As with last week's Universe Puzzle, something that cannot be answered by five minutes spent googling, a puzzle that requires you to cudgel your brains a bit, and do some lateral thinking. This is a puzzle on a "Universal" topic – astronomy and astronomers; space, satellites, missions, and astronauts; planets, moons, telescopes, and so on.
What do the following have in common?
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Now that we've hunted down Orion and been bull ridin' with Taurus, it's time for us to discover a pair of celestial brothers – the Gemini twins. Gemini is one of the members of the zodiac which means the imaginary path the Sun, Moon and planets follow across the sky passes through the stars of this constellation. But what happens when you don't have these solar systems objects to point the way to the pair? Then look over the top of Orion's left shoulder and you'll see two bright stars that live about a thumb's length apart from each other – Castor and Pollux. For many of us, Gemini will be almost directly overhead at sky dark. Click to continue…
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This Week in Space with Miles O'Brien highlights: Space hits the red carpet: IMAX: Hubble 3D debuts at the Air and Space Museum, a Falcon 9 "hot fire" disappoints, the shuttle program manager says "no problem" for shuttle to keep flying, and safely — it's only a question of money — and Obama gets ready to speak up for his controversial new plan for NASA…and braces for what promises to be a firestorm of protest at planned April 15 conference on the future of America's space program.
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If you don't know this face, then let me introduce you. His name is Ken Crawford and he's the man "behind the curtain" of some of the most amazing works of astrophotography just this side of the Hubble Space Telescope. This northern California resident embarked on his celestial imaging journey almost a decade ago and his work graces everything from magazines to NASA's "Astronomy Picture of the Day". So what does the current President of the Advanced Imaging Conference, Inc. do when the skies are cloudy? Then step inside to find out… Click to continue…
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Photo of successful static fire of Falcon 9 at Cape Canaveral, FL on March 13. Credit: Chris Thompson/SpaceX
SpaceX announced that today’s (Mar 13) test firing of all 9 Merlin first stage engines was successful at Pad 40 at Cape Canaveral. This is a major milestone towards the planned inaugural first flight of the Falcon 9 rocket which SpaceX is building. This success follows an aborted test firing attempt on Thursday (Mar 11) and several other delays due to poor weather at the Cape this week.
The Falcon 9 will play a crucial role in resupplying cargo for the International Space Station after the scheduled retirement of NASA’s Space Shuttle program set for late this year or early 2011. Click to continue…
Filed under: Commercial Space, Space Exploration, Space Flight, Space Station, Technology | 4 Comments »
The most powerful operational heavy-ion collider in the world, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) recently recorded the highest ever temperature created in an Earth-based laboratory of 4 trillion Kelvin. Achieved at the almost speed of light collision of gold ions, this resulted in the temporary existence of quark-gluon soup – something first seen at about ten to the power of minus twelve of the first second after the big bang. Click to continue…
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Ready for another Where In The Universe Challenge? Here's #95! Take a look and see if you can name where in the Universe this image is from. Give yourself extra points if you can name the spacecraft responsible for the image. We provide the image today, but won’t reveal the answer until tomorrow. This gives you a chance to mull over the image and provide your answer/guess in the comment section. Please, no links or extensive explanations of what you think this is — give everyone the chance to guess.
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Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! If you're a die-hard amateur astronomer, then you'll recognize this as one of the prime times to undergo the rigorous "Messier Marathon" – an all night race to see how many Messier objects you can capture! If you need a bit of assistance, be sure to visit the Guide To Space section of Universe Today where you'll find plenty of information to help you along with your quest. If you're into a more quiet weekend, then come along as we discover some galactic star clusters that are a little bit more off the beaten path. Whenever you're ready, I'll see you in the backyard… Click to continue…
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Recent observations of blazar jets require researchers to look deeper into whether current theories about jet formation and motion require refinement. This simulation, courtesy of Jonathan McKinney (KIPAC), shows a black hole pulling in nearby matter (yellow) and spraying energy back out into the universe in a jet (blue and red) that is held together by magnetic field lines (green).
