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24 October 2010
The Oldest Object Ever Photographed?
There is a paper in NATURE this week that has caught the attention of a lot of people. Even those who are not into astrophysics! Awhile back the Hubble telescope took the image you see below. See that little smudge? This image may contain the most distant and oldest object ever seen by human eyes. From European Southern Observatory/NASA Astronomer Matt Lehnert from the Observatoire de Paris and a team …
18 October 2010
Great Poster for Teachers
Found this online today and it’s a must for Earth Science teachers everywhere. This is definitely my longest post ever! Okay so click on it and download the full size image and then get a poster made! kudos to Karl Tate at OurAmazingPlanet.com
17 September 2010
Are Sunspots Disappearing? New Paper Rocks Solar Physics World!
Two scientists at the National Solar Observatory in Tuscon, Arizona have published a paper that has literally rocked the world of solar physics. Their paper says that sunspots may disappear from the sun by 2016 and stay gone for decades! MAUNDER WHAT? This has actually happened before. From 1645 to about 1715 there were virtually no sunspots seen on the sun. This period is called the Maunder Minimum and it …
23 August 2010
Keep Looking Up Jack and RIP
His signature sign-off was “KEEP LOOKING UP!” Jack Horkheimer was the star of the PBS series Star Gazer and taught millions to look up at the night sky in wonder. He was a grand ambassador for science. He died on Friday, and the astronomy world is the poorer for it. There are astronomers to be who will have gotten the star bug from Jack Horkheimer. He leaves a great legacy. …
12 June 2010
Brian Cox on Exploration
Brian Cox was host of Wonders Of The Solar System on the BBC earlier this year. As I wrote in a previous post, the series was the first I have seen that surpassed Carl Sagan’s COSMOS. TED (Ideas Worth Spreading) invited Cox to make a talk on exploration. I do not even have to watch it to know that I should post it here. I cannot imagine that I’ll disagree …
1 June 2010
Just As The Mars Hoax Fades Comes This!
One of the best science blogs out there is Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy. He has a post today about a rumour spreading that Betelgeuse is about to go supernova and will fry us all. This is really bad news. Not because it’s true. It isn’t. Betelgeuse may indeed go supernova in the next 100,000 years but it will not fry us. It’s bad news because every one of us Meteorologists …
3 May 2010
If This Isn't Cool, You Don't Have A Nerdy Bone In Your Body!
The Spirit Rover on Mars hasn’t been heard from in a few weeks now. This was expected because it’s winter up there and the sunlight, and the cold, have drained the batteries. It is assumed that Spirit went into hibernation mode as it was designed to do. Hopefully it will wake up in the Spring. Hopefully. There are no guarantees and we cannot claim we didn’t get our moneys worth. …
14 April 2010
The Stars They Saw – April 14, 1865 & April 14, 1912
Being a history and science buff, I have often wondered what the weather and the sky looked like at great moments in history. Today is one of those dates. At 13 minutes past 10 PM on Friday April 14, 1865, a gunshot rang out in Fords Theatre at Tenth and E street in Washington. Forty seven years later, almost to the minute, a lookout shouted “ice berg, dead ahead!” on …
30 March 2010
Holy Cow! Is Mimas a Pac-Man Death Star??
The image on the right is a temperature map of Saturn’s moon MIMAS. The big crater in it is called the Herschel Crater. The image below explains more: So what is causing this?? THEY DON’T KNOW… Yet!
Is Brian Cox The Next Carl Sagan?? My Vote is YES.
Dr. Brian Cox. Rock band musician and physicist. No, really. He played in the rock band DARE with Thin Lizzy’s Darren Wharton. If you’re in the UK and have not seen Wonders of The Solar System on BBC Two, then fire up the iPlayer and watch it. All four episodes that have aired are just superb. They are the only TV productions I’ve seen about astronomy that equals or surpasses …
Dan Satterfield has worked as an on air meteorologist for 32 years in Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama. Forecasting weather is Dan's job, but all of Earth Science is his passion. This journal is where Dan writes about things he has too little time for on air. Dan blogs about peer-reviewed Earth science for Junior High level audiences and up.