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

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.

As I was flipping through the Hubble telescope gallery, I nearly fell out of my chair when I saw that IMAX and NASA teamed up together to film the final repair mission back in May ’09.. and all in 3D!

I was completely in shock when I read in Scott’s American Cinematographer magazine how much effort went into the development of the movie from start to finish.  In a short period of time, the IMAX team trained the astronauts how to use the camera in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, a 6.2 million gallon pool where the astronauts train for life in space.

Since just a single load of film could be taken up to space, they were only able to capture 8 minutes of actual spacewalk footage (which equals over a mile of film).  Once fixed into position, the camera had no way to pan or tilt and all functions were operated via laptop.  The film stock was specifically made for the production and the undeveloped negative weighed more than 50 pounds per roll in custom made cans.  They also had to create a vacuum and pressurized system to keep the film from curling inside the container and to allow it to enter and re-enter the atmosphere properly.  The footage had to be deemed a “national treasure’ by NASA to allow cinematographer James Neihouse to hand carry the film back to California on a commercial flight without having to put it through the x-ray scanner.

So much can go wrong up there in space.  Astronaut Mike Massimino had to rip off a handrail after attempting to remove a bolt that wouldn’t budge.  In the movie he describes that working on Hubble is like “doing brain surgery with oven mitts on”.  Also, they say the most vulnerable part of the spacesuit are the gloves since they could slice open easily with one wrong move.  Can you imagine??

So the only place it seemed to be showing near me was at the California Science Center in LA.  Narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, the movie is only 45 minutes long… and yes, you really do feel like you are right there changing Hubble’s batteries along with the crew.  For about $10 you can get this life-like astronaut’s perspective of Earth from space, here’s your ticket:  HUBBLE 3D

The final servicing mission included the installation of the New Wide Field Camera 3 and a Cosmic Origins Spectrograph allowing detailed imagery using UV and infrared spectrums of light.  So now we can see deep into the universe better than ever…

Saturn with Aurora

Omega Swan Nebula

Cat’s Eye Nebula (dying star)

Supernova Remnant

Helix Nebula & Galaxy NGC 1512

Butterfly emerges from stellar demise in planetary nebula NGC 6302

UFO – no really, they have no idea what this is… photo taken on January 29, 2010.  Looks like they call it a “comet-like asteroid”.

Spiral Galaxies NGC 2207 & IC 2163

Jupiter and moon IO

Eagle Nebula

Deepest view of universe – galaxies galore

The universe is just filled with intergalactic art.

Photos:  Moon from my front porch, Virgin Galactic on Flickr – Herb Lingl

I’m completely blown away with every facet of space.  Just the thought of being on a rotating orb traveling around the sun at 67,000 miles per hour makes my head spin.

The full moon on saturday night was the biggest and brightest it will be in 2010. Not to be outdone, Mars joined the party with its little red glow too.  As I was snapping away with my jaw dropped, I was thinking about all the lucky bastards that are going to space via Branson’s Virgin Galactic spaceships.  A six minute float in space breaks the piggy bank at $200,000 with a $20,000 down payment.  Unbuckling your seat belt to float around the cabin and bumping into everything is one thing….. but man, the thought of being able to look back at Earth with my own eyes just takes my breath away.  Very humbling.

Branson and his mother, Eve, celebrating over a bottle of bubbly.  She looks like a woman that loves an adventure.  Love it.