European astronaut rookies make the grade - BBC News
Rosemary and her dad are regular attendees of Brighton Astro so everyone is pretty excited about this news!
Link tags: astronomy
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The Institutions of Science With Lord Martin Rees
I love just about every answer that Martin Rees gives in this wide-ranging interview.
Aegir.org | Five Moons
In a way, I find these pictures—taken by someone from the ground with regular equipment—just as awe-inspiring as the images from the James Webb Space Telescope.
Days Since Incident
I love this list of ever-increasing timelines. All that’s missing is the time since the Carrington Event, just to remind us what could happen when the next one hits.
Bright Galaxies, Dark Matter, and Beyond | The MIT Press
A new biography of Vera Rubin by Ashley Jean Yeager. One for the wishlist!
Figures in the Stars
A lovely bit of data visualisation from Nadieh showing the differences and commonalities in constellations across cultures. As always, she’s written up the process too.
Astronomical Typography
Typography meets astronomy in 16th century books like the Astronomicum Caesareum.
It is arguably the most typographically impressive scientific manual of the sixteenth century. Owen Gingerich claimed it, “the most spectacular contribution of the book-maker’s art to sixteenth-century science.”
Hertzsprung-Russell diagram animation | ESA/Hubble
When I was in Düsseldorf for this year’s excellent Beyond Tellerrand conference, I had the pleasure of meeting Nadieh Bremer, data visualisation designer extraordinaire. I asked her a question which is probably the equivalent of asking a chef what their favourite food is: “what’s your favourite piece of data visualisation?”
There are plenty of popular answers to this question—the Minard map, Jon Snow’s cholera map—but we had just been chatting about Nadieh’s previous life in astronomy, so one answer popped immediately to mind: the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram.
The Orrery at The Interval: An Invitation to Long-Term Thinking — Blog of the Long Now
The Long Now Foundation has been posting some great stuff on their blog lately. The latest is a look at orreries, clocks, and computers throughout history …and into the future.
Edge of darkness: looking into the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way | Science | The Guardian
Building a planet-sized telescope suggests all sorts of practical difficulties.
Stargazing Live, 2017 : Outreach : Physics and Astronomy : University of Sussex
There’s going to be an evening of astro events out at Sussex University next Wednesday, January 18th. Stargazing, an inflatable planetarium, and the Ensonglopedia of science—fun for all the family!
How a Couple of Guys Built the Most Ambitious Alien Outreach Project Ever | Science | Smithsonian
One might think sending messages to other stars would be a massive, expensive job. No. It isn’t. The Cosmic Call was essentially a crowdfunded hobby project.
Discovery of peculiar periodic spectral modulations in a small fraction of solar type stars
We find that the detected signals have exactly the shape of an ETI signal predicted in the previous publication and are therefore in agreement with this hypothesis.
Brighton Astro
The website for Brighton’s astronomy meet up:
Every month we will have one or two talks aimed at beginners with an interest in learning more about astronomy, but assuming no prior knowledge.
Also, we will take our telescopes out to observe in and around Brighton on clear evenings - on the seafront, Hove and Preston Park, Devil’s Dyke and beyond.
Archeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication edited by Douglas A. Vakoch
A free PDF download from NASA on all things SETI, specifically the challenges of interspecies interstellar communication.
Star Axis is a profound meditation on the sky – Ross Andersen – Aeon
A beautiful exploration of the Star Axis sculpture—an artwork of the Long Now.
The ancients had pyramids to tame the sky’s mystery. We have Star Axis, a masterpiece forty years in the making.
100,000 Stars
A gorgeous interactive visualisation of our local galactic neighbourhood.
B612 Foundation
Defending Earth against asteroids, just like the Spaceguard organisation described in Rendezvous With Rama.
Detect. Deflect. Defend.
SpaceWarps
Zooniverse have done it again. Now you can help in the hunt for sources of gravitational lensing.
It’s informative. It’s fun. It has genuine scientific value.
Data Visualization Reinterpreted by VISUALIZED on Vimeo
Peter Saville talks about the enduring appeal of his cover for Unknown Pleasures.
I like to think of all the variations and mashups as not just tributes to Joy Division, but tributes to Jocelyn Bell Burnell too.