The dwarf planet Ceres, at 587 miles wide the largest object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, has a different surface composition than previously thought—and it took NASA and DLR’s Boeing 747-based SOFIA observatory to make the distinction. By observing Ceres in mid-infrared, only possible from high altitudes above infrared-absorbing water vapor, SOFIA found that…
Tag: telescope
Eppur Si Muove: Galileo’s Big Night, 407 Years Ago Today
407 years ago tonight, on January 7, 1610, the Pisan astronomer Galileo Galilei looked up at a brilliantly-shining Jupiter through his own handmade telescope and saw three bright little “stars” next to it, stirring his natural scientific curiosity. Further observations over the next several nights showed that the planet wasn’t moving relative to the little “stars” as it…
“It’s Like The Universe Was Talkin’ To Me” – Neil Tyson’s First Visit To The Hayden Planetarium
“It’s as though you were locked in a room your whole life and then somebody opens a window.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson Do you remember your first telescope? Your first trip to a planetarium or observatory? Astrophysicist and Cosmos: a Spacetime Odyssey host Neil deGrasse Tyson does, and in this installment of NOVA’s Secret Life…
Vision: Save The James Webb!
Do you love astronomy? Do you appreciate science? Do you have a curiosity about the nature of our Universe, how it came to be and what our place is within it? If you are even reading this I assume your answers to all of those questions is a resounding “yes!” and so I present to…
From the LITD Archives – VLT: A Space Opera
Can’t see the movie below? Watch on YouTube here. Here’s an enchanting video by the European Southern Observatory highlighting the discoveries of their Very Large Telescope (VLT) array, high in the mountains of the Atacama Desert in Chile. The Atacama is the driest place on Earth, far from the light pollution of major cities, and thus…
High Above Hawaii
For a real weekend treat, check out this beautiful time-lapse video taken by a camera mounted on a catwalk on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) on Mauna Kea in – you guessed it – Hawaii. 🙂 (If you don’t see a video above, click here to watch on YouTube.) Wow…absolutely beautiful! Especially considering no fancy editing…
Getting WISE to asteroids
NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer – WISE – has recently finished a survey of small bodies in our solar system. The survey mission, called NEOWISE (for Near Earth Objects), used WISE’s infrared-imaging capabilities to identify 20 new comets and more than 33,000 main-belt asteroids. WISE also spotted 134 near-Earth objects – asteroids or comets that…
VLT: A Space Opera
Here’s an enchanting video by the European Southern Observatory highlighting the discoveries of their Very Large Telescope (VLT) array, high in the mountains of the Atacama Desert in Chile. The Atacama is the driest place on Earth, far from the light pollution of major cities, and thus provides the clearest, darkest skies allowing these massive…
Two Decades of Discovery
As this weekend marks the 2oth anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope’s launch, here’s a video from the Hubble team highlighting just a few of the many discoveries the orbiting observatory has made since first opening its – and our – eyes to the universe. Here’s to many more years of Hubble! Read more on…
Lights in the Dark 