Unknown Pleasures: The story behind the cover.
Scientific American digs into one of the most recognizable, most influential records (and cover images) – the astronomical story behind Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures album […]
astronomy
Science Art: Leonid Meteor Storm, as seen over North America on the night of November 12-13, 1833
This is a celestial event recorded beautifully in E. Weiß’s Bilderatlas der Sternenwelt, the “Picture-Atlas of the Star-World”. I’m not sure, but I think that’s […]
Science Art: The moon’s influence on earth’s tides, c 1930s.
A planetary self-portrait, apparently from Wonderland of Science, a book published in the 1930s. [via scientificillustration.tumblr.com]
“Sorry, but your new home is a cosmic burp.”
Science Daily has us imagining that message being broadcast to an an interstellar ship full of would-be colonists, thanks to new research that’s found some […]
The biggest particle accelerator in the *universe*… is made of galaxies.
Nature writes so calmly about shockwaves of such epic proportions: Four massive clusters of galaxies are plowing into one another at a crash site about […]
Meet the Mega-Earth
Harvard researchers have found a whole new kind of planet. It’s just like ours, only way bigger: Astronomers announced today that they have discovered a […]
Farewell, Spitzer telescope?
Nature covers the hard decisions that NASA faces in its latest budget… which may include shutting down a great space telescope (and an asteroid watchdog) […]
Howdy, neighbor!
Universe Today celebrates a Goldilocks discovery. The Kepler mission has found a planet just the right size and in just the right place to have […]
Science Art: Hubble Views Stellar Genesis in the Southern Pinwheel
Click to embiggen This is a galaxy named M83, which is usually a faint smudge in the constellation Hydra. Up close, however, Hubble Space Telescope […]
Science Art: Portrait of John Kepler, 1854
This is the face of the man who was ROBBED by the third episode of Cosmos. Planetary motion? Elliptical orbits? Not Newton’s ideas – this […]
Faster computers will find aliens.
If you never thought cosmic loneliness was a computing problem, think again. In Popular Mechanics, SETI leader Seth Shostak says Moore’s Law means we’ll find […]
Science Art: Nebulae in the Pleiades, by the Yerkes Observatory
Click to embiggen This is an old photograph taken through the largest refracting telescope (no mirrors, just a really big lens) in the world, the […]
Darker than Nemesis: Was it dark matter that killed the dinosaurs?
Nature tries to see what was behind the comet that killed the dinosaurs – and other mass extinctions that seem to happen every 35 million […]
Science Art: An X-class Solar Flare, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
A scientific visualization from NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio, who have this to say about it: An X-class solar flare erupted on the left side […]
Largest space telescope is ready to… observe.
PhysOrg has the skinny on ESA’s Gaia telescope and its quest to catalogue a billion stars: Gaia will be able to discern objects up to […]