Just in from SpaceX and NASA, here’s a video of the descent of the Dragon capsule on the morning of May 31, 2012.
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Taken from a chase plane, the footage shows the spacecraft’s dramatic chute deployment and splashdown into the Pacific at 8:42 a.m. PT, approximately 560 miles southwest off the coast of Los Angeles. The event marked the end of a successful and historic mission that heralds a new era of commercial spaceflight in the U.S.
Astronaut Don Pettit continues to ‘wow’ us all with his photographic exploits. In this great timelapse video, not only does Pettit capture a stunning Moonrise over Earth, but he had the presence of mind to set up his video camera in such way that he could also show himself opening the shutters in the space station’s Cupola observation windows just in time to watch all the action. The time-lapse scene was photographed from the airlock of the ISS’s Russian segment.
Here’s a excellent video compilation featuring images from the Hubble Space Telescope, along with music by Kanye West and quotes from astronomers Neil deGrasse Tyson, Lawrence Krauss and Carl Sagan reflecting on our place in the Universe… and the Universe’s place within each of us.
Uploaded to YouTube by video editor Brandon Fibbs, this is a reminder of how Hubble has opened our eyes to the wonders of the cosmos. Enjoy.
“The cosmos is also within us. We’re made of star stuff… we are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”
– Carl Sagan
The Royal Observatory Greenwich is giving free presentations of "Measuring the Universe: from the Transit of Venus to the Edge of the Cosmos" from now until September 1.
Measuring distance doesn’t sound like a very challenging thing to do — just pick your standard unit of choice and corresponding tool calibrated to it, and see how the numbers add up. Use a meter stick, a tape measure, or perhaps take a drive, and you can get a fairly accurate answer. But in astronomy, where the distances are vast and there’s no way to take measurements in person, how do scientists know how far this is from that and what’s going where?
Luckily there are ways to figure such things out, and the methods that astronomers use are surprisingly familiar to things we experience every day.
[/caption]The video above is shared by the Royal Observatory Greenwich and shows how geometry, physics and things called “standard candles” (brilliant!) allow scientists to measure distances on cosmic scales.
Just in time for the upcoming transit of Venus, an event which also allows for some important measurements to be made of distances in our solar system, the video is part of a series of free presentations the Observatory is currently giving regarding our place in the Universe and how astronomers over the centuries have measured how oh-so-far it really is from here to there.
Video credits: Design and direction: Richard Hogg Animation: Robert Milne, Ross Philips, Kwok Fung Lam Music and sound effects: George Demure Narration and Astro-smarts: Dr. Olivia Johnson Producer: Henry Holland
We’re still loving all the eclipse photos and videos coming in: Astrophotographer Ted Judah put together this great video showing his views of the May 20, 2012 annular solar eclipse at Sundial Bridge in Redding, California. Not only are there spectacular shots of the eclipse — including views of the simmering surface of the Sun in the annulus of bright light surrounding the Moon at the maximum phase (starting at about 4:00 in the video) — but he shares the joy of astronomy outreach, as Ted set up his telescope and allowed passersby to see eclipsed Sun for themselves. Great music, too by Peter Adams titled, appropriately, “Shoot the Moon.”
Previous "ring of fire" annular eclipse event (NASA)
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As the eclipse is happening, we’ll try to dig up every online source we can find. Here’s what we’ve got so far.
Can’t see tonight’s annular eclipse from your location? It’s ok, you can watch it here live in a feed provided by the U.S. Department of the Interior! The video (posted after the jump) will be broadcast from Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque, NM, beginning at 9:00 p.m. Eastern / 6:00 p.m. Pacific.
Petroglyph National Monument will be a prime location for the May 20 annular eclipse in the U.S. (NPS)
National Park Service photographers will be taking photos from many other locations as well, you can find out more on the USDOI site here.
(If the above feed is blank, they may have reached capacity. Visit the feed directly here.)
Stanford professor Parviz Moin shows a simulation of temperature fluctuations from a scramjet exhaust.
Researchers at Stanford University are working on solutions to the inherent difficulties of hypersonic flight — speeds of over Mach 5, or 3,000 mph (4828 km/h) — and they’ve created one amazing computer model illustrating the dynamics of air temperature variations created at those intense speeds.
