Space

Astronauts John Grunsfeld and Drew Feustel successfully installed the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) Thursday during the first of five scheduled EVAs, or spacewalks, to rejuvenate the Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble was "full of surprises" for the astronauts, and EVA 1 took an hour longer than planned, but the veteran space and ground crews overcame all obstacles and Servicing Mission 4 (SM4) remains right on schedule.  (See the full scheduled timeline in my previous post.) The tensest moment came when a bolt refused to come loose on the old WFPC2 camera.  The stubborn instrument has…

x

They did a great job describing the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, but an awful job showing a picture of it.  "They" will remain nameless, as they otherwise put together a really great exhibit of images from the Hubble Space Telescope.  But in a panel where they talk about the Ultra Deep Field, they show pictures of something completely different: two galaxy clusters named Abell 1689 and CL0024.  They are beautiful examples of gravitational lensing which enables us to almost "see" dark matter, but not they are not the UDF. I have studied all three of these images in some detail.…

Monday afternoon the space shuttle Atlantis blasted off into the Florida sky carrying with it the hopes and dreams of astronomers like me and people around the world.  Seven NASA astronauts have set out to repair the aging Hubble Space Telescope and upgrade it with new instruments. The launch was picture-perfect from our vantage point at Space View Park in Titusville, Florida.  This may be the second shuttle launch I have seen in person, but it is the first I am old enough to remember.  (photo courtesy of David Radburn-Smith) Many people turned out to witness a launch we all…

The recent Star Trek movie raised a new set of conundrums about time travel and alternative realities. As an astrophysicist, I am clearly most able to tackle these issues. Basically, time travel theories fall into two classes. C. J. Ander posits 6 Theories of Time Travel, but Anders is more of a trek anthropologist. His work categorizes how time travel affects people and things, not entire universes. From a physics point of view, these can be simplified to two different energy perspectives. I note that the new movie provides enough evidence to serve as the proof of my theory. However, to…

Astronomy and green space? Yes, indeed. As an astrophysicist I always find great pleasure in pointing out that the Earth is a planet, just like all the rest of the bunch orbiting our Sun and thus an astronomical object. The Earth is special though because we live on it. And we talk about a green planet referring to environmental issues on planet Earth. Credit: NASA But green space, what the heck? I admit that I had trouble with the concept to begin with, especially if you talk about being green from space also. But then I was reminded of a frog - Kermit the Frog and his famous It's not easy…

I've just wrapped up my time with another mission!  Can you match each satellite picture with its name? A B C  D E F Asca (Astro-D) RXTE (XTE) Astro-E SWIFT Suzaku (Astro-E2) STEREO Alex, the daytime astronomer The Daytime Astronomer, Tues&Fri here, via RSS feed, and twitter @skyday

The Fermi collaboration released yesterday a paper describing their measurement of the electron and positron flux of cosmic rays. Simultaneously, a second paper was published by the HESS collaboration on the very same topic. Together, these two important new articles provide the means for a significant advancement in our understanding of the spectrum of electrons and positrons from nearby sources. It is especially meaningful to consider the two results together because the two instruments are as different as salt grains and tequila. Let me see where to start: Fermi is an air-borne…

While I was napping, Jupiter became a 2nd sun. Although it was observed in January by STEREO, we forgot to tell people. Or perhaps we were hiding the truth. Also, it was so well covered on YouTube that we didn't think we had to bother with a press release. And thus occurred the most benign conspiracy in the history of NASA. See, usually NASA is accused of hiding evidence of aliens, moon landing hoaxes, flat Earths, and other things Too Dangerous For People To Know. But when Jupiter was seen igniting as a second sun, the response was... upbeat. Image of the solar corona, taken by the SECCHI…

It's certainly the case that 'dark matter', like 'Smurf' or 'government regulation', has in recent times become a de facto explanation for the unexplained.   We aren't big believers in magic so mysterious, undetected forces that explain everything probably actually explain nothing - and tossing out Newton in the process  brings on a higher order of scrutiny, since he has been declared irrelevant often before only to survive quite nicely. Dark matter is currently unable to reconcile all the current discrepancies between measurements and predictions based on theoretical models and…