednesday, June 27th, 2012
by AJ Plunkett
Our universe is one step closer to seeing the beginning of time. We hope.
The first instrument for the James Webb Space Telescope — a joint project of NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, and the European Space Agency — was recently delivered to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
The follow-up to the Hubble Telescope, and currently the most powerful space telescope ever built, the JWST will be used to look for the first light emitted billions of years ago when the universe began. Read more.
Tuesday, June 19th, 2012
by Jason Taetsch
It’s not everyday that the phrase, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, can be applied to the space industry. But last week news broke that NASA will receive an unforeseen boost from the hardships of the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office in the form of two powerful telescopes designed for satellite imagery. Read more.
Wednesday, April 11th, 2012
The search for alien life has fallen on hard times, leading alien chasers to the doorsteps of millions of people across the world.
The globe may look huge, but we know it’s tiny. Miniscule. A blue dot in the grander scheme of the universe. Even from our perspective down here on Earth, it’s far smaller today than it was thirty years ago; thanks in part to the internet, and most recently the onset (and onslaught) of social media.
A unique benefit to stem from this community shrink is crowdsourcing — the act of outsourcing a task, or series of tasks, to a group of individuals.
What are we crowdsourcing? In a word: everything. The limits to what can be crowdsourced are negligible, which is why it’s now being used to find intelligent alien life… We kid you not. Read more.
Tuesday, February 28th, 2012
Buckyballs are everywhere. You couldn’t open a news browser last week without seeing the usually modest spaceballs splashed across your screen.
Last week, it was reported that NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope detected a massive cloud of buckyballs speeding through space, 6,500 lightyears away. This week we’re learning a little more about what these intriguing orbs have to offer… namely, the building blocks of life.
Saturday, January 14th, 2012
This week’s astronomy conference contained some major findings presented by the brightest stars of the space science and astronomy world. These astronomers and scientists congregated from all corners of the globe in Austin, Texas, from January 8 to 12, for what was heralded as the ‘Super Bowl’ of Astronomy.
Telescope Array Field. Credit: Shutterstock.com
Held in the summer and winter of each year, this season’s conference had the potential for scientific buzz, and it delivered. In the face of a floundering economy and numerous cut-backs, the 219th American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting left a nice array of impressive discoveries in it’s wake: