Cottages for Stargazing Holidays200 rental properties match your search for Cottages for Stargazing on Holiday
Watch the Stars Twinkle on a Cottage Holiday
As all keen stargazers know, there’s something quite romantic about looking up and seeing the stars at night. See a shooting star and the memory stays with you for years. Maybe you’re someone who knows your comets and planets too and may be even your constellations like the Plough, the North Star, the Bear and Cassiopeia!
Telescope at the Ready on a Stargazing Holiday
Whether for you star-watching is a romantic notion or a professional hobby, if you love the cosmos and the magic of twinkling stars lighting up the dark night then a stay in a holiday cottage away from light pollution or in a dark sky reserve could be perfect for you. So pack your telescope, book the right cottage and weather-conditions permitting you can look forward to a fantastic stargazing holiday.
Dark Skies for Stargazing Holidays
In the UK, the National Parks are renowned for their dark skies; make sure you book a cottage away from a town so you can enjoy looking out on an unspoilt dark sky at night. Currently there are 4 recognised Dark Sky Reserves in Britain; Exmoor National Park, the South Downs, the Brecon Beacons and Snowdonia National Park.
There are also many unspoilt rural areas in Britain, as well as lots of wide open unspoilt spaces in Scotland and remote places where there is no light pollution and excellent stargazing opportunities. Stay up in some parts of Scotland and you may even see other stunning phenomena like the Northern Lights!
The cottages listed below are either in remote locations or in one of the UK’s national parks, we hope you find the perfect holiday house for your stargazing holiday.


Posted: 14 August 2011 Updated: whenever: whatever
If you like, you can let me know what you think about this. But if you're not willing to have your comments posted on here, along with my response, don't bother me. For contact, use cdoswell_#_earthlink.net -- use the email hyperlink or cut and paste, replacing _#_ with @.
My inspiration for this essay comes from a podcast interview with Dr. Richard Carrier. In his interview, Dr. Carrier made some statements I wanted to check out. Hence, I did some calculations (see below). If you find them challenging, you can skip them because, in essence, what I found is that Dr. Carrier’s statements were correct.
If the "known universe" is a sphere with a radius (r) of 23 billion light years (lyr), that's a sphere with a volume [(4pi/3) r3] of 5.097 x 1031 lyr3. Note that the scientific notation 103 = 1000, whereas 10-3 = 1/1000 = 0.001. Thus, 1031 is 1 followed by 31 zeroes!
1 lyr = 6.78 x 1012 mi = 10 x 1012 km = 10 x 1015 m (ten trillion) = 1016 m.
1 lyr3 = 2.032 x 1038 mi3 = 1039 km3 = 1048 m3
Therefore, the known universe encompasses a volume of 5.1 x 1079 m3. That's 51 followed by 78 zeroes!
Now, consider a good-sized single-family home in America, having a surface area of 2000 ft2. If we assume the interior of the house is at a height of 10 feet, that means a volume of 20,000 ft3. Converting that to metric units, it occupies a volume of 550.661 m3.
Next, consider the volume of a proton (one of the particles within the nucleus of an atom) - modern estimates put its radius at 0.842 x 10-12 m, which means if it's a roughly spherical shape, it occupies a volume of 2.5 x 10-36 m3. The ratio of the volume of a proton to the volume of a house is, therefore, given by (2.5 x 10-36)/(5.50661 x 102) = 0.454 x 10-38. That’s 454 preceded by 39 zeroes to the right of the decimal point!
Consider the volume of the planet Earth: it has an average radius of about 6370 km = 6.37 x 106 m. Therefore, its volume is 2.585 x 1020 m3. Earth is a habitable planet (although the inhabited part is mostly within a spherical shell from 10 km above to 5 km below the surface - an issue I'll ignore for the sake of simplicity). If we were to assume that all the habitable planets in the known universe together occupied the volume of 10 trillion (1013) Earths, then the habitable fraction of the volume of the known universe would represent the following ratio of that volume: [(2.585 x 1033)/(5.097 x 1079)] = 0.507 x 10-46. That's 507 preceded by 47 zeros to the right of the decimal point. [If the uninhabitable volume of the Earth were excluded, this ratio would be even smaller, being divided by a factor of about 250.]
So: the volume of 10 trillion habitable planets (that on the average are "Earth-sized") would occupy a fraction of the volume within the known universe that was one-one hundred billionth the fraction of the volume occupied by a single proton within a good-sized home in America. This is the confirmation of comments made by Dr. Carrier in his interview on the podcast. So if we could shrink the known universe to a volume of a decent-sized American home, the habitable volume within it would be considerably smaller (by a factor of 100 billion) than the volume of a single proton within that home. In fact, it would take 100 billion of those volumes to equal the volume of that proton within that home!
Note: The number of atoms involved is pretty huge, also. Every human body comprises roughly 1027 atoms - 1 followed by 27 zeros!! Imagine the number of atoms for everything on Earth: 1050 atoms - 1 followed by 50 zeros! Current estimates for the number of atoms in the known universe lie somewhere between 1078 and 1082 - less than a "googol" of atoms (10100), but still an enormously large number!
Of course, no one knows the number of habitable planets within the known Universe, which could be many times larger (or smaller) than 10 trillion. At this point in the history of science, it's impossible to know that number, but the Universe is a big place, and life seems to be able to thrive in some pretty hostile environments on Earth (temperatures near the boiling point of water, temperatures well below the melting point of water, highly alkaline and acidic water, very thin air, etc.)! The number seems at least plausible to me, but I certainly can't claim it's very accurate. You can substitute your own guess and see how it changes the numbers.
The rest of that mind-bogglingly vast volume occupied by the known Universe is completely uninhabitable by any lifeform we can imagine: the deep vacuum of space, the volume occupied by stars and their coronas, black holes, extremely hot and cold planets, planets bathed in toxic radiation, planets with extremely poisonous or corrosive atmospheres, planets with no atmosphere, very thin clouds of gas and dust particles, etc. No matter how accurate my guess of the equivalent of 10 trillion Earths actually turns out to be, nothing is going to alter the fact that "islands" capable of supporting the development of life are stupendously rare in the universe! Making the number much smaller simply reinforces this basic idea of the rarity of life-benevolent places. Making the number much larger increases the probability of finding life elsewhere in the universe, rendering the idea that all this was made just for us humans even less plausible.
Some religious believers claim that this Universe seems just about perfectly "designed" for the occurrence of life: if the key physical constants (like the speed of light, Planck's Quantum Constant, etc.) were just a little different, life might not be possible at all. They see this as an argument in favor of the conscious design of the Universe by a creator-deity. But if we consider the preceding, the Universe we know is dominated overwhelmingly by a pervasive hostility to life. There are very few places in the Universe where life is even remotely possible – barring the existence of very strange lifeforms we might not be able to recognize as living that could survive in interplanetary space, within stars, or on what we now see as very life-hostile planets.
This very same argument can be used, of course, to argue that life here on Earth could in fact be the only life in the entire Universe. After all, it seems that habitable domains in the vast emptiness of the Universe are pretty few and far between. However, the discussion herein has been developed assuming that there are 10 trillion habitable planets! While this is, of course, not an infinite number, it's pretty large. With that many places where life is at least possible, what fraction of such places might actually harbor life? With 10 trillion chances, given the rapidity with which life arose here on Earth and its known tolerance for hostile environments, it seems quite likely that there are many, many worlds with life of some sort on them. The very idea that the vast cosmos was created simply as a backdrop for humans on their backwater planet circling a common type of star in the outskirts of an ordinary galaxy is quite a stretch! With so many possibly inhabited worlds, the argument that the Universe was designed solely for humans by a powerful deity fades into implausibility - Bayesian logic makes it an extremely unlikely possibility.
Since the truth about life on other worlds is not yet known, all we have are probabilities, not yes/no answers. With the logical foundation of Bayesian probability, science can estimate the likelihood of life existing on other worlds and, in a nutshell, the available evidence is massively in favor of it. The probabilities are such that life on other worlds is more likely than not. The confirmation of life on other worlds eventually will knock humanity from their presumed (and clearly self-assigned) lordship of the living universe, just as astronomy has removed the Earth we inhabit from the center of the physical universe.
The Universe appears pretty much as if it were "designed" without any grand design at all, and certainly is hostile to life throughout the overwhelming majority of its immense volume! Life is a low probability event within the universe on the average, for sure, but the Universe is a very big place that's been around for a very long time. Far bigger and far longer than most religious believers can comprehend and far more interesting than what is described in any of the "sacred texts" of the world’s major religions. Within that stupendous volume of space and time in which life is mostly impossible, tiny islands of life are not only possible, but likely. Of course, we know for certain that on our microscopic island of Earth - the one place we know in detail - life is a reality, not just a possibility.
The pursuit of scientific understanding has provided, so far, quite a dramatic story of our position in the universe. By the account of science, we're beings made up of atoms created from the raw stuff of the Big Bang, hydrogen, in stars. We're a part of the universe, come to life and able somehow to contemplate its place in the universe. If the universe can create this living embodiment of itself in one tiny corner of the incomprehensibly huge volume it now occupies, would it not simply be conceit that says all this was created for us puny humans by some all-powerful being for mysterious reasons of its own?
The scientific story of the universe is an incredibly rich, entirely nonfictional accounting of stars and planets in all their complex variety, emerging from the relatively simplicity of physical laws that govern everywhere in an identical fashion. Although the scientific story is as accurate as fallible humans can make it, it certainly will not remain static in the future, as new science gains new insight. We’re learning that complexity is not limited to the province of conscious thought, but can develop from the application of relatively simple principles: gravity, conservation of momentum, the equivalence of matter and energy, and so on. The story of the mythical deity producing things out of nothingness by mere thought seems stilted and threadbare in comparison, devoid of insight and plagued with a profound ignorance of how things really work. Is a wave of a god's metaphorical hand any sort of explanation? Does it provide a satisfactory framework for an adult understanding? No. Only the mind of an ignorant child could be satisfied with such an answer!
Our universe and even our own Earth, we're discovering, is not a paradise focused on making life wonderful for the enjoyment of human beings. For the most part, it's downright hostile to any life. The universe's hostility isn't the result of conscious malevolence, but rather flows from the universe's indifference, ticking along by means of laws we're just lately coming to comprehend. We aren't even the equivalent of flyspecks on the immense palette of the universe, and our role in that universe is trivial beyond anyone's comprehension of triviality. But nevertheless, we're still an extremely tiny part of the grand process, however miniscule our role may be. We have a cosmic connection to all that exists because of our shared heritage, that primeval hydrogen gas that emerged from the Big Bang. The cosmic design is codified in the laws of nature, not the commandments of some mythical being we dreamed up to explain things before we learned how find explanations by scientific means.
The existence of a universe in which we can exist and have managed, eventually, to begin to learn of the way the universe works, just is not likely to be the result of the whims of a deity postulated to have infinite capabilities (but for some reason, has a need for the worship of finite human beings it created). As noted, the existence of our universe hinges on the values of some key physical constants. It's true that had those numbers been slightly different, the universe as we know it wouldn't exist, and so we wouldn't exist either. Many believers choose to see this as a sign of conscious design for our benefit - the foundation of the argument that provoked this essay. Science can't offer much in the way of answers to why those numbers are what they are. Unlike religion, science always chooses to eschew making up explanations for things not yet understood. Such issues remain open until someone can offer a plausible explanation and tests the validity of that hypothesis against observations. This is not a sign of the weakness of scientific insight. No, it's a strength, not a weakness! We scientists are not so arrogant as to claim we have the answers to everything, unlike religions.
When an argument is fundamentally untestable, science doesn't offer to even try explaining it away to its adherents. The argument asserting the universe is so perfectly designed for life that it could only have come about by the action of an infinite, loving, and benevolent deity remains out there in the sphere of human ideas because it lives in a realm of metaphysical philosophy, untouchable by any logic or experimentation. You can believe unfounded, unbridled speculation if you choose to ignore any evidence to the contrary and be satisfied when accepting ideas by interpreting evidence in a way that always supports your beliefs, no matter what that evidence really shows. That the universe is manifestly hostile to life seems to indicate that this deity simply isn't all that benign. The controlling tendrils of religious belief provide weak and shallow minds with a version of the universe that believers in mythology find reassuring. If you find comfort in the delusion that the entire colossal universe was made just for you, then I'm unlikely ever to change your mind, no matter what arguments my rationality can muster. If you decide that logic and evidence are incapable of contravening the teachings of those who would have you follow them and obey their dictates, then there's little chance anything I say is going to alter your beliefs. Should you be pleased that I have no wish to convert the unwilling, then, I only ask that you do me the same favor! And praying for me is a patronizing insult, so don't bother with that, either!


