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John Dobson, 1915–2014 The long-lived master of sidewalk astronomy died peacefully on January 15th. Emerging from obscurity in 1968, he introduced simple ideas that revolutionized how amateurs make and use large reflecting telescopes.

This web page is designed to give everyone an idea of what our universe actually looks like. There are nine main maps on this web page, each one approximately ten times the scale of the previous one. The first map shows the nearest stars and then the other maps slowly expand out until we have reached the scale of the entire visible universe. This atlas does a very good job of providing the proper persepctive in demonstrating the vast distances that encompass our known universe. Of course, like most people, you will find yourself being able to maintain focus, losing...

Breathtaking space pictures don't necessarily start snd end at APOD. There are countless astronomy sources that offer imagery of the Cosmos catalogued in different ways, like the National Optical Astronomy Obsevatory, NOAO. NOAO is the US national research & development center for ground-based night time astronomy. In particular, NOAO is enabling the development of the US optical-infrared (O/IR) System, an alliance of public and private observatories allied for excellence in scientific research, education and public outreach. Our core mission is to provide public access to qualified professional researchers via peer-review to forefront scientific capabilities on telescopes operated by NOAO as...

Then at 12:32 Central Time it went wild: Massive sunspot AR1944 has erupted. The X1 flare has sent a coronal mass ejection into space, and it’s heading towards Earth. … NOAA has upped the risk from further X-class flares to 50% for the next 24 hours. Risk of M-class up to 80%

Original Title:Hubblecast 70 Explains How Gravitational Lensing Will Help Uncover the Secrets of the Universe This eight minute Hubblecast video takes a look at gravitational lensing, explaining how it works and how it can help astronomers uncover the secrets of the Universe.

As the Chinese lunar lander Chang'e 3, carrying the Jade Rabbit rover, voyages to the moon, the question arises what should NASA's response be, aside from congratulations to a rival space power. RESOLVE might just fit the bill. RESOLVE or Regolith and Environment Science and Oxygen and Lunar Volatile Extraction is designed to prospect for lunar resources mounted on a rover. "RESOLVE includes a drill, a chemical plant (with an oxygen and volatiles extraction node, gas chromatograph, and mass spectrometer), a neutron spectrometer, and a near infrared spectrometer." It has been tested on Earth as part of a joint American/Canadian...

With the recent announcement by NASA that the 36 year-old spacecraft Voyager 1 has officially entered interstellar space at a distance from the Sun about four times further than Neptune's orbit, and with Voyager 2 not far behind, it seems worthwhile to explore how humans managed to fling objects so far into space. Interplanetary spacecraft often use a maneuver called a gravity assist in order to reach their targets. Voyager 2 famously used gravity assists to visit Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in the late 1970s and 1980s. Cassini used two assists at Venus and one each at Earth and...

Nobody knows how the universe’s biggest black holes grow so large. Now one astrophysicist says it’s because they feed on the quantum foam that makes up the fabric of spacetime One of the more fascinating astrophysical discoveries in recent years is that almost all galaxies hide supermassive black holes at their cores. Indeed, astronomers believe that galaxies and black holes have a kind of symbiotic relationship so that one cannot form or grow without the other. The evidence comes from observations of galaxies both near and far—almost all contain huge black holes. But that raises an interesting question. We see...

A massive rocket carrying a spy satellite for the US government launched from the California coast on Wednesday. The Delta IV Heavy rocket left the launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base and sped towards low-Earth orbit, officials said. The rocket carried a satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office, which oversees the USA's constellation of intelligence-gathering satellites. At 23 stories, the Delta IV Heavy is the largest rocket in the country. The last time it launched from Vandenberg - in 2011, the roar of the engines shook the nearby city of Lompoc. Some people reported hearing the engine roar from...

Bear with me, LI readers – I’m a little bit of a geek, so I find stories like these exciting. It might not be of interest to everyone, but I do think there’s one point about it that will resonate with all of you. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos started Bezos Expeditions (as well as the space exploration venture Blue Origin) out of his “passions for science, engineering, and exploration.” Bezos, like so many others, watched Apollo 11′s launch from his television as a child in 1969. Days prior, the mission began when five F-1 rocket engines fired together in a...

There’s no money to run White House tours, but apparently there’s money to pull one of Al’s pet projects out of mothballs. Satellite shelved after 2000 election to now fly By SETH BORENSTEIN WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is proposing dusting off and finally launching an old environmental satellite championed by Al Gore but shelved a dozen years by his 2000 rival George W. Bush. Obama proposed Wednesday spending nearly $35 million in his 2014 budget to refurbish a satellite, nicknamed GoreSat by critics, that’s been sitting in storage after it was shelved in 2001, months after Bush took...

Hoping to take the commercialization of space to a higher level, a second company has jumped into what the founders hope will be a lucrative emerging market, prospecting for raw materials among near-Earth asteroids using fleets of low-cost robotic spacecraft, senior executives said Tuesday. The long-range goal is to develop an in situ manufacturing capability, harvesting raw materials and building components in space using high-tech mini foundries built around sophisticated 3D printers. "This is about the future. This is about making something happen," company chairman Rick Tumlinson told reporters during a news conference in Santa Monica, Calif. "Deep Space Industries...

Particles do not retain "information", don't have "knowledge". It is not that the act of observation that alters reality. In fact the physical nature of the "observation" small though it may be is sufficient to alter the metrics of sub atomic particles.

On March 25, 2010, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced on their blog that ESA’s study of the mass of Phobos had been accepted for publication in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters. The announcement excerpted startling conclusions of ESA’s findings: “We conclude that the interior of Phobos likely contains large voids. When applied to various hypotheses bearing on the origin of Phobos, these results are inconsistent with the proposition that Phobos is a captured asteroid.” (1,2) Since that time, a number of prominent ancient astronaut blogs have had plenty to say about the findings. The ESA findings were most...

At a news conference Friday, NASA scientists said the object that exploded over Russia was a “tiny asteroid” that measured roughly 45 feet across, weighed about 10,000 tons and traveled about 40,000 mph. The object vaporized roughly 15 miles above the surface of the Earth, causing a shock wave that triggered the global network of listening devices that was established to detect nuclear test explosions. The force of the explosion measured between 300 and 500 kilotons, equivalent to a modern nuclear bomb, according to Bill Cooke, head of the Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville,...

ATTN MODERATOR: This article is NOT copied, but authored 100% by myself (and x-posted at Reaganite Republican) with the exception of one small quote from Russia Today near the bottom (duly noted and linked) All orginal Russian info/data sources noted and linked at the bottom, as always... _________________________________________________________ Some pretty serious damage was delivered upon six Russian towns -and hundreds injured- when a hefty meteorite streaked across the sky, approached the Earth's surface in Chelyabisk Oblast (region) of the southern Ural Mountains near the border with Kazakhstan, then exploded early this morning, cca 9:30-10AM local time. Fragments fell and windows shattered as many...

Video at this LINK

"For those of you with even a small refractor telescope, the next few nights present a once in a blue moon opportunity to spot all seven planets in the same evening. Five of them are visible without even binoculars, while the other two will require you to reference the charts below. While Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn will "move" faster in the sky, Uranus and Neptune will stay relatively fixed in their positions in Pisces and Aquarius for some time. The closest five planets all yield some features through a small amateur telescope, the largest, Saturn and Jupiter, even...

Mystery of the Mayan Calendar finally revealed