MetaFilter posts tagged with telescope and space

Stars In Your Eyes

Miko — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:36:12 -0800

See Saturn this Saturday April 12 is the second annual International Sidewalk Astronomy Night, a worldwide event coordinated by the Sidewalk Astronomers. The group, founded in 1968 by John Dobson (subject of this documentary), is dedicated to a sort of guerrilla astronomy -- experienced stargeeks bringing their really good telescopes out to places where people are. So even on your way to the bars, the shows, and the honky-tonk you can see stuff like this and this - like these people did.

HobbySpace

Upton O'Good — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 00:22:33 -0800

HobbySpace hosts an exhaustive collection of information and links about space-related hobbies, including amateur astronomy, satellite design, and rocketry for both beginners and experts.

Best of the Webb

BlackLeotardFront — Fri, 11 May 2007 08:38:41 -0800

"Clearly we need a much bigger telescope to go back much further in time to see the very birth of the Universe." The venerable Hubble space telescope is going to be replaced by what looks like a honeycomb on a box of chocolates. Of course, if it takes more pictures like this (XL), nobody is going to complain about its looks.

Cake to person ratio = infinite

WolfDaddy — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 16:18:53 -0800

To celebrate the 17^th birthday of the Hubble Space Telescope, please feast your eyes on a very detailed (Flash) picture of the Carina Nebula.

Planet-hunter probe "Corot"

stbalbach — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 07:36:31 -0800

France launches planet-hunting probe "Corot", the first spacecraft able to detect rocky planets down to about twice Earth's size. Its 2.5 year mission will be to seek out new planets from a field of about 200,000 nearby stars.

Oh my god, it's full of stars...

Orange Goblin — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 07:05:59 -0800

Pictures from the Hubble telescope

telescope worthless by 2050

goldism — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 09:41:13 -0800

via BBC Ground-based astronomy could be impossible in 40 years because of pollution from aircraft exhaust trails and climate change, an expert says.

Hubble Birthday Gallery

peacay — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 08:00:05 -0800

Hubble's 15th Birthday Image Gallery
Reports about birthday.
NASA Hubble site.
(previous) via

The Hubble gets a reprieve...maybe.

wsg — Wed, 11 Aug 2004 11:00:23 -0800

They're going to try to save the Hubble telescope after all! Yea!
Nasa chief Sean O'Keefe has asked for a firm mission proposal to be worked up in a year, after which a decision whether to proceed will be made.

As discussed previously in this thread, it looked like NASA didn't want to devote the resourses necessary to maintain the 14 year old telescope.

The Hubble Space Telescope is no more.

pineapple — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 13:01:27 -0800

"The end of an era in deep space exploration draws to a close. The era of the total militarization of space dawns," says the blog of Bruce Garrett, a software engineer for the Space Telescope Science Institute (home of the Hubble). Although I haven't been able to corroborate it at a news source yet, Garrett reports that the word came today from NASA director Sean O'Keefe that servicing missions to Hubble are over.

The President made his announcement on Wednesday, and NASA announced their reorganization in order to fall in line with Bush's plan today. Interestingly, this "reorganization" including support to only manned missions began over a year ago, but O'Keefe still testified to the US Senate in May 2003 that the Hubble would be serviced next in November 2004. Wonder what changed.

We marveled at The Best of Hubble in December 2003. Might be the Last, as well.

Spitzer Space Telescope

homunculus — Sat, 20 Dec 2003 00:33:46 -0800

The first images from the Spitzer Space Telescope, formerly known as the Space Infrared Telescope Facility and renamed after astrophysicist Lyman Spitzer, Jr., were released on Thursday. Launched on August 25, it obtains images by detecting the infrared energy radiated by objects in space, and it will drift behind the Earth as the planet orbits the sun.

The Best of Hubble

reverendX — Wed, 10 Dec 2003 12:02:20 -0800

The Best of Hubble Its mission will end in 2010. Four years later it will re-enter the atmosphere and burn up. Many astronomers are calling for Hubble to be refurbished and its mission extended to 2020. Here are some of it's best pictures.

My God, it's full of stars!

Irontom — Fri, 10 Oct 2003 05:41:54 -0800

Breathtaking Hubble picture of the Sombrero Galaxy (also identified as M104). The Hubble Heritage team took the original images during May and June of this year using the Advanced Camera for Surveys and multiple color filters. They then stitched 6 images together to make the final composite image.

The biggest subwoofer in the universe

wobh — Thu, 11 Sep 2003 04:22:13 -0800

Listening through a telescope the Chandra X-ray observatory hears a black hole.

Deep impact

gottabefunky — Tue, 13 May 2003 14:09:58 -0800

Deep impact. NASA scientists want to know what the pristine inside of a comet looks like. What better way, then, than by blowing a 25-meter crater in one? Comet Tempel 1, to be specific. Even better, send them your name and they'll put it on a disc attached to the impactor spacecraft, which will be launched on December 30, 2004. It'll hit on the 4th of July, 2005.

Steven Den Beste — Sat, 17 Jun 2000 00:59:34 -0800

It's nice to know that people can still have big dreams. This is not hallucination; these guys are very serious and very practical and their credentials suggest that they know exactly what they're doing. It's the same team which is just finishing the Very Large Telescope project, which when complete will be the biggest scope in the world, and will be more sensitive and get better pictures than the Hubble. Scopes #1 and #2 are now online, #3 is in engineering shakeout, and first light for #4 is coming shortly. All four scopes will work together to generate images using interferometry.