NASA’s Kepler mission has just announced finding some 1,284 new largish balls of rocks and somewhat larger balls of gas orbiting distant stars. That brings the total number of exo-planets discovered to nearly 5,000. That’s 5,000 planets known to exist orbiting distant stars. Wow! They also revealed that 9 of...
I just ran across this amazing CGI animation by Adrian Mann of Stewart Cowley’s Spacecraft, 2000-2100 A.D sci-fi art book. I had this book as a kid, and it was absolutely amazing–a vision of mankind’s exploration of space in all its breathtaking wonder and grandeur. Although long out of print, you can still find...
The final episode of Phil Plait’s “Crash Course in Astronomy” is out, and it’s a pretty good wrap-up to the series. If you been watching the show, be sure to watch the last episode, and if you haven’t seen the show, but have any interest in space or astronomy, then...
Have you ever wondered how the universe will end? Will it end with a bang, a whimper, a crunch, a fizzle, a freeze? To find out, have a look at the latest episode of Crash Course Astronomy with Phil Plait. Spoilers: it will be a very cold, dark, empty place, but not for a...
NASA has just released a new video showing the highest resolution yet of the surface of Pluto, and it’s looking quite amazing! According to his NPR article, the new images reveal details of craters and mountains, along with icy plains. With a resolution of around 80 meters per pixel, they show...
Based on the best selling book by Andy Weir, the upcoming movie The Martian, directed by Riddle Scott, promises to be the latest sci-fi thriller in the growing list of near-future hard sci-fi. If I were to give it a short synopsis, I would say it’s a bit like MacGyver in...
The latest images of Pluto have been beamed back from the New Horizons probe! You can see the latest image on the New Horizons mission site, or read the article on Space.com. Also, there was a nice informative press conference, so have a look at that as well.
On July 14th, the New Horizons space probe made history as zipped past Pluto at a blistering 14 km/s (that’s 0.000046% the speed of light, if you’re counting), snapping pictures and taking readings. It will take 16 months for all the images and data to be downloaded, but NASA has...
On July 14th, 2015, the New Horizons probe will fly by the (dwarf) planet Pluto, taking photos and readings of this far flung outlier of our solar system, and the most well-known of the Kuiper Belt objects. Here’s a nice video overview of the New Horizons mission, an interesting write-up by...
Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. (Rest in peace, Douglas Adams). Now here’s a great two part video explaining the nature of and possible answers to the Fermi Paradox. Not only does the narrator have a smooth British accent, but...
