Category Archives: international year of astronomy

'Casts, 365 days of astronomy, astrocast.tv, the astronomer's universe

Outback Astronomy and New Media Astronomy

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MWA

Dipole elements in the Murchison Wide-Field Array in Australia. Courtesy MIT Haystack Observatory and the MWA Consortium.
Dipole elements in the Murchison Wide-Field Array in Australia. Courtesy MIT Haystack Observatory and the MWA Consortium.

Some of my favorite folks in the world are working on the Murchison Wide-Field Array, a low-frequency radio astronomy project being built in the outback of Western Australia. I’ve worked on a couple of short projects for the Haystack Observatory team (in Westford, MA), and the array has been a long-term interest of mine for a while now.

So, it’s with great pleasure that I point you to today’s 365 Days of Astronomy podcast about the MWA. I wrote and narrated it and the music and soundtrack production is by Mark — including his wonderful original music.

Go check it out — we’ll still be here when you get back!

Astrocast.TV and The Astronomer’s Universe

Okay, now that you’ve listened to my golden voice talking about MWA, let me now point you over to Astrocast.tv — a project I’m proud to be working on as producer of a segment call The Astronomer’s Universe. Each month I and several other producers give you 4- to 5-minute-long in-depth looks at such topics as what professional astronomers are learning about the cosmos, what climate scientists are learning from the study of planet Earth, and what amateur stargazers can see each month in the night sky. Couple that with the latest astronomy and space news, plus a set of really nicely written blog entries by all of us involved in the project, and you’ve got 30 minutes or so of prime space media — at your fingertips!  It’s a pleasure to be working with the executive producers on this project and very exciting to watch as our viewership grows each month. So, go check it out if you haven’t already — and then go back the first of each month for a new set of space and astronomy stories.

It’s really a LOT of fun to be involved in such cool new media projects… I hope to do more of it in addition to my other projects (fulldome video shows, podcasts, and other media presentations).

international year of astronomy, Lunar exploration, lunar landing

Humanity’s Moon

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Focus on our Nearest Neighbor in Space

The Sea of Tranquillity, where the Apollo 11 astronauts landed, as imaged by U.S. amateur astrophotographer Mark Sibole of Fife Lake, Michigan. Its part of the Moon for all Mankind IYA/Malta mosaic. Click to embiggen.
The Sea of Tranquillity, where the Apollo 11 astronauts landed, as imaged by U.S. amateur astrophotographer Mark Sibole of Fife Lake, Michigan. It's part of the "Moon for all Mankind" IYA/Malta mosaic. Click to embiggen.

The Moon is in the news for good reason.  This week marks the 40th anniversary of the 1969 lunar landing, where three humans walked on the Moon for the first time. NASA is releasing new footage of that landing, plus sponsoring a number of events commemorating it.

Planetariums are having public events as well, and there’s a wealth of info online about the mission.

Over at  Universe Today, Nancy Atkinson has posted a number of links about the Apollo mission — all worth checking out!

One of the neatest online projects (among the many neat ones) about the Moon is the IYA’s Malta “Moon for all Mankind” image, comprising images (and at least one sketch) of the Moon from around the world.

The Moon for All Mankind IYA Image. Click to embiggen.
The Moon for All Mankind IYA Image. Click to embiggen and by all means, visit the website for a larger image you can print out!

The IYA has organized a number of events for the year, with a special emphasis on the Moon and our ongoing exploration of this rocky body. We’ve long been interested in the Moon, and for centuries all we had were our eyes to study it with. The invention of the telescope revealed incredible detail, and all those features confirmed in observers’ minds that this mysterious thing in the sky was another place — one that could be explored, in time.

The first spacecraft to actually land on the Moon was the Russian Luna 2 probe. It slammed into the surface on September 14, 1959. Today, 50 years and many, many spacecraft from six countries later, we’re still exploring the frozen lava seas and cratered surface of our nearest neighbor in space.

Keep an eye out over the next few days for more imagery, re-released image sets and videos from NASA, and news stories about the Moon and our ongoing exploration.

LRO shows us the Apollo 11 landing site, and the Eagle Lander. Bart Sibrel, eat your heart out!!
LRO shows us the Apollo 11 landing site, and the Eagle Lander. Bart Sibrel, eat your heart out!!

One of the most exciting image collections (just released today (Friday, July 17) comes from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission, showing five of the six Apollo landing sites, including the landers.  Those landing sites were selected to give scientists a good look at various parts of the lunar surface. Astronauts set up instruments, took rock and dust samples, and many, many wonderful images of the lunar landscape. The set also shows Apollo 14, Apollo 15, Apollo 16, and Apollo 17 landing sites, plus evidence for all the instruments set up at the  Apollo 14 site.

These images are not just blasts from the past, according to NASA. They tell us in a most visceral way that “we were there” and that “we want to go back.” LRO’s images are giving detailed information about past  landing sites as a way to determine future places where astronauts can settle in for a long-term study of the Moon.