Category: Out in the Black
Get Out Your Telescopes!
Want to see an asteroid? If you have a decent telescope and some skill, your chance is coming up soon. An asteroid possibly as large as a half-mile or more in diameter is rapidly approaching the Earth. There is no need for concern, for no collision is in the offing, but the space rock will [...]
Giant Bubbles of Hot, Hot Gas!
Giant bubbles of hot gas! No, not Ted Kennedy, Jack Murtha, and John Kerry. These are in space, all around Earth, actually: Astronomers found the activity up where Earth’s magnetic field meets a constant stream of particles flowing out from the sun. While space is commonly called a vacuum, in fact there is gas everywhere, [...]
Wahoo. Robots.
This is good news? NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter team said Friday it has completed its preliminary design review as part of the mission confirmation process. The first in a series of robotic missions to the moon, the LRO is scheduled for launch in October 2008. It will carry six science instruments and a technology demonstration. [...]
Who Knew…?
Apparently, black holes don’t really exist . I suppose we have to chalk up another win for the juggernaut called “dark matter”. There’s a link there to the paper that explains it. I ran off a copy that’s about four pages long and my initial perusal reveals that there appears to be scary math involves. [...]
Touchdown!
The Cassini/Huygens probe has reached Titan and is sending back pictures. Cool news! CNN correspondent Miles O’Brien has an in-house blog covering the event (though someone needs to make sure his boss knows he isn’t running a Web-hosting service there) that’s worth reading. YOu can get some of the first photos via the ESA website [...]
Hey, Mr. Science Guy! – Frame Dragging.
It’s been kind of a quiet month or so in the science news world, but I found a little tidbit that I thought might interest everyone. Several months ago, NASA launched a satellite called Gravity Probe B. Now, aside from having a name that made it sound like a villan from a Godzilla movie and [...]
Messenger is away!
NASA’s newest planetary probe, Messenger is on its way to Mercury. It’s scheduled to arrive at the innermost planet in January, 2008, via a complicated series of orbits around the Earth and Venus, to gain the necessary speed and to match orbit with Mercury. Mercury poses several questions that have baffled scientists for decades. Among [...]
That’s What You Said