Topic: Pamela Gay
Closer Look: An 18-Mission Fleet Monitors Earth (For Now)

Closer Look: An 18-Mission Fleet Monitors Earth (For Now)

There are currently 20 NASA Earth observing missions circling our world, either as singular flagship spacecraft or as constellations of small sats that work together to do their science. These missions collectively observe everything from the chemistry of our atmosphere, to the flux of solar radiation on our world, to the planet’s thermal behavior and changing sea levels. Together, these spacecraft provide continuous monitoring of out evolving world over time. Unfortunately, many of these missions are already working on borrowed time. Ace, CYGNSS, Jason03, Landsat 7 & 8, and SMAP all...

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Dying Stars’ Final Artwork

Dying Stars’ Final Artwork

One of the justifications for building the Hubble Space Telescope was to finally get a detailed enough view  of the fuzzy blobs we call planetary nebulae that we could finally understand what is going on. Turns out, for some of the nebulae, we actually needed...

It’s a Star-Eat-Planet Universe

It’s a Star-Eat-Planet Universe

One of the most mystifying planets to many of us are the hot Jupiters. These massive worlds have orbits smaller than Mercury’s and in some cases are so close to their stars that starlight is pushing mass off the planet or the planet is raising tides on the star....

New Weird Star-Star-Planet Combination

New Weird Star-Star-Planet Combination

The Universe sometimes likes to mock us. Such is the case with exoplanets. Once upon a time, researchers would sagely say, “Solar Systems like Tatooine, with twin stars, likely don’t exist.” The thing is, this was based on models that relied on limits created with...

Rubin Observatory Brings Much Needed Joy

Rubin Observatory Brings Much Needed Joy

Ok, so we held off running this last little section while I waited to see if Vera Rubin observatory would put out a First Light press release. Rubin Observatory did not put out a first light press release. They put out a Facebook post saying “on-sky engineering tests...

Leading Science Via Meritocracy and Consensus

Leading Science Via Meritocracy and Consensus

An American flag hung upside down from a cliff by National Parks employees, signifying distress. Credit: Tracy Barbutes / San Francisco Chronical One of the imperfectly realized goals of science is to reward people fairly for their excellence and defining our future...

It’s Time to Give Up on Supersymmetry

It’s Time to Give Up on Supersymmetry

Since I was old enough to read about particle physics, I’ve been reading about how one possible set of solutions to explain why we have the particles we have in our universe would require the existence of a massive zoo of particles that that bring the population of...

Galaxies Seen Through Gas

Galaxies Seen Through Gas

One of the more surreal aspects of JWST images is that infrared light can pass through a lot of dust and gas, allowing us to see galaxies that were previously hidden. New images of Herbig-Haro 49/50 resemble a weirdly abstract Christmas tree; a ring galaxy ornaments...