You are browsing the archive for Ryan Anderson.
22 May 2008
The Search for Life on Mars: Part 2
In a previous post, I talked about how the idea of life on Mars captivated the mind of the world before the space age, and left off with the arrival of Mariner 4. Now, with the Phoenix landing coming up on Sunday, I thought it would be fitting to continue the story of the search for life on Mars by looking at what past spacecraft have found. When Mariner 4 …
21 May 2008
Dangerous Sunrise
Image credit: Inga Nielsen Ok, apparently I am a sucker for artist’s renditions of active red dwarfs. Today’s picture is the Astronomy Picture of the Day, and shows a concept of what the surface of Gliese876d might look like. This planet is heftier than Earth and orbits closer to its star than Mercury does the sun. However, it orbits a dim red dwarf, which means that even though it is …
20 May 2008
Superflare!
Image credit: Casey Reed/NASA Apparently the tiny little red dwarf star EV Lacertae has quite a temper. On April 25, astronomers detected that this little dim star underwent a colossal flare and became brighter than the sun. Bad Astronomy has the full story, but I felt the need to share this mostly because of the absolutely awesome artist’s rendition of the flare above. I’ve seen a lot of space artwork, …
18 May 2008
New York Geology: Day 2
In an earlier post, I shared some pictures and interpretations from the first day of a two-day whirlwind tour of New York geology. Now without further ado is day 2! Our first stop on Day two was Stark’s Knob, a tall outcrop of basaltic rock jutting out of the middle of an otherwise unremarkable bit of New York countryside. The basalt is in the form of rounded blobs or “pillows”, …
15 May 2008
Carnival of Space #54
It’s that time of week again! There’s enough spacey goodness to last you until the weekend over at Altair VI, this week’s host of the Carnival of Space.
14 May 2008
New York Geology Trip: Day 1
Over the weekend I went on a joint Astronomy/Geology department field trip to visit some cool geologic sites in eastern New York state. As a planetary scientist, it is good to sometimes go out and actually, you know, study an actual planet. I will do my best to describe some of the sights here, but I’m afraid my field geology skills are lacking so I won’t nearly do the locations …
12 May 2008
Lego Mars!
Targeted ads in gmail sometimes show me some awesome sites. I posted before about the chance to buy land on Mars, and now I learn that Lego has a Mars Mission set of toys! They even manage to slip a few facts in on the web site. For example, they have “transmissions from Mars” and one of them describes working in Valles Marineris, giving all its impressive stats. Of course, …
8 May 2008
Carnival of Space #53
It’s Thursday, and you know what that means: the Carnival of Space! Go check it out over at SpaceCynics!
7 May 2008
Dust Devils at the Phoenix Landing Site
It’s finals week in Cornell-land, so I apologize for the lack of posting. As always, I will sate your appetites with a picture. This time, it is an image from the context camera (CTX) on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, showing giant dust devils near the landing site for Phoenix. Coolness! Phoenix is landing on May 25 (only 18 days left!), and will probably be able to catch a glimpse of …
5 May 2008
One Way to Save On Gas
This morning, as I was skimming headlines at CNN, I saw a link to a TIME magazine list of 10 ways to save on gas. First of all, there were only 9 suggestions in the list and most of them were silly. For example: wearing different shoes while you drive. And second of all, they miss the most important one. Therefore, I feel it is my duty to inform people …
