I noticed that many science fiction writers of the past way overestimated technology progress. Read some 20 year old books and according to them we should be in space??by now, conquering other planets and have personal helicopters instead of cars. In reality not much had changed. Yes we have faster cars and smaller phones, but that’s about it.

The thing is that money is ruling our current world and science is very expensive. Look around and notice where do we have the biggest technology progress: cars, electronics,??pharmaceutics. All those areas are driven by businesses and consumers who buy all that stuff. By the way, if you haven’t seen the story of stuff I highly recommend it. So consumers pay big money for science development in these areas.

What about astronomy and space exploration. Sure it’s cool to watch satellites smash into the Moon and astronauts walking on Mars, but that’s about it — regular people don’t get any immediate benefit from it. Your bed is not softer, your car is not faster, your food is not tastier, so you don’t have a wish to pay for this kind of science, as simple as that.

While I like to talk about science, but there is no way we going to see any cool things in general science in the nearest future, not until our society is driven by money and looks like this is not going to change too. I am not telling that hungry scientists slaving 20 hours a day on a new spaceship is a good idea, just when you make your??decisions??in life don’t let money drive you. Money is a means, not a goal.

Posted in Space Technology

For those, who still did not see the LCROSS crash:

Nothing spectacular :) Unfortunately scientists did not say right away if they found water, more data analysis required. I am pretty sure, that if there were lots of water in that crater, then they would be able to confirm it right away. It means that even if water exists in dark Lunar craters there is not so much of it (which sucks).

We’ll have to build a base on Mars and skip the Moon ;)

Posted in Astronomy News, astronomy video

This is time for the next cool picture, guys! Below is a composite picture of two merging black holes captured by Hubble and Chandra. All red and yellow colors are from Chandra picture and bluish colors are from Hubble. Isn’t it amazing how people just 50 years ago were not sure if black holes exist and now we are looking at the picture how two of them collide?

Posted in Cool Pictures

Sometime ago I wrote about some LCROSS troubles, but they did not affect mission much and we still going to see the big boom. Recent news is that LCROSS team changed an impact crater. They did it because latest data from other Moon satellites points for a better target. This is where LCROSS will search for water:

It is amazing for me to see how different teams from different countries can efficiently communicate and help each other. I hope this awesome mission will be a success and there will be enough water on the Moon, so we won’t have??excuses??not to build a permanent station there.

We already know that there is a bit water on the Moon, but for sure it would be great to find more. If you are interested in tiny details, read press release on LCROSS mission website.

Posted in Astronomy News

Finding planets near other stars is a cutting edge in modern astronomy. How exactly do they do it? There is no simple answer on this, because there are several ways to do it.

1. Measure precise star position. If star has a planet, then planet affects star position, because they both circle around common center of mass. If you think that stars are too big and heavy to feel any gravitational effects from their planets, look at the picture below.

As you see planets in the Solar system make the Sun spin around common center of mass. Exoplanets can do this to their stars and we can detect (sometimes :-)) those position shifts and tell that star has a planet. But in order to do this very precise instruments are required and also this method works only for stars which are close to us.

Posted in Did You Know

Yesterday space.com published an article which said, that water on the Moon is officially found. If you imagining rivers and oceans, it’s not like that :) Moon is dryer than any desert on Earth, but still scientists estimate about 32 ounces (900 g) of water per ton of Moon’s regolith.

How was water discovered? Well, there is still no direct evidence of it, but three different spacecrafts (India’s Chandrayaan-1, Cassini and Deep Impact spacecraft) detected that there is something with hydrogen+oxygen in there and they assumed that it’s water. That’s why I personally is not that much exited about that??announcement. Still nothing can beat the direct water??detection??expected from LCROSS mission.

What does water give us? First of all if people would ever live there on a permanent basis, they will drink this water. Second, you can use water as a fuel (sounds fantastic, right?). It is possible to break water to hydrogen and oxygen using electricity (from solar panels for example). Later you can burn hydrogen and oxygen and use energy from burning to do some useful work (drive a lunar car for example). When you burn hydrogen and oxygen you get pure water, which you can split again later with electricity, etc… Pretty cool stuff and very eco-friendly as well ;)

Where did water come from? There are two main hypothesis for that. One says that comets crushing into surface brought all the water (those comets which brought water to Earth, those comets which spread the life all over the Universe, blah-blah :), second hypothesis suggests that Solar wind (protons and hydrogen atoms) collide with Moon’s surface (which is 45% oxygen) form a bit of water. ??Water??presence??on the Moon means a lot of good stuff for us if we ever are going to make a permanent lunar base — we can drink it, we can breath oxygen from it, we can burn it.

Posted in Astronomy News, Solar System

Sorry, I did not post any educational articles for some time, because I was busy with my new site. Alternative energy is my second passion beside astronomy. Spacecrafts rely on solar panels for a long time already. I know only one current spacecraft which uses nuclear power generator — Cassini, it’s too far from the Sun to supply enough solar energy, but the rest use solar. For example International Space Station gets all it’s energy from solar panels:

Problem with solar panels is that they still have to go some way to become a bit cheaper. For sure this technology has a good potential. For example solar cells which you currently can buy for your needs have about 16% efficiency, while solar panels used by Mars rovers are about 40% efficiency!

Solar energy is a very broad topic and unfortunately I don’t have too much time on my hands, so I decided to make a smaller website about RV solar panels. I think it is better to cover the small topic completely than have a never finished website. I believe solar panels is a good choice for RVs — you don’t need a big system to power it, so it’s not that expensive like the household solar system.

Posted in Space Technology

For quite a long time we were able to detect only Jupiter like planets near other stars. But today we finally can say with confidence that a rocky small Earth like planet is found near the other star. First rocky exoplanet is about 5 times heavier than Earth and about 2 times bigger in radius. It means that it has very similar to our home planet in density.

This is a good example of how quantity can transform into quality. We did not invent any revolutionary super cool stuff, but rather were gradually perfecting the detection methods and improving instrument precision. And today those small improvements paid off — they allowed to detect a first rocky world near another star.

Posted in Astronomy News

I posted so many pictures and videos about different space objects, but nothing can beat our own home — Milky Way. European Southern Observatory created an outstanding 360 degree picture of our galaxy. I still don’t understand how did we discover what is the shape of our galaxy, because we can only see it from inside. In any case it is just beautiful:

If you want to get picture featured in this video, you can do it on ESO website. Different picture sizes available on the right hand side.

Posted in astronomy video

One of my favourite spacecrafts — Cassini sent a new picture of one of my favourite planets in the Solar System — Titan. This big Saturn’s moon has a thick nitrogen atmosphere, land and seas. Sounds so Earth like, but it’s really not. Nevertheless it was always capturing a lot of my attention for some reason.

Cassini shot a picture of Titan’s surface through its atmospheric haze. You can see bright and dark regions on this image. Unfortunately we can not clearly say yet what are those features: hills, mountains or seas? It amazes me how we can view pictures shot so far away, and Saturn is far, way further than Mars, so I don’t think we can expect Titan rovers anytime soon.

Posted in Astronomy News, Cool Pictures, Solar System