Enceladus’ plume and a poem

To get a better of what is in the plume that’s spews out of Saturn’s moon Enceladus (it’s known to contain water vapor, sodium, and organic molecules), they sent Cassini through it on November 2, 2009. Here’s a picture of the plume (Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute–click on it to see it better):

And since today [...]

Saturn at equinox

Still trying out my camera, here’s a picture of Saturn at its once every 15 years equinox:

Ok, this might really be from Cassini and perhaps was taken on August 12, 2009 in a series of pictures over eight hours and then put together (Image Credit, maybe: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute). In any case, it’s a nice picture [...]

Superfreakonomics and global warming

I’m a little slow getting to this, but it seems that the new book by Levitt and Dubner has a chapter on global warming (you can see an excerpt here). As usual, I leave most of the arguments to the experts (see here, here, and here for example). Instead, I’ll look at one of the responses [...]

Global Warming

Hmm, it seems there is more out about global warming and the data still says the Earth is getting warmer. First, via here, a study finds the same basic ‘hockey stick’ graph using different methods. Being a math guy, I love this:
The sheer amount of computation, however, is daunting, involving heavy matrix algebra. Initial values [...]

Now that’s a ring

Well now:
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered an enormous ring around Saturn — by far the largest of the giant planet’s many rings.
The new belt lies at the far reaches of the Saturnian system, with an orbit tilted 27 degrees from the main ring plane. The bulk of its material starts about six million kilometers [...]

War against the moon commences and a poem

It’s begun:
NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, created twin impacts on the moon’s surface early Friday in a search for water ice. Scientists will analyze data from the spacecraft’s instruments to assess whether water ice is present.
The satellite traveled 5.6 million miles during an historic 113-day mission that ended in the Cabeus [...]

LCROSS and a poem

This seems interesting:
LCROSS launched with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on June 18, 2009 at 2:32 p.m. PDT. The LCROSS shepherding spacecraft and the Atlas V’s Centaur upper stage rocket executed a fly-by of the moon on June 23, 2009  and entered into an elongated Earth [...]

Water on the moon, the milky way, and a poem

A new report says water has been found on the moon:
From its perch in lunar orbit, M3’s state-of-the-art spectrometer measured light reflecting off the moon’s surface at infrared wavelengths, splitting the spectral colors of the lunar surface into small enough bits to reveal a new level of detail in surface composition. When the M3 science team [...]

Jim Carroll and Norman Borlaug

In the last couple of days, two people have died.
Norman Borlaug was a food scientist who:
rose from his childhood on an Iowa farm to develop a type of wheat that helped feed the world, fostering a movement that is credited with saving up to 1 billion people from starvation.
They give part of his speech when [...]

New Hubble

The first set of Hubble photgraphs are now out and here are a couple (the credit for both is: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team). The first is the Butterfly Nebula:

and the second is the barred spiral galaxy NGC 6217, which is the first image taken by the repaired Hubble:

Galaxies, a black hole, and a poem

This week, I present (via NASA) two pictures of galaxies. The first is a coiled galaxy around a black hole (the area around the black hole is in the middle, coded a light blue, Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech):

The second is really a nebula, the Cat’s Eye Nebula, taken by the Chandra and Hubble telescopes (Image Credit: X-ray: NASA/UIUC/Y.Chu [...]

Stars, planets, and a poem

It’s Friday, so let’s get to some pictures. The first is really more of a chart, it gives the size and orbital distance of planets that have been discovered. It includes a span for ‘habitable’ planets. I’m not quite sure how they decided this, but the only one in that region right now is Earth [...]

40 years ago, a landing

40 years ago the first people who had landed on the moon came back to Earth. I already put up pictures of the trip here, so today all that’s new is a poem (if you want to make it topical, replace the first two lines with: With a moon behind, There’s a world in front):
With [...]

Jacoby and Global Warming

Jeff Jacoby has another article downplaying/denying global warming which seems to be almost wholly based on this article in the Wall Street Journal.
I’m not a scientist in this field, so I’m going to farm out a lot of the rebuttals:

Much of the denialist information is based on a book by Ian Plimer, which is discussed here.
Some [...]

Enceladus, water, and a poem

It seems that a moon of Saturn has salt water in it:
For the first time, scientists working on NASA’s Cassini mission have detected sodium salts in ice grains of Saturn’s outermost ring. Detecting salty ice indicates that Saturn’s moon Enceladus, which primarily replenishes the ring with material from discharging jets, could harbor a reservoir of [...]

Venus and … wait look over there

I noticed I haven’t looked at Venus yet, so today I will. The first picture was taken by the Magellan probe using cloud penetrating radar (Credit: SSV, MIPL, Magellan Team, NASA):

A second picture showing the clouds of Venus (Credit: NASA):
 
and a picture with all the planets of the Solar System showing their relative size (Credit: [...]

Jupiter and a poem

Today I look at Jupiter. The first picture is in pastely colors because it was taken in near-infared light. The two colored dots are the moons Io and Ganymede, while the three dark dots are their shadows (Callisto is not seen in the picture, but its shadow is–Credit: NASA, ESA, and E. Karkoschka (University of [...]

Neptune, Triton, and a poem

Hmm, Scary Go Round has a story on Atlantis (it starts here) so I think this week I’ll look at Neptune. Both of the following pictures were taken by Voyager 2 (that’s V’ger to you Star Trek people) back in 1989 or so and the credit is NASA/JPL. The first is of the planet itself [...]

Hubble takes its leave and a poem

I forgot to put this up yesterday. Well, wait mans for no time. Or something. Anyway, here’s a picture of the Hubble telescope just prior to its being released (Credit: NASA):

I think it’s a good picture, it was taken through a window and almost looks more like a painting than a photo.
And a poem:
If you [...]

Space walk or conspiracy?

NASA has some pictures showing astronauts working on the Hubble telescope and I have to ask if they’re real:

Really, the effects here are terrible. A black background? Did they forget to put in the background picture? And what’s with all the aluminum foil?
In all seriousness, the work is expected to be finished today (it seems to [...]