Astronomy

Astronomy educational software takes you up, up and far, far away

Just for a moment, you need to be a superhero. For the trip we’re taking, you need to be Superman, Silver Surfer, or any super-duper fella with the ability to fly and who doesn’t need to breathe. You’re going straight up. Crashing through the roof of your house, you shoot through the bright sunlight sky, […]

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Help listen for ET with SETI@Home

Silence falls over Proxima Post at the Top Secret Military Base. Eyes grow large as the control room loudspeakers broadcast a strange, warbling, gibbering sound. “Hold on… Enhancing…” A technician peers intently into a monitor, adjusting his glasses with one hand, slowly twisting a dial with the other. The odd noise resolves into a musical-sounding […]

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Fly around the world with satellite image software

You’ve probably seen mapping programs that display satellite images of requested locations. Let’s take that one step further with some free programs. Each allows you to view satellite images, ranging in distance from a bird’s eye to a satellite’s eye. You can pick any point on earth and see recent photos of it. Tilt, pan, […]

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Solar Sails – An interview with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

What are solar sails? Solar sails are a creative and unique way to harness the sun’s energy for transportation, requiring no other fuel. Solar sails act just as the name implies: They are a physical sail, pushed by the sun’s energy. The sun constantly spews out a high-energy stream of photons. (Photons create the images […]

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Solar Sails – Science fiction made fact

The description of “solar sail” spaceships smells like science fiction, but taste it: It’s real. Think of a kite. It’s held in the air by a rigid, lightweight frame, kept in the air by the force of the wind. A solar sail spacecraft works much the same way, only instead of wind, the sail is […]

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