The Secrets Within Cosmic Dust

Dust captured by a spacecraft from a comet's tail holds clues to the origin of the solar system
December 2009 | By Robert Irion

What You Should Read -- Sesame Street and the Environment, Smart Pigs, Vaccines, the Amazon, and more...

Here's a roundup of the best of what I've been reading in the past couple of weeks:Are global warming and deforestation too scary for Sesame Street?: A couple of years ago Sesame Workshop named these as adult topics too scary for young children. Instead they focus on teaching kids to respect the Ea...
November 12, 2009 | By Sarah Zielinski

Felicia Day Explains Colliding Galaxies

You may recognize Felicia Day as Dr. Horrible's red-haired obsession (or maybe from that appliance commercial). And if you've been reading this blog, you probably have heard of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which was responsible for last month's discovery of a massive ring around Saturn. Add the ...
November 02, 2009 | By Sarah Zielinski

Picture of the Week--The Kappa Crucis Cluster, a.k.a. the "Jewel Box"

The Abbé Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille was the first to find this cluster of stars, in 1751 while on an astronomical expedition to the Cape of Good Hope (South Africa). The Kappa Crucis Cluster (NGC 4755), which resides near the Southern Cross, received the nickname the "Jewel Box" during the next cent...
October 30, 2009 | By Sarah Zielinski

Thursday News Roundup — Black Holes, Traveling to Titan, and More Spiders

According to New Scientist, physicists Tie Jun Cui and Qiang Cheng of the Southeast University in China have succeeded in creating the first black hole, built to absorb and trap solar energy. Based on a theory from Professors Evgenii Narimanov and Alexander Kildishev of Purdue University, the Chin...
October 22, 2009 | By admin

Meteor Shower Rewards Early Risers Tomorrow

Right now, the Earth is traveling through a trail left behind by Halley’s comet, which last passed through our neighborhood in 1986 (it will return in 2061). These little bits of debris produce a yearly meteor shower, the Orionids, named so because they appear to originate in the constellation Orio...
October 20, 2009 | By Sarah Zielinski

Hubble Telescope Gets Back to Work

Yesterday, NASA celebrated the rejuvenation of the Hubble Space Telescope by releasing the first batch of images to come from the satellite since it was upgraded in May. That’s when astronauts installed two new instruments—the Wide Field Camera 3 and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph—and repaired two...
September 10, 2009 | By Sarah Zielinski

An Honor and a Party for Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking, the renowned theoretical physicist from Great Britain, was one of two scientists among yesterday's recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Here's what President Obama had to say about Hawking:Professor Stephen Hawking was a brilliant man and a mediocre student when he lost...
August 13, 2009 | By Sarah Zielinski

Picture of the Week—Jupiter’s New Spot

Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley was the first person to spot the new spot on Jupiter, on July 19th. Professional astronomers quickly confirmed the sighting and started aiming their powerful telescopes at the gas giant. Scientists now say that a small comet probably created the scar, wh...
July 24, 2009 | By Sarah Zielinski

Forensic Astronomer Tackles Three More Munch Paintings

Forensic astronomer Don Olson solves puzzles. He looks at pieces of art, passages of literature and stories from history and uses science to answer questions like: Why is the sky red in Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream? (Gas and ash from the 1883 eruption of Mount Krakatoa produced colored skies ...
July 22, 2009 | By Sarah Zielinski

Darwin for Dads and More Science Finds in the August Issue

When my daughter was small, I used to take her to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. There, I would explain why the dinosaurs disappeared and how mankind evolved from our primitive forebears. She seemed rapt. But a few weeks ago, after hearing me on the radio discuss a new boo...
July 21, 2009 | By Sarah Zielinski

Apollo Astronauts Push for Mission to Mars

Today, on the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, the focus is not on the past, but on the future. The seven astronauts in attendance at this morning’s NASA news conference were not content simply to relish in the accomplishments of the past.Astronauts Walter Cunningham (Apollo 7), Jame...
July 20, 2009 | By admin

Moon Landing Video Restored

I always get a little shock when I see crisp, color images from the first moon landing (like the one featured as the most recent Picture of the Week). We’re all far more familiar with the grainy video that millions watched live 40 years ago today. But it’s one thing to snap color photos that will b...
July 20, 2009 | By Sarah Zielinski

Picture of the Week—Apollo 11 Solar Wind Composition Experiment

NASA didn’t send people to the moon just to bounce around and hit golf balls; Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin of Apollo 11 were performing science experiments during their brief time on the lunar surface. What looks like a white towel next to Aldrin in the photo above was the Solar Wind Composition ...
July 17, 2009 | By Sarah Zielinski

The Apollo 11 Owners’ Workshop Manual

If you wanted to replace the muffler on your Ford Mustang, you might logically turn to your handy copy of the Haynes Repair Manual. If you wanted to install a new space sextant in the Apollo 11 Command Module, you wouldn’t turn to the new Haynes Owners’ Workshop Manual, but you would have such a go...
July 16, 2009 | By Sarah Zielinski

Science News From the Smithsonian

The tourists visiting the Smithsonian museums may not realize it, but there is a ton of fascinating research going on, sometimes within just a few feet of where they are standing. And in addition to the museums and the zoo, there are researchers at the astrophysical observatory in Massachusetts, th...
July 15, 2009 | By Sarah Zielinski

A New Kind of Black Hole

Until now, there have been two known types of black holes: stellar-mass black holes that are several times more massive than our sun and are created when really big stars die out, and supermassive black holes that are millions to billions of times the mass of the sun and which sit in the center of ...
July 02, 2009 | By Sarah Zielinski

Find the International Space Station with Twitter

Though I may be tweeting (@SarahZielinski), I’m still not exactly convinced of the value of Twitter. That said, a new service called Twisst (follow @twisst) is starting to convince me otherwise. Twisst uses Twitter in an interesting mashup with other services to let followers know when they can vie...
June 30, 2009 | By Sarah Zielinski

An Explanation for the Missing Sunspots

I bet that most of you don’t know that the sunspots are missing. That’s okay. I’m sure many people don’t realize that the sun is more than just a ball of fire: it has a complex internal structure, features that vary based on multi-year cycles, and it can create solar storms that knock out power and...
June 18, 2009 | By Sarah Zielinski

Picture of the Week--Next-Gen Mars Rover

Those two little Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have far outlasted their original expected lifespans, but they have their limitations. They may have traveled far, but they have sometimes gotten stuck along the way. And we never saw them attempt to traverse a cliff or crevasse. The tethered "C...
June 12, 2009 | By Sarah Zielinski

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