Star Gazing from the International Space Station (and Free Astronomy Courses Online)

in Astronomy, Video - Science | March 26th, 2012

Don Pet­tit joined NASA in 1996 and has since logged more than 176 days in space, liv­ing abord the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion (ISS) mul­ti­ple times, and always tak­ing his cam­era with him. In the past, he has shown us What It Feels Like to Fly Over Plan­et Earth, Views of the Auro­ra Bore­alis Seen from Space, and How to Drink Cof­fee at Zero Grav­i­ty. Now we get an edit­ed ver­sion of what it looks like to star gaze from low orbit. Whether you look up or down, you can’t lose.

Look­ing to dig a lit­tle deep­er into what’s hap­pen­ing out there in the cos­mos? Then you might want to spend some time with the cours­es list­ed in the Astron­o­my sec­tion of our Free Cours­es col­lec­tion.

  • Astro­bi­ol­o­gy and Space Explo­ration – iTunes – YouTube – Lynn Rotschild, Stan­ford
  • Astron­o­my 101 – iTunes – Web Site – Scott Miller, Mer­cedes Richards & Stephen Red­man, Penn State
  • Explor­ing Black Holes: Gen­er­al Rel­a­tiv­i­ty & Astro­physics –YouTube – iTunes Video — Web Site – Edmund Bertschinger, MIT
  • Fron­tiers and Con­tro­ver­sies in Astro­physics - YouTube — iTunes Audio – iTunes Video – Down­load Course – Charles Bai­lyn, Yale
  • Intro­duc­tion to Astro­physics — iTunes — Joshua Bloom, UC Berke­ley

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and start shar­ing intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

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Astronaut Films Auroras from Above

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | March 20th, 2012

As the sun’s 11-year cycle of mag­net­ic storms moves clos­er to peak inten­si­ty some­time ear­ly next year, peo­ple who live at high­er lat­i­tudes can expect to see col­or­ful auro­ras light­ing up the night sky. But what would it be like to look down at the auro­ras, or to move through them? In these strik­ing images from NASA, we find out. Astro­naut Don Pet­tit has been orbit­ing the Earth since Decem­ber, as a Flight Engi­neer for Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion Expe­di­tion 30, and while up there he’s been tak­ing advan­tage of the increased solar activ­i­ty by film­ing some of the fire­works in the Earth­’s mag­ne­tos­phere. “We can actu­al­ly fly into the auro­ras,” Pet­tit says in this NASA Sci­ence­Cast. “It’s like being shrunk down and put inside of a neon sign.” To learn more, you can read the arti­cle at NASA Sci­ence News, and to watch oth­er episodes in the series, vis­it the Sci­ence­Casts home page. Find more excel­lent clips in our col­lec­tion of Great Sci­ence Videos.

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Neil deGrasse Tyson: ‘How Much Would You Pay for the Universe?’

in Astronomy, Science | March 19th, 2012

“Nobody’s dream­ing about tomor­row any­more,” says astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson in this com­pelling lit­tle video on the decline of the Amer­i­can space pro­gram. “After we stopped going to the moon, it all end­ed. We stopped dream­ing.” The video was put togeth­er by Evan Schurr with mate­r­i­al from var­i­ous sources. In it, Tyson asks us to imag­ine the pos­si­bil­i­ties for tomor­row if NASA’s bud­get were increased to just one pen­ny for every tax dol­lar. It’s a point he raised ear­li­er this month before a U.S. Sen­ate com­mit­tee (read the full tes­ti­mo­ny here), when he said:

The 2008 bank bailout of $750 bil­lion was greater than all the mon­ey NASA had received in its half-cen­tu­ry his­to­ry; two years’ U.S. mil­i­tary spend­ing exceeds it as well. Right now, NASA’s annu­al bud­get is half a pen­ny on your tax dol­lar. For twice that–a pen­ny on a dollar–we can trans­form the coun­try from a sullen, dispir­it­ed nation, weary of eco­nom­ic strug­gle, to one where it has reclaimed its 20th cen­tu­ry birthright to dream of tomor­row.

via The Dai­ly Beast

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Neil deGrasse Tyson Remembers His First Meeting with Carl Sagan

in Astronomy, Physics, Science, Television | March 5th, 2012

Carl Sagan left a big void when he died in 1996. His elo­quence, his pas­sion for explain­ing sci­ence to a wider pub­lic, made him a major cul­tur­al fig­ure in late 20th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca. Now a new voice is emerg­ing. Neil deGrasse Tyson, like Sagan, is an astronomer and physi­cist with a remark­able gift for speak­ing about the beau­ty and impor­tance of sci­ence. Like Sagan, he hosts a PBS tele­vi­sion pro­gram (NOVA Sci­en­ceNOW) and appears fre­quent­ly on talk shows. The pass­ing of the torch will become obvi­ous next year, when Tyson hosts the sequel to Sagan’s ground-break­ing 1980 TV series, Cos­mos. Tyson’s con­nec­tion to Sagan actu­al­ly began at a very young age. In the video clip above, Tyson tells Ted Simons of the region­al PBS show Ari­zona Hori­zon the sto­ry of a remark­able act of gen­eros­i­ty by Sagan when Tyson was only a teenag­er. If it whets your appetite, be sure to watch the com­plete 25-minute inter­view below. And don’t miss our very pop­u­lar relat­ed post: Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read.

