Peter Chen displays his 12-inch “moondust mirror.” AAS photo by Richard Dreiser © 2008 American Astronomical Society Once upon a time, the buzzwords in telescope making were Teflon and Formica. In the future, though, they may be epoxy and lunar dust. Peter Chen and his colleagues at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, presented a novel recipe for making telescope mirrors at the American Astronomical Society meeting in St. Louis...

There’s no better place to find astronomy related software than the web archive created by Astro Events Group of Ostend, Belgium. “Our compilation will actually never be complete,” says Patrick Jaecques, a member of the group. “We have updates about every week. It’s also the only part of our Dutch web site that is translated into French, German and English.” There you’ll find hundreds of programs for a wide variety of computing environments, including...

It’s the year 2030, and humans are finally undertaking interplanetary travel with a historic mission to the Red Planet. This is the premise for Discovery Channel Canada’s 4-hour “Race to Mars” mini-series, which the network describes as its most ambitious project to date. (Watch the trailer .) The show premiered in Canada September 23, but air dates for the U.S. are not yet available. However, the companion book to the series is. In Race to Mars ...