Tag: telescope

February 27, 2018 at 2:54 am

Casting the Mirror for the World’s Largest Telescope

Casting the Mirror for the World’s Largest Telescope

The castings of the 15-metric ton, off-axis mirrors for the Giant Magellan Telescope forced engineers to push the design and manufacturing process beyond all previous limits

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March 24, 2016 at 8:54 pm

Picture of the Day: Jupiter’s Moon Io Casts a Shadow as It Transits Jupiter

Picture of the Day: Jupiter's Moon Io Casts a Shadow as It Transits Jupiter

Did you know Io’s shadow sails across the face of Jupiter at 38,000 mph (17 kilometers per second)!

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January 6, 2015 at 3:02 pm

Picture of the Day: Pillars of Creation Redux

Picture of the Day: Pillars of Creation Redux

Photograph by NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) Although NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has taken many breathtaking images of the universe, one snapshot stands out from the rest: the iconic view of the so-called “Pillars of Creation.” The jaw-dropping photo, taken in 1995, revealed never-before-seen details of three giant columns of cold…

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March 16, 2014 at 5:16 pm

Picture of the Day: Sidewalk Astronomy

Picture of the Day: Sidewalk Astronomy

SIDEWALK ASTRONOMY Photograph by piranhasaurusTex on reddit How cool is this! Spotted at a parking lot in Houston, Texas (Memorial Drive and Dairy Ashford Road) was this guy with a ‘Dobsonian‘ telescope and a sign that reads: This is a telescope. Come take a look at Jupiter. Free According to Wikipedia:…

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August 13, 2013 at 5:08 pm

Picture of the Day: A Rose Made of Galaxies

Picture of the Day: A Rose Made of Galaxies

A ROSE MADE OF GALAXIES Photograph by NASA/ESA/STScI/AURA In celebration of the 21st anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope’s deployment into space, astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., pointed Hubble’s eye to an especially photogenic group of interacting galaxies called Arp 273. The larger of the spiral galaxies,…

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May 25, 2013 at 12:15 pm

Picture of the Day: Observing Mars in 1926

Picture of the Day: Observing Mars in 1926

OBSERVING MARS IN 1926 Photograph via Smithsonian Institution In this photo from 1926, we see George A. Van Biesbroeck (1880-1974), an astronomer at Yerkes Observatory, observing Mars when it approached close to the Earth that year. Van Biesbroeck is shown using the observatory’s 40 inch refracting telescope, the largest of its kind…

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