 

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Earth-Size Tornadoes On The Sun

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | February 27th, 2012

What a sight to behold. Ear­li­er this month, NASA’s Solar Dynam­ics Obser­va­to­ry (SDO) beamed back stun­ning images of the sun’s plas­ma mov­ing vio­lent­ly around the star’s mag­net­ic field for 30 some hours, cre­at­ing a tor­na­do as large as the Earth itself, with gusts reach­ing up to 300,000 miles per hour. That’s accord­ing to Ter­ry Kucera, a solar physi­cist with NASA’s God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter. NPR has more on the mak­ings of solar storms. Find more awe-inspir­ing footage in our col­lec­tion of 125 Great Sci­ence Videos.

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The Birth of the Moon: How Did It Get There in the First Place?

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | February 23rd, 2012

The Moon is a mys­tery. For all its familiarity–the reg­u­lar­i­ty of its phas­es, the fact that every­where on Earth it looks the same–the Moon has always been an enig­ma, a lumi­nous ques­tion mark rolling across the night sky.

In this new video from Cos­mic Jour­neys, we learn about some of the lat­est sci­en­tif­ic research into the struc­ture and his­to­ry of the Moon. In par­tic­u­lar, we learn the lat­est ideas on what is per­haps the great­est of lunar mys­ter­ies: the ques­tion of how the Moon got there in the first place.

The lead­ing can­di­date for an answer is the Giant Impact Hypoth­e­sis, which posits that some­time in the ear­ly stage of the Solar System–about four and a half bil­lion years ago–a large pro­to-Earth col­lid­ed with a Mars-sized body named “Theia,” caus­ing a huge cloud of mate­r­i­al from both bod­ies to fly out into space. Some of the mate­r­i­al remained in the Earth­’s orbit and coa­lesced into the Moon. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing hypoth­e­sis. To see more videos from the same series, vis­it the Cos­mic Jour­neys chan­nel on YouTube, or the Spac­eRip blog.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Moon Up Close, in HD

A Year of the Moon in 2.5 Min­utes

The Far Side of Moon: A Rare Glimpse from NASA

125 Great Sci­ence Videos

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The Far Side of Moon: A Rare Glimpse from NASA

in Astronomy, Education, Science, Video - Science | February 9th, 2012

Here’s some­thing you don’t see every night: the far side of the Moon, pho­tographed by one of NASA’s Grav­i­ty Recov­ery and Inte­ri­or Lab­o­ra­to­ry (GRAIL) space­craft.

The Moon is “tidal­ly locked” in its orbit around the Earth, mean­ing its rota­tion­al and orbital peri­ods are exact­ly syn­chro­nized. As a result, we always see the same view of the Moon no mat­ter when or where (on Earth) we look at it. In this inter­est­ing video, released last week by NASA, we get a rare glimpse of the Moon’s oth­er side, start­ing with the north pole and mov­ing toward the heav­i­ly cratered south.

The video was cap­tured on Jan­u­ary 19 by the “MoonKAM” aboard one of a pair of GRAIL space­craft that were launched last Fall and began orbit­ing the Moon on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. The pri­ma­ry mis­sion of GRAIL is to study the Moon’s inte­ri­or struc­ture and to learn more about its ther­mal evo­lu­tion.

GRAIL is also the first plan­e­tary mis­sion by NASA to car­ry instru­ments ded­i­cat­ed sole­ly to edu­ca­tion and pub­lic out­reach. The “KAM” in “MoonKAM” stands for Knowl­edge Acquired by Mid­dle school stu­dents. The pro­gram, led by for­mer astro­naut Sal­ly Ride, will engage fifth- to eighth-graders from across the coun­try in select­ing tar­get areas on the lunar sur­face to pho­to­graph and study. Edu­ca­tors inter­est­ed in par­tic­i­pat­ing can reg­is­ter at the MoonKAM web­site. To learn more about the video and GRAIL, see the NASA news release.

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Apocalypse Not Quite Yet: Why Solar Storms Won’t End the World in 2012

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | January 25th, 2012

With the largest solar storm since 2005 light­ing up the night skies this week after a pair of solar flares sent streams of charged par­ti­cles hurtling toward the earth, prophets of doom have been light­ing up the Inter­net.

Bob Thiel, a self-described “Church His­to­ry and End Times Exam­in­er” and author of 2012 and the Rise of the Secret Sect, wrote yes­ter­day: “Worse solar flares will ulti­mate­ly hap­pen after the ‘Great Tribu­la­tion’ begins (Rev­e­la­tion 16: 8–9), and one or more that affect satel­lites and elec­tric­i­ty could hap­pen even today.” Hmm. Inter­est­ing.

Although very seri­ous ques­tions do exist about the readi­ness of our elec­tric pow­er grid and satel­lite infra­struc­ture to with­stand a major solar storm like the one in 1859 that short­ed out tele­graph wires and caused auro­rae so bright a crew of gold min­ers in Col­orado report­ed­ly got out of bed in the mid­dle of the night to cook break­fast, the cur­rent increase in solar activ­i­ty is part of a reg­u­lar 11-year cycle and pos­es no spe­cial risk, accord­ing to NASA helio­physi­cist Alex Young. (See the video above.) And any­way, Young says, the peak isn’t expect­ed to hit until 2014, well after the Mayan cal­en­dar has run its course.

For an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion about the past week’s solar activ­i­ty you can lis­ten to Phil Plait, author of Dis­cov­er Mag­a­zine’s “Bad Astron­o­my” blog, in an inter­view yes­ter­day with Patt Mor­ri­son of Los Ange­les pub­lic radio KPCC. And for a look at the earth-direct­ed coro­nal mass ejec­tion of Jan­u­ary 22, you can watch anoth­er NASA video below.

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