This is a story that not many know, about a Russian cosmonaut named Vladimir Komarov. He was one of the first Soviet cosmonauts in the 1960s during the cold war space race between the United States and the Soviet Union. He was the first cosmonaut to fly on more than one space mission, and he sadly became the first human being to die due to space flight. An Aerospace Engineer and test pilot, he was one of the few exceptional candidates accepted into Air Force Group One, the original Soviet cosmonaut program. He wasn’t medically fit for the program on...
A video released a couple of days ago is a brilliant short film about a group of friends who went in to the Nevada desert and built a scale model of the solar system to give us a perspective on how large space actually is. Filmmakers Alex Gorosh and Wylie Overstreet led the project, which featured footage of the production of the model as well as some interesting results. Watch right to the end, where some fabulous footage of the Apollo program is shown, along with some inspiring words from the few men who have seen the Earth from beyond...
I’m over-stimulated. I literally can’t take it anymore. These images from Pluto are mind-blowing, but with so many incredible photos released over the past week, I have reached my limit. I can no longer contain my excitement(not that I have in the past). Here are the newest images showing a Pluto we have never seen before. This second image is my favorite. It shows so much depth and detail, and reveals Pluto to be a world, far more than just a boring rock occupying the outer reaches of our solar system. Visible in the image is the layered atmosphere, mountain...
Whenever I give a planetarium show to an audience, I always like to let time pass quickly. The stars appear to move, but I quickly point out that it is in fact the planet Earth turning that gives the stars their apparent motion through the night sky. I then reassure them that stars do move, it just takes a very long time for them to move a noticeable amount. Why is this? The above animation of Barnard’s Star is a clue. Photographed once per year, Rick Johnson created this animation showing the movement of the small red dwarf. Barnard’s star...
For years there has been talk of a subsurface ocean present within Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus. Many have simply assumed it to be fact, but the reality is, something so complex on a world so far away is very difficult to prove conclusively. But now, using data from over a decade of observations by the Cassini spacecraft, mission scientists have shown conclusively that Enceladus must have a global ocean beneath a surface of ice. Previous data analysis suggested that there was a lens-shaped liquid ocean beneath the south polar region of the planet, giving a source for the observed plumes...
I see so many amazing discoveries from educational institutions around the world, as they do cutting edge research in a variety of space-related fields. But I am truly excited when a discovery is made close to home, at a university here in Ontario, Canada. A PhD candidate from Queen’s University named Matt Schultz has discovered the first ever massive binary star in which both stars have magnetic fields, a star called epsilon Lupi. Why is this a big deal? Well if you’ve done a bit of astronomy in school, you’ll know that stars like the Sun have huge magnetic fields....
The International Space Station is orbiting the Earth at an altitude of 400 Km, give or take. This gives it an orbital period of about 90 minutes. Keen observers on Earth can track these movements and look for the ISS in the sky as it passes overhead. Some of the keenest observers even take photos, and plan for incredible transits. In the case below, we can see the ISS transit the Sun, twice in one day. A carefully chosen time and place on Earth by the photographer Hartwig Luethen, this photo was taken on August 22nd, during two successive transits....
Around 470 Million years ago, two asteroids collided in the asteroid belt between the planets Mars and Jupiter. This sent fragments everywhere, and millions of years later these fragments moved into the inner solar system, many of which struck the Earth as meteorites. Recently, in Jämtland county, Sweden, a team of geophysicists has identified a pair of impact craters that were formed at the same time, likely from two separate impactors. One of the craters is a massive 7.5 Km across, while the other is smaller at 700 meters. This is the first time a double impactor has been scientifically confirmed on Earth....
It sounds more wacky over-the-top science fiction, but this is real. A video from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) shows a huge spiralling solar prominence many times larger than the Earth. The Sun’s powerful magnetic fields drive such events, and even though I’m well aware crazy things like this happen on the Sun every day, I’m still blown away. Cheesy disaster B-movie? Let’s call it Solar Plasma Tornado.
It’s like a birthday to an astronomer when new science data comes in. I will always love seeing new photos from the Pluto system, and with terabytes of data left to download from new horizons, we’re going to have a lot of presents over the next few months. Our latest gift gives us some new images from the flyby, showing surface features and atmosphere. These are stunning. These incredible photos show the surprising complexity of surface features on Pluto. The gorgeous variation in the surface is reminiscent of Mars, amazing considering the lack of sunlight this distant world receives. The long...
