Science Daily: Uranus
- NASA's Hubble, New Horizons team up for a simultaneous look at Uranus October 11, 2024
- Key to rapid planet formation August 1, 2024
Year: 2009
Asteroid Impact in Nubian Desert Tracked
Science News is reporting on a first of its kind: an asteroid that was tracked all the way to its impact on Earth. The asteroid was apparently about the size of a car (hmm, would that be a Hummer or a mini-Cooper?) and since the trajectory was well-tracked, the impact site in northern Sudan was …
Open Source Physics Educational Java Tools
Well, it’s good news bad news time. I was excited to find these via an article in the Physics Teacher. Clearly, I haven’t been paying attention, because they’ve been mentioned before, but the item which caught my attention was an article that used a program called Tracker to analyze 2D motion. I immediately thought of …
C/2007 N3 Lulin from Brooklyn
Well, sort of. I got out briefly tonight with my wife’s Canon 12×36 IS binoculars (that’s Image Stabilized). The position of Lulin is easy enough to find with Saturn less that 6º away and two reasonably bright star nearby to help zero in on its location – Leo 59 at mag 5 and Leo X-63A …
100 Hours of Astronomy
The canonical website for information is http://www.100hoursofastronomy.org/. This page will be updated with new local to New York and Brooklyn. Keep in mind that there is a weather component to this event, but I hope to be able to sponsor both night viewing and some solar viewing, although the Sun has been very quiescent (no …
Another Reason to Turn off the Lights
Yet another study has found a connection between cancer and night-time lighting. Last time it was breast cancer, this time is it prostate cancer. In Darkness, Melatonin may Suppress Breast and Prostate Cancers, Science News reports on another study that shows a link between burning the midnight oil and human health. The great irony to …
Pendulums
For his science fair project, Jonathan investigated pendulums. His hypothesis was that how fast the pendulum swings, its period, should depend on how heavy it was. So I arranged to have 1-inch diameter pendulum bobs made of copper, steel, and wood. We suspended each from a horizontal beam, carefully measured so they were all the …
How Fast is Sound?
A few months ago, I read an article in The Physics Teacher (published by the American Association of Physics Teachers) on measuring the speed of sound using a couple of microphones hooked up to a computer’s line-in jack. Apart from having to make a trip to Radio Shack to buy some parts to convert two standard unpowered microphones into a pair of powered microphones for stereo input, the process was amazingly straightforward. I did a quick proof-of-concept in the dining room one evening and go
Ansel Adams Trivia
I just read this in Astronomy Beat #15, a publication of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, One of the most active leaders of the [Astronomical Society of the Pacific] was Charles H. Adams, an insurance broker and businessman, who had an amateur interest in astronomy. After joining the ASP Board in 1923, he soon …
365 Days of Astronomy
As part of the International Year of Astronomy, you can find a daily podcast on astronomy at http://365daysofastronomy.org/.
Globe-at-Night Survey Wants You!
The Globe-at-Night program is an annual program where you (yes, you) can help by providing data on the visibility of stars in the night sky. Your role as an amateur scientist is to make some observations (details on their web site), record the results, and submit them to the Globe-at-Night program. Your observations, along with …