How High Up Is Space?

How High Up Is Space?

How high is space, how far can you fall with a parachute, where is the Project Calliope satellite going to be, and where does the hard radiation from the sun get nasty?  Gathered for the first…
Galactus vs NASA

Galactus vs NASA

Just a quickie here. So I'm reading a comic book, Marvel's "Ultimate Galactus". In it, a godlike being named (in Kree... not Cree, but Kree) Gah Lak Tus is attacking the Earth, sending superpowered…
Space Policy Wonks Rejoice!

Space Policy Wonks Rejoice!

What do you get when you mix politics and space exploration?a) an impenetrable messb) an interesting clash between technology and peoplec) something scarier than sausage making For those who think…
How Planck Sees The Universe

How Planck Sees The Universe

ESA’s Planck mission is a 'time machine' to study the relic radiation from the Big Bang, and it has delivered its first all-sky image, one of four all-sky scans it will complete by the end of its…
Enjoy Some Cosmic Fireworks For Independence Day

Enjoy Some Cosmic Fireworks For Independence Day

It's been a good month for cosmic wonderment.  The Wide Field Imager (WFI) at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile caught the region around the star R Coronae Australis and on June 13th, the…
Retro Space Tourism

Retro Space Tourism

Ever wonder what the future of space tourism will be? This series of posters (from the same collection as last week's spaceport illo) in neo-retro style clearly presents your options. Although I…
Justifying Solar Sonification

Justifying Solar Sonification

While I'm busy building an instrument to convert the ionosphere to music, this NASA group has sonified the Sun.  Astronomers at Univ. of Sheffield "found that huge magnetic loops that have been…
Cosmic Collision Fires Up Quasar SDSS J0123+00

Cosmic Collision Fires Up Quasar SDSS J0123+00

Using two of the world’s largest telescopes, the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile and the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) on La Palma in the Canary Islands, an international team of astronomers…