The Ancient Symbolic Landscape of Wessex, David Ride
This book explores mankind's urge to impose order and meaning on the landscape in which we live. Through careful and reasonable argument, with the help of many illustrations and diagrams, Dr David Ride shows the countryside of Wessex to contain a series of related man-made structures, surveyed with astonishing precision and of great symbolic significance.
The remarkable pattern is based on the heavens and depicts its stars, its fundamental reference points, and celestial mythology. It also conforms to the Vitruvian principle that temples should reflect the proportions of the human body. But how did it get there? The geometry and numerology of its design suggest that it belongs to the esoteric school of Pythagoras and was laid out in late Roman times.
The focus of the pattern is the Rufus Stone in the New Forest, which symbolically marks the spot where William II was killed.
It shares a similar significance with the 'navel stone' at Delphi in ancient Greece and provides the starting point for unearthing the secrets of the surrounding terrain.
Dr Ride also discovers and interprets other notable features that are written across Wessex, including a huge representation of the constellation of Orion, the mythical River Eridanus, and the Milky Way. He is further able to argue that Stonehenge was precisely sited and constructed as an image of the pole star in the Neolithic Period or the Bronze Age, long before such accuracy was thought possible.


Computer Science Colloquium
Wednesday, October 2, 2002, 2:30pm
255 Olin Hall
Can Databases Help Science?
Microsoft Research Center
ABSTRACT: I have been putting Astronomy data into a database and then helping astronomers use it to answer science questions. This talk will describe (1) how we designed the database, (2) how we use the database to do data mining, (3) some interesting algorithms for spherical geometry in SQL. Then I will briefly Touch on the World-Wide Telescope effort of federating all the world's astronomy archives into a single database accessible via the Internet.


GOLDEN, Colo., March 6, 2013 – Colorado School of Mines will participate in a $4.4 million NASA grant that will help researchers develop a telescope to be deployed on the International Space Station to detect extreme energy cosmic rays.
The Extreme Universe Space Observatory on board the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM-EUSO) is the first mission devoted to detect extreme energy cosmic rays – particles whose origin remain unknown – from space. The telescope, which is expected to be deployed in 2017, will measure the properties of these cosmic rays by recording the UV light produced by the air showers they produce in the Earth's atmosphere.
NASA selected Mines, along with partners at NASA’s Marshal Space Flight Center and the University of Alabama, Huntsville, to design and develop a global network of light flashers and lasers These ground based light sources will be used to benchmark and monitor the observatory as it orbits the earth.
The Mines group, led by Physics Associate Professors Lawrence Wiencke (principal investigator) and Fred Sarazin, will help select suitable locations around the world and develop, install and maintain the laser stations of the Global Light System (GLS) array.
“The energies of these cosmic particles extend more than 10 orders of magnitude beyond the energies of man-made accelerators,” said Wiencke. “Understanding the observatory will be key to understanding the cosmic accelerators, this is why the GLS array will be so important. It’s also a great match for the Mines group because it builds on our experience with laser techniques and cosmic ray detectors.” Wiencke is currently in Malargüe, Argentina, with Mines graduate students Eric Mayotte and Carlos Medina leading the upgrade of the central laser facility at the Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory.
The JEM-EUSO footprint will pass over a GLS unit on average once per near-moonless night under clear conditions over appropriately selected sites, Wiencke said.
“The GLS locations need to be representative of the different climates around the world, because the development of the air showers depends upon the general properties of the atmosphere where it occurs,” said Sarazin.
As part of this grant, the Mines group is developing a laser system that will be flown in an aircraft to test a JEM-EUSO prototype that will flown in a high altitude balloon in 2014.
Other Project partners on this grant include the University of Chicago and the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. In all, 13 countries, 77 institutions and as many as 280 researchers are working on this mission.
For more information, see:
Karen Gilbert, Director of Public Relations, Colorado School of Mines / 303-273-3541 / KGilbert@mines.edu


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Does the big bangs microwave background radiation really represent the entire universe?
2 months ago
Things to worry about that pic:
- outside the visible universe is dark... even that darkness would be knowledge, that we dont have
- the universe bubble seems to be illuminated by something that is shining light on it...
The observable universe is everything we will ever see. It is not so that outside of the observable universe everything is dark but instead that the light sent from stars of bounced of off things outside of the observable universe won't reach us until the heat death of the universe. There isn't just a big light like from the big bang or something instead everything is lit just the same way and the only difference is that some light won't reach us in time.
This is assuming that you meant observable and not visible universe.
2 months ago*
2 months ago*
Thats my point...
Even stating outside the observable universe is dark, is knowing something that cant be known. Hence im nitpicking on the pic, dont take it too seriously, just a bit. Basically the CMB should never be depicted/illustrated from the exterior.
"things outside of the observable universe won't reach us until the heat death of the universe" - this, not true, new light is always reaching us, by the time heat death of the universe happens all stars would have died, so less new light will reach us by then.
"There isn't just a big light like from the big bang or something" - again i was showing how wrong the image is, its a sphere illuminated from the outside, like a single focus of light shining on it, its just not science accurate at all.
And yah, my bad, i meant observable, not visible, thx for that correction.
Oh, thanks for the explanation. I just misunderstood you a bit.
But isn't the definition of the observable universe something like this?: A spherical shape the distance of all the light that will ever reach earth before the heat death of the universe
Also where am I supposed to put the question mark?
Its a spherical observation from the inside, its the current electromagnetic radiation we can detect at the moment, a remnant/evidence of the big bang.
(Also now that I think of it, there are distinctions between the observable universe and the CMB, not gonna try to explain it, cause I don't seem to remember it properly.)
Besides that, there is another point I didn't mention earlier, like dark energy and the accelerated expansion, at some point, before the heat death of the universe, we might get a decrease of new light entering the observable universe, has the expansion rate might be superior to the time light takes to travel to us, hence never reaching us.
If I read your entire conversation I'm sure I will gain 5 IQ points
NFL world champions.
Aliens>>>>>>>>>>>> the game is rigged
You can't proof this fact.
And you can't deny this fact.
I didn't try to deny the fact, my point was that there is a possibility that there is another miss universe out there.
But it would be a different title with same name. Like I cannot be a nobel prize winner by making a prize named nobel myself.
The earth in the in universe
You can't win if you don't participate
You can't participate if you even don't know that some human on planets earth do that
I love the one on futurama. There it is miss universe there it is looking weird
I’m the 667th like, just saved you from the devil


