• Pic of the Week: Annular Solar Eclipse Over Antarctica

    This week’s image comes from the European Space Agency (ESA). It shows the “Ring of Fire” solar eclipse earlier this month from Antarctica. It was captured over the French and Italian Concordia research station. Here is more from ESA on this image and the Concordia research station: Peaking at 19:47 local time (12:47 CET), the…

  • Now We Know the Rest of the Story about that ISS Medical Emergency

    While NASA had kept it quiet for a while, we now know that the medical evacuation of Crew-11 from the International Space Station (ISS) last month related to NASA astronaut Mike Fincke (age 58). While we still do not know the underlying medical condition, and maybe never will, it appears Fincke is still recovering given…

  • Space Quote: SETI and the Swimming Pool

    “My inner eight-year-old, my inner Star Trek nerd, started putting this together that we should use the data that we have and try to figure out how to pull the knowledge from 60 years of radio astronomy and apply it into this optical, visible-light astronomy. My hope in pushing this from the radio into the…

  • Space Stories: More Artemis II Delays, Starliner a Type A Mishap, and James Webb Space Telescope Studies Atmosphere of Uranus

    Here are some recent space-related stories of interest. —NPR: “NASA’s Artemis II Lunar Mission May Not Launch in March After All“ Just one day after NASA said it was eyeing a potential March 6 launch date for the Artemis II lunar mission, the space agency said Saturday that complications with the rocket could delay all launch attempts in…

  • Americans May Be a Bit Too Optimistic About Space Travel

    The latest Harper’s Index from Harper’s magazine had a few interesting statistics related to space travel and alien encounters (something discussed in Friday’s post). Here are the two stastistics: Portion of Americans in 1998 who believed that space travel would be common for ordinary Americans by 2025:  3/10 Portion of Americans in 1998 who believed that…

  • Study Findings: Building Wet Planets Through High-Pressure Magma–Hydrogen Reactions

    Nature abstract of study findings: Close-in transiting sub-Neptunes are abundant in our Galaxy. Planetary interior models based on their observed radius–mass relationship suggest that sub-Neptunes contain a discernible amount of either hydrogen (dry planets) or water (wet planets) blanketing a core composed of rocks and metal. Water-rich sub-Neptunes have been believed to form farther from the…

  • More Files to be Released, But This Time it’s UFOs

    Preview in new tab Not to be outdone by former president Obama, who let it slip that he believes in UFOs, President Trump is now promising to release all of those hidden UFO files. Of course, this is likely just another distraction from the Epstein files, which are currently causing the defenestration of top political…

  • Pic of the Week: A Protostar in the Cepheus A Region

    This week’s image was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. It shows the star-forming region Cepheus A in the constellation of Cepheus. This region is about 2,400 light-years away. Here is more from NASA about this region: The high-mass star-forming region Cepheus A hosts a collection of baby stars, including one large and luminous protostar,…

  • Movie: In the Blink of an Eye

    On February 27th, a new movie called In the Blink of an Eye premieres on Hulu. It sounds like an interesting story told in three parts over thousands of years from primitive human life all the way to travel to a new planet. You can see the outline for yourself in this trailer. While I…

  • More Satellites Planned by Iran

    Just as we deal with more and more satellites from SpaceX, Amazon, Europe, and the Chinese, creating an increasing amount of orbital pollution, we now have to contemplate Iran adding thousands more satellites to this number. According to the Tehran Times, Iran is looking to create its own internet satellite system similar to Starlink. Hassan…