In our presentation of the NASA-hosted event opening the James Webb Space Telescope to the world’s astronomical community, we discussed one of the five commissioning targets presented to the public. That choice to open this 5-article series was SMACS 0723, a distant galaxy cluster receding at 29% the speed of light. In this article, we’ll[…]
OMG, the sky is falling! In what appears to be another visceral, emotionally charged characterization, a thinly-veiled attempt at clickbait, another article has now appeared, describing the JWST micrometeoroid event of May 24 as an ‘uncorrectable‘ tragedy, a show-stopper, the proverbial final nail-in-the-coffin. Nothing could be further from the truth! The actual report, a peer-reviewed,[…]
Full resolution image (2799×2856) of the SMACS 0723 cluster of galaxies, 4.6 billion light years distant in the southern constellation Volans. Known as Webb’s First Deep Field, this image of galaxy cluster is overflowing with detail and is described more fully below. Images and results from Webb’s observations are archived here with the first images[…]
Link to video below The Deep Space Network (DSN) provides continuous send and receive service for all planetary and deep-space missions throughout one solar day or 24 hours. Stationed in three separate regions of the planet, a seamless hand off transitions service from one network complex to another as the earth rotates providing worldwide coverage[…]
When I was a young child, long before I received my first telescope as a Christmas gift from my parents, I often looked up at the moon and thought to myself, this is what the moon will look like in a hundred years from now, a thousand years from now, long after I’m gone. While[…]
On 3 October of 2017, in what the prestigious Royal Swedish Academy described simply as “a discovery that shook the world”, three Americans were awarded that year’s Nobel Prize in Physics “for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves”, waves famously predicted by Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity 105[…]
In our latest video, Dr. Jim Daly of Astronomy for Change discusses the recent interest in colonizing Mars through ‘Terraforming’. Elon Musk is pushing the idea of rapidly warming the surface of the Red Planet using clean Nuclear Fusion ‘bombs’ and thus rapidly increasing the planet’s average surface temperature. Through a thoughtful choice of the[…]
On 4 December, 2017 Dr. James Daly of Astronomy For Change hosted a public event discussing the landmark discovery and optical counterpart observation of the merger of two Neutron Stars. The discovery was made on 17 August, 2017 using the US-Based LIGO Gravity Wave Telescope Array and the Virgo gravitational wave observatory located near Pisa,[…]
Update to European Southern Observatory To Announce “Unprecedented Astronomical Discovery” Monday, 16 October The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has announced the unprecedented discovery and observation of the optical counterpart to the gravitational wave event observed on 17 August (GW170817) of this year. The full announcement and press event can be watched here: This observation is[…]
September 7, 2017 After Cassini: Pondering the Saturn Mission’s Legacy Cassini’s discoveries are feeding forward into future exploration of the solar system. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute › Full image and caption (Author’s note: The Cassini orbiter is scheduled to be deorbited and plunge into Saturn’s cloud tops this Friday, September 15 at 4:55 AM, PDT.[…]
In what could only be described as a visual metaphor of a bright, hopeful, limitless future, this image, iconic as it is inspirational, epitomizes what is the best in us, the potential we have to soar to new heights, a young child chasing Juno along a Florida beach as the intrepid explorer slips the surly[…]
Jupiter’s North Pole Unlike Anything Encountered in Solar System Having completed a brilliant orbital insertion on 4 July, Juno has successfully completed the first of 36 orbits of Jupiter. As it passed within 4,200 Km (2,600 mi) of the giant planet’s upper cloud decks at 6:44 a.m. PDT (9:44 a.m. EDT, 13:44 UTC), it was[…]
Fifty years ago today, NASA published the first-ever image of the Earth from the moon. Imaged by the intrepid Lunar Orbiter 1, the black and white image above was beamed back from a distance of 380,000 Km (236,000 mi). Lunar Orbiter 1 was the first of five Lunar Orbiters sent to the moon in preparation[…]
Note: Following observations of the 2 August Transit of the moon across the sun, SDO failed to return to Science mode, hence the blank video composites below. Daily, Dynamic Video Composite Loops of the Sun in the light of Extreme UltraViolet and soft X-Rays High-Definition Movies of the Raging Sun 24/7 Be the first to[…]
The JunoCam camera aboard NASA’s Juno mission is operational and transmitting data after the spacecraft’s July 4 arrival at Jupiter. Juno’s visible-light camera was turned on six days after Juno fired its main engine, placing itself into orbit around the solar system’s largest planet. The first high-resolution images of the gas giant Jupiter are still[…]
At 9:32 AM, EDT on this date forty seven years ago, humanity finally came of age, venturing off our home world, home to all life that we know of since the dawn of recorded history, for a thousand millennia. It has been said, and quite accurately, that for the 21 hours his two companions were[…]
A relatively strong, C-class solar flare was observed on Sunday, July 17th by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. The flare is noteworthy in that the sun has been relatively quiescent, on its way to solar minimum. The image and the accompanying video below are composites, compiled from hard Ultraviolet and X-ray images obtained by the SDO,[…]
In what could only be described as a visual metaphor for a bright, hopeful, limitless future, this image, iconic as it is inspirational, epitomizes the essence of our mission at Astronomy For Change: a young child is chasing Juno along a Florida beach as the intrepid explorer slips the surly bonds of Earth into a[…]
In beautiful cadence, the progress of knowledge and understanding cascading across the millennia culminating now, with Juno’s successful arrival at Jupiter. In resounding brilliance, we are in orbit around the largest planet in our solar system, in search of our beginning. In the waning hours of July 4th, Juno successfully began its two year orbit[…]
As I write this post, NASA’s Juno spacecraft has commenced the Jupiter Orbital Insertion (JOI) burn, the most perilous phase of the mission. No spacecraft has ever flown this close to Jupiter or its intense radiation belts. The Juno Mission to Jupiter, has arrived at its destination. Juno is the second spacecraft designed for NASA’s[…]
NASA’s Juno spacecraft is going closer to the massive and mysterious planet Jupiter than any spacecraft has ever gone. The ship has flown more than 1.7 billion miles over five years, and on Thursday Juno began executing the sequence of commands that will take it right to Jupiter’s clouds. On July 4th, the engines will[…]
