Carnival of Space #56
With the Mars Phoenix Lander settling down on the surface of Mars, many posts in the this week's Carnival of…
Podcast: The Scientific Method
You've heard me say it 90 times: "How we know what we know." But how do we know how we…
Astronomers Weigh the Coolest Brown Dwarfs
Pity the poor brown dwarf; a star wannabe. With as little as 3% the mass of the Sun, brown dwarfs…
Famous People Wandering the Halls of AAS
Walking the halls of the AAS meetings we found Galileo Galilei, who actually looks pretty good for being 440 years…
Planet Discovered with Only 3 Times the Mass of the Earth
Most of the planets found to date have been massive and orbiting their parent stars at a fraction the orbit…
AAS Meeting in St. Louis, June 1-5
It's going be another busy week of space news. That's because thousands of professional astronomers have descended into St. Louis…
How To Weigh a Black Hole: Just Look At Its Galaxy
My father was a rancher, who had the uncanny ability to accurately estimate the weight of each animal in his…
Phoenix Digs on Mars
Phoenix's first dig in the Martian soil. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ University of Arizona The Phoenix lander used its robotic arm…
Launchpad Damaged During Saturday’s Shuttle Launch
Debris falls into the water following Discovery's launch on Saturday. Images from CBS Space Place. The launchpad at Kennedy Space…
Get Ready for High-Energy GLAST
It's not hard to grab someone's attention when you mention the words "super massive black holes," "gamma ray bursts," "cosmic…