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The measure of success

How do you make astrometry fun? Well, you don’t, of course. Astrometry is the precise measurement of the position and motion of astronomical objects. It is not something one takes lightly. It requires skill, exactitude, and lots and lots of math. Nevertheless, the good folks at Astrometry.net are working...

Posted to Astronomy.com blog (Weblog) by Francis Reddy on 12-04-2007
Tags: Francis Reddy
Red Planet fast-track

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...

Posted to Astronomy.com blog (Weblog) by Francis Reddy on 11-07-2007
Tags: Francis Reddy, book reviews, solar system
Brave new words

My recreational reading ebbs seasonally in a manner generally corresponding to the release of select DVD sets. While I prefer to keep my fanboy side from showing too prominently, my recent excuses for letting the books pile up include the second season of Battlestar Galactica and Season 3 of Stargate...

Posted to Astronomy.com blog (Weblog) by Francis Reddy on 11-06-2007
Tags: Francis Reddy, book reviews
Shout outs

Some blogs are fun, some blogs are intellectual, and some provide a handy way to find links. (Okay, mine's an exception.) But here, in no particular order, are a few blogs I try to read regularly. Cosmic Log : Since 2002, MSNBC science editor Alan Boyle has provided his take on a veritable smorgasbord...

Posted to Astronomy.com blog (Weblog) by Francis Reddy on 10-12-2007
Tags: Francis Reddy
Does physics matter to you?

It does if you like smaller, higher-capacity hard drives. But the road from landmark paper to an iPod often is longer than we like to think. Such is the case of Albert Fert (Université Paris-Sud, Orsay, France) and Peter Grünberg (Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany), who just won the...

Posted to Astronomy.com blog (Weblog) by Francis Reddy on 10-09-2007
Tags: Francis Reddy
Lost in translation?

An interesting question hit my inbox this week. How far south can an aurora be seen? Specifically, are the “northern lights” ever visible from Timbuktu? A 2004 New York Times article about medieval Arabic manuscripts triggered the question. The city of Timbuktu, Mali, was one of Africa’s intellectual...

Posted to Astronomy.com blog (Weblog) by Francis Reddy on 08-23-2007
Tags: Francis Reddy, history
A room with no view

Looking for a different sort of vacation? Consider a trip to Mars. The European Space Agency (ESA) wants you. The mission, slated to begin next summer, is to work and live in a simulated spaceship for a 520-day round-trip to the Red Planet. Aside from weightlessness and radiation, the simulation will...

Posted to Astronomy.com blog (Weblog) by Francis Reddy on 06-22-2007
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Dangerous liaisons

In 1959, British scientist and novelist C. P. Snow suggested that what slowed progress in solving the world's problems was a communications breakdown: scientists and artists no longer talked to one another. The title of his University of Cambridge Rede Lecture, " The Two Cultures ," has...

Posted to Astronomy.com blog (Weblog) by Francis Reddy on 05-16-2007
Tags: Francis Reddy
Moving forward by looking back

NASA Former astronaut Wally Schirra died May 3 at the age of 84. He was one of NASA's "Original Seven," the first crop of astronauts selected in April 1959, and the fifth man in space. Schirra was the only astronaut to fly in all three of the U.S. space agency's pre-shuttle programs...

Posted to Astronomy.com blog (Weblog) by Francis Reddy on 05-08-2007
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Soccer-ball space science

With its exciting operations at asteroid Itokawa in late 2005, Japan's Hayabusa showed the time has come for on-site exploration of near-Earth asteroids and comets. Dennis Ebbets and his colleagues at Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colorado, presented a novel design concept for...

Posted to Astronomy.com blog (Weblog) by Francis Reddy on 01-13-2007
Tags: Francis Reddy