I did a short presentation last night for a group of families at a Halloween event. My job was to talk space but make it as spooky as possible and use some Halloween themes for the kids. There really is a fine line between teaching Science and being entertaining, but here’s some of the things I did. Lets start with the following image….What does this look like to you? Did you say the head of a witch? Then yes you are right! This is known as the Witch Head Nebula. A nebula is a place where gas and dust in...
I’ve seen a lot of lovely images from the Spitzer Space Telescope. It takes infrared images and can see the fine structure of galaxies, where stars are forming and where they are not forming. The photos paint a picture of the history and evolution of a galaxy. The latest image released last week shows some amazing features. The Cyan light in the image is a combination of blue and green coloured light representing infrared wavelengths of light at 3.4 and 4.5 microns. This wavelength shows the stellar population in the galaxy. The red light is representing dust features that glow...
I was blown away to hear this news just a few hours after the launch. The Antares rocket exploded on the launchpad just six seconds after launch. Yesterday’s post discussed how the Antares-Cygnus resupply launch was delayed by a lone man in a boat who had no clue he was in the blast zone. First of all, it’s important to note that no one was hurt, including all personnel on site and in the control room. This was an unmanned rocket, so the major loss was the resupply capsule and its cargo, not to mention the loss of the $250...
One of the funnier parts of the scientific method, at least during work in the field, is that nature is a cruel prankster. The smallest things can derail the greatest of experiments. More often than not this results in catastrophe, yet some of the greatest leaps in Science have come from something that seemingly went wrong. Alexander Fleming accidentally discovered penicillin when he noticed that a bacterial culture had been contaminated with mold, but the bacteria did not spread anywhere near the mold. Penzias and Wilson discovered the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation when they were trying to detect faint radio waves...
The sun is definitely hitting its usual ‘rebellious’ phase on its 11 year sunspot cycle, where it flares up at literally everything. The biggest sunspot observed in 24 years has been releasing huge amounts of energy, in the form of X-class solar flares. In the past week this sunspot, designated AR 12192, has released 3 X-class flares, including a huge X-3.1 on Friday. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has been watching the light show. Okay so the Sun is blowing up, what does all this mean? Let’s start with Sunspots. A sunspot is a place on the sun where there...
I’m sure a lot of us remember the stratospheric skydive of Felix Baumgartner two years ago (I know, I can’t believe it’s been two years either). It gathered a lot of media attention and the live webcast put on by Red Bull made it an amazing event. He jumped from a height of 39km, accelerating to a speed of 1,357 km/hr, breaking the sound barrier and a world record in the process. Well they say nothing lasts forever, and this record only lasted about two years, because on Friday, Alan Eustace jumped from 7000 ft higher, an altitude of 41.4 km, to...
Yesterday’s post had me discuss the partial Solar Eclipse that occurred around sunset for most of North America. The one thing I neglected to mention was regarding safe viewing of it. In reality if you saw the sun with your bare eyes during a partial eclipse, it looks like the sun any other time of day – its bright. Don’t damage your eyes. I found a bit of time in the afternoon to build a pinhole camera, which basically consists of a tube or box with a pinhole in one end and a film or ‘viewing area’ at the other...
Tonight, right around sunset, there will be a partial eclipse of the sun, visible from most of North America. As the sun sets, skywatchers will get to see the moon gradually cover about half of the sun, before it disappears below the horizon. A map of the viewing area shows that the best spot to see it will be all the way up in the Canadian arctic. If you don’t live in the Arctic circle, you can certainly see the eclipse in the South-West near the horizon as it sets. The moon will start to cover the sun around 5:45 EDT,...
