Category: space

Christmas In Space

Karen

It’s time for my favorite part of December : The Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar. Count down to the 25th with a new picture every day and be mind-boggled.

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(Galaxy cluster Abell 68)

 

Since I shared the calendars for 2009,  2011, and last year with quotes, here’s one for this year:

“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light‐years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. […] The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.”

(by Dr. Sagan, my science boyfriend, in The Demon-Haunted World)

Rover!

Karen

Yesterday was first anniversary of the Curiosity rover touching down on on Mars. Remember the “Seven Minutes of Terror” video describing the crazy plan to get it to Mars? That WORKED? Remember Bobak? Remember when we all “dared mighty things”?

In the past year, my hope for humanity has ebbed and flowed. But when I remember that humanity put a ROBOT  on MARS that is doing SCIENCE and sending us PICTURES, I feel better. (I also apparently get all shouty and Salinger-esque with my emphasis.)

Good job, Curiosity. Keep it up.

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Above: the rover’s first photo from, you know, the surface of Mars. And lots more science and recaps (and less shouting) over at Bad Astronomy.

Friday Unrelated Information

Karen1 Comment

1. RUSSIAN METEOR OMG! An undetected meteorite passed over the Chelyabinsk region in the Ural Mountains and created a sonic boom that broke a lot of windows and injured people with glass. The Bad Astronomy blog has an initial roundup of videos from the event, complete with what I am sure is the Russian for “HOLY SHIT, IT’S A GIANT FIREBALL!”

2. Scientists are pretty sure the Russian event is unrelated to another asteroid that will buzz Earth today: Asteroid 2012 DA14. You can watch it live from several observatories (assuming the math on the near-miss is right)–again, Bad Astronomy has a good roundup at the link.

3. I took the day off so I’m going to be wearing yoga pants and keeping a close eye on the sky.

Tweets In Space

Karen

Are you following Chris Hadfield on Twitter yet? He’s a Canadian astronaut who has been aboard the International Space Station since December. (In March, he’ll take over as commander.) Since he’s been up there, he’s been tweeting pictures of Earth as they orbit it, several a day. Earth, as it turns out, is pretty striking:

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Also striking is the fact that we have a space station orbiting the Earth; that the Canadian commander-to-be was carried there in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft; and that we can get pictures from the station sent to our computers and smartphones in real time. Remember the Cold War? Remember the time before the internet? Remember when I didn’t have a smartphone? This is the future!

 

Space!

Karen

I love anything from the Hubble Telescope, but this is pretty amazing: A new an hours-long infrared exposure at a section of the  Hubble Ultra Deep Field image has shown us perhaps the most distant galaxies we’ve ever seen. One of the group of seven is 13.3 billion light years away–meaning that these galaxies were around before Earth even existed. 


I mean….holy shit. Way to be mind-bogglingly vast and ancient, Universe. Way to be clever hairless ape and figure this out, humans.
More information and better pictures are right here at Bad Astronomy.

December

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If it’s December, it’s time for my favorite part of it: The Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar.

Today’s image: Part of the Carina Nebula

It’s also time to keep something in mind that my yoga teacher shared on Saturday: “The theme for December is forgiveness.” That’s taken from this page, and the metaphor of “moving houses” really touched me, as did this:

This is the task this month: To forgive and let go. To release the unproductive partnerships and bad investments and stupid mistakes and all the guilt and shame around the ways that we were naïve or impulsive or addicted or ignorant.

…and as you release and let go and forgive, look at what may be coming to you that is new, innovative and exciting. Take a chance on something that feels right and inspires you. Now is the time to have the courage to make the changes you know are right.

And there you go. Space and hippies, brought together for your Monday morning. 

Happy Birthday, Carl Sagan

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Today is the birthday of my science boyfriend Carl Sagan. It’s hard to narrow down what I want to say about him, or pick a favorite quote, because how can you say that this:

There was a time when the stars seemed an impenetrable mystery, but today we have begun to understand them. In our personal lives, also, we journey from ignorance to knowledge. Our individual growth reflects the advancement of the species. The exploration of the cosmos is a voyage of self-discovery.

is more inspiring than this?

Even The Writer’s Almanac gave him a mention today:

Because he had done extensive research on nearby planets, NASA hired him as an advisor for a mission to send remote-controlled spacecrafts to Venus..In preparation for the mission, Sagan was shocked to learn that there would be no cameras on the robotic spacecrafts, called Mariner I and Mariner II. The other scientists thought cameras would be a waste of valuable space and equipment…Sagan couldn’t believe they would give up the chance to see an alien planet up close[…]

Sagan lost the argument that time, but he won over NASA eventually. The Mariners were the last exploratory spacecraft ever launched by NASA without cameras. He contributed to the Viking, Voyager, and Galileo planetary exploration missions, and his insistence on the use of cameras helped us get the first close-up photographs of the outer planets and their moons.

I think that this latest image from Curiosity–on THE SURFACE OF MARS, fer crissake–reflects his legacy.  

Space News

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Did you hear that astronomers at the European Southern Observatory have found a plant orbiting Alpha Centauri B, the closest star system to our own? 

It’s not remotely Earth-like (small and really hot), but this is a really cool discovery because 1) we figured out it was there in a pretty sophisticated process after looking for a planet in the system for decades and not finding anything, and 2) as Phil Plait says in the same link above: 

This is Alpha Centauri! Famed and fabled in a thousand science fiction stories. It’s where the Robinson family was supposed to go in “Lost in Space”. It’s where Zefram Cochrane lived in “Star Trek”. It’s where the Fithp came from in Footfall…So I, and a lot of people like me, grew up hoping against hope we’d find a planet around one of these stars someday. And here we are.

And it’s just a matter of time until we find planets that are actually Earth-like, I bet. Go humans!

Oh Hai

Karen

You may have seen this, but it’s great: We have that robot we sent to Mars taking pictures of itself now:

I love that it looks like WALL-E. (More info at Bad Astronomy, of course.) 

Friday Bradbury Information

Karen
1. I didn’t want to steal my dad’s thunder, but Wednesday also would have been Ray Bradbury’s 92nd birthday. In honor of that, did you see that the Curiosity rover named its landing site after him? 
2. The video in the post linked to above is really, really great–Ray talking to a roomful of JPL and Caltech engineers in 1971 on the eve of Mariner 9 going into orbit around Mars and then reading one of his poems.
So don’t let the politicians of the world get you down. There’s engineers and the next Ray out there too.