Science
Three Years of SDO Data – Narrated
Tweet If you enjoyed the recent video from Nasa’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) - “Three years in three minutes” – but would have liked more of an explanation of what was going on with our own local star… here it is again! This time, though, extended, and narrated by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center heliophysicist Alex [...] more »
“A major difference between the hurricanes is that the one on Saturn is much bigger…”
Tweet As I mentioned previously, Saturn doesn’t get the love some of our other gas giants do. [All hail our friend and lord, Jupiter! Keeping Ogdy at bay… - Ed] Indeed… [new link] But, with the help of Cassini, Saturn does provide some wondrous images. In some of its first sunlit images of Saturn’s north pole, Cassini has looked [...] more »
Solar Dynamics Observatory: Three years in three minutes
Tweet What it says on the tin. Three years after First Light, Nasa’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has released three stunning minutes of images compiled during its virtually unbroken coverage of the sun’s rise toward solar maximum. Enjoy! [Video from NasaExplorer on YouTube. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO] As they note in the associated text [...] more »
Comet 2013 A1: Rendezvous with Mars…
Tweet Here’s something to think about whilst waiting to see if Comet ISON will fizzle, or sizzle. The latest Science at Nasa video looks at the trajectory, and consequences for Mars missions, of Comet 2013 A1 (Siding Spring). Discovered as recently as 3 January this year, this Oort cloud object will pass “extraordinarily close” to the planet Mars [...] more »
The ALMA Inauguration
Tweet As the BBC reported on Wednesday, having opened its eyes in 2011, and with 57 of its 66 antennas now ready to receive data on the Chajnantor Plateau in the Atacama desert, Chile, the Atacama Large Millimetre/Sub-millimetre Array (ALMA) was officially inaugurated on March 13. Here’s the associated ESOcast 55: The ALMA Inauguration. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO). Editing: [...] more »
“It was a meteor strike–the most powerful since the Tunguska event of 1908″
Tweet ScienceAtNasa has a sobering video on the latest information about the visitation by the god Ogdy unexpected meteor strike in the Chelyabinsk region of Russia on 15 February. Video credit: ScienceAtNasa. From the accompanying ScienceAtNasa press release The Russian meteor’s infrasound signal was was the strongest ever detected by the CTBTO network. The furthest station to record the sub-audible sound [...] more »
“President Vladimir Putin said he thanked God no big fragments had fallen in populated areas.”
Tweet As I mentioned previously, asteroid 2012 DA14 is due to make its close encounter with Earth later this evening. Meanwhile, earlier today several hundred people in the Chelyabinsk region of Russia were injured during a visitation by the god Ogdy by debris caused by the unexpected appearance of a relatively large meteor. It’s reported that a crater 6m (20ft) [...] more »
Pope Benedict XVI: “with full freedom I declare that I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome”
Tweet For anyone seriously concerned with his “legacy”, the surprise announcement by Pope Benedict XVI, of his intention to renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome “as from 28 February 2013, at 20:00 hours”, deserves a more considered approach. For example, following on from his initial response, at the Telegraph Blogs Damian Thompson reproduces the [...] more »
“Ireland has the potential to generate far more wind energy than we could consume domestically…”
Tweet Apparently, Ireland is to become Britain’s off-shore wind farm… That seems to be the gist of the complaint from opponents to wind farms in the Irish Midlands, as reported in the Irish Times. Andrew Duncan, spokesman for the Lakelands Wind Information Group in Co Westmeath, said: “It seems to be an Irish solution to a [...] more »
“comets are like cats: they have tails, and do whatever they want to do”
Tweet In the BBC’s science news preview of 2013, reporter Jason Palmer highlights a couple of astronomical events worth keeping an eye out for. In mid-February we will get another reminder we live in a (potentially) violent cosmos – asteroid 2012 DA14 will make a harmless but attention-grabbing pass near the Earth, at a distance just a [...] more »
Further Up Yonder
Tweet Stunning views of the Earth accompany this seasonal message from the crew of the International Space Station. more »
“In Saturn’s Shadow” – redux
Tweet Saturn doesn’t get the love some of our other gas giants do. [All hail our friend and lord, Jupiter! Keeping Ogdy at bay… - Ed] Indeed. But, with the help of Cassini, Saturn does provide some wondrous images. [Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute]. From the image’s associated text NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has delivered a glorious view of [...] more »