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According to a news article from Stanford University, “Real-world laboratories can only go so far in reproducing such conditions, and test vehicles are rendered extraordinarily vulnerable. Of the U.S. government’s three most recent tests, two ended in vehicle failure.”
The video above shows some of the research team’s animation model — one of if not the largest engineering calculation ever created, it ran on 163,000 processors simultaneously and took 4 days to complete! And it’s utterly mesmerizing… not to mention invaluable to researchers.
“It’s something you could never have created unless you put computer scientists, mathematicians, mechanical engineers and aerospace engineers together in the same room,” said Juan Alonso, associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford. “Do it, though, and you can produce some really magical results.”
In a (very tiny) nutshell, the behavior of air through an hypersonic engine — called a scramjet (for supersonic combustion ramjet) — changes at extremely high speeds. In order for aircraft to travel and maneuver reliably the scramjets have to be engineered to account for the way the air will respond.
“If you put too much fuel in the engine when you try to start it, you get a phenomenon called ‘thermal choking,’ where shock waves propagate back through the engine,” explained Parviz Moin, the Franklin P. and Caroline M. Johnson Professor in the School of Engineering. “Essentially, the engine doesn’t get enough oxygen and it dies. It’s like trying to light a match in a hurricane.”
“Understanding and being able to predict this phenomena has been one of the big challenges. It’s not one number or two numbers that come out of it at the end of the day… it is all of these structures that you see back there, the richness of it. It is understanding that allows you to control.”
– Parvis Moin, Stanford University professor
Thanks to this study, made possible by a 5-year $20 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, we may one day have aircraft that can travel up to 15 times the speed of sound. But the team’s groundbreaking computations aren’t just reserved for aeronautic aspirations.
“These same technologies can be used to quantify flow of air around wind farms, for example, or for complex global climate models,” said Alonso.
Yesterday, space shuttle Enterprise was removed from NASA’s 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft at JKF Airport in New York. You can watch an entire night’s activities in a little over a minute, and even watch the Moon rise over the action. Enterprise will be placed on a barge that will bring Enterprise via tugboat up the Hudson River to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. This will happen in June, and then the shuttle will be lifted by crane and placed on the flight deck of the Intrepid, where it will be on exhibit to the public starting this summer in a temporary climate-controlled pavilion. The museum is still working on their permanent display home for Enterprise. Continue reading “Timelapse: Shuttle Enterprise Removed from 747 Aircraft”
Conan says "I'm a big fan of science and technology." (Air quotes his.)
I wanted to know, so I decided to ask him. And thanks to “Team Coco” and Google Plus, I was able to — last night at 9:30 p.m. Central/7:30 p.m. Pacific, to be exact.
On Monday afternoon, Team Coco — that is, the Google Plus page for comedian and late-night TV host Conan O’Brien — posted a video contest where five lucky “Plussers” would be able to participate in Conan’s first-ever live Google Hangout. All you needed to do was record and post a video question on your Google Plus page, and tag #AskConan on the post.
I figured I’d give it a shot, and recorded a quick webcam video wherein I asked Mr. O’Brian what his feelings were on the future of space exploration. Because, honestly, that’s what we all want to know.
The next morning I had a response from Team Coco… they liked the video and wanted me on the Hangout. So I got to participate, and ask Conan himself — er, myself — um… I got to ask Conan himself, myself!
There were five of us all together on the Hangout, along with Aaron, the moderator, and of course the comedic maestro, Conan O’Brien. After some time prepping to make sure everyone’s lighting and sound were ok and the internet connections were reliable, and basically chatting among ourselves and getting to know each other, we finally went live on Google. The result is above, for better or worse… hey, it was live! Enjoy.
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As far as the answer to the question goes, you can find that around the 16-minute mark. I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but let’s just say that a late-night TV host has certain…priorities…to keep in mind, and above all, Conan is ultimately a businessman.
A funny, funny businessman with an endless supply of gag props.
So check out the video, follow Team Coco on Google Plus and, if you’re a fan of Hangouts be sure to catch Universe Today’s own Space Hangout every Thursday (which I am also a participant in) on our fearless editor Fraser Cain’s feed here.
And next time you see a video contest in your Plus feed, enter it! You never know who you’ll end up hanging out with.
