Commercial space entrepreneurs are developing rockets that will take tourists to the moon in the not-too-distant future. But a software maker has taken a head start on the adventure by simulating a lunar ride for the PC user.
Virtue Arts, based in Los Angeles, has developed software that renders the …
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NASA’s Kepler mission to seek other Earth-like planets is undergoing final preparations for liftoff Friday, March 6, from Pad 17-B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The spacecraft launch aboard a Delta II rocket has two windows of opportunity Friday, from 10:49 to 10:52 p.m. and 11:13 to …
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Something is about to happen on Saturn that’s so pretty, even Hubble will pause to take a look.
“On Feb. 24th, there’s going to be a quadruple transit of Saturn’s moons,” says Keith Noll of the Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute. “Titan, Mimas, Dione and Enceladus will pass directly in …
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NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, lifted off Thursday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Launch Complex 41 on a first-of-a-kind mission to reveal the sun’s inner workings in unprecedented detail. The launch aboard an Atlas V rocket occurred at 10:23 a.m. EST.…
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Astronomers using NASA’s Swift satellite and Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope are seeing frequent blasts from a stellar remnant 30,000 light-years away. The high-energy fireworks arise from a rare type of neutron star known as a soft-gamma-ray repeater. Such objects unpredictably send out a series of X-ray and gamma-ray flares.
In 1996, a 7-year-old boy in China bent over the eyepiece of a small telescope and saw something that would change his life – a comet of flamboyant beauty, bright and puffy with an active tail. At first he thought he himself had discovered it, but no, he learned, two …
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Galileo first turned his telescope to the heavens in 1609, marking the dawn of modern astronomy. To commemorate 400 years of exploring the universe, 2009 has been designated the International Year of Astronomy.
In conjunction with Galileo’s birthday on Feb. 15, NASA is releasing images from its …
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AAVSO Alert Notice 394:
Nova in The Large Magellanic Cloud
February 9, 2009
Event: Nova in The Large Magellanic Cloud
Discovered By: W. Liller (Vina del Mar, Chile)
Discovery Date: 2009 February 05.067 UT (JD 2454867.567)
Discovery Magnitude: m=10.6 (Tech Pan photograph, unfiltered)
Position: RA = 05h 40m 44.20s , …
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In 1996, a 7-year-old boy in China bent over the eyepiece of a small telescope and saw something that would change his life – a comet of flamboyant beauty, bright and puffy with an active tail. At first he thought he himself had discovered it, but no, he learned, two …
Read the rest of this article
This month sees a penumbral eclipse of the Moon. It is the first of four eclipse this year (penumbral eclipses also occur in July and August, and there’s a Partial eclipse in December). The eclipse details are shown below. Times are in UT. The diagram (slightly reduced in size) …
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