Netherlands ♥ the European Extremely Large Telescope November 28, 2008
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Artsy impression of the E-ELT
Good news! The Dutch government announced today that it will invest 18.8M euros in research and development for instrumentation for the European Extremely Large Telescope in the next decade. Around 8 million will be spent in the next 3 years, with the remaining 10M covering the period beyond 2012. The money was awarded to NOVA, the Dutch Research School for Astronomy, an umbrella partnership of the five Dutch astronomy institutes – Amsterdam, Groningen, Leiden, Nijmegen and Utrecht.
APOD: Galaxy Nom November 27, 2008
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Today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day speaks for itself: big galaxy, eats small galaxy (nom!). PIcture was taken with the Danish 1.5 m telescope at La Silla. Pretty! Enjoy, Happy Thanksgiving if you’re in the US and OMG I hope you’re ok if you’re in Mumbai.
Image credit: Robert Gendler, Jan-Erik Ovaldsen, Allan Hornstrup, IDA
Awesome ISS pictures November 26, 2008
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Some really amazing pictures celebrating 10 years of the International Space Station over on The Big Picture. Enjoy!
Image credit: NASA
Belgium rule the Galaxy November 25, 2008
Posted by sarah in: science . Add a commentWell, not quite perhaps…. But good news!
ESA announced last week that Belgium’s second man in space, Frank Dewinne, will become the first non-American or non-Russian to command the International Space Station. After a first visit in 2002, Dewinne, 47, will be returning to the ISS on board a Russian Soyuz in May next year. He’ll be part of the first 6-man crew on board the station, taking advantage of the upgrades taking place during the current ongoing mission. He may even be able to drink his own pee! During the last few weeks of his 6-month stay, the Belgian civil engineer and pilot will take command of the ISS crew, ending the Americo-Russian dominance of the post.
If you read Dutch you can read more here.
Incidentally, Belgium’s first man in space was Dirk Frimout (in English here!), who travelled on Space Shuttle Atlantis in 1992. Dirk has since been immortalised in Suske & Wiske, one of Belgium’s most popular comics. He was voted the 161st and 26th Greatest Belgian by the Flemish and Wallonian communities respectively. Placed higher in Wallonia than in Flanders – ha, who says we can’t get along?!
Go Frank, go Belgium!
More cosmic ray excesses reported November 24, 2008
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The Milagro cosmic ray detector
In a busy week for cosmic ray science, yet another paper reports the detection of excesses in cosmic ray detections from galactic sources. Using 7 years of data from the Milagro detector, scientists of the University of Maryland and Los Alamos National Laboratory have found two hotspots of high-energy cosmic radiation.
