Space
Space includes outer space, the sun and planets in the solar system
Rare Meteor Event Inspired Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass includes the poem "Year of Meteors, (1859-60)" in which he documents many events in those years—including the hanging of abolitionist John Brown and the election of Abraham Lincoln. He also includes descriptions of a comet and meteors:Nor the comet that came unannounc...
June 07, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
What Does an Eclipse Look Like from Space?
If you have no knowledge of how the Earth and Sun and Moon move, an eclipse is a scary thing. With no warning, the Sun goes black and your world turns dark. An eclipse, however, is really just the shadow of the Moon passing over the Earth, as seen in the above photo (a NASA image taken by an astron...
May 28, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Lost Soviet Reflector Found on the Moon
In "Dark Energy: The Biggest Mystery in the Universe" from the April issue of Smithsonian, writer Richard Panek describes an experiment that measures the distance between the Earth and the Moon:Twenty times a second, a laser high in the Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico aims a pulse of light at t...
April 28, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
The Sun Is More Than a Blob of Yellow
We've got a lot of eyes on our Sun. No, not yours and mine (you shouldn't be looking directly at the Sun anyway). I mean the artificial eyes on cameras in spacecraft. The newest of those spacecraft is NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which began transmitting images to Earth earlier this week. The...
April 23, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Air Pollution as Seen From the Skies
From Mt. Etna to China to the Sahara, these striking satellite images of air pollution are from both natural and man-made causes
April 20, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Saturn’s Polar Hexagon
This is definitely one of our solar system's weirder features: a hexagon that circles the north pole of Saturn (image credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona). The shape isn't carved into the planet's surface; it's a constant feature in the atmosphere. It has puzzled scientists since it was first sp...
April 09, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Phobos, A Martian Moon
This odd-shaped chunk of rock, as imaged by the Mars Express spacecraft last month, is Phobos, the larger of Mars' two moons. The moon is about 27 by 22 by 19 kilometers in size and despite its solid appearance, is about 25 to 35 percent porous (in the 1950s and 1960s, scientists speculated the tha...
April 02, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Dark Energy: The Biggest Mystery in the Universe
At the South Pole, astronomers try to unravel a force greater than gravity that will determine the fate of the cosmos
April 2010 |
By Richard Panek
Worst NASA Posters Ever
NASA is usually a master of the art of self promotion, which is why I'm a bit perplexed by this page of downloadable posters promoting NASA manned space missions. The most innocuous ones are simply boring, with proud astronauts grouped in front of a space shuttle or some stars. (No one looks good i...
March 29, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Take Flight Over Mars
It will be years, decades, before humans explore Mars. Until then, we'll just have to rely on robots and satellites. And talented 3D-animators.Doug Ellison took advantage of the thousands of images from the HiRISE camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to create the animation above. Ray Vi...
March 18, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Where Is the Center of the Universe?
This seems like it should be a simple question: Where is the center of the universe? But as Varoujan Gorjian of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory explains in this video from the Spitzer Science Center, this question doesn't have an easy answer. Looking out from Earth, it appears that we're sitting a...
March 08, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Stephen Hawking's Initials in the Big Bang's Echo
Scientists have released their latest, most detailed map of the cosmic microwave background--that faint glow of radiation left over from the Big Bang--and Stephen Hawking's initials are still there. The S and H have been spotted in previous versions of the image, which is sometimes known as WMAP fo...
February 09, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Hubble Takes New Pluto Pics
These new images of Pluto from the Hubble Space Telescope's are the most detailed ever made of the dwarf planet. They may be a little blurry, but what do you expect when your camera is more than two and a half billion miles from its subject?NASA aimed the HST at Pluto to get better images of the d...
February 05, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
An Eclipse in Your Pocket
When you think about it, American money is kind of boring. It's fairly drab in color, and rarely have people other than U.S. presidents been found on our dollars or coins. Other countries put more interesting people, like scientists, on their money, often using a rainbow of colors. Even more daring...
January 29, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Black Hole Rap
I've been reading all the news about the Large Hadron Collider for months, but apparently I missed the most important bit about the LHC: the project has its very own rapper, ATLAS e-News science writer Katherine McAlpine, a.k.a. "AlpineKat." Her Large Hadron Rap went viral, with more than 5.5 milli...
January 25, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Picture of the Week—Iron in the Sun’s Corona
The sun is a big ball of gas, mostly hydrogen. That hydrogen undergoes fusion, producing both the radiation that keeps us warm and heavier atoms, mostly helium but also oxygen, carbon and other elements. (You can find a good lesson about the sun here.)Our sun has an atmosphere, though you can't see...
January 08, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
NASA's New Lunar Rover
The Smithsonian Institution pitches in to help NASA prepare for its next lunar mission with a new "home on wheels"
January 2010 |
By Megan Gambino
Nine Science Stories You Should Have Read This Year
It's also been a good year for science stories in Smithsonian magazine, including our special issue, Exploring the Frontiers of Science. Here are nine you should read if you haven't already:Gene Therapy in a New Light: A husband-and-wife team's experimental genetic treatment for blindness is renewi...
December 30, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Visualize More Sunshine
We're past the winter solstice (finally!) and, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, getting a bit more sunlight every day. It's hard to see a difference yet—in Washington, D.C., the days are lengthening by only about half a minute per day this week. (You can chart your local sunrise and sunset time...
December 28, 2009 |
By Laura Helmuth
Five Things to Keep You Occupied Over the Holiday Weekend
One, the known universe, courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History (HT: Slog):Two, check out Geeks Are Sexy for 5 ways to geek it up over the holidays.Three, speaking of geeks, you can weigh in on whether or not we should ban the labels "geek" and "nerd".Four, GrrlScientist reprises her cl...
December 23, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