Get information about the Ursa Major constellation for kids. Improve your knowledge on Ursa Major stars and learn more fun constellation facts with Ursa Major is the third-largest constellation in the sky. It was regarded by many ancient civilizations as a bear. In fact, its name is Latin for "great bear."
The speaker of the poem is best interpreted as taking on the role of
Jun 28, 2012 · Nah, that's my AT152 in my POD. I had attached a photo to an earlier post and it stuck. It is, by the way a very good scope but I think the C6R might fill a gap that the 152 doesn't quite get to. The C6R can be had brand new as an OTA from Astronomics for $599 freight paid and I just happen to have a spare GSO focuser that will drop right in.
When the team was renamed the Titans, the club introduced a new logo: A white ring of the circle represents the sun with three stars, similar to that found on the flag of Tennessee containing a large capital “T” with a trail of flames similar to a comet or solar flares.
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Amazing pets, epic battles and math practice. Prodigy, the no-cost math game where kids can earn prizes, go on quests and play with friends all while learning math. I would have loved to have been in the marketing meeting when the Frito Lay team decided to transmit a 30 second ad to a solar system 42 light-years away. “Being first to market often results in category leadership. If we can be the first in the minds of the aliens near Ursa Major, we … Read more The problem: Tech-based toys are hurting our children’s development. Read in JAMA Pediatrics that "more screen time is linked to poorer progress on key developmental measures such as communication skills, problem solving and social interactions among young kids over time.”
Ursa Major rs medr also known as the Great Bear is a constellation in the northern celestial hemisphere One of the 48 constellations listed by P. In Theosophy, it is believed the Seven Stars of the Pleiades focus the spiritual energy of the Seven Rays from the Galactic Logos to the Seven...The explosive death of a star seeded matter into the solar system soon after its birth, analysis of a meteorite now reveals.Earth and the rest of the solar system coalesced from a giant cloud of gas and dust more than 4.5 billion years ago. Many of the details about the galactic neighborhood in which the solar system arose still remain a mystery.
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Hoe om te zeggen Callisto Engels? Uitspraak van Callisto met 1 audio-uitspraak, 2 synoniemen, 1 betekenis, 6 vertalingen, 2 zinnen en nog veel meer voor Callisto. Should avoid exchanging, high cost of is the starting the pyramid the variations of your links 301 redirecting any website bloggers with relevant search engines want to around 5 on a couple. Welcome friends to The UK Cloud Magnets brand new website. UK Cloud Magnets is a very friendly Facebook group full of like-minded people from all over the UK who have an interest in anything and everything to do with Astronomy.
Browse Gallery of Major campaign pictures, images, photos, GIFs, and videos on imgED. Heat Activated - Pour in hot liquid and the constellations magically appear. Includes: Cassiopea, Perseus, Saggitarius, Hercules, Andromeda, Scorpius, Taurus, Ursa Major (Big Dipper), Ursa Minor (Little Dipper), Orion, Gemini. 11 Constellations Appear - Star gazing and latte drinking don't have to be separate things any longer.
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This is Ursa Major's music collection on Bandcamp. Start your own!
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Discover the best in face & body skincare at Bliss. All products are 100% cruelty-free, PETA-certified & free from parabens, phthalates & more. Shop Bliss today! To Scale: The Solar System. Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. Infographics. Dimitry Novoklimov.
Feb 27, 2016 · Utilizamos cookies, próprios e de terceiros, que o reconhecem e identificam como um usuário único, para garantir a melhor experiência de navegação, personalizar conteúdo e anúncios, e melhorar o desempenho do nosso site e serviços. Learn about RV camping, RV travel, RV news and much more. This newsletter, now in its 18th year of continuous publication, is funded primarily through advertising and voluntary subscription contributions from our readers. Thank you! FREE Holiday Shipping for everyone at Amazon.com If you shop at Amazon, would you use one of the links below […]
These come from, or are, the Great Bear, Ursa Major, and pertain to the 7 stars of the Big Dipper also called Arthur's Wain, or the 7 Rishis. The 7 rays each have a subtlety, making 14. They have to do with Osiris, the egg of light, the cosmic Egg of the solar hero as mythologically reports it.
Aug 15, 2008 · Less than 2% (maybe less than 1%) of our energy comes from solar and wind. A nuclear power plant, once it is up and producing, takes about 10 years to have produced as much net-energy as it took to build--it must run for many years to justify it's own existence.


The week that I get to teach my First Grade students about objects in the sky is honestly one of my favorite science weeks of the year!
We cover every “object in the sky” from the sun, to the clouds, stars, moon and planets.
We talk about what is different about day and night and how the different time of day is usually a different kind of temperature. I think we often take for granted that kids need to be taught these little life skills and this unit is such a fun way to do so!
My favorite part, and the kids' favorite part too, is when we start talking about Astronauts. I know astronauts are not usually in the first grade science curriculum, but learning about the profession of astronauts is such a fun way to tie it all together while also giving your students an aspiration for the future!
Why Space in First Grade?
First-grade students should learn about space because it sparks their natural curiosity and imagination.
Discovering space introduces them to basic scientific concepts in a fun way, encouraging a love for learning.
It expands their understanding of the world beyond, promoting early interest in science and exploration while fostering a sense of wonder.
Mentor Texts for Objects in the Sky
I like to throw in a mix of mentor texts when teaching my students about space.
I choose straight-forward nonfiction with photographs, a little more fun nonfiction with maybe a character and then I also like to choose so fiction books just to help the students better relate to objects in space.
My two must-reads during my Earth and Space science unit are:
- A Journey Through Space by John Haslam and Steve Parker
- Aliens Love Underpants by Claire Freedman and Ben Cort
A Journey Through Space can be quite a lengthy book…but here's a secret….
Who says you have to read the whole thing in one sitting? I pick certain pages a day that relate to the activity I have planned. I let my students finish reading the book the next day or the next week during my reading station!
There are so many great videos out there for kids about space. Brainpop Jr. has five great videos that I show every year as a way for my students to “research” the topic of objects in the sky.
But when it's time to get creative, I LOVE to show videos of real astronauts in space. You can find lots of them on YouTube, but my favorite channel is the Canadian Space Agency [Click HERE for direct link].
I love that they are short 2-3 minute videos but they answer a lot of common questions like “how do astronauts sleep in space” or “how to astronauts brush their teeth in space”. I know these are not topics that are “must know's” in first grade, but I love the spark it creates in my students to learn more about astronauts and subsequently about Earth and space.
Guided Research about Objects in the Sky
Okay, “Guided Research” sounds like a super formal term… but what it really means is that these are the activities that we do together as a class and there is typically a right or wrong answer.
This is where I introduce new vocabulary and I am “guiding” students through books or videos to find new information. We are then recording that new information on a simple recording sheet.
These activities are completed at the beginning of the unit when students are just starting to build their knowledge base, so these activities might seem easy, but remember, they are BUILDING their knowledge on the subject.
My two favorite activities for early vocabulary building are:
- Day and Night
- Light and Dark
(pictured on the right)
These activities will be especially helpful if you have English Language Learners in your classroom.
We often take these simple words for granted and assume students know and understand them. BUT, you can't jump into moon and stars if you don't first understand the difference in night and day/light and dark.
Okay, now to my favorite part. A few days into the unit, once students have a good foundation of Earth and Space, I like to start testing what they know.
Activities start to become less guided and more open-ended. I like to choose activities that allow the students to showcase their creativity and learn what they have learned about what is in the sky at nighttime and what is in the sky during the daytime.
My next activity is my favorite of the entire unit. To wrap up Earth and space science, I have my students complete the “If I Were an Astronaut” writing activity.
This may seem like just another fun writing prompt, but really it showcases what your students have learned about objects in the sky.
Not only do students have to think like an astronaut, but they also have to tell you what kind of objects they would see in the sky if they were an astronaut.
You can download this writing activity as a FREE sample of my Objects in the Sky no prep science unit here:
Interactive journals are my favorite way to compare information about Earth and Space. They allow my students to show what things have in common and what is different about it.
My students also really enjoy interactive journals because it is different, and therefore a little more engaging, than just a regular worksheet.
My two favorite journals for this Earth and Space unit are:
- Day and Night (students draw what they see in the sky during day and night)
- Planets (students draw/write the name of each planet under the flap or a unique characteristic such as the color or number of rings for that planet)
First Grade Science Activities
All activities in this blog post (except for mentor texts and videos) can be found in my No Prep Objects in the Sky science unit.
Capture students’ interest with this all in one interactive unit about objects in the sky: sun, moon and stars! Enjoy one easy download of everything your students need to learn about what’s in the sky!
Students will learn features of daytime, features of nighttime, characteristics of the sun, moon, and stars as well as the moon's phases.