Titan’s Nile River Valley
Tweet Fascinating image from Nasa’s Cassini probe at Saturn, where we’ve previously watched the weather on Titan. [Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI.] North is to the right in this view. From the JPLnews press release “Titan is the only place we’ve found besides Earth that has a liquid in continuous movement on its surface,” said Steve Wall, [...] more »
Black Marble Earth
Tweet As the BBC’s Spaceman, Jonathan Amos, notes This [above] spectacular night-time view of Earth is called Black Marble. It has been assembled from a series of cloud-free images acquired by one of the most capable satellites in the sky today – the Suomi spacecraft. Here is the associated, wondrous, video from Nasa Explorer This view of [...] more »
“damn, what a sky…” – redux
Tweet [Image credit: ESO/Y. Beletsky] Another stunning time-lapse video of the wondrous night sky above the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope [VLT] array on top of Cerro Paranal in Chile’s Atacama Desert. This time presented as ESO Cast 50: Chile Chill 1. [Marvel at the solar system in motion... - Ed] Or, indeed, the galaxy. Stay with it [...] more »
Ever had a #DigitalLunch: Why not take a leap into a new space?
Tweet This week’s #DigitalLunch ‘jumps off’ from where on Herr Baumgartner’s sensational (in more ‘senses’ than one) leap into space lands… If you want to come along or just watch from your desktop (we don’t quite expect the 8 million Felix got, a few dozen would do us at this stage), you’ll be very welcome. [...] more »
“Sometimes you have to go up really high to understand how small you are.”
Tweet Stunning images of record-breaking skydiver, Felix Baumgartner, as he completes his last checklist, steps out of the capsule, and falls to earth. From a height of 128,097ft (24.2 miles; 39km). You can also see the flatspin that almost scuppered the attempt to break the sound barrier. The voice on CAPsuleCOMmunications is that of retired US [...] more »
National Trust: “However, not everyone agrees with the scientific view…”
Tweet The BBC report that the National Trust have amended the controversial exhibition at the new Giants’ Causeway interpretive centre following their announced review of the materials in the display. But have they fully addressed the problem? Not quite. Here’s how the revised controversial section of the transcript now reads Today there is a clear understanding among scientists [...] more »
“We stared at this patch of sky for about 22 days…”
Tweet As the BBC’s spaceman, Jonathan Amos, notes, the Hubble Space Telescope team have released an updated version of their stunning Ultra Deep Field image – the eXtreme Deep Field (XDF) – and they have seen further than ever. [Image credit: NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and P. Oesch (University of California, Santa Cruz), R. Bouwens (Leiden University), and [...] more »
Endeavour’s Final Final Flight
Tweet Nasa’s fifth and final Space Shuttle, Endeavour, following in the footsteps of Discovery, undertook a farewell fly-over yesterday atop a modified 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft over numerous west coast landmarks including the shuttle’s future home, the California Science Center. Here it is flying over the Reliant Stadium and the Astrodome in Houston [Image credit: Nasa]. As the JPL [...] more »
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Books
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The First Shades of God (Jamie Bryson): unremarkable theology, but an insight into the mind of the protest-organiser
Tweet Jamie Bryson has come to prominence recently as one of the leaders of the flag protests across Northern Ireland. As Chris Donnelly pointed out in his post (and was echoed later in the Belfast Telegraph), Jamie Bryson is a well known loyalist in North Down where he unsuccessfully stood at the council elections under [...] read our review »
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Stay out of Libya: counterinsurgency doesn’t work
Tweet A moment of some significance in journalism perhaps, as the New York Times reviews the current talked about book, The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan by Bing West. The author is no bleeding heart but a former assistant Defense Secretary from the Reagan era who stomped his way round the [...] read our review »
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Total Politics: Top 20 NI Blogs…
Tweet Fair play to Iain, he managed to get over 2,200 people voting in his poll for the top Northern Irish blogs this year… We (just, I imagine) retained our top spot, with Splintered coming straight in at number 2, no doubt his pet subject du jour will have garnered him a lot of fans… [...] read our review »
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