Space
Space includes outer space, the sun and planets in the solar system
Royal Observatory Photography Prize
The Royal Observatory, in Greenwich, England, has announced its 2010 Astronomy Photographer of the Year. Tom Lowe won with this photo, Blazing Bristlecone. Though he won, Lowe wasn't perfectly satisified with his photo. He said:If I could change anything about this photo, it would be the artificial...
September 17, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
NASA to Fly Mission Into the Sun
NASA and other space agencies have a host of satellites aimed at the Sun, taking pictures and gathering data that scientists are using to better understand how the star we depend on works. None have ever gotten close to the Sun, though. A 1958 National Academy of Science panel recommended that NASA...
September 07, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
A Solar System Rich in Planets
If you're looking for life outside of our solar system, it makes sense to look for solar systems and planets like our own. You'd want a solar system with a Sun like ours, with lots of planets orbiting around it. One of those planets should be the size of Earth and traveling at a distance around its...
August 26, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Richard Branson on Space Travel
The billionaire entertainment mogul talks about the future of transportation and clean energy
August 2010 |
By Megan Gambino
What's Next in Space?
Probes and landers sent into the final frontier will bring us closer to answering cosmic mysteries
August 2010 |
By Mark Strauss
Asteroid Hunters
Astronomers are determined to protect human beings from inanimate outer space invaders
August 2010 |
By Robert Irion
A Spanish Breakthrough in Harnessing Solar Power
Solar technologies being pioneered in Spain show even greater promise for the United States
August 2010 |
By Richard Covington
Happy Mars Day!
The National Air and Space Museum is holding its annual Mars Day today. Visitors can learn about current and upcoming Mars missions from NASA scientists, compete in a Red Planet Quiz Show and view a Martian meteorite. (Check out Around the Mall's Five Reasons Why You Need to be at Mars Day.)For tho...
July 16, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Music of the Heavenly Spheres (Part 2) — Holst, Haydn, Handel and More…
Apollo with his famous lyre is the Greek god of music. This son of Zeus was also closely associated with the Sun and is often assumed to be the Sun god Helios by a different name. In other polytheistic circles, none of the gods of music in Hindu, Norse, Japanese or Egyptian mythologies were associa...
June 23, 2010 |
By Brandon Springer
Music of the Heavenly Spheres (Part 1)
From time immemorial, humans have looked in wonder at the cosmos and attempted to express their awe through art. Astronomers, from Ptolemy to Kepler, commented on the great dance of the heavenly spheres and the harmonies of the celestial bodies of Sun, Moon and Earth. Musicians and composers have s...
June 22, 2010 |
By Brandon Springer
The Birth of Saturn's Moonlets
Saturn has two main types of moons: the first are regular moons, like Enceladus, that are similar to moons around other giant planets and orbit in Saturn's equatorial plane. The others are tiny, icy moonlets that reside on the outer edges of Saturn's rings. They weren't discovered until about six y...
June 14, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
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