My due date is April 10 but I'm really wondering if bubs will be born on or close to the full moon April 6. I don't know much about these things but apparently ancient cultures used to determine their conception and due dates according to the phases of the moon which were a lot more accurate when we didn't have so much artificial light around us.
I know that I ovulated on the full moon and often do. I read somewhere that it's good for fertility and well, for me it was
Anyway, for those mummas who weren't induced or had planned c sections, how close to the full moon was your bubba born?
The below website has a list of full moon dates.


Welcome to The Great American Solar Eclipse Retreat at Eagle Sky of The Ozarks! Join us from April 7-9, 2024, for a transformative 3-day, 2-night retreat nestled in the breathtaking Ozarks of southeast Missouri.
Immerse yourself in faith-filled experiences, surrounded by the beauty of God’s creation. This unique event offers a perfect blend of spiritual growth, fellowship, and the excitement of witnessing the solar eclipse. During your stay, savor five delicious meals crafted to nourish your body and soul.
Eagle Sky, a Christian Challenge Camp, invites you to embark on a journey of reflection, community, and connection with Jesus Christ. Mark your calendar for an unforgettable retreat where the celestial wonders mirror the spiritual enlightenment. See you there!


|The Link Observatory is constructed of wood from trees cut down from the hilltop. To craft the observatory dome, a shipbuilder curved the wood. Photo credit: Emily Metheny|
Dr. Link gifted the observatory to Indiana University in the 1940s, and in the following years it was used for the Indiana Asteroid Program. Ultimately, during the 1980s light pollution made research impractical, and the program came to an end.
Consequently, Indiana University contracted the Indiana Astronomical Society to be the caretakers of the property, and in 2012, the Link Observatory Space Science Institute was founded to allow for more public programs surrounding STEM and the facility. Today, all three organizations work in a partnership to advance the study of astronomy.
Since it began offering public presentations with telescope viewing opportunities, community interest has grown to the point that presentations had to be moved from the 50 person lecture hall in the observatory to a large meeting room at the Mooresville Public Library. Following the presentation, attendees are transported to the observatory, through a partnership with CASMC, to view the night sky through the two telescopes, while learning the history of the facility itself.
Greg McCauley, executive director and CEO of the Link Observatory Space Science Institute, worked for NASA during the Apollo 15, 16, and 17 missions.
“The Apollo stuff, I was there when it happened,” McCauley said. “I met the guys. I watched it take place.”
“Eventually, here on the property or close by, we are going to [build] our institute,” McCauley said. The building would include a full auditorium that could seat more than 250 people, a full and operational planetarium, multimedia classrooms and a mission control.
This institute would allow for STEM programming and informal education for youth throughout the county.
“One of our goals is to build an exact duplicate of the mission control center at the jet propulsion lab in California,” McCauley said.
The mission control would allow students to remotely contact and operate large telescopes throughout the world thanks to a partnership with NASA.
“You could change kids course in life, getting [them] involved in something like this. [It's] absolutely the most awesome thing ever and suddenly there is an interest in science. [Now], because there is interest in science, there's interest in math,” McCauley said.
These interests keep building to include chemistry and physics until it circles back around to liberal arts, and the child’s desire to be a well-educated scientist.
“That's what we are trying to do. To inspire those kids to say “Wow, I love this. I want to learn more,” McCauley said.
Last summer, Mt. Olive Manufacturing, a company just north of the observatory, donated $10,000 to the observatory to help provide STEM and space exploration programming to middle school children in Morgan County. The Discovery programs and NASA Digital Learning Network gets kids excited about space exploration and various STEM subjects.
“Every place we go, every time we talk to people about what we have in mind for the public, [as well as] young people, everyone's enthusiastic and willing to help,” McCauley said. “We certainly appreciate everyone's support and we look forward to a long relationship [with Mt. Olive Manufacturing and the Community Foundation of Morgan County]."
McCauley added that they want to do some capital improvements such as landscaping and updating the observatory, but the facility will be kept historically accurate.
|An event attendee looks through the telescope at the observatory following a presentation at Mooresville Public Library. Photo credit: Emily Metheny|
Getting Connected LocallyThe Link Observatory Space Science Institute has a fund housed at the Community Foundation of Morgan County. McCauley said that working with the individuals of the foundation has been wonderful and helpful.
“I would like to thank the Community Foundation of Morgan County. They have been so helpful and instrumental in our initial success with our organization as we are planting our roots here and developing our informal education and public programming.”
More information and donations can be made to the organization at the CFMC website.


It’s Official: We’re Going to Mars
It looks like Republican and Democratic senators alike are keen on safeguarding America’s space programs. With the potential chaos of a new president on the horizon, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation passed a bipartisan bill giving NASA $19.5 billion to continue working on a mission to Mars. It also includes support for the continuation of the program to send astronauts on private rockets to the International Space Station (ISS) from American soil no later than 2018.
The NASA Transition Authorization Act of 2016 includes an overall authorization level of $19.508 billion for fiscal year 2017, but it still needs to be passed by the Senate as a whole, of course. The budget allotted is the same as what was approved by House appropriators and a bit more than the version released by the Senate Appropriations Committee. The Obama administration, likewise, proposed $19 billion in funding for NASA.
The Senate is not giving NASA money just for the sake of exploration. It is also a challenge, a mandate, actually. The bill requires that NASA make it an official goal to send crewed missions to Mars in the next 25 years.
The bill allocates funds for different components: $4.5 billion on exploration, nearly $5 billion for space operations, and $5.4 billion for science. It also does not scrap NASA’s controversial plans to send men on asteroids and collect samples by 2021. It does, however, require the space agency to regularly send progress reports to Congress, justifying its $1.4 billion cost.
WHAT DOES THE BILL SAY?
The Senate passed a bipartisan bill that authorizes a new $19.5 billion budget for Nasa to send a crew to the red planet, but mandates it must happen within the next 25 years.
This bill also blocks the incoming US president from up heaving the nation’s space program.
This bill also marks the first time a trip to Mars has been mandated by law.
Money will be delegated by the legislation for different components of the mission to Mars, such as $4.5 billion for exploration.
The bill also provides a range of vital space programs the agency is set to carry out, such as continued development of the new Space Launch System launchers and the Orion Earth-orbit-and-beyond spacecraft.


How do astronauts wash their clothes in space? Aboard the International Space Station, gravity and water are both in short supply, and both are typically needed if you want to do laundry. Lacking that option, astronauts have had no other choice but to burn their dirty clothes.
A partnership between P&G and NASA aims to change that, and tackle the problem of laundry’s climate impact here on Earth as well. With SpaceX’s 24th cargo mission launched last month, experiments will now be conducted to study stain removal and laundry detergent stability in space. The experiments will test the impact of gravity on Tide solutions, particularly evaluating the stability of the fully degradable detergent Tide Infinity in low and no gravity environments. Scientists will also be looking to see whether water used for washing can be purified back into drinkable water.
The results will have implications for Earth as well. Products that biodegrade have less impact on the climate, and if they rely on less water, they’d be more accessible in regions where that resource is scarce. With a mission to become carbon-neutral by 2030 as a company, P&G is looking to innovations like low-impact laundry solutions to help get there.
“This partnership was created to rethink cleaning solutions … for resource-constrained and challenging environments … [to develop] a low-resource-use laundry solution for everyday use while meeting consumer demand for more sustainable products,” said Aga Orlik, Senior Vice President, P&G North America Fabric Care, when the partnership was announced in June 2021.
But it’s not the company’s first effort to tackle climate issues in laundry. P&G also developed Tide Cold Water to remove the need for energy-consuming hot water.
While going to space to experiment on P&G products is new, the partnership with NASA isn’t. P&G has been going to space with NASA since the Apollo 11 mission, when the astronauts all shaved with razors and aftershave provided by P&G brands Gillette and Old Spice. And a special space version of Crest was developed in the 1960s for NASA astronauts, some of whom then and since have taken their Oral-B toothbrushes with them. With this experiment, Tide tackles yet another frontier in space and here on Earth.


