The Great Orbiting Observatory Series: Part III: Gamma-Ray Telescopes.

Compton is placed into orbit by the Space Shuttle Atlantis. (Credit: NASA/Art Explosion).

   By far, the portion of the spectrum with the coolest Science fiction-friendly name is gamma-ray. The highest end of the spectrum, this range starts at energies above 100 keV and wavelengths of 10 pico-meters (that’s tiny…) or less. Gamma ray energy from [...]

The Great Orbiting Observatories II: The Ultraviolet.

 
   When we last left our installment of this saga, we covered the observatories that target the visible edge of our spectrum. This is a narrow slice; a tiny sliver of what we call the electromagnetic spectrum. This week, we move into the ultraviolet, a span of the spectrum at roughly between 10 to 320 [...]

Space Telescopes, Part I: Optical.

 

(Credit: NASA/ESA/S. Gallagher/J. English).

 

 Hickson Group 31 of galaxies as imaged by Hubble.
   This weeks’ expose will kick off our four part series on orbiting space telescopes. For starters, we’ll begin with the most familiar; the optical wavelength. True, we as humans are biased towards this narrow band of the spectrum; we love to see pretty [...]

LIGO: A Quest for Gravity Waves.

LIGO, Livingston. (All Photos by Author).

  We had to go there… last month’s NASA Tweetup at the Johnson Spaceflight Center saw us undertake the great American road trip from Astroguyz HQ north of Tampa, Florida, to Houston on the other side of the Gulf of Mexico and back. Ever the opportunists, we scoured the route for [...]

12.03.10:Update: A Phobos Flyby/Martian Moons Ephemeris II.

 
 Mars Express scouts the proposed landing site(s) for Phobos-Grunt.
    The pictures are in: ESA’s Mars Express has performed two close flybys of Phobos in the past weeks and performed sensitive gravimetric as well as photographic reconnaissance passes of the bizarre moon. Of course, the data reveals more questions than it solves. Is Phobos solid rock, or [...]

An Ephemeris of the Martian Moons.

This is a quick posting of the best apparitions of the moon of Mars, Deimos and Phobos, as promised in the Mars opposition post. The tables run for a week after opposition, and are accurate to about 10 minutes or so. I hand crafted these in Starry Night after I found a lack of info [...]

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