Blogs & Ecology

The legendary Hubble Space Telescope is set to be decommissioned in 2010. While the new telescope on the station, set to launch only a year later, will be far more advanced, many astronomy fanatics will always remember the Hubble as a source of great joy, and sometimes, frustration. In tribute, here are the top ten shots taken, or contributed to, by the Hubble Telescope.

10. Shot on May 11, 2002, this anomaly, called the Cone Nebula, is a seven light-year long pillar residing in a violent nebula where many new stars are being born.

Image: Stuart Fox/NASA

With the intent of starting new missions on the Moon by 2020, NASA will need an off-roader capable of handling a multitude of situations. The Chariot is one of the new prototypes for NASA’s next generation lunar rover. Taking a cue from the Mars rovers, it will have six wheels, each with it’s own independent steering.

Once upon a time, in the far, far away land of Techgeeks lived two university pals named Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They spent long hours dreaming of a company that one day would be the biggest search engine in the world, offering mere mortals the opportunity to traverse the great plains of the planet without moving their lazy asses.

Information would be available at the touch of a square key and people could search for the most bizarre, beautiful, weird and wonderful images relayed by satellites dotted around the globe. This would make for a very happy life.

This is Google Earth.

Image from NASA

Image: Splorp

Written by new contributor Cole Hendricks

Since time immemorial, we have imagined what it would be like to climb to the heavens. With the advent of modern rocketry, a few brave souls, and many more brave robots, have managed to slip the surly bonds of Earth.

Image by: Gemini Observatory

Written by new contributor, Jonathan Fincher

Do you see that photo above? As far as photos of our universe go, it’s pretty blurry and not all that spectacular, except for one little detail: this is the first photo of a planet orbiting a star outside of our solar system. Ever.

Hurricane Fay by NOAA

If you can’t quite get enough lava flows, images of Earth from space and weird and wonderful factoids about this awesome planet of ours, then check out the Geography section over at About. Written and managed by Matt Rosenberg, a professional, published geographer who has been the guide on About for over a decade, the collection of articles and images compiled is phenomenal.

image via Wikipedia

At the start of 2007, China took the first step in the international space arms race. On January 11, the Chinese launched a missile
and successfully destroyed one of their satellites.

Officials hurried to say that there was no cause for concern because there was no threat behind the launch. The space device was brought down because it was an old weather satellite and China had no intention in entering a space arms race. But criticism was unavoidable.

Image from neebong

Sapporo Holdings, proud manufacturers of an essential ingredient in sake bombs, have announced that they’re making an ambitious step to grow their brewery: beer from space.

NASA Photo via National Geographic

In the life of the Milky Way, our galactic home, and the place where we can best study the makeup of the universe, we have only ever been able to observe a supernova that occurred in the late 17th century– just over 300 years old.

Over the past year, however, scientists at North Carolina State University have realized that they were observing an event that was only 140 years old, opening a window into activity that has never been seen by human eyes before.

Image from eddy13

The Vatican’s chief astronomer, Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, confessed in an interview that he saw no conflict between the religious doctrine he serves, and the scientific knowledge he peruses–including the possibility of “extraterrestrial brothers.” He also stated that it remains entirely possible that humanity represents the “lost sheep” of the universe, and that there is an entire community of highly-evolved extraterrestrials that remained in “full friendship with their creator.”

Image from Ribbon Controller

Now there’s a headline you don’t see every day and yet, while it’s probably calling back memories of “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” for an entire generation of corrupted American youth, it’s entirely true. The Chinese have begun growing their own version of genetically modified crops–with “modified” meaning “strapped to the top of a long march rocket and blasted into space.

Image from D’Amico Rodrigo

In maybe the most impressive data-recovery task of all time, Jon Edwards has extracted the contents of a hard drive that was on-board the doomed Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003, meaning that it survived the disintegration of the shuttle while it was 39 miles above the surface of the earth and traveling 12,000 miles an hour.

Because this probably hurt. Image from kevinzim

Ah, Canada: Home of hockey night, tim bits, and the best hope our planet has of locating and killing asteroids before they can blot out life as we know it.

Image from Pingnews

At Lancaster University, they’re unraveling the secrets of how to build a universe. In fact, they have already formed one, or something very much like it. This scientific breakthrough lies in the bottom of a chamber no larger than your pinky finger, filled with helium and cooled to 0.0003 degrees Fahrenheit above absolute zero.