Mauna kea means “white mountain” in the Hawaiian language, a reference to its summit being regularly covered by snow in winter. The peak of Mauna Kea is 4,207 m above sea level but 10,203 m above its base on the floor of the Pacific Ocean. It is the world’s tallest mountain by this measure, taller than Mount Everest, which is the highest mountain above sea level.
Mauna Kea is in the post-shield stage of volcanic evolution, having made the transition from the shield stage about 200,000 to 250,000 years ago. At that time, its appearance was probably quite similar to that of its neighbor Mauna Loa today, a smooth shield volcano with a large summit caldera. Following the transition, eruptions became more explosive in character, resulting in the formation of numerous overlapping cinder cones which eventually filled and completely obscured the caldera. These cinder cones now form the peaks at the summit of Mauna Kea, with several of them exceeding 13,500 feet (4,100 m) in elevation. After several hundred thousand years of slowly building itself up by volcanic activity, the mountain’s height is slowly decreasing now as its massive weight depresses the Pacific seafloor beneath it.
Snowfall often occurs at elevations above 3,400 m during the period from November through March. During particularly cold and wet winters, which are usually linked to La Niña, a snowpack several feet (1 m) deep may remain in the summit region above 4,000 m for weeks or months. This permits skiing and other snow-play activities on the slopes of the cinder cones.
The summit of Mauna Kea has been a celestial observatory since ancient times and is considered to be one of the best astronomical sites in the world. For this reason it is home to many of the world’s leading astronomical observatories. The summit is above approximately 40% of Earth’s atmosphere and 90% of the water vapor, allowing for exceptionally clear images of the night sky. Additionally, the peak is well above the inversion layer, which leads to approximately 300 clear nights per year. (Source: Wikipedia)
The thing that fascinated me the most was that you can go swimming in the Pacific and about 2 hours later you are standing on top of Mauna Kea about 4207 m higher with temperatures well below freezing and yea if you have brought your skis along you could go skiing.


Already known as the 'Great American Eclipse', the 2017 total solar eclipse is a spectacular one. Not only because the United States almost patented this eclipse, but because it runs from beginning till end through the US. Exactly perpendicular with the long axis of this country, it goes from west to east, through a staggering 10 states with maximum eclipse being visible in Kentucky at 18.25.32 Universal Time (UT). Second, it occurs high in the sky during the peak of the summer. This is as good as it can get! Expect many astronomers to broadcast this amazing event, brought to you through their own telescope.
The 114.7km wide path of totality will ensure that millions will be able to watch it. The rest of North America, including the north of South America and even small parts of western Europa and Africa will see a partial block of the solar disk. You will get a good idea of the Sun-Moon-Earth system when watching the solar disk coverage from your location and comparing this with how it looks from different locations through different live streams.
If you are a US citizen and reading this, we hope you realize the impact of this grant astronomical phenomenon. Although the majority will be able to see a partial blockage of the solar disk, from almost everywhere in the US, it is NOT comparable with experiencing totality. Totality is a phenomenon where your eyes (+ eclipse glasses!) are able to see incredible details that are normally hidden. Most intruiging is the Sun's outer environment called the 'corona' which is latin for crown. The corona is normally unvisible to the human eye, due to the extreme brightness of the Sun's glare. Also you might spot a solar flare! Solar flares are thousand-fold powerful than atomic bomb explosions, being blasted in space. Because these flares occur regularly, you should be able to watch some small versions at the edge of the solar disk. Imagine a situation where the sky shifts to deep twilight in minutes, birds go silent, it gets colder very quickly and the incredible celestial dance taking place in front of your eyes. Most people say this is the most incredible thing to see. An event that silence the most loudly people. And this all will not be visible when you are one inch outside the path of totality.
So let's say we have convinced you to travel to the path of totality. You should know some facts for an optimal experience! Imagine if you were standing right on the outer edges of the 114.7km path (North or South side), your totality will last only a fraction of a second. Going more to the middle will increase the time you are able to enjoy it, going there in an exponentially fashion with a maximum of 2 minutes and 41.6 seconds, depending on your location.
Author: Sander Klieverik
Main image: Total Solar Eclipse 2012 by Phil Hart - http://philhart.com
Map image; copyright Fred Espenak - NASA's GSFC
Image right: Solar eclipse 2009 by Aaron Favila


Welcome to The Twins Wiki
The Twins is a science fiction project encompassing two galaxies (Castor and Pollux) connected by a wormhole known as the Origin.
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Your next skin cream may come from NASA's outer space science
Want to avoid premature wrinkles? Drink plenty of water, wear sunscreen, don't smoke, never frown or knit your brow, and try to limit your time in outer space.
Astronauts' skin takes quite a beating, even without gravity to weigh it down. In fact, spacefarers say they tend to get dry, flaky, and thin skin, depleted of natural oils that keep cells plump. Yet the downsides of spaceflight, which alters gene behavior and seems to speed up the aging process, could be a key for dermatological researchers, unlocking mysteries behind old-age-related skin problems.
The unique environment in orbit has caught the attention of Colgate-Palmolive, the toothpaste giant with a newly expanded skincare division. The company is about to use the International Space Station as a test-bed for skin research, following its recent use of the space lab for an oral health study. The space station is a taxpayer-funded national laboratory, so NASA regularly invites research collaborations with private businesses.
Human skin tissue culture plates will launch aboard Northrop Grumman's Cygnus spacecraft on an Antares rocket from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Feb. 19. The specimens, cells from a single donor, will be included on a supply craft containing 8,200 pounds of research materials and crew provisions. If all goes well, the spacecraft will reach the station on Feb. 21.


Hubble space telescope this research paper hubble space telescope and other 62,000+ term papers, college essay examples and free essays are available now on. Hubble space telescope finds most distant galaxy yet this video from the hubble telescope and lead author of the research paper announcing the. Read this research paper and over 1,500,000 others like it now what the hubble telescope has taught us hubble space telescope research paper. The hubble space telescope the telescope was restored to its planned quality and became a vital research tool as over 4,000 papers based on hubble data.
Persuasive essay outline middle school ofsted reports poetry analysis essay assignment teel essay structure worksheet xlsx essay about japanese restaurant los angeles. The hubble space telescope and is well known as both a vital research tool and a public over 9,000 papers based on hubble data have been published. Hubble discovers a unique type of object with the help of the nasa/esa hubble space telescope the research is presented in a paper published in.
His paper, entitled as it continued to return groundbreaking photos of the universe and help astronomers do valuable research, the hubble space telescope's future. Hubble papers, 1900-1989 telescope, which he was the number of persons with whom edwin hubble was not professionally associated many of. Continue for 1 more page » • join now to read essay hubble space telescope and other term papers or research documents. With the help of the nasa/esa hubble space telescope hubble discovers a unique type of object in the the team leader and main author of the research paper. Hand-held hubble: expert paper model on this page: downloads and supplies this model reflects the state of the telescope after servicing mission 3b.
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- MBRSC Announces Development of PHI-Demo Under the Payload Hosting Initiative
- The 12U modular satellite platform is being developed in partnership with OQ Technology and SteamJet
- Initiative set to further enhance the UAE’s position at the forefront of space innovation
The Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) today announced the development of PHI-Demo, a 12U modular satellite platform under the Payload Hosting Initiative (PHI), in partnership with OQ Technology and SteamJet.
PHI-Demo will host an IoT communication payload that stores and forwards the collected data from IoT devices in remote areas, industries and autonomous vehicles using 5G technology. It will also host a green and safe propulsion subsystem that uses water as the main propellant.
Now nearing completion, the platform will be operated from the MBRSC S-band ground station by technical specialists who will ensure the efficient implementation of diverse operations, sending commands, receiving telemetries and receiving payloads data.
His Excellency Salem Humaid AlMarri, Director-General, MBRSC said: “The collaboration and innovation that have gone into making the development of the PHI-Demo under the Payload Hosting Initiative a reality today not only advances the use of satellite-related technologies but also presents an opportunity for entities and countries alike to deploy and operate their own satellites in space. The results of these efforts will further place the UAE at the forefront of space innovation and assist in making incredible advancements in science and technology”.
Zakaria Al Shamsi, Head of Payload Hosting Initiative, MBRSC said: “We look forward to expanding and accelerating our partnership with private and government entities as well as academic institutes from around the world that want to develop their space capabilities. The future of the space sector is reliant on collaborative opportunities and the Payload Hosting Initiative represents a strategic step in that direction for the UAE.”
Marco Pavan, CEO, SteamJet Space Systems said: "We are extremely happy and honoured to have been selected by MBRSC on its first PHI mission. This is an important step for the qualification of our clean water-powered propulsion subsystem, the Steam Thruster One, specifically designed for CubeSats and small satellites. The partnership with MBRSC is for us an essential step towards a greener and safer approach to propulsion in the small satellite industry and a more sustainable use of space.”
Omar Qaise, CEO, OQ Technology said: “The PHI mission represents a major enabler for us in expanding our global satellite 5G coverage and also business in the MENA region. The partnership with MBRSC is strategic and beneficial for both of us as each party brings in ideas and capabilities that revolutionise the satellite telecom industry. Following our previous Tiger satellite 5G missions, this is our fourth mission which we are very proud and happy to work on with the PHI team. We really enjoy the enthusiasm, agility, and professionalism of a young vibrant team and a flexible agency and this is exactly the partnership that enables a startup like us to thrive and succeed. We look forward to working together”.
MBRSC and the Office for Outer Space Affairs of the United Nations (UNOOSA) had announced the launch of the Payload Hosting Initiative and the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to help boost space exploration through the initiative, during the 72nd International Astronautical Congress held in Dubai last year.
PHI will provide a modular satellite platform to foster innovation in the space technology sector and ensure collaboration between government entities, universities and start up companies. The initiative involves a planned programme of two satellite missions annually.
The second mission of the initiative called PHI-1 will be done in cooperation with UNOOSA, through its Access to Space for All Initiative, under the terms of the MoU signed last year. The partnership is aimed at increasing the number of countries benefitting from the capacity-building activities of developing and manufacturing satellite payloads as a prior step to complete satellite development, including developing technical know-how, engineering processes and associated infrastructure. The initiative will further help raise awareness of the role that space science and technology plays in promoting sustainable development, and contribute to building national capacity in spacecraft engineering, design and construction.


