Spitzer
esiegel | August 21, 2013"I am undecided whether or not the Milky Way is but one of countless others all of which form an entire system. Perhaps the light from these infinitely distant galaxies is so faint that we cannot see them." -Johann Lambert
When we look out at the Universe, our view is pretty consistently dominated by the stars within our own galaxy. Although we know that many interesting things lie beyond -- globular clusters, individual galaxies, and rich clusters and superclusters of galaxies -- being in the Milky Way makes it very hard to see beyond it.
Image credit: Richard Payne, of Arizona…
catdynamics | May 5, 2010The verdict is out, the 2010 Senior Review Committee recommendation on the NASA Astrophysics old active missions; who will keep going, and who is recommended to get the chop.
It is an interesting list, with some interesting recommendations.
And the winners are...:
1. Planck - level funding for 30 months, per request, consider 42 month extension later
2. Chandra - extend to 2012 and beyond, restore and augment funding, consider automated operation, concern about spacecraft degradation
3. Warm Spitzer - surprise winner! recommend $7M augmentation for 2012 and 2013, note spacecraft ends…
esiegel | January 25, 2008I got a great question earlier today from my buddy Zrinka, and decided to figure out the answer for her, and also for myself. She asks:
Ethan, is it possible to know, or better to say to imagine somehow how our galaxy looks from outside?
What a simple-sounding question! After all, we know what the Earth looks like from the outside: we just go outside of it and photograph it. But the galaxy is too big to do that to; it would take tens of thousands of years moving at the speed of light to get that far away! So we're left with the option of looking at our galaxy from inside of it, and trying to…