The Christian Science Monitor – In a lab beneath the University of Arizona’s football field, scientists are painstakingly polishing a glass disk nearly 28 feet across â the first of seven mirrors that, when combined to form an enormous optical telescope, would help revolutionize ground-based astronomy.
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SPACE.com – Astronauts on the International Space Station have given a
zero gravity tribute to famed 17th century scientist Sir Isaac Newton in honor
of his pioneering work to understand the laws of gravity which they’re
currently defying.
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AP – Nicolaus Copernicus, the 16th-century astronomer whose findings were condemned by the Roman Catholic Church as heretical, was reburied by Polish priests as a hero on Saturday, nearly 500 years after he was laid to rest in an unmarked grave.
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SPACE.com – The
spacewalking crew of NASA’s space shuttle Atlantis began the third and final
spacewalk of their mission early Friday to wrap up a battery upgrade service
call on the solar arrays outside the International Space Station.
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2010 May 13
Marco Burali, Tiziano Capecchi, Marco Mancini
(Osservatorio MTM
Sculpted by stellar winds and
radiation, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud by
chance has assumed this recognizable shape.
Fittingly named the
Horsehead
Nebula, it is some 1,500 light-years distant,
embedded in the vast
Orion cloud
complex.
About five light-years “tall”, the dark cloud is cataloged as
Barnard 33
and is visible only because its
obscuring dust is silhouetted
against the glowing red emission nebula IC 434.
Stars are forming within the dark cloud.
Contrasting blue
reflection nebula NGC 2023, surrounding a hot, young star,
is at the lower left.
The gorgeous
color image
combines both narrowband and broadband
images recorded using three different telescopes.
This post has been generated by Page2RSS
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AFP – The remains of Nicolas Copernicus, the 16th century father of modern astronomy, were reburied in a Polish cathedral Saturday as a cleric expressed regret for Church condemnation of his theories.
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While ESA’s Proba-2 keeps its main instruments trained on the Sun, it is also looking back to its homeworld. This wide-angle view of Earth comes from an experimental camera that is smaller than an espresso cup.
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ESA’s new Business Incubation Centre was formally launched yesterday in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. Over the next four years, 40 innovative companies will be helped to bring space technology down to Earth.
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SPACE.com – Astronauts on the space shuttle Atlantis packed up their
spacecraft Saturday to get ready for their trip home and will get some
well-deserved time off after a busy week of space station construction.
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2010 May 14
The arc of the southern Milky Way shone brightly on this starry night.
Captured on May 4, in
the foreground of this gorgeous skyview is
the rainforest near the spectacular
Iguaçu Falls
and national park at the border of Brazil and Argentina.
Looking skyward along the Milky Way’s arc from the left are
Alpha and
Beta Centauri,
the Coalsack, the Southern Cross,
and the Carina Nebula.
Sirius,
brightest star
in planet Earth’s night sky is at the far right.
Brilliant Canopus,
second brightest star in the night,
and our neighboring galaxies the Large and
Small Magellanic clouds,
are also included in the scene.
For help finding them, just slide your cursor over the image.
Much closer to home, lights near the center along the
horizon are from Argentina’s Iguazú Falls International Airport.
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