Tag Archives: space

The Milky Way is shaped like a CD

Posted on 1st December by Mr Reid

The Earth orbits just one of the 200  –  400 billion stars that make up the Milky Way. This star, the Sun, orbits at a distance of about 27000 light years from the Galactic Centre, trav­el­ling at 220 km/s (one mile every seven thou­sandths … Continue reading →

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Star traveller etymology

Posted on 2nd November by Mr Reid

The term astro­naut comes from the two Greek words: ástron (star) and nautes (trav­eller), making an astro­naut a “star trav­eller”. In Russia astro­nauts have always been known as cos­mo­nauts, an angli­cised version of the Russian word kos­monavt (ori­gin­ally from the … Continue reading →

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Looking at constellations from a different angle

Posted on 30th October by Mr Reid

You are probably familiar with the con­stel­la­tion of Orion (The Hunter), in par­tic­ular with the asterism that makes up Orion’s Belt. Because of the way the right ascen­sion data is plotted the images shown here are how they would appear … Continue reading →

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Time on the Moon

Posted on 22nd February by Mr Reid

I was sur­prised to find that the amount of time spent on the Moon by Neil Arm­strong and “Buzz” Aldrin on the Apollo 11 mission was really quite small when compared with the time spent by astro­nauts on sub­sequent Apollo … Continue reading →

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Remembering Challenger

Posted on 4th February by leila

(A guest post from Leila Johnston.) It’s almost exactly 25 years since one of the most tragic incid­ents in the history of space flight. Mission STS-51-L was to be the 25th Space Shuttle mission, an event sur­rounded by tre­mendous excite­ment and … Continue reading →

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Advances in antennae

Posted on 9th January by Mr Reid

An antenna is a device for sending or receiving radio signals. You’re probably most familiar with the Yagi-Uda antennae used for receiving UHF ter­restrial tele­vi­sion signals or the para­bolic satel­lite dishes used to receive Ku – band satel­lite tele­vi­sion signals. A high-gain Yagi-Uda … Continue reading →

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Rods from God

Posted on 31st July by Mr Reid

The problem with bombs is getting them to their target. Dropping them from the air has always been the standard approach (Aus­trians used air-dropped bombs during the siege of Vienna in 1849), but this is beset by problems. Even stealth … Continue reading →

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Pacman is alive and well and living on Saturn’s moon Mimas

Posted on 31st March by Mr Reid

More inform­a­tion …

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20 years ago today

Posted on 14th February by Mr Reid

4545 days after launch, on 14th February 1990, at a distance of six billion kilo­metres from Earth, the Voyager 1 probe turned its camera on the solar system for a “family portrait”. One of the 60 indi­vidual pho­to­graphs taken became one … Continue reading →

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What’s up with the Sun?

Posted on 5th February by Mr Reid

The Sun (the big floaty fireball, not the awful “news­paper”) has been in the news lately as it’s been pre­dicted that the Sun may inter­fere with the 2012 Olympics. It’s been sug­gested that  solar flares, ejec­tions of material from the … Continue reading →

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How many people are in space right now?

Posted on 17th September by Mr Reid

This is abso­lutely my favourite single serving website ever: http://www.howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/

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Messing about in space

Posted on 3rd August by Mr Reid

When astro­naut Koichi Wakata arrived at the Inter­na­tional Space Station he brought with him a list from JAXA, the Japanese Aerospace Explor­a­tion Agency of 16 exper­i­ments to perform in space, selected from a list of 1600 pro­posals from the public. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohcS8pmtoEc[/youtube]

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Long Duration Experiment

Posted on 15th June by Mr Reid

NASA’s Long Duration Exposure Facility was a bus-sized satel­lite that orbited Earth for more than five and a half years, com­pleting more than 32 000 complete orbits. It was covered in 86 panels, each of which was a dif­ferent exper­i­ment designed … Continue reading →

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K. Megan McArthur

Posted on 17th May by Mr Reid

Update: Megan McArthur is in space right now. As part of Ada Lovelace Day I’m posting about a woman in tech­no­logy who I admire. Dr K. Megan McArthur is a NASA mission spe­cialist with a BS in Aerospace Engin­eering from UCLA … Continue reading →

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SPACEBAT!

Posted on 16th May by Mr Reid

Update: Spacebat has a website! I have a tem­porary new favourite animal: SPACEBAT! Won­dering what that orange surface is? Spacebat was spotted clinging to the foam coating of the Space Shuttle Discovery’s external fuel tank during launch on Sunday, clearly … Continue reading →

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Space Junk

Posted on 4th May by Mr Reid

The space around Earth is full of junk, as you can see in the pictures below from the European Space Agency. Click to enlarge. It’s so full of junk that recently a US Iridium satel­lite and a Russian Strela satel­lite collided, … Continue reading →

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NASA’s HD channel

Posted on 20th April by Mr Reid

NASA has started posting HD videos to its YouTube channel. One of the first videos posted was this incred­ible stop-motion video of the ISS in orbit around Earth. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXNH7whveGk[/youtube] Make sure you click the ’ HD’ icon to watch in … Continue reading →

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Transit of the Moon

Posted on 29th September by Mr Reid

A transit is an astro­nom­ical term for when one object passes another. In the pho­to­graph below the planet Mercury is trans­iting across the Sun, as seen from the SOHO space­craft. For the first time sci­ent­ists have recorded the Moon’s transit … Continue reading →

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Jupiter’s spot burps out a baby

Posted on 23rd September by Mr Reid

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, a violent storm bigger than Earth, has given birth to a new, smaller, giant storm.

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“What would happen if I fell into a black hole?”

Posted on 10th September by Mr Reid

… is a question I’ve been asked quite often recently. Slate magazine has the answer.

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