Frosty Leo Nebula – 3000 light years away (December 5, 2011)

Blue Horseshoe – Red Galaxy in foreground being circled by a distant galaxy (December 19, 2011)

Cigar Galaxy (M 82) – 12 million light years away (January 2, 2012)

NGC 3259 Galaxy inside of the Ursa Major constellation, 120 million light years away (January 9, 2012)

Ancient cluster NGC 6752, 13,000 light years away and over 10 billion years old (January 30, 2012)

Just a few new Hubble Space Telescope shots from the picture of the week series.  My fav is the frosty Leo Nebula.

Photos:  spacetelescope.org

Damn, I love this.

Looking at satellite images of Earth never gets old.  This is a new composite image taken on January 4, 2012.  At 8,000 x 8,000 pixels, it’s the highest resolution photo ever taken of Earth.  Is it gorgeous or what?

Wish I could be a space photographer!

(‘Blue Marble’ shot with the Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite instrument (VIIRS) on NASA’s newest Earth-observing satellite: Suomi NPP.)

Source:  Gizmodo, NASA Goddard Flickr

Photo:  JPL

Since I have a thing for space and live in southern California, I thought I’d take advantage of my location and do a little tour of JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) up in Pasadena.  One of the highlights was walking through the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) and seeing where the Mars rovers are born and tested.  I’m completely fascinated by these little robots just knowing that they’re out there exploring another planet while I’m sitting here writing… craziness!

Curiosity is the newest and largest rover family member (the one on the right above) and is due to launch at the end of this month.  It’s huge by comparison (weighing 2,000 pounds) and makes the old rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, look like babies.  I was amazed to hear that it has a rock-vaporizing laser (it’s the pink eyeball looking thing) and it’s own geology lab that can examine samples on the spot.  But I have to say, I’m a little disappointed that they didn’t just paint another pink eyeball on it since it looks like it only has one eye!  Even an eyepatch would’ve been good enough to complete it’s face!

The launch is scheduled for November 25 at 7:25 a.m. PST from Cape Canaveral, Florida and will land on Mars sometime in August 2012.  I’ll be tuned in to watch since my name is added to the microchip that is flying into space with it… (Yep, nerd’s still the word.)

Mars Curiosity on Twitter

Photos shot with the Fuji X100

It’s not a theory, brains are ALWAYS in style and Professor Brian Cox proves it.  If you were to walk by him at that train station in Mexico (pic 1) would you ever guess he was an accomplished particle physicist at CERN?  He definitely doesn’t scream “nerdy scientist” and with a getup like that you’d think he was a rockstar… Okay, well maybe he was one. (He’s on the right.)

When he’s not smashing atoms with the Large Hadron Collider or teaching at the University of Manchester, you can find him on a number of TV and radio shows.  In his most recent TV series, “Wonders of the Universe”,  he travels the world to explain the complexities of the universe by using metaphors and gorgeous cinematography.  I can’t get enough of the show, so of course I had to buy the book.

Rock on Brian.

Brian’s Website
Twitter: @ProfBrianCox
Speaking at TED

Photos:  Twitter @BBC_Wonders

Photo of Saturn shot with the Fuji X100 through the telescope lens.

Space coast is the best coast!  If you want to pretend to be an astronaut for a day, this is the place to be.  During a trip to Florida to visit the fam, we spent the day at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and the night at Brevard Community College to peep through Florida’s largest public telescope (it’s 24″ in diameter).

There’s tons to see and do at KSC… There’s a shuttle launch simulator, spacecraft on display, IMAX movies, moon rocks, Star Trek exhibits, and you can even have lunch with an astronaut or go through astronaut training!  If you plan it right, you can catch a rocket launch!  Watching the launch of the Juno spacecraft was the icing on the cake.  Since we were staying an hour away in Orlando, we had to wake up before dawn to be some of the first 2,000 people to get priority viewing access.  It was definitely well worth it.

After a full day of mars landers, spacesuits, and alien flavored dippin’ dots, we drove 30 minutes south to the Brevard observatory and planetarium.  We were lucky to have a pretty clear sky that night and had an insanely awesome view of Saturn.  Looking at Saturn and it’s well defined rings through a telescope this large is probably one of the creepiest things.  It’s there, and I’m here… It makes me feel very small, which I love because it really puts things in perspective.

Will you boldly go?

Photos shot with the Fuji X100

While visiting the fam on the west coast of Florida, we drove over to Kennedy Space Center (KSC) to catch the Juno launch!   It was the first time I’ve seen a launch up close.  The most surprising thing about it was not how loud it was, but how bright and blinding the blast was… especially when watching it through the binoculars.  Amazing!!

