October 2008: News & Notes. October 1, 2008
Posted by webmaster in : Astro News, Astro News & Commentary , add a comment(Newsflash- NASA announced recently that STS-125, the final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, will be delayed indefinitely due to a failure of the telescopes’ main control unit. Engineers are looking at options to restart a backup unit. That also scrubs Astroguyz’s mission to cover the launch live! click here for more info!)
First Exoplanet Pic? (Credit: Gemini North Telescope).
First Image of an Exo-Planet: Astronomers utilizing the Gemini North telescope have produced what may be the first image ever of an exo-planet. The three person team from the University of Toronto used the adaptive optics of the enormous telescope to image the object in the glare of 1RXS J160929.1-210524, about 500 light years distant. (more…)
AstroEvent of the Week:29th-September 5th, 2008: Spot Neptune! September 29, 2008
Posted by webmaster in : Astro News & Commentary, Weekly Astro-events , add a commentNow, to spot a planet that was first located mathimatically.
Neptune and Triton as imaged by the Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1989. (Credit: NASA/JPL).
Now that the Moon is out of the sky this week, it’s a good time to add the outer most gas giant to your “been there, done that” list! First spotted in 1846 by Johann Galle & Heinrich D’Arrest, Neptune’s position was first deduced by the French Mathematician Le Verrier, who himself hated the “grittiness” of rank and file observational astronomy. (more…)
Astronomical Observing in the Military. September 25, 2008
Posted by webmaster in : Astronomers' Tales, Observational Astronomy , add a comment
F-15s… the Mighty ZZ!
The military has enabled me to observe astronomical phenomena from some unique locales. My interest in astronomy has waxed and waned (pun intended) all of my life. I’ve basically been looking at the sky since I’ve been old enough to look at anything. (more…)