‘Apollo 13: Home Safe’ documentary gives inside look at mission
Apollo 13 suffered a catastrophic explosion en route to the Moon but has since become known as “a successful failure” because the three-man crew was able to safely return to Earth thanks to the round-the-clock heroic efforts of the entire NASA team to devise a solution to save the trio. NASA’s third planned manned lunar …
This Week in History: April 12-18
APRIL 13, 2029: The near-Earth asteroid (99942) Apophis will pass just 0.00026 AU from Earth, slightly less than 5 Earth radii above the surface and within the orbital distance of geosynchronous satellites. At this time this is the closest predicted future approach of a near-Earth asteroid. The process of determining future close approaches like this …
Comet of the Week: 153P/Ikeya=Zhang P/2002 C1
Perihelion: 2002 March 18.98, q = 0.507 AU One of the many successful Japanese comet hunters of the 1960s was Kaoru Ikeya who, coming from a family of modest means, built a homemade telescope for the equivalent of US$20 and began to hunt comets with it. He discovered his first comet in 1963 and would …
Special Topic: Prediction of Future Approaches
During the third week of July 1994 the various fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 1993e impacted Jupiter, liberating enormous amounts of energy in the process and creating large planet-sized “scars” in Jupiter’s atmosphere that lingered for some time afterwards. (Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 and these events are discussed in a future “Comet of the Week” presentation.) …
Kennedy Space Center Word Search
Locate words related to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex hidden in this Word Search puzzle. The words may be horizontal, vertical or diagonal. If you would like to learn more about Kennedy Space Center, consider reading these features on the KSC Visitor Complex and Launch Complex 39A.
James Webb’s primary mirror passes test before pandemic suspends work
The team building NASA’s mammoth James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) recently accomplished a major milestone – fully deploying its 21 foot (6.5 meter) primary mirror into the same configuration it will have when it is carrying out astronomical observations in space. However, NASA has also suspended virtually all future testing of the Webb Telescope – …
QuizMe: Neil Armstrong
Neil Armstrong will forever be known as the first human to walk upon the Moon. He also is the featured topic in this edition of our new QuizMe series of educational content. Put your knowledge to the test with these 10 questions about the quiet and private astronaut that was thrust upon the world stage …
This Week in History: April 5-11
APRIL 5, 1861: An amateur astronomer in New York, A.E. Thatcher, discovers a 9th-magnitude comet. Comet Thatcher was found to have an approximate orbital period of 415 years and is the parent comet of the Lyrid meteor shower, which peaks around April 22 each year. The Lyrids usually put on a modest display of less …
Comet of the Week: 12P/Pons-Brooks
Perihelion: 2024 April 21.00, q = 0.781 AU For this week’s “Comet of the Week” I am turning my eye towards the near-term future: a comet that I hope to see within the next few years. While there perhaps is no exact formal definition of the term, the phrase “Halley-type comet” is generally used for …
Special Topic: Upcoming Missions to “Small Bodies”
A significant part of our knowledge about the “small bodies” of our solar system has come from the various spacecraft missions that have been to – or at least by – some of them. I’ll be covering these missions as a whole in a future “Special Topics” presentation, and where appropriate I am including results from …
QuizMe: Our Solar System
The solar system that everyone of us calls home is the fourth featured topic in our new QuizMe series of educational content. Put your knowledge to the test with these 10 questions about our tiny outpost within the galactic neighborhood. Afterward, please feel free to share your results and challenge your friends to take the …
This Week in History: March 29-April 4
MARCH 29, 1807: The German astronomer Heinrich Olbers discovers the asteroid now known as (4) Vesta, the brightest and second-largest asteroid in the main asteroid belt. Vesta was orbited by the Dawn spacecraft between July 2011 and September 2012. It and the other first-known main-belt asteroids are discussed in the Week 1 “Special Topics” presentation. …
Comet of the Week: Bennett 1969i
Perihelion: 1970 March 20.04, q = 0.538 AU One of the underlying foundations of “Ice and Stone 2020” is the fact that it marks the anniversary of my observations of my very first comet, Comet Tago-Sato-Kosaka 1969g – also, incidentally, the first comet ever observed from space. (I discuss this comet, including my observations of …
Special Topic: Ancient Ideas about Comets
To our ancestors of several centuries to a few millennia ago, the nighttime sky was, to some extent anyway, a generally predictable place. The stars remained “fixed” relative to each other in the patterns that we call constellations, each culture “seeing” whatever constellations that they considered relevant. While these shifted east-to-west over the course of …
QuizMe: Russian Space Program
The Russian space program is the third featured topic in our new QuizMe series of educational content. Put your knowledge to the test with these 10 questions about the country’s space program which accomplished a number of international firsts. Russia has continued to launch crewed spaceflights since the early 1960s and is a major partner …
Mercury Explained: Facts, Questions, and History
Mercury is the first planet in our Solar System and one of the closest planets to Earth. Thanks to this, we have known about its existence since ancient times and we have studied and learned a lot about it. It is one of the most interesting planets because it has helped us understand a lot …
Ice and Stone 2020 Companion Glossary
We hope you are enjoying reading the weekly Ice and Stone 2020 content from astronomer Alan Hale. For those who might not be as versed in astronomy terms, he’s put together this glossary of technical terms, many of which are regularly used within the weekly educational content. A Absolute magnitude: for a comet or asteroid, …
This Week in History: March 22-28
MARCH 22, 2016: The tiny Comet PANSTARRS P/2016 BA14 passes just 0.024 AU from Earth, the closest known cometary approach to Earth thus far in the 21st Century and the third-closest known cometary approach to Earth in history. Despite its closeness, it was never brighter than 13th magnitude. This and other close comet approaches to …
Comet of the Week: Hyakutake C/1996 B2
Perihelion: 1996 May 1.40, q = 0.230 AU Following the discovery of Comet Hale-Bopp in mid-1995, the entire world was awaiting its expected good show in 1997. But while we were waiting, another comet came by and provided another stunning show. This object was discovered on January 30, 1996 by a Japanese amateur astronomer, Yuji …
Special Topic: “Small Bodies” and the Electromagnetic Spectrum
The “visible” light that our eyes see, and that most of our telescopes detect, is only a very small part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The full EM spectrum encompasses everything from the long-wavelength, low-frequency, low-energy radio waves, on down through infrared, then “visible” or optical light, and then into the shorter-wavelength, higher-frequency, and higher-energy ultraviolet, …