Blogs / Bad Astronomy

Yesterday, the Large Hadron Collider once again had a beam of protons whizzing around its 27 km-long circumference!

After a series of setbacks — some devastating, holding up the world’s largest scientific experiment for many months — this milestone achieved shows that the collider is heading back to full operations, which should get started again next year. There will be press conference about this on Monday November 23rd at 1:00 p.m. GMT, which will be webcast live.

And if you’re wondering what the crew at CERN think of this latest news, then take a look at this picture of them looking at the results of the start up:

That picture makes me smile. Those unemotional, cold, calculating scientists. Why can’t they ever reveal their true feelings?

On November 20, 2009, the Cassini spacecraft buzzed the surface of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus once again, returning dramatic images of its water geysers and wrinkled, ridged surface:

That raw image (which means it has not been processed to remove instrument/detector artifacts like bad pixels and such) was taken when Cassini was a mere 2000 km (1200 miles) above the moon’s surface. The features are beautiful and plentiful… and it looks like a great place to ski. Bonus: the low gravity would make the experience last longer!

Cassini got an overview of the geysers, too, when it was still more than 500,000 km away:

Remember, these are raw images; that bright "star" just above Enceladus is probably a cosmic ray hit on the detector and not an actual astronomical object.

Over at The Planetary Society blog Emily is, of course, having kittens over the pictures, and has made some stereoscopic pairs of them (though I’ll wait for the red/green anaglyphs; crossing my eyes at my monitor makes my tummy queasy). [Edited to add: in the comments below, BABloggee Alex links to anaglyphs he created. Very cool!]

Stay tuned, because as these images are processed things will only get cooler.

I know, I usually wax lyrical and scientific over this picture or that returned from various astronomical and space observatories. But honestly, I don’t have a whole lot to say about this particular image, from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, showing boulders that have rolled downhill to the bottom of the 45 kilometer-wide Rutherford crater:

Except:

a) Click to embiggen.

2) I still have not gotten used to these super hi-res pictures. This one is 510 meters across. See the big rock at the top, left of center? The one casting a long shadow? That’s about the size of my yard, and I don’t have a particularly large piece of property. Some of the rocks in this image are smaller than a car.

c) Wow. The good news is, these images still do amaze me. I’m pretty happy I haven’t been spoiled yet. But as more pictures come back from LRO, that might happen. I’m only human — but I do have a large capacity for amazement. Keep ‘em coming!

Image credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University

I have few regrets in life, but if there’s one, it’s that I didn’t have access to all this amazing technology when I was a teenager and figuring out just how I was going to tackle my love for astronomy. How I would have loved podcasts, programmable telescopes, CCDs, websites with satellite pass information…

But that’s the way things are now, and lots of people are putting this tech to good use. Like, for example, Sirius Stargazing, a new YouTube channel with info on how to observe various astronomical objects. It’s just starting out but off to a good start. Here’s one video on the Pleiades. And who’s the dork in the tie introducing it?

If you have a YouTube account and are interested in observing the skies, then consider subscribing to Sirius Stargazing. They may just give you ideas.

While driving in Los Angeles recently, I was surprised to see this out my passenger window:

Wow. I know NASA’s budget is small, but this seems a bit unnecessary. I wonder if Harry Broderick was driving?

Aha! The video I mentioned the other day featuring Watchmen advisor Jim Kakalios — about nerds running the planet — is now on YouTube! So I have embedded it below for those who are too busy to click an actual link.

You know what "galaxy" means in Latin Greek, don’t you?

Yeah, it’s Saturn, not the Milky Way, but still. That is made of awesome. I want to go to that coffee shop!

Via Reddit.