Topic: Pamela Gay
Dying Stars’ Final Artwork

Dying Stars’ Final Artwork

by | May 7, 2025 |

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 something even better than HST - and that “better than” is the JWST.  First catalogued in 1790 by William Herschel, NGC 1514 is a binary star system surrounded by a glowy blob of stuff. One of the stars is actually a stellar remnant - a hot white dwarf that has shed its atmosphere and stopped undergoing nuclear reactions in...

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Suni Williams Breaks Women’s Spacewalk Record

Suni Williams Breaks Women’s Spacewalk Record

by | Feb 14, 2025 |

NASA astronaut Suni Williams conducts spacewalk The US Human presence in space is supposed to be flying back and forth form the ISS on a combo of SpaceX and Boeing crew capsules. Unfortunately, was undermined by it’s own failures to deliver on time and a myriad of...

Ordering Enough Water for Early Planet Earth

Ordering Enough Water for Early Planet Earth

by | Feb 11, 2025 |

artist's depiction of planets colliding. While major asteroid and comet impacts have often been devastating for life on Earth, life on Earth wouldn’t be here without impacts that occurred early in our world’s history.  As the story goes, Due to our planet’s...

iSpace Has a Rubric for Mission 2 Success

iSpace Has a Rubric for Mission 2 Success

by | Jan 24, 2025 |

Over the past year, we've seen a variety of different commercial missions that do things I wouldn't necessarily consider successful. We've seen lunar landers unintentionally practice gymnastics by standing on their heads and flipping over sideways. We've seen...

Meteorite Strikes Walkway on Prince Edward Island

Meteorite Strikes Walkway on Prince Edward Island

by | Jan 23, 2025 |

The scattering of video cameras all over the world, as people mount them on dashboards and doorbells, is allowing us to see rare events. When it comes to meteorite collecting, the amazing security cameras and other nighttime images have made it significantly easier...

Protecting Historic Sites on Earth, Moon, and Mars

Protecting Historic Sites on Earth, Moon, and Mars

by | Jan 22, 2025 |

Dominion Observatory in Ottawa Our planet is dotted with old observatories and astronomical research centers that are no longer capable of doing science. Either their equipment is too small, their skies too bright, or both. Both is always an option. I've been lucky...

Don Pettit Proves Stars Can Be Tracked From ISS

Don Pettit Proves Stars Can Be Tracked From ISS

by | Jan 21, 2025 |

Photo taken by Astronaut Don Pettit from ISS: Milky Way with Zodiacal light and Starlink satellites streaking by. Astronaut Don Pettit is, among many other things, an amateur astronomer. One of the most delightful moments of my life with getting to hear him talk to...

Crew 10 Delayed Until March 2025

Crew 10 Delayed Until March 2025

by | Dec 30, 2024 |

Boeing Crew Flight Test (CFT) astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams in T-38 pre-flight activities at Ellington Field. Photo Date: August 16, 2022. Location: Ellington Field, Hangar 276/Flight Line. Photographer: Robert Markowitz In some late breaking news, NASA...