Category Archives: Astronomy

Astronomy, Exoplanets

WFIRST to use donated space telescope for exoplanet imaging

The WFIRST (Wide Field Infra-Red Survey Telescope) project aims to use one of the space telescopes donated to NASA by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) last year primarily for the study of distant supernova and galaxies. However, it also will “be a bonanza for exoplanet studies” : Exoplanet capabilities of WFIRST-2.4 – The Space Review

In addition to microlensing to detect exoplanets, a coronagraph

will block out a large fraction of the light of target stars. With much of the glare of parent stars suppressed, the telescope will be able to directly image any planets orbiting that star. The goal is to produce as narrow an image of the space around the star as possible. This is referred to as the Inner Working Angle (IWA). The more that the IWA can be shrunk, the more inner planets can be imaged. It is possible that the enhanced WFIRST may be able to view planets as close as 1 astronomical unit (AU) to their parent star, depending on their distance from our solar system.

John Kelly applauds the use of surplus assets : Sharing technology leaps us ahead – Florida Today

Astronomy, Space participation

More about the Arkyd space telescope

The  ARKYD Space Telescope kickstarter campaign has reached nearly 9000 backers and over $810,000 pledged towards their $1,000,000 goal.

Planetary Resources has been posting updates and new videos: ARKYD: A Space Telescope for Everyone by Planetary Resources – Updates — Kickstarter

In this video

Chris Lewicki leads a conversation with a few of the technical staff at Planetary Resources talking about the Kickstarter campaign for a publicly accessible space telescope.

Astronomy, Simulators, Software

Space on the iPad + Tutorials for the Orbiter simulator

Here’s a review from Bruce Irving of several space related apps for the iPad device: iPad Astronomy – Music of the Spheres.

See also his free ebook, written with Andy McSorley, on the Orbiter spacecraft simulation program: Virtual Spaceflight – Go Play in Space

He includes a free presentation about the Orbiter: Go Learn in Space v2 – (pdf, 2.8MB).

Astronomy, Multiple media, Space Science

Video: Asteroid 1998 QE2 and its moon

This NASA JPL video shows radar images of asteroid 1998 QE2, which recently passed near earth,  and of the asteroid’s moon rotating around the object:

Astronomy, Space Arts, Space Science

Science Friday interview with scientist and artist Dan Durda

Science Friday has an interview with Dan Durda, who is both a space scientist (at SwRI) and an artist: Out of this World – Justin Nobel/Science Friday.

I’ve had an entry in the HobbySpace Art section Space Art section for Dan from the beginning of the website. Dan had been using acrylic painting but now focuses on digital art. See his gallery at 3D Impact.

DanDurdaCloudCity_450x151