Image credit: Tech Explorist Every once in a while, a story comes along that just makes me giggle, and also forces me to fix some misinformation living in my brain. Consider the microscopic black hole. In my brain, these diminutive creations of the early universe should all have evaporated away thanks to Hawking Radiation. It turns out, however, I was thinking too small. While the tiniest of possible primordial black holes - those measuring hundreds of million tons and smaller - will indeed have evaporated away, those that are a bit bigger - say a billion metric tons or larger - should all...
Lucy’s Discovered Dinkinesh Throws Rocks
We often find ourselves saying that science moves at that rate of technology. With new telescopes and spacecraft we can get new views on the universe. And some of them are weirdly unexpected. Back in November 2023, the Lucy mission flew past the asteroid Dinkinesh on...
Large Binocular Telescope images Jupiter’s moon IoOld Telescope Shows Off New Skills
Meanwhile on Earth, the Large Binocular Telescope has installed a new high-contrast optical imaging instrument, dubbed SHARK-VIS. Using adaptive optics, the system can compensate for the earth’s atmosphere, and with a pair of 9m mirrors, it has resolutions and light...
Euclid Releases First Science Images
While the 33 year old Hubble struggles, the not yet 1 year old Euclid space telescope has released its first science images. Euclid is a 1.2 m telescope with a wide-angle camera that is designed to survey galaxy shapes and study dark matter and dark energy. It is...
Hubble Down to One Gyro
In a June 4 telecon with the press, NASA shared that due to recent issues, they have made the decision to operate HST in single gyro mode. This isn’t expected to have any impact on the quality of individual science images, however Hubble will need significantly more...
Robotic arms may rescue clumsy astronauts
I have a delightfully weird tech story related to future lunar exploration. Research has shown that astronauts working on the moon are most likely to fall over when using tools, and once they fall over, getting up while wearing a space suit that restricts their motion...
Closer Look: The cost of the climate of academia
We are recording this episode about a week in advance of our normal recording date. This is because our producer Ally Pelphrey and I will be at the Balticon science fiction and fantasy convention over Memorial Day weekend and I’m then flying to Orlando where I’ll be...
Hubble Resolves star formation
Image credit: NASA / ESA One of the things I personally enjoy most about working in astronomy is the way yesterday’s empty star fields and faint smudges resolve into spectacular vistas and amazing nebulae as we build better telescopes and find the time to point them...
The butterfly that was actually a planet forming disk
Object IRAS 23077+6707 The sky is littered with small fuzzy blobs that are chock full of science waiting to be understood. And one such fuzzy blob looks surreally like a butterfly. Discovered in 2016, this object, cataloged as IRAS 23077+6707, is located about...
Galaxies caught in the act of merging their blackholes
As we head toward summer, JWST is getting ready to start its second year of science operations. During its brief period of operations, this $8.8 billion spacecraft has been working hard to prove it can do science worthy of its price tag. Adding to it’s list of...
Geology points to the path most chosen
One of the most common questions faced by those of us who study other worlds is this, “What good is studying planets when we have issues here on Earth?” Well, it turns out Earth happens to be a planet and sometimes geology can tell us really cool things about...