OK, who can resist a title like How I Killed Pluto...? It promises and then delivers a light, interesting take on the Pluto demotion from one of the nine big ones to a dwarf planet at the edge of our solar system. "My very excellent mother just served us nine pizzas." Do you remember that line from science class in grade school? The words helped us remember the planets and their order in the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. Alas, now mother is just serving us nine___?
Read more about How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming


Look up at the sky on a clear, starry night. What you see is part of the universe. You could never see all of the universe. No one even knows whether the universe has an edge or if it goes on forever. The universe contains all matter and energy. The universe holds all space and time. You are a part of the universe. The universe includes everything there is.
WHAT MAKES UP THE UNIVERSE?
Earth and all the planets in our solar system make up just a tiny part of the universe. Billions of other stars like our Sun all form a group called the Milky Way Galaxy. With telescopes we can see billions of other galaxies.
There are no cars on the planet Uranus. Yet Uranus is covered with a kind of smog. Smog on Earth is pollution that comes mostly from cars that burn gasoline. Sunlight changes fumes from the cars to smog.
Smog on Uranus comes from gases called ethane and methane. Small amounts of these gases are part of the atmosphere of Uranus. An atmosphere is the layer of gases around a planet, like air on Earth. Sunlight shining on methane and ethane makes smog. The haze of smog around Uranus makes the planet look like a smooth, bluish-green beach ball.
Take a really deep breath. Feel how your chest gets bigger and bigger. Your chest gets bigger because your lungs are filling up with air. You cannot see air, but air is all around you. You can feel it when the wind blows.
Earth’s atmosphere is made of air. An atmosphere is made up of the gases that surround a planet.
WHAT IS AIR?
Air is a mixture of several different gases. The main gases in air are nitrogen, oxygen, and argon.
Days on Venus seem endless. Venus is the second planet from the Sun. One day on Venus is as long as 243 days on Earth. A year on Venus is only 225 Earth days long. So a day on Venus is longer than a year!
WHY DOES VENUS HAVE LONG DAYS?
Venus orbits, or goes around, the Sun just as all the planets do. It takes Venus 225 days to go around the Sun. Earth goes around the Sun in 365 days. We call the time it takes Earth to go around the Sun a year.
Thousands of years ago, human hunters had a problem. They couldn’t get close enough to an animal to use spears or knives to bring down their prey. Finally, they found a clever solution: the bow and arrow.
No one knows just how or when the bow and arrow was invented. Some experts say it was developed more than 25,000 years ago. No matter when it appeared, it changed hunting and warfare for good.
Using a bow and arrow, humans could strike at animals and enemies from a long distance away and with more accuracy. People didn’t have to get so close that they might be killed first.


Unveiling the Symphony of the Universe: Scientists ‘Hear’ Low-Frequency Gravitational Waves
Scientists have for the first time ‘heard’ the chorus of low-frequency gravitational waves coursing through the Universe. This is not yet a full discovery, but the observations highly likely indicate something significant has been detected. Astronomers have managed to ‘hear’ low-frequency gravitational waves, the faint ripple in the fabric of the Universe caused by the motion of supermassive objects that stretch and compress space.
Einstein predicted that as superheavy objects move in space and time, they create a ripple that travels through the fabric of the Universe, sometimes referred to as the Universe’s background music. In 2015, the LIGO experiment helped detect gravitational waves and proved Einstein right, but until now, they were only recorded at high frequencies. These were individual fast ‘chirps’ that only occur at certain moments, for example, when relatively small black holes and dead stars collide with each other.
In the recent research project, scientists attempted to detect gravitational waves at much lower nanohertz frequencies – the periods of this slow ripple can be years and even decades long. It likely emanates from the largest objects in the Universe – supermassive black holes weighing billions of suns. But there are also other ‘suspects’: cosmic strings, phase changes in the Universe, rapid space expansion after the Big Bang. Perhaps even the Big Bang itself, but the length of the gravitational wave from it would be the size of the Universe, requiring a detector of comparable scales.
Galaxies in the Universe constantly collide and merge. Similar processes are observed in supermassive black holes at the cores of galaxies. They approach each other, revolve around each other, and eventually merge as well, emitting gravitational waves during the interaction. If you compare the collision of supermassive black holes with a stone thrown into a pond, the ripple it creates on the pond’s surface is low-frequency gravitational waves. They spread simultaneously in all directions at the speed of light, compressing and stretching space and time. It’s impossible to detect this ripple directly with human-available tools – the length of such a nanohertz wave can be measured in light-years. Simply put, the Earth is too small, and a detector of galactic scales would be needed. Detecting them indirectly took the NANOGrav scientists 15 years, and in their work, they used equipment installed all over North America. Astronomers from other countries relied on research results that lasted up to 18 years.
We live in a galaxy that is much larger than Earth, and it contains objects that can indirectly detect signs of low-frequency gravitational waves. These are radio pulsars – dead stars that emit bursts of electromagnetic radiation in the radio frequency range as they rotate. These bursts have strict periodicity, serving as a kind of perfectly accurate clocks located far in space. However, as gravitational waves distort the fabric of space and time, they change the distance between Earth and these pulsars, thereby distorting this extremely stable rhythm. A minor glitch in a periodic event is of course not enough. But if you monitor many pulsars over a long time and note related glitches in the frequency of radio bursts, you can indeed record signs of a low-frequency gravitational wave.
As part of the research project, NANOGrav astronomers observed 68 pulsars using the Green Bank (USA, West Virginia), Arecibo (Puerto Rico) and Very Large Array (USA, New Mexico) radio telescopes. Similar evidence was found by other teams of scientists who followed other pulsars using telescopes around the world. In total, material on 115 pulsars was collected over 18 years. Pulsar timing array astronomy is a long-term project, but scientists are already as close as possible to confirming the discovery. Researchers combined the data from their observations – the final result should be obtained within a year or two.
Unfortunately, this method does not allow tracking exactly where the specific low-frequency gravitational waves come from – it simply reveals a constant hum surrounding us. In a similar way, a person at a noisy party hears that many people are talking, but cannot hear anything specific.
There are already reasons to claim that the background noise of low-frequency gravitational waves detected by scientists turned out to be “louder” than expected. This may mean that black hole mergers occur more often than thought, or our understanding of the nature of the Universe does not fully correspond to reality. Researchers hope the discovery will help us learn more about the supermassive objects of the Universe, open new doors for “cosmic archaeology”, and trace the history of black hole and galaxy mergers around us.
- I'm Vasyl Kolomiiets, a seasoned tech journalist regularly contributing to global publications. Having a profound background in information technologies, I seamlessly blended my technical expertise with my passion for writing, venturing into technology journalism. I've covered a wide range of topics including cutting-edge developments and their impacts on society, contributing to leading tech platforms.
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The Chinese New 12 months Calendar
The Chinese calendar is usually a lunisolar calendar that’s applied to ascertain significant Pageant dates, for instance Lunar New Calendar year. Lunisolar Calendar The Chinese calendar is lunisolar. It is based on correct astronomical observations with the Sunlight’s longitude as well as the Moon’s phases. It makes an attempt to get its years coincide Together with the tropical calendar year and shares some similarities Along with the Jewish calendar. In the two these calendars, a standard calendar year has twelve months plus a leap year has 13 months; and a standard 12 months has 353–355 times while a leap year has 383–385 times.
In Modern-day Society Although the Chinese calendar originated in China, today, the Gregorian calendar is used for civil functions. Nonetheless, the Chinese calendar remains to be noticed among several Chinese communities around the globe. It is utilised to ascertain festival dates, for example Lunar New 12 months, and auspicious dates, like wedding dates. It is also made use of to find out Moon phases as it follows the Moon. Moon Phases in your city Counting the Decades and also the sixty-Yr Cycl he Chinese calendar will not count many years in an infinite sequence. On a yearly basis is assigned a name consisting of two parts within just Each individual sixty-12 months cycle. The 1st component is actually a celestial stem:Each of the two parts is employed sequentially. Therefore, the primary year in the 60-calendar year cycle results in being jia-zi, the second year is yi-chou, and so forth. 1 starts from the start in the event the close of the element is attained. The 10th year is gui-you, the eleventh calendar year is jia-xu (restarting the celestial stem) the 12th year is yi-hai, as well as the 13th yr is bing-zi (restarting the celestial department). Ultimately, the 60th 12 months is gui-hai.
This sample of naming years inside of a 60-year cycle dates again about 2000 decades. A similar naming of times and months is no more used although the date name remains listed in calendars. It’s been customary to selection the sixty-year cycle given that 2637 BCE once the calendar was supposedly invented. Calculating Chinese New Year In keeping with Helmer Aslaksen, of the Countrywide College of Singapore, There’s two guidelines of thumb utilized to determine The brand new year within the Chinese calendar. The main rule of thumb is the fact Chinese New Calendar year needs to be The brand new Moon closest to the start of spring (within the Northern Hemisphere), called Lìchūn. This rule is correct more often than not, nonetheless it can fall short if Lìchūn falls close to midway involving two New Moons. For eaxmple, it unsuccessful in the two 1985 and 2015. Chinese New Calendar year will usually drop involving January 21 and February 21.
The next rule of thumb is always that more often than not Chinese New Calendar year will tumble 11 (or from time to time ten or 12) days previously compared to preceding 12 months, but if Which means the function will be outside of the Chinese New 12 months selection of January 21 to February 21, a leap thirty day period must be extra so Chinese New Calendar year jumps 19 (or sometimes eighteen) days afterwards. The Chinese calendar functions twelve months. On the other hand, an extra month is inserted within the calendar each time a leap 12 months takes place. Thus, leap many years inside the Chinese calendar have thirteen months, contrary to leap years inside the Gregorian calendar during which an extra day is incorporated. A leap thirty day period is included for the Chinese calendar around just about every three years (7 times in 19 a long time). The identify on the leap month is the same as the past lunar thirty day period. A leap calendar year during the Chinese calendar isn’t going to essentially drop concurrently a leap yr happens while in the Gregorian calendar.
A person have to work out the number of New Moons between the 11th thirty day period in a single 12 months, which happens to be the thirty day period Together with the December solstice, and the 11th thirty day period in the next calendar year to figure out if a yr is often a leap yr. The leap year needs to be inserted if there are actually thirteen New Moons from the start of your 11th month in the first calendar year to the start in the eleventh thirty day period in the 2nd yr. Not less than just one thirty day period doesn’t consist of a principal term (Zhongqi) in leap many years. The photo voltaic phrase procedure has twelve principal terms to indicate the Sunshine’s longitudes at every single 30 levels. The initial month that doesn’t Have got a principal time period is determined since the leap month. Calendar Background The Chinese calendar’s origins can be traced as far back as the 14th century BCE. The Shang oracle bones give evidence of the lunisolar calendar which has been A lot modified but persists to this day. It can be believed that the Emperor Huangdi (Huang Ti or Huang Di) launched the calendar concerning 3000 and 2600 BCE, or about 2637 BCE. It is also imagined that his minister Ta Nao ready the main calendar, known as the Chia-tzu or Kan-chih method, and that is translated as “the system of cyclical characters”.
One more stage was extra into the calendar because the system was intended for being for well known use. Twelve animals were connected with every year over the Chou time period. These 12 animals ended up normally known as the 12 Zodiac animals in western Culture. They have been believed to generally be basically well-known symbols and didn’t have any fantastic importance. Having said that, there are a variety of folktales linked the origin on the twelve animals. China resisted the Gregorian calen ปฏิทิน 2563 dar until finally 1912 but it really was not commonly used throughout the country right until the Communist victory in 1949. This popular improve happened on October one, 1949, when Mao Zedong, who led the Persons’s Republic of China, purchased which the calendar year need to be in accord Along with the Gregorian calendar. Observe: timeanddate.com needs to thank many sources which include Claus Tøndering, writer of Usually Asked Questions on Calendars Variation two.8, and Helmer Aslaksen, with the Nationwide University of Singapore.


