Cosmic Fireworks

This week, many Americans will celebrate the 4th of July by enjoying fireworks. We love to see the explosion, followed by the colorful debris field as it expands and rains down from the sky. And, fireworks are often slightly different from one another – even if they originate from the same type of explosion. Of course, if they have different types or proportions of chemicals before in the explosive itself, the fireworks can look dramatically different. And, don’t forget that the environment they explode into – include wind or clouds of smoke – can affect how they look.

Come Meet Chandra In Washington, DC

Well, you won't get to shake hands with the spacecraft, of course, because it's doing its job thousands of miles above the Earth's surface. You can, however, see a giant model of Chandra, view large-scale images, and meet many people who have worked on the mission during this year's Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

Favorite Chandra images
Some of our favorite Chandra images will be on display

Meet Me (Well, the AAS) in St. Louis

This week, the American Astronomical Society (AAS) holds its biannual meeting in St. Louis, Missouri. The AAS is the largest professional organization in North America and their meetings are intended to give scientists a chance to share their latest results through talks and poster sessions. This will be the 212th meeting and you can find out what's being talked about by looking here: http://aas.org/meetings/aas212/videos

Now or Then: Explaining Light Travel Time

With the press release for G1.9+0.3 we talked about when an event in a distant part of the Milky Way galaxy occurred. One delicate issue that immediately came to mind was what to do about the light travel time to this object. We decided to adopt the astronomer's convention and talk about events in Earth's time frame, that is when the light reached the Earth, as we noted in the press release and in a few other places on our web-site.

Try Out the Universe on Your Desktop

In the last year we have seen tremendous development in visualizing the Universe through the digital world. Google Sky and Wikisky are examples of this progress. These interfaces have taken well-known all-sky surveys and detailed observations to create virtual observatories that show our nearest planetary neighbors, like Mars and Jupiter, to the most distant galaxies in the Universe.

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