Apogee Books have cornered themselves a great niche in publishing books related to space. Their offerings span from the most recent to some dated but vintage fare. Yet all of them seem to add another little sparkle to the crown of our outer space ventures. The following is a review of two of their recent publications.
Continue reading “Book Reviews: Mars a Technical Tale / Reference Guide to the ISS”
What’s Up this Week: February 19 – February 25, 2007
Monday, February 19 – Today is the birthday of Nicolas Copernicus. Born in 1473, he was the creator of the modern solar system model which illustrated the retrograde motion of the outer planets. Considering this was well over 530 years ago, and in a rather “unenlightened” time, his revolutionary thinking about what we now consider natural is astounding.
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Podcast: The Fermi Paradox: Where are all the Aliens?
We live in a mind bogglingly big Universe filled with countless stars. We know intelligent life evolved here on Earth. It must be common across the Universe, right? But if there’s life out there, how come we haven’t been visited by aliens yet? Why haven’t we even picked up signals from alien television stations? Where’s all the life?
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Chandra Gives Another Look at the Pillars of Creation
Probably the most famous photograph every taken by the Hubble Space Telescope is of the “Pillars of Creation”; a star forming region inside the Eagle Nebula (aka M16). Astronomers have wanted to know just how much star formation is actually going on inside the nebula.
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Spacecraft Finds Evidence of Underground Fluids on Mars
Here’s an interesting new result from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Scientists announced today that the spacecraft has turned up evidence that some kind of liquid or gas once flowed beneath the surface of Mars.
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Atlantis Moves Out to the Launch Pad
The space shuttle Atlantis made its journey out to the launch pad on Thursday, perched atop the slow-moving crawler transporter. If everything goes well, Atlantis will blast off on March 15, beginning an 11-day visit to the International Space Station to install a new truss segment.
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Lunar Eclipse Coming on March 3, 2007
Skywatchers in Eastern North America, Europe, Africa and parts of Asia are about the be treated to one of the most beautiful events in the night sky: a total lunar eclipse. The eclipse gets underway on Saturday, March 3, 2007, and will last about 6 hours from start to finish.
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Hubble View of Planetary Nebula NGC 2440
This beautiful photograph was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, and it shows the planetary nebula NGC 2440. Once again, we’re looking at a haunting vision of the future that awaits our own Sun.
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Podcast: Counting Aliens with the Drake Equation
If you’re wondering how many extraterrestrials there are in our galaxy, you just have to use a simple equation developed by astronomer Frank Drake in 1961. Just find out how many stars there are, how many support life, how many advanced societies form, and a few other details and we’ll be set.
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Comets Colliding Inside the Helix Nebula
The latest photograph taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope shows a bizarre false colour view of the Helix Nebula. Located around 700 light years from Earth, in the constellation of Aquarius, this beautiful nebula used to be a star similar to our own Sun. As it died, it sloughed off its outer layers, creating the view we see today.
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