Herschel and Planck ready to go! May 13, 2009
Posted by sarah in: science, space . 1 comment so far
Continuing the astro-goodness of the week, Thursday will see the launch of two major European-led astronomy space missions from ESA‘s space port in French Guiana. Hitching a ride on the same Ariane 5 rocket, space telescopes Herschel and Planck will be launched towards the L2 point on 14 May. (more…)
APOD: Shuttle magic May 13, 2009
Posted by sarah in: pics, space . Add a comment
In keeping with this week’s Launchtastic theme, today’s APOD is a beatiful picture of Space Shuttle Atlantis on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral. Atlantis is currently under way to rendez-vous with the Hubble Space Telescope to carry out essential repairs to ready the telescope for 5 more years of science operation.
Click to enlarge.
Image credit: Charles Danforth (CASA, U. Colorado)
Misconduct in Physics: Further reading May 12, 2009
Posted by sarah in: politics, science . 3comments
I found the May copy of Physics World in my inbox today, featuring a long cover story on Jan Hendrik Schön, the perpetrator of one of the biggest physics fraud scandals of the last decades. For years, Schön was considered to be one of the brightest minds of his time and something of a publishing monster. In 2002 his fame came tumbling down when much of his breakthrough work was found to be, well, fake. Read the full story here.
How nice of Physics World to publish this story to accompany my recent posts!
(I kid, I kid)
The reinvention of Hubble May 11, 2009
Posted by sarah in: science, space . Add a comment
If you’re into space and astronomy, then I can’t imagine you don’t already know that the 4th Space Shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope, aka Pimp my Space Telescope, is launching today. Yes, TODAY! How long have we been waiting for this? It seems so long. So what’s happening? In their 11 days in space, mission astronauts will undertake 5 spacewalks to make some crucial fixes and replacements to Hubble. Two brand new instruments, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and the Wide Field Camera 3 will be installed, setting the telescope up for 5 more years of Hubble goodness.
WFPC2, the camera that was responsible for so many of Hubble’s amazing images, will now be decommissioned. NASA released a final pretty picture from the camera yesterday, of planetary nebula K 4-55.
A final goodbye from WFPC2, planetary nebula K 4-55
Mike Massimino, one of the astronauts on the Space Shuttle crew, has been twittering about his preparations for the mission. It’s been amazing to follow first-hand how astronauts prepare for these things and how they feel – particularly for this mission that is so long-awaited. Brilliant job Mike, thanks to you and all the crew, and safe travels tonight!
The launch is planned to take place at 2:01 EDT (check here what that is in your timezone) from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Watch it live over on NASA TV, and follow updates on twitter. NASA’s official page for the mission is here. Blogs with more mission information over at astropixie and Cosmic Variance.
Update, 11/05: Wired Science have a useful guide to following the Shuttle launch live, here.
Enjoy!
Misconduct in astronomy: What you said May 10, 2009
Posted by sarah in: politics, science . Add a comment
Check out the original poll here. But your votes won't be counted anymore. The numbers are percentages.
A couple of weeks ago I posted a poll asking readers “Which of the following constitutes “misconduct” in science?”, followed by a number of scenarios. I finally got round to putting the results into a pretty little graph to show the distribution of your picks. For the statistics aficionados, the numbers reflect the percentage of total votes that was given to that particular option; it isn’t possible to see who-clicked-what with the WordPress-offered polls. (more…)