On April 8, the moon’s shadow will glide across a narrow part of Canada, producing one of nature’s greatest spectacles: a total solar eclipse. If you think you’ve seen one before, you probably haven’t, as these eclipse experts reveal the beauty and awe of the experience.
A total solar eclipse is a ‘spiritual’ experience, says one eclipse chaser
On April 8, the moon’s shadow will glide across Mexico, into the United States and finally into Canada, producing one of nature’s greatest spectacles: A total solar eclipse.
But if you want to see it, you’ll likely have to travel to eastern Canada — and into a very narrow path that stretches from southern Ontario, through Quebec into New Brunswick, P.E.I. and Newfoundland. (In Nova Scotia, only the Meat Cove area will experience totality.)
Total solar eclipses occur when the moon passes in front of the sun, blocking out its light. The path of that shadow is extremely narrow, which is why most people have likely never seen one.
“People … think that solar eclipses are extremely, extremely rare,”


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- The cost of a seat in Apollo Spacecraft was around 3000 crores, which Elon Musk has increased to 412 crores.
- SpaceX is America’s first crew spaceship to enter space orbit and land safely in Gulf of Mexico
SpaceX is America’s first crew spaceship that entered space orbit and landed safely in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday. The SpaceX Dragon capsule landed in the Gulf of Mexico carrying Dog Hurley and Bob Behenken. This has happened 45 years later, when NASA astronauts have landed at sea. Earlier the Apollo command module had landed at sea.
This mission is a major victory for Elon Musk’s SpaceX, as he has cut the cost of an astronaut going to space by about 2600 crores. A seat in the Apollo spacecraft cost $ 390 million (about Rs 3000 crore), which Elon Musk has raised to $ 55 million (about Rs 412 crore).
60 years of cheapest spacecraft
It was the cheapest spacecraft development effort in close to 60 years. An audit conducted by NASA in 2019 found that SpaceX’s price per seat is significantly lower than all previous programs, even Soyuz. Please tell that the cost per seat in Soyuz is 80 million dollars (about 600 crores).
Apollo most expensive spacecraft
According to the Planetary Society, a seat in the Apollo program cost $ 390 million (about Rs 3000 crore), while in the Space Shuttle the figure was $ 170 million (about Rs 1.2 thousand crore). NASA audits estimated that the cost per seat in the SpaceX Crew Dragon comes to $ 55 million (about Rs 412 crore), while in Boeing’s Starliner it goes up to $ 90 million (about Rs 675 crore).
Private company got a chance for the first time
This happened for the first time in history, when businessman Elon Musk’s private company SpaceX took a human into space. The mission was launched from the US on 31 May. This was the world’s first private space human mission. The program is being run under an agreement between SpaceX and the US space agency NASA.
The American wants to remove Russia’s dependence to send its astronauts to space. Also, its cost has been very important in launching SpaceX. NASA contracted with SpaceX and Boeing under a program called Commercial Crew to develop a new spacecraft. NASA awarded $ 3.1 billion to SpaceX and $ 4.8 billion to Boeing


A NASA spacecraft slammed into the surface of a distant asteroid at 7:14PM ET on Monday night, the climax of the agency’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART).
An hour before impact, the target asteroid, Dimorphos, wasn’t even visible in the images from the spacecraft. In some of the early images sent back to Earth, even Dimorphos’ larger companion Didymos, looked like a single speck against a sea of black. The DART spacecraft was moving at 14,000 miles per hour, and details quickly came into view. Viewers on Earth saw the rough surface of Didymos zip by as the spacecraft cruised autonomously towards Dimorphos. Boulders filled the screen just before it went bright red, indicating a loss of signal — DART had reached its final destination.
Telescopes around the world (and a few in space!) are now turning their attention to the scene of the collision. They’ll be watching to see how much the impact changed the movement of Dimorphos. The crash is part of the first practical planetary defense experiment — a trial to see if humanity might one day be able to redirect the path of an asteroid headed toward our planet.
“We’re embarking on a new era of humankind, an era in which we potentially have the capability to protect ourselves from something like a dangerous hazardous asteroid impact. What an amazing thing. We’ve never had that capability before.“ said Lori Glaze, Director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, soon after the impact.
To be clear, neither Dimorphos nor Didymos, pose any danger to Earth. No known asteroids pose a significant and immediate threat to our planet. But NASA is playing a long game. Someday in the future, if an asteroid is spotted on a dangerous path, the agency wants us to have options that could let us avert catastrophe.
The option that DART is testing is one of the most direct; if we slam something into an asteroid, will it change how that asteroid moves? Because Dimorphos’ orbit takes it between another asteroid (Didymos) and Earth, researchers will soon have an answer to that question.
Dimorphos is relatively small, so scientists couldn’t actually see the asteroid until just before the collision. But telescopes can see Didymos dimming every time that Dimorphos crosses between it and Earth. This lets researchers know how fast the asteroid is moving. They expect to see Dimorphos’ orbit speed up after the collision, but how closely the asteroid’s behavior will match the computer models remains to be seen.
Before impact, the DART spacecraft released a smaller satellite, the Italian-built LICIACube. This tiny spacecraft followed DART on its way to its doom, taking pictures of the immediate aftermath, which will be sent back to researchers on Earth. Telescopes on seven continents will also focus on the asteroid system, as will the Lucy spacecraft, the James Webb Space Telescope, and the Hubble space telescope. All of them will be monitoring Dimorphos to see if the stadium-sized asteroid’s orbit has changed.


