Waxing lyrical about exoplanets May 28, 2009
Posted by sarah in: new astronomy, science, space . Add a commentThis year we celebrate the 400th anniversary of the first published astronomical observations with a telescope, by Galileo Galilei. Galilei used his telescope to observe the changing phases of Venus and reveal the true configuration of the Solar System. Now, exactly four centuries later, CoRoT observations have shown the changing phases of an extrasolar planet for the first time in optical light.
Blimey, is that a Nature-worthy cheesy quote or what?! And …. that’s exactly what it is*. (more…)
Welcome back Atlantis, good luck Frank! May 26, 2009
Posted by sarah in: belgium, science, space . Add a comment
Welcome back Atlantis
After a fascinating 13-day mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, Space Shuttle Atlantis and its crew touched down safely at Edwards Air Force Base on Sunday 24 May. Welcome home Atlantis! The mission to repair and upgrade Hubble was closely followed by space and astronomy enthusiasts around the world (yup that includes me), thanks to the great coverage on NASA TV.
A welcoming ceremony is taking place today at 4 pm Central Time, watch it live here.
I’m delighted the astronauts got the job done and Hubble is ready for its final stint. Unfortunately I had to miss the landing as I was on a little jaunt around Britain to attend some meetings and catch up with friends and family.
Great also to have Mike Massimino back on live twitter, telling us all about the weirdness of being back on Earth.
Good luck Frank!
Three astronauts will take off from the Baikonur cosmodrome tomorrow for the International Space Station. Representing the European Space Agency is Belgian Frank De Winne, who will also become the first European commander of the ISS during his 6-month stay. Good luck Frank!
Read more about the mission here. Watch a Q&A session with him on ESA’s YouTube channel here.
Image: G. Blevins/LA Daily News
Mobile sky mapping May 17, 2009
Posted by sarah in: astro 2.0, science . 1 comment so farGoogle have just released a fab new application for their Android phones, called Sky Map. When you point your phone at the sky, Sky Map can automatically load a map of the bit you’re looking at. Or if you’re looking for Mars, it can actually direct you to it on the sky, in a very cool “icy-cooler-bit warmer now-warm-hot-scorching-yes you’ve got it!”-stylee.
One of the main developers on the project is a software engineer who used to work on AstroGrid, John Taylor (h/t to Andy for flagging that up). Check out the video below from the application launch at the recent Google Searchology event (the sleek promo video is here).
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD5lVvbvCUs]
Hugs for Hubble May 16, 2009
Posted by sarah in: science, space . Add a comment
Astronaut Andrew Feustel trying to find hole F and bolt C. I wonder what it feels like to have your feet strapped in for 8 hours?
The Hubble Space Telescope has been receiving some astronaut love this week as part of its 4th servicing mission, NASA’s final upgrade for the 19-year old observatory. The Atlantis crew have already carried out some crucial repairs in two lengthy space walks on Thursday and Friday: the famed WFPC2 camera was decommissioned and replaced by the shiny new wide field camera, WFC3, and new batteries and gyros have been installed to power up the telescope for a further 5 years of operations.
Following the demise of Columbia in 2003 the future of the servicing mission was thrown into serious doubt. Many considered the cost and risk of sending astronauts to Hubble too high in view of the safety concerns surrounding the Shuttle, and suggested NASA design a robotic servicing mission to Hubble. But the astronauts have well proven their worth this week, with several problems cropping up during the space walk that perhaps a robot would not have been able to deal with so easily. Julianne discusses the same point on Cosmic Variance.
The spacewalks can be followed live on the internet and, while the spacewalks last many hours, the coverage makes for fascinating viewing (at NASA TV). Spaceflight Now has excellent coverage on the whole mission, follow them on twitter to stay up to date.
A full schedule of the mission is here. The NY Times have a really cool interactive feature on Hubble and the repairs. Some amazing pictures have appared online, like today’s APOD (also on Bad Astronomy, here).
Image: NASA
Two more eyes in the sky May 16, 2009
Posted by sarah in: science, space . Add a comment
The launch went beautifully on Thursday, and soon astronomers will have two more eyes in the sky beaming down exciting new data. Herschel and Planck separated successfully from their ride, sent a signal back to mission control to confirm that all is well, and are now both under way to their dark orbits at L2.
The thing with launches is that there’s a lot of excitement and build-up, but when all goes well there’s really not much to say about it. They launched, yay! Now begins the important commissioning phase (planned to begin today for Herschel, on Monday for Planck), where all the functions of the telescope and the instruments, and their performance is checked out.
So here is a round-up of some media and bloggy coverage…
Big news stories from the BBC, Guardian, Volkskrant (in Dutch)
The official launch page at ESA has also been updated with latest news and some great videos and images.
Blog updates by Stuart, Andrew, Peter, Robert, Phil – for full astro-blog listings check out Spacebuzz for tags “Herschel” and “Planck”
News on the missions’ dedicated blogs (Herschel, Planck)
Image: ESA/S. Corvaja
