Search This Blog

Saturday 16 May 2020

This week in space news: Lockdown astronomy, SpaceX prototype passes cryogenic test, preserved water from other worlds, and loads more...








From the video store:

SpaceForce is recruiting:

Why the Star Wars sequel trilogy was doomed from the start:




Reading material:











FIREBALL PARALLAX: Strange but true: The three fireballs in the image below are all the same meteor. During last month's Lyrid meteor shower, an unusually big piece of Comet Thatcher disintegrated in Earth's atmosphere over Slovakia. Three photographers located in three different towns photographed the fireball, and one of them, Tomas Slovinsky, combined the three photos into a single image:

"This composite image beautifully illustrates the effect of parallax on the apparent position of the meteor," says Slovinsky. "The three fireballs were photographed from Zilina (shortest one), Zbojska, and Kosice (longer one) - all with different paths and lengths on the sky."

Using the three images, the team of photographers was able to reconstruct the physical path of the meteor through the atmosphere, and they found a surprise. "While ordinary meteors disintegrate 60-90km above the ground, this one started to burn much higher: 121km above the ground," says Slovinsky. "We believe this is due to the meteor's high speed, which we measured to be 27km/s (60,000 mph)."

Thanks to Tomas Slovinsky, Robert Barsa, and Pavol

Friday 1 May 2020

Think space needs to be high tech and expensive?


Want to support the future science and engineering? You can do so through one of these charities:




Well meet the school kids of Earth To Sky Calculus, who send all sorts of things (and science experiments) to the edge of the atmosphere using weather balloons...


Personal items... 

 


Toy diggers... 




Jewelry... 




And Snoopy...




This isn't just a high school science project: Their team send all kinds of items to the edge of space, and raise funds by doing so, and getting people to sponsor them you can check out all of their videos here.