Sir Isaac Netwon did not quite understand what gravity was, but the math he developed describes normal gravity extremely well. When you hear how artillerymen before Newton thought their projectiles behaved it is tempting to wonder how intelligent they were. Of course, they were no dummies, but humanity did not have the mathematical knowledge to describe how projectiles behave in our gravitational situation. Einstein’s understanding of gravity is much more intimate, it gets much closer to truly understanding WHAT gravity really is, but I’m talking about skiing down our mountains at speeds substantially less than the speed of light (be careful there or you will get fined & jailed)!
Newton’s mathematics did not come all from him, but he built on the works of Galileo, Nikolas Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, and Johannes Kepler. It was those gentlemen who laid the foundations leading to the understanding of planetary motion that gave Newton the laboratory to test his mathematics on.
Galileo and Copernicus broke the shackles of earth centered universe model (Galileo performed some other experiments and made some other observations that also apply to gravity), Brahe and Kepler developed the observations and general characteristics (Brahe observed and recorded, Kepler provided the analysis) of planetary motion. Newton developed the math to describe and predict how bodies influenced by gravity move.
So, how does this apply to skiing and snowboarding? Well, gravitational energy is the main energy driving us down the hill. When you are at the top of a ski run think of yourself as a spring under tension. That energy you have is potential energy and that is the potential ability to do work. In this case the work is to move yourself down and over the ski run. The energy stored is not at all dependent upon the length of the run, but solely determined by the difference between your current altitude and the altitude of the lowest spot you will be skiing through. The pitch of the run has nothing to do with how much energy you have stored up at the top of the run. However, the pitch will dictate how quickly you convert that energy into motion (acceleration and speed).
More to come on this!


The following highly distinguished theoretical physicists have very kindly agreed to serve as PSI Patrons. They will each visit Perimeter Institute at least once per year to interact with and encourage the PSI students, and offer advice to PI on the quality and content of the program. Some of the Patrons will also give short lecture series.
Yakir Aharonov, Tel Aviv University and Chapman University, is one of the world's leading quantum theorists. He shared the 1998 Wolf Prize for his co-discovery of the Aharonov-Bohm effect. His research interests include nonlocal and topological effects in quantum mechanics and quantum field theory, and the foundations of quantum theory. He is a Professor at Chapman University and Professor Emeritus at Tel Aviv University.
Philip Warren Anderson, Princeton University, is one of the world's most highly regarded condensed matter physicists. He shared the 1977 Nobel prize for his work on the electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems, which allowed for the development of electronic switching and memory devices in computers. He has made pioneering contributions to many fields including antiferromagnetism and high-temperature superconductivity. He is Emeritus Joseph Henry Professor at Princeton University.
James Daniel "Bj" Bjorken, SLAC, is one of the world's most distinguished high energy particle theorists. His discovery of the scaling properties of high energy scattering amplitudes provided the initial evidence for the existence of quarks. He is Emeritus Professor at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.
Stephen Hawking, Cambridge University and Perimeter Institute, is one of the world's most famous living scientists. His proof that Einstein's theory of general relativity breaks down at the cosmic singularity, his theorems concerning the properties of black holes, and his demonstration that black holes should evaporate due to quantum effects provided much of the impetus for the field of quantum gravity in the 1970s. He also made seminal contributions to quantum cosmology, including the mechanism whereby primordial seeds for galaxies form in an inflationary universe. He holds the Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics at Cambridge University, as well as a Distinguished Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute. He is well-known for his popular expositions of theoretical physics, including the bestseller A Brief History of Time.
James Peebles, Princeton University, is one of the world's foremost cosmologists, and a founder of the modern big bang theory. In particular, with Dicke, Roll and Wilkinson, he provided the key interpretation of the observation of the cosmic microwave background. He performed pioneering calculations of big bang nucleosynthesis, and the pattern of anisotropy expected in the cosmic microwave background, according to various theoretical models. He was a founder of the cold dark matter theory of cosmic structure formation, and one of the first to advocate a cosmological constant (or "dark energy") as the explanation for various conundra regarding the interpretation of cosmological data.
Sir Roger Penrose, University of Oxford, is a renowned mathematical physicist, famous for his highly original and creative work in general relativity, including the theory of black holes and cosmology. He invented twistor theory, increasingly recognized as a very powerful tool for understanding the fundamental structure of unified quantum field theories. He holds the Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford and is an Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College. He has published a number of bestselling popular science books including The Emperor's New Mind and The Road to Reality. He has an Erdös number of three.


Company donated the land during 1961, with Rice University as an intermediary. Another Rice faculty member in attendance was Ron Sass, fellow in global climate change at Rices Baker Institute for Public Policy and the Harry. 27 Kennedy ordered reviews of the Apollo project in April, August and October 1963.
8 Speech delivery edit Kennedy's speech on the nation's space effort delivered at Rice Stadium on September 12, 1962 (17m 28s) On September 12, 1962, a warm and essays for uc schools sunny day, President Kennedy delivered his speech before a crowd of 40,000 people in the Rice University. Apollo 11 liftoff: nasa). Kennedy's goal gave a specific mission to nasa's Apollo program. This allowed Kennedy to reference back to his inaugural address, 15 when he declared to the world "Together let us explore the stars". From the, rice news release by Jade Boyd: JFKs 1962 moon speech still appeals 50 years later. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon.
Kennedy makes his moon speech at Ric. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not. Kennedy delivers his famous moon speech. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things. Kennedy We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the oth er things, not because they are easy, but because they are dress.


This blog was created to share the construction of our observatory. The project started on 4/22/07 and finished on 6/16/07. Total number of days 56. This has made our hobby more of a pleasure than a chore. Before we would spend over a hour setting up the scope. And nearly that much to breakdown the equipment. Now we can have the scope tracking on the first object within 15 minutes. And the same amount of time to close up the observatory.


For many, seeing and photographing the aurora borealis, or northern lights, is a life goal. And it should be! Few natural phenomena compare. And very few places have better viewing conditions than interior and northern Alaska.
There is a caveat of course, and it’s this: the aurora is only visible from the late fall to the early spring; the rest of the year there is too much daylight. The best times to watch are usually around the shoulder seasons in late September and October, and in March to the first day or two in April. These time windows, in addition to being warmer, with longer daylight hours, also coincide with the usual peak of aurora activity around the fall and spring equinox. March in particular combines relatively mild temperatures, good chances for the northern lights, and since it’s the driest month of the year, the best chance for clear skies.
I offer small-group (maximum 6 participants), one-night, and multi-day tours based out of Fairbanks. I almost always work with individuals, couples, families, and groups of friends who want to escape the hustle and bustle of large, group tours. Custom trips are what I do best, and that’s what I want to bring to aurora viewing.
For general inquiries about Aurora Photo Tours, fill out the form below:


If you missed it, There was a FULL Lunar Eclipse last night. I tried my best to capture the event with our lowly Nikon….but the camera’s “safety feature” ( to keep you from taking bad pictures at night) would kick in and leave the shudder open for 3-5 seconds longer than normal. This would cause me to wobble and distort the image. I did manage to capture a couple of “almost decent” shots. But the NASA web site had much better pictures ( and video!) of the event as it happened.
It was a sight to behold. Even though I’m technically not a astronomy geek, it is cool to look up at the night sky and see something that will not occur for another 20 or so years. ( last one was in 1986, I think….) The moon never really disappeared behind the shadow of the earth. Instead, it turned a deep orange/red.
Cheryl was outside with me for this one…at least for the first two hours of the shadow. We decided to call it after the moon went completely dark. I continued to monitor it online in real time….occasionally darting out to check the progress here in Iowa. After the Moon moved behind the large tree by the apartment, the visibility was compromised. Not that it mattered much as I simply could not capture it with the camera.
So…if you missed it….you will have to wait for another 20 years for the blood moon full lunar eclipse to happen again. Then again…perhaps you really do not care about the night sky much as you tend to sleep during those hours. I hear ya….not everyone is a night owl like myself. However, sometimes you are rewarded for staying up past your bedtime. Sunsets, Northern Lights, Falling Stars and Lunar Eclipses just to name a few.


In honor of Schoonover Observatory’s 50th anniversary this year, the Lima Astronomical Society is planning a three-day celebration on Sept. 12, 13 and 14.
On the evening of Sept. 12, the original founder of the Lima Astronomical Society — Herb Doughty — will return to Lima from his home in California to speak on a variety of subjects. On Sept. 13, an open house will be held at the observatory starting at 1:30 p.m., including a re-dedication of the observatory, remarks by current members and more. September 13 will also feature a black-and-white film about the history of the observatory, including remarks by current and past members, at the Elks Lodge on North Street in Lima. Wrapping up the anniversary celebration, members of the astronomical society will meet up Sept. 14 with a breakfast saying farewell to Doughty.


Why is there something, rather than nothing at all?
It is, perhaps, the mystery of last resort. Scientists may be at least theoretically able to trace every last galaxy back to a bump in the Big Bang, to complete the entire quantum roll call of particles and forces. But the question of why there was a Big Bang or any quantum particles at all was presumed to lie safely out of scientific bounds, in the realms of philosophy or religion.
Now even that assumption is no longer safe, as exemplified by a new book by the cosmologist Lawrence M. Krauss. In it he joins a chorus of physicists and cosmologists who have been pushing into sacred ground, proclaiming more and more loudly in the last few years that science can explain how something — namely our star-spangled cosmos — could be born from, if not nothing, something very close to it. God, they argue, is not part of the equation.
He gave a talk in 2009 which was a YouTube sensation:
If nothing is our past, it could also be our future. As the universe, driven by dark energy — that is to say, the negative pressure of nothing — expands faster and faster, the galaxies will become invisible, and all the energy and information will be sucked out of the cosmos. The universe will revert to nothingness.
Nothing to nothing.
One day it’s all going to seem like a dream.
But who is or was the dreamer?