Tag: space

  • Asteroids on the Moon

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    Brendan Barry
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    I hope everybody enjoyed their holiday. But, before we dive back into the meatier topics of the news, I wanted to share this serpentine graphic from the Guardian I discovered last week. Functionally it is a timeline charting the size of 96 known large asteroid impact craters on the Moon, between 80ºS and 80ºN. The…

  • Longest Lunar Eclipse of the Year

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    For those of my readers in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and South America, you are in for a treat tonight as you get to experience the longest lunar eclipse of the year. For those of us in North America, i.e. Canada, the United States, and Mexico, we get nothing. So for a reminder, we turn to…

  • Jupiter’s New Moons

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    Brendan Barry
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    Yesterday, space nerds were alerted to the news that 12 new moons have been discovered in orbit of Jupiter. These are much smaller than Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, which is the largest moon in the Solar System and is larger than even Mercury. The point is that there are almost certainly no Ganymede-esque moons orbiting Jupiter…

  • The James Webb Telescope: Delayed Again

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    Brendan Barry
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    A few weeks ago it was announced that NASA’s James Webb space telescope would see its launch delayed again. The successor to the Hubble telescope was originally supposed to launch several years ago, but now it won’t fly until at least 2021. Thankfully xkcd covered this slipping launch date. Credit for the piece goes to…

  • The Brightest Night Lites

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Today is Friday. We all made it through yet another week. So let us look up into the evening sky tonight and see the Hertzsprung–Russel diagram in action. Or, we can take xkcd’s expanded version and just enjoy ourselves. Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.

  • Lunar Observations

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    Brendan Barry
    in ,

    Monday night I was doing some work outside and when I turned around to head inside I was struck by the brilliance of an object in the night sky. I had seen the Moon rise earlier in the evening, but this was far to the east. It was identifiable as a dot, not just a…

  • Onwards and Upwards

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Yesterday SpaceX launched the Falcon Heavy rocket on its maiden voyage, and then recaptured several, though not all, of its reusable rockets. The Falcon Heavy represents the most powerful rocket available to mankind today, though NASA’s Saturn V of the Apollo programme era was considerably more powerful. That was all the stuff you could read…

  • Farewell, Cassini

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Today’s post is a sad post, hence why I did not run with it on Friday. But on Friday, we bid adieu to the little space probe that could, Cassini. This piece is not terribly heavy on the information design, but it does include one diagram—so it counts. The BBC put together a piece reflecting…

  • The Timeline of the Voyager Mission

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    There are a bunch of things to look at this week, but what am I most excited about? Voyager. No, not Star Trek. (Did you know that the Vger entity from the first Star Trek film was a replica of the Voyager probes?) I am of course talking about the Voyager mission to the outer…

  • Solar Eclipse Day

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Today is Solar Eclipse Day. Thankfully Vox has put together a great interactive piece to help you plan your day. This is for my viewing area in Philadelphia. We only max out at 75% of the sun, but that is still pretty fantastic. Credit for the piece goes to Casey Miller, Ryan Mark, and Brian…