***Images updated.*** Next week, you can check out the rich collection of astronomical instruments at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. In celebration of the 400th anniversary of the telescope, the planetarium opens its a new exhibition, “Telescopes: Through the Looking Glass,” on May 22. The show spotlights technology used to gather information about our universe since Galileo’s day and includes hands-on interactive exhibits. The trumpet-shaped telescope...

Astronomers eagerly anticipate the final Hubble Space Telescope (HST) servicing mission, set to blast off May 12 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. And they are already hard at work designing the observatory that will take over after Hubble sees its final light. Hubble is, in the lingo of telescope engineering, a UVOIR instrument: Its 2.4-meter light-collecting mirror samples wavelengths of light in the ultraviolet (UV), optical (O)...

Telescopes have extended the human senses to unimaginably distant and inhospitable parts of the universe. A documentary beginning to air this week on public television stations in the United States tells the story of the telescope and its unveiling of the cosmos — starting with that simple little tube Galileo pointed at the Sun, Moon, and stars . The 60-minute documentary is called 400 Years of the Telescope: a journey of science, technology, and...

Last summer, my colleague Michael Bakich, a senior editor at Astronomy , kindly gave me a special filter that fits on the front of my 4-inch Celestron NexStar, thus allowing me to observe the Sun without turning my eyeball into a poached egg. I looked at the Sun with the new setup. Nada. Nothing! Thanks to this cool graphic just released by NASA, it’s clear why the Sun is so, well, boring to look at lately. We are in a deep “solar minimum,” a period...

“Wanted: a few hundred thousand computers with a little spare time on their hands.” That’s the basic job qualification if you (and your personal computer) want to join Einstein@Home, a massive international project that uses donated personal computer time to crunch data for real scientists. The project has been going on for several years . This week, Einstein@Home announced it will begin to analyze data from a new source: the giant radio telescope...

Check out this video from Astronomy reader Robert Massey of Fort Worth, Texas. Look to the top left of the grouping of four bright stars, at about the 11 o’clock position. A blob appears to move to the left. The video shows an object — a satellite or perhaps an asteroid? — tumbling through the field of view of Massey’s Meade 12-inch LX200 telescope. At the time he was observing M42, the Orion Nebula. In his own words: “I have been behind a telescope...

In recent blogs, I introduced you to Benne Holwerde, a researcher at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He’s on a team of scientists building a new radio telescope called MeerKAT (Karoo Array Telescope). Holwerde and his group hope MeerKAT will solidify South Africa as the host site for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), an even-larger radio telescope. The SKA will be the world's biggest radio telescope, and it will be built in either...

In a recent blog, I introduced you to Benne Holwerde , a young researcher at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Check out the view from his office in the image at right. He’s on a team of scientists hoping to build a giant new radio telescope called MeerKAT ( Karoo Array Telescope ), a project Holwerde and his group hope will solidify South Africa as the host site for the Square Kilometre Array . Here’s another report on the project from...

California’s Mount Wilson Observatory (MWO) is celebrating the centennial of its famous 60-inch reflecting telescope . Upon its completion in 1908, the “60-inch,” as astronomers call it, was the largest telescope in the world. Pioneer astronomer George Ellery Hale commissioned the project under the auspices of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. The 22-ton behemoth saw first light December 13, 1908, and is considered the grandparent of all modern...

For a couple of years, the giant Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico has been under threat of closure because of budget cuts proposed by the National Science Foundation. It appears the budget axe will not fall on Arecibo’s valley-spanning disk just yet. Here is some communication we just received from Emily Schoenfelder of Edelman Public Relations in Washington, D.C.: “The future of the world’s largest single-dish radio telescope and site for some...