Juno is on its way to Jupiter and will arrive by July 2016.  Once it gets there, it’ll orbit the planet for about a year to collect data about it’s structure and origins.  If you’re into those Discovery Channel shows about the universe like I am, then you’ll love digging around on the Mission Juno site… tells you all about it.

After spending the day at KSC, we headed to the Brevard Observatory which is home to Florida’s largest telescope… more pics to share in the next post.

Juno on Twitter

I instantly gravitated toward the book 3-Minute Einstein by Ivy Press at Barnes and Noble the other day.  It’s a quick biography of Einstein’s life and theories done in a creative way.  I think I’m going to have to go back and get it.

I came across this site on PBS that features him and loved what he said about his work, “The daily effort comes from no deliberate intention or program, but straight from the heart.”  Not only did he have the mind, but his heart was completely in it too.  He truly loved what he did.

(Here’s a 1-minute explanation of E = mc² by another one of my favorite scientists and theoretical physicist, Michio Kaku.)

p.s. nerd’s the word.

MYTH:  Women and science don’t mix.

If Velokova had a middle name, it would be Kari.  Kari Byron from Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters, is the ultimate badass science chick… hands down.  She redefines what it means to be a scientist.  She shoots cannons, builds rockets, conducts experiments, and jumps out of planes… all for the love of learning and adventure.  Lucky girl!  I’d love to hang with her for a day and bust some myths!

By the age of 5 Kari was experimenting on her sister and using dolls as crash-test dummies.  With a background in sculpting and painting, she began model-making and eventually landed a job at M5 Industries in San Francisco which led to her big debut on Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters.

Kari is an amazing role-model.  She also hosts the show, Head Rush, on the Science Channel to inspire kids to take an interest in science and technology.  “Let’s face it: subjects like science and math have an unfortunate reputation for being boring and dry and, dare I say, even “nerdy.”  Another huge roadblock for students is the lack of role models in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (what the President calls the STEM initiative) in our media-driven world of glamor, fame, and money. Close your eyes and picture a scientist. Do you see an awkward nerdy man with bad posture, glasses and a lab coat? Who wants to be him when you are inundated with exciting visions of gorgeous movie stars and rich athletes?”

Wait, it gets even better.  She’s also a kickass mom!  “Everyone told me I would take less risks as a mom…What?! I am still me.   I don’t hold back from doing daring things. Of course I still jump out of planes! What really changed was that my everyday life has become a profoundly blissful experience. I get just as excited about peek-a-boo as I do about counting down an explosion.  Even though I will have to eat live bugs this season and possibly handle poop, I am not fazed. I still do exciting, daredevil, and wild things — but now I do them so that my little girl will know that a mommy can distinguish between a C4 and an ANFO explosion.  If I want my daughter to be an adventurous independent woman who doesn’t shy away from new experiences, I will have to be that woman too.”

Episode recap…MYTH: Women and science don’t mix..

You can catch up with Kari on Geekmom and Twitter.

Photos:  Discovery Channel

Did you catch the final launch of the Discovery??  I was so stoked to see it live online, but I was bummed knowing it was the shuttle’s last flight. Growing up in Florida I watched all the launches as a kid.  In elementary school, the teachers would let us out to watch and one day I was sooo excited that I ran, tripped, and fell hard on my leg.  I had to get stitches in my knee and I still have the scar…. space tattoo?

Discovery has had a great run.  It’s been flying since ’84 and it even carried the Hubble Telescope into orbit.  Nicole Stott is one of the crew members aboard for it’s final mission.  As an astronaut, engineer, and a mother, she’s an incredible role model.  Becoming an astronaut is one of those things that seems completely out of reach, but it’s not impossible.  Look what she said about applying for the job… “I think that’s one of the hardest things, is actually convincing yourself that you should fill out the application and send it in.  That took a lot for me.  I always thought it was really cool but never thought it was a reality kind of thing.”

Nicole spent a few months at the International Space Station and shares what the experience is like in an article in Dwell.  She says that, “When my heart beats, I actually feel like the space station is moving around me because of it, when in fact, it’s really my whole body gently moving in response to it and not the station motion at all.”

I can only imagine what it would be like looking through the window up there.  I love her view on spacecraft, “We get to and from space in them, they deliver food and supplies to us, they dock to each other, they provide us with everything we need to live in the vacuum of space — and they are amazingly beautiful.  There is a shiny, spectacular independence to each of them when you see them hanging so naturally in space, like they were meant to be there with the forces of nature holding them in their place.”

You can read about Nicole in her inteview with NASA

Nicole on Twitter

Sources and Photos:  NASA, Nicole Stott’s Blog, Dwell

Nerding out with this space art by Christopher David Ryan and these incredible NASA photos.

This tee just might have to warp into my closet.