"As the universe's biggest accelerators, blazar jets are important to understand," said Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) Research Fellow Masaaki Hayashida, corresponding author on the recent paper presenting the new results with KIPAC Astrophysicist Greg Madejski. "But how they are produced and how they are structured is not well understood. We're still looking to understand the basics."
Blazars dominate the gamma-ray sky, discrete spots on the dark backdrop of the universe. As nearby matter falls into the supermassive black hole at the center of a blazar, "feeding" the black hole, it sprays some of this energy back out into the universe as a jet of particles.
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Filed under: Astronomy, Black Holes, Physics, galaxies | 35 Comments »
Endeavour rolls to pad 39 A at Dawn. Will the sun set on the shuttle era forever as scheduled by late 2010, or will Congress force an extension to the shuttle program until a replacement US rocket system is available to fly Americans into space and the ISS ? Credit: Ken Kremer
“Where the money comes from is the ‘big question’. We feel like we've addressed [the issue of shuttle] recertification”, said Shannon at a press briefing at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Click to continue…
Filed under: NASA, Space Exploration, Space Flight, Space Shuttle, Space Station | 17 Comments »
Representing what may be the first long term lunar environmental impact study, recent laser ranging data from the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico suggests the Lunar Ranging Retro Reflectors (LRRRs) left on the Moon by Apollo missions 11, 14 and 15 are beginning to shows signs of age. Click to continue…
Filed under: Missions, Moon, Science | 21 Comments »
An artist's representation showing outflow from a supermassive black hole inside the middle of a galaxy. Credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss
Scientists have found evidence of a catastrophic event they believe was responsible for halting the birth of stars in a galaxy in the early Universe. According to their findings, just 3 billion years after the Big Bang, a massive galaxy exploded in a series of blasts trillions of times more powerful than any caused by an atomic bomb. The blasts happened every second for millions of years. "We are looking into the past and seeing a catastrophic event that essentially switched off star formation and halted the growth of a typical massive galaxy in the local Universe," said lead author Dr. Dave Alexander from Durham University.
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Screenshot of the Falcon 9 rocket on Tuesday. Credit: Spaceflightnow.com
SpaceX just released the official word on what happened with Tuesday's 3.5 second test-fire of the Falcon 9 rocket. The test aborted immediately after it started, and a a spin start system failure forced the early shutdown. The Falcon 9 sits on Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, and from the Kennedy Space Center press site, (about 4 miles away) a muffled bang was heard at the time of ignition, 1:41 pm EST. "Today SpaceX performed our first Static Fire for the Falcon 9 launch vehicle," said Emily Shankin from SpaceX in a press release. "We counted down to an T-2 seconds and aborted on Spin Start. Given that this was our first abort event on this pad, we decided to scrub for the day to get a good look at the rocket before trying again. Everything looks great at first glance."
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The Martin Jetpack in flight. Image courtesy Martin Jetpack
Step right up — you can now get your very own jetpack. That's right, a real, not-science-fiction-honest-to-goodness jetpack. New Zealander Glenn Martin has been working on perfecting his jetpack for 30 years, and in 1998 created the Martin Aircraft Company to develop and market his idea. Now, the jetpack has become a reality. The 200-horsepower, dual-propeller is designed to fly average-sized person for 48 km (30 miles) in 30 minutes on 18 liters (5 gallons) of gas. The newest model can also reach heights of 2,400 meters (about 1.5 miles). Price? $100,000. "They are a helluva lot of fun to fly," said Martin.
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This week's Carnival of Space is hosted by Ian O'Neill over at Discovery News/Space, (and formerly of Universe Today!) who has given the Carnival the "Red Carpet" treatment.
Click here to read the Carnival of Space #144.
And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to carnivalofspace@gmail.com, and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out, let Fraser know if you can be a host, and he’ll schedule you into the calendar.
Finally, if you run a space-related blog, please post a link to the Carnival of Space. Help us get the word out.
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