Clippings

Posts for Tag: Astronomy

Annie Jump Cannon


This is exciting. See The Glass Universe for details. And I’ve got to find out what American Innovation Coins are all about.

The Chambered Nautilus


This got us thinking. Science, too, builds then rebuilds as new evidence is accumulated. Theories are constructed, then subsumed, or even abandoned. Our animation shows the progression of our understanding of the skies, from Ptolemy to Einstein, shutting us from heaven with a dome ever more vast.  


Via Berkeley Lab CS and Nautilus

It's interesting that I read this just after I read this thought of Kevin Kelley via Explore

Any complex invention is a network of dependent and self-sustaining different technologies… That’s also true of ideas – ideas are not standalone ideas; ideas are a network of other ideas that support them and are required to make them happen… A new idea is just the last little bit that’s added to a network that already exists.

Hubble Shows Oldest Galaxies Ever Seen - Hubble - Gizmodo

Want to see something old? Something really old? Take a gander at this shot, which shows galaxies between 12.9 and 13.1 billion years old. For reference, the universe is estimated to be about 13.5 to 14 billion years old.

The images here were taken during August 2009 over the course of 4 days and 173,000 total seconds of exposure times. Hubble used the newly installed Wide Field Camera 3, which allows it to see near-infrared wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum. This allowed the telescope to observe light from the very beginnings of the universe.This is because the expansion of the universe distorts the ultraviolet and visible light from these galaxies over the course of their unimaginably long journey, pushing them into near-infrared wavelengths.

These are some of the final images the Hubble will send back, as it's being replaced by the James Webb Telescope in 2014. Which is both sad an exciting, as the Hubble has shown us so much of the universe but the Webb will show us even more.

via gizmodo.com

Amazing.