Explorer

A new company called Earth-i has announced it will be launching a constellation of satellites into Earth's orbit that will download "fast-turn-around pictures and colour video of the planet's surface."

When you read a scientific story in a popular blog or magazine, many times you will see the caveat "artist interpretation" next to some of the accompanying images. This as a gross undersell of the time, effort, and most important, accuracy, that goes into developing the renders. While we don't know what a black hole or an exoplanet looks like, it is important to attempt to visualize them, and to do it as accurately as possible. This video is an interview with two people who are responsible for

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) released a 3 gigapixel image of Sharpless 2-54, the Eagle Nebula, and the Omega Nebula; the detail is astounding. Taken with the Very Large Telescope (VLT) located at the Paranal Observatory, Chile, the image spans roughly 2 degrees on the sky, or about 4 full moons side-by-side. One of the most iconic nebula in the sky, the Eagle Nebula is at the centre of the image.

A newly discovered exoplanet, LHS 1140b, is being called the "best place to look for signs of life beyond the Solar System." The reason is because of a confluence of factors: the planet is likely rocky, orbits a relatively quiet star, passes in-front of its star from Earth's point-of-view every 25 days, and likely has an atmosphere. At the moment, studying that atmosphere in detail is not possible; however, with the next generation of telescopes coming online in the coming years (TMT, ELT, JWST)

Looks like progress for the European Southern Observatory's Extremely Large Telescope. Two contracts were awarded to companies to build and test the 39 mirror segments (each 1.4 meters across). Once completed, ELT will be the largest optical telescope on the planet.

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) is building one of three next generation optical telescopes, called the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). It will have a primary aperture that is 39 meters wide made of segmented mirrors. Astronomer Frans Snik and his team have created detailed LEGO® instructions for you to now build your own ELT. As both an astronomer and lover of LEGO®, I approve of this project. The other two next generation optical telescopes are the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), which

NASA's Cassini-Huygens mission has begun its final mission phase, making its first dive between the planet Saturn and its rings. It is the only craft to ever make that plunge. Check out some of the amazing images it took as it went through, including the north pole hexagonal vortex.