In
A Hundred Billion Trillion Stars, Seth Fishman and illustrator Isabel Greenberg (
previously) present a the astounding, nearly incomprehensible size of the universe in a picture book that even the very youngest readers will delight in; when I blurbed it, I wrote "Dazzling: the astounding, mind-boggling scale of the magnificent universe and our humbling and miraculous place in it, rendered in pictures and words that the youngest readers will understand."
“No, I don’t like that at all. I don’t even know what that means”
Bo Gardiner:
Not sure what [Isaacs] Mizrahi's excuse is, but you gotta love his "let a man set this silly woman straight" tone with his own silliness. As for [Shawn] Killinger, an avid Christian, perhaps she got her science from Genesis in Sunday school.
Check out the model's reaction at 0:39! I like to imagine she models to put herself through an astrophysics Ph.D.
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The Cassini spacecraft is on final approach to Saturn, following confirmation by mission navigators that it is on course to dive into the planet’s atmosphere on Friday, Sept. 15.
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The always-excellent maker of animated explainer videos, Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell just released a new video that explains what black holes are, explains what information is, and then goes into the way that black holes are the cause of something called "The Information Paradox." The takeaway: we all might be stretched on a flat screen, just imagining that we are in three dimensions. Read the rest
Best solar eclipse 2017 video ever.
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In the NASA image above, today's total solar eclipse is seen above Madras, Oregon. Photo by Aubrey Gemignani for NASA. Below, our moon blocks out the sun during the solar eclipse in Depoe Bay, Oregon.
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"May the shadow of the moon fall on a world at peace."
Frank Reynolds anchored from New York, with live reports from former science correspondence Jules Bergman and reporter Bob Miller. Live images from Portland, Oregon, Washington state's Goldendale Observatory and Helena, Montana.
It might seem strange, and certainly cold comfort to those who suffered and still suffer, but his wish has been mostly granted. The world has a lot to lose.
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As eclipse mania grips the nation, Vox has created a nifty interactive eclipse map of what to expect in every American ZIP Code. Read the rest
This is neat: "A free, one-hour online class anyone can take to learn everything they need to know about the eclipse. It’s part of a real college course at University of Colorado, Boulder taught by Prof. Douglas Duncan, a professional astronomer and director of the Fiske Planetarium."
A total eclipse is one of the most spectacular sights you can ever see! It looks like the end of the world may be at hand. There is a black hole in the sky where the sun should be. Pink flames of solar prominences and long silver streamers of the sun's corona stretch across the sky. It gets cold, and animals do strange things. People scream and shout and cheer, and remember the experience their whole life. But total eclipses are important scientifically as well. They let us see parts of the sun’s atmosphere that are otherwise invisible. A total eclipse presented the first chance to test Einstein’s prediction that matter can bend space – like near a black hole. The best total eclipse in the United States in 40 years happens August 21st, 2017.
This course has two primary goals:
1) to get you excited for the total solar eclipse coming in August 2017 and prepare you and your community to safely view it
2) to provide an inviting overview of the science of the sun and the physics of light
If you are most interested in preparing for the eclipse, you can hop right into Week 5! If you want the full course experience, and to get some fun scientific context for what you'll be seeing on August 21st, start with Week 1 and move through the course week by week!
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In this TEDx Talk, science writer and umbraphile (an "eclipse chaser") David Baron emphasizes the importance of witnessing a total solar eclipse firsthand (eye?) at least once in your lifetime.
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I chanced across Emoh Store's gorgeous astronomy rugs while googling for the daytime-TV conspiracy science classic "Fabric of Time," and immediately ordered one.
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Imaged by the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), this is
the most detailed depiction yet of the enormous supergiant Betelgeuse, 600 light-years off in the constellation Orion and 1400 times the size of the sun.
The star is just about eight million years old, but is already on the verge of becoming a supernova. When that happens, the resulting explosion will be visible from Earth, even in broad daylight.
The star has been observed in many other wavelengths, particularly in the visible, infrared, and ultraviolet. Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope astronomers discovered a vast plume of gas almost as large as our Solar System. Astronomers have also found a gigantic bubble that boils away on Betelgeuse’s surface. These features help to explain how the star is shedding gas and dust at tremendous rates (eso0927, eso1121). In this picture, ALMA observes the hot gas of the lower chromosphere of Betelgeuse at sub-millimeter wavelengths — where localised increased temperatures explain why it is not symmetric. Scientifically, ALMA can help us to understand the extended atmospheres of these hot, blazing stars.
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From @LRO_NASA:
"A huge payoff from the longevity of the LRO mission is the repeat coverage obtained by the LROC Wide Angle Camera (WAC). The WAC has a very wide field-of-view (FOV), 90° in monochrome mode and 60° in multispectral mode, hence its name. On the one hand, the wide FOV enables orbit-to-orbit stereo, which allowed LROC team members at the DLR to create the unprecedented 100 meter scale near-global (0° to 360° longitude and 80°S to 80°N latitude) topographic map of the Moon."
See also NASA Goddard's Tour of the Moon, especially if your love for it was formed in the last century:
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The August 21 eclipse is being commemorated by the US Postal Service with a new stamp printed with thermochromic ink; when you rub the stamp the image transforms from an image of the 2006 total eclipse as shot from Jalu, Libya, to a photo of the full moon, both taken by Fred Espenak, aka Mr. Eclipse, of Portal, AZ.
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If you vomit, do be considerate and try not to let it land on the moon. [via Metafilter] Read the rest
When the sun is directly overhead in Hawaii, it looks like a bad video game render
The sun is exactly overhead twice a year in Lahaina, Hawaii, once in May and once in July. Poles don't cast shadows, giving the urban landscape an eerie appearance. Hawaii is the only state in the US where the sun's rays are perpendicular to the surface of Earth. It's called a subsolar point.
Image: Flickr/Daniel Ramirez
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According to astronomer Seth Shostak, the alien intelligences we'll likely encounter someday won't be "little grey guys with big eyeballs but machines." As senior astronomer at the
SETI Institute, Seth has dedicated his scientific career to seeking out evidence of ET transmissions and using that research to educate the public about our place in the universe. Mark Frauenfelder and I interviewed Seth about hunting for aliens in this episode of
For Future Reference, a new podcast from Institute for the Future:
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