Frequently, when we are discussing astronomy with customers (it comes with the territory when you sell telescopes) the subject of Pluto comes up and the customer usually asks us: “So, what happened to Pluto? All of a sudden they decide it isn’t a planet? What do you think of that?!”. A lot of these folks […]
We’ve already posted about how you can ‘adopt’ a star in the stellar region the Kepler Mission is examining for planetary bodies via the Pale Blue Dot Project.
Well it is 2010 and already Kepler seems to have found some new planets!. The best part is that many of these stars have not been adopted, so […]
400 years ago today Galileo observed the moons of Jupiter. Thus beginning one of the most important events in science/astronomy history. Frankly, I don’t have the words to describe this event and its importance, especially when there are those who do it so much better. I am speaking of Phil Plaitt, the Bad Astronomer:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/01/07/the-galilean-revolution-400-years-later/
If you […]
The year 2009 winds down, and the decade comes to an end. This means that the International Year of Astronomy is also ending. Officially the IYA will not end until the official ending ceremonies which will take place January 9th & 10th in 2010.
But let us look at what the IYA has accomplished:
The […]
This is one of those examples of what an amateur can do. These are some of the most impressive shots of Mars we have seen from a terrestrial telescope and the animation is really cool.
You might want to check out the other pictures as well, the animated shots of the ISS are particularly impressive.
If […]
If all goes well this Friday NASA will be launching its WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) satellite. This will scan the skies in the infrared with much greater sensitivity than ever before. NASA expects that WISE will uncover comets, cooler stars and other celestial objects that cannot be seen in the visible spectrum.
The heart […]
It is a new awesome astronomy picture every day! The best of the year 2009. It is the Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar 2009. Every day from Dec 1st to the 25th a new astronomy photo will be revealed! Enjoy!
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
It’s a busy day and getting near the holidays, so we figured it would serve all well to reprint our Telescope Buyer’s Guide:
There are several telescope buyers guides available on the Internet, some good, some not so good. At Spectrum we are writing from our experience with customers and hope to make this simple and […]
It is official. Despite a poor visual display with its impact, the LCROSS impactor has confirmed there is water on the Moon!
Here are images of what lead to this conclusions
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
These are some interesting short computer animations of various planets and moons in our solar system undergoing rotation. These are courtesy of youtube channel joshig1983:
1st Up, Mars!
Jupiter:
Io
Ganymede
Europa:
You can find more at joshig1983’s youtube channel
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
