NASA iPhone app

Have an iPhone? Interested in keeping track of NASA's activities? Go here to learn about the free iPhone app NASA has designed for space enthusiasts out there. Enjoy!

Space Engineering website

ESA has recently developed a new website, available here, describing the technologies that goes into its spacecraft. Hope you enjoy!

Jupiter / Moon conjuction tonight

Just after sunset. Go here for a skymap. I hope there are clear skies in your area!

Poor LCROSS....

It hit the location on the Moon it was supposed to, but unfortunately didn't create the plume of dust and gas the scientists were hoping for. Go here for a funny, yet sad, synopsis.

New Sunspot

Just because the Sun is in the midst of one of the deepest Solar Minima ever recorded, producing far fewer sunspots than average, does not mean it isn't producing anyway. This weekend, a very large and powerful sunspot formed in the Sun's corona. Go here for more information and some pretty pictures / movies. Enjoy!

The Future of Human Spaceflight in the US...

... may indeed be largely determined by this report. The short-term future, in any case. What do you think? I'm very interested to hear/read your opinions, so please leave them below.

The Milky Way's neighbors

In addition to M31 (Andromeda galaxy), orbiting the Milky Way are a collection of small, irregular galaxies which likely had lost gas and stars to the Milky Way's gravitational attraction when they get too close. Go here for some new, pretty pictures of one of the galaxies that may form the building blocks of the Milky Way's halo.

Virtual Spacewalks

NASA has developed a new video game, Station Spacewalk, to give you the opportunity to experience (somewhat) what it is like to float outside the International Space Station into the emptiness of space. Without, you know, actually going up in space and floating outside, unfortunately. Go here to try it out.

Astronomers Do It Again: Find Organic Molecules Around Gas Planet - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Astronomers Do It Again: Find Organic Molecules Around Gas Planet - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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Cosmic Pearls by Herschel

I honestly don't see the "pearls" in these images, but the latest results from Herschel are stunning. Available as an e-postcard from JPL here. Enjoy!

September 14th Radio Show: Solar System News

Wrapping up the radio shows originally broadcast on WVKR, here is a show trying to wrap up the latest Solar System news (I run out of time, and will do this on my first web-only podcast). Hope you enjoy! As always, please leave below any questions, comments, or concerns you might have. Thank you for listening

NASA Sponsors Student Water Recycling Competition

NASA is sponsoring a waste limitation management and recycling design challenge for fifth through eighth grade students, where participants will design and test water recycling systems that could be used for future exploration of the moon. The top three teams will receive awards, and the first place team will receive an expense-paid trip to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Teams of up to six students and one teacher or mentor must submit their proposals and results to NASA for evaluation by Feb. 1, 2010. For more information, go here, and good luck!

String Theory Comic

Available here. According to a friend of mine who actually studies string theory, it is a pretty good summary of the field. I particularly like silly string theory...

Frozen Water on Mars

While results from the Phoenix Mars Lander suggested this was the case, measurements of the ground composition from layer recently exposed by meteorites hitting the surface of Mars by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter strongly suggest the presence of sub-surface water ice. Go here for more information. Very interesting, to say the least.

Want to be a radio astronomer?

The Lewis Center for Educational Research (LCER) has announced a pretty cool opportunity for elementary school teachers to get their classes involved in radio astronomy. Cribbed from their announcement: "The Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope Program (GAVRT) is an education partnership involving NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and LCER. It is a K-12 project using radio astronomy to provide an opportunity for students to experience real science and to learn that science is an ongoing process and actual discovery is possible. Using their classroom computer, 32,000 students have taken control of a 34-meter, 500-ton, 9-story-high radio telescope located at NASA's Deep Space Network at Goldstone, CA. They learn how to gather data, understand what the data mean and how to follow through with analysis. We are excited to include Radio JOVE with our training in 2010. Radio JOVE is a NASA education program: Solar and planetary radio astronomy for schools. It is a hands-on educational activity that brings the radio sounds of the sun, Jupiter, the Milky Way galaxy and terrestrial radio noise to students, teachers and the
general public. We target grade levels 6 - 14 to build a simple radio telescope kit, speak with professional radio astronomers, make scientific observations, and interact with radio observatories in real-time. For further information, see http://radiojove.gsfc.nasa.gov
Teachers need to attend a 5-day class in order to take this program back to their
students, and can apply online at this time at http://www.lewiscenter.org/gavrt/opportunities.php. We are conducting a 5-day teacher training class at the Lewis Center on March 8 - 12, July 19 - 23, and October 25 - 29, 2010, at our facility in Apple Valley, CA. We strongly recommend at least two teachers attend the training from your school or area. While this is not a requirement, it will definitely serve to help in program support once back in the classroom. The cost of the 5-day class is $745. For questions, e-mail gavrt-info@lcer.org or call (760) 946-5414 X234.
More information about GAVRT can be found at http://www.lewiscenter.org/gavrt/ ."

Images of LCROSS crash into the Moon

Though it didn't produce the large plume that astronomers were hoping to see, LCROSS did hit the lunar surface, as evidence by photos compiled by spaceweather.com. Enjoy!

August 31st Radio Show: The Outer Solar System

Originally broadcast over a month and a half ago (I'm really sorry for the delay), finally available here is the August 31st episode of this radio, where in addition to the latest (at that time) Astronomy news I also discuss interesting scientific results concerning the outer Solar System. Thank you very much for listening and your patience, hope you enjoy, and please leave any questions or comments you might have below.

One small step for a telescope...

... one big step for ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, currently being constructed by ESO, NRAO, and Japan to image the sky at millimeter and sub-millimeter wavelengths in the Atacama dessert in Chile (the dryest place on Earth not in Antarctica) like never before. Go here for updates.

Happy 20th Birthday Galileo!

The NASA mission to Jupiter and beyond!, not the Italian astronomer (who is much older). Go here to read more. Enjoy!

Saturn's amazing rings

Thanks to Cassini observing Saturn's rings when they appeared edge-on relative to the Sun, we now know much more about thickness and 3D shape of Saturn's rings. Go here for more information. And, thanks to Spitzer, it now appears that Saturn's ring extend much further out that previously before (go here for an artist's rendition), as explained here. Wow!

GigaGalaxy 2 and 3

According to this, now you can zoom in on the Galactic Center using GigaGalaxy 2, or the Lagoon Nebula with GigaGalaxy 3. Enjoy!

More astronaut twitter

Go here to read tweets from Astronaut Jeff Williams, who will command the next International Space Station mission. Ah, twitter. Enjoy!

First results from ESA's Planck

Planck, the latest satellite to measure the properties of the Cosmic Microwave Background - essentially residual heat from the Big Bang, has released its first results and it looks very good indeed. Go here and
here to look for yourself. Enjoy!

NASA's newest astronomy satellite

... and WISEist so far. (sorry couldn't resist the bad pun). Click here to read an article on NASA's next astronomy satellite, the WISE mission, which will make the most sensitive all-sky infrared map to date. There have been lots of advances in infrared astronomy thanks to Spitzer, but much of the sky has not been imaged at this wavelength in over a decade so all the interesting objects out there have almost certainly not been identified yet. This mission will hopefully discover good targets for more sensitive infrared telescopes, like Herschel and James Webb Space Telescope, and personally looking forward to its launch.

I'm really sorry...

... for the lack of activity here in the past month. Between this conference, proposal deadlines for these two satellites, and everything else, I just haven't had time to work on this podcast. Over the next two weeks, I hope to work through the backlog of past shows and news items and then, beginning November, start the regular monthly (at the minimum) podcasts.