Happy Birthday Gallileo Galilei! Galileo Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations, and support for Copernicanism.
Here’s a great story in the Telegraph about an amateur stargazer who tricked out his garden shed in the U.K. and surprised professional astronomers around the world with his top-notch images.
I received the most special gift this Christmas. My husband, Chris, was holed up in our garage most nights since November, feverishly working on a secret project for me. He’s never attempted woodworking before, but tackled this project with absolute determination. I’m a huge space geek, and have been fascinated with the night sky almost […]
From the Chromoscope intro: Ever wanted X-ray specs or super-human vision? Chromoscope lets you explore our Galaxy (the Milky Way) and the distant Universe in a range of wavelengths from X-rays to the longest radio waves. Seen above is an image in visible light and in radio waves (408 MHz) [via Tim O’Reilly’s Twitter feed]
Craig Smith sent us these pics and note: My telescope is low end in the scope-world, a 60mm refractor. But I discovered the eyepiece is the same size as my digital camera telephoto lens. My digital camera is low end in the camera world, too, a 3.2MP. But put them together with a custom PVC […]
If you missed December’s biggest full moon of 2008, tonight will be the biggest full moon of 2009. NASA has a nice article about it. Johannes Kepler explained the phenomenon 400 years ago. The Moon’s orbit around Earth is not a circle; it is an ellipse, with one side 50,000 km closer to Earth than […]
Paul Neave has a wonderful site to wander through, it’s full of little toys and wiggly kind of stuff. I really liked the Neave Planetarium; you can virtually explore the sky from any point around the world.
