Astronomy Buff

March 30th, 2007

Jupiter’s Spin Produces 10 Million Volts Around its Poles

Here is a stunning image taken in November 1998 with the Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS). It is an ultraviolet image of auroras over the north pole of Jupiter.

Image Credit: ESA
It turns out that the auroras on Jupiter are larger than our entire planet. Here’s a composite image of a Hubble […]

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February 23rd, 2007

Ulysses Confirms Poles of Sun Have Different Temperatures

The north and south poles of the Sun are not at the same temperature, they vary by roughly 7 to 8 percent, or 80,000 degrees Kelvin.
The astute reader (which is of course you, since you’re reading my blog) may be asking, “Wait a minute, did you say 80,000 degrees? I thought the Sun was […]

By Tony -- 1 comment

February 2nd, 2007

Saturn From Above In Living Color

Last week’s astronomy porn was a mosaic of photographs taken by the Cassini Spacecraft on January 20, 2007 showing the entire ring system from high above the planet. Emily Lakdawalla had posted the initial attempts last week at assembling the photos into one larger one. Yesterday, Emily wrote that Ian Regan had put […]

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January 26th, 2007

Saturn From Above

Emily from the Planetary Society Weblog has put together this amazing mosaic of Saturn as viewed from above. She’s taken images from the Cassini spacecraft and manually assembled them into this image:

Photo Credit: NASA / JPL / SSI / Emily Lakdawalla

Excellent work. This is a truly unique view of Saturn, it is […]

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January 25th, 2007

Hey! There’s a Poll Over Here People

I’m giving you guys a chance to express yourself. There’s nothing sadder than a poll not voted in, it makes it look like no one’s reading my stuff. Even though that’s absolutely true, I expect all ten of you to get off your asses and vote. This is your chance to […]

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January 15th, 2007

Comet McNaught: So bright you can see it during the day

If you have a chance, you need to get out in the late afternoon and check out comet McNaught. It has surprised many of us with how bright it has become. Here’s a YouTube video, made by truemartian, on a Sony Hi8 camera that captures what you can see brilliantly. It has […]

By Tony -- 2 comments

January 6th, 2007

The Face on Mars (Isn’t)

One of the things I like to do is make astronomy videos and I’ve been doing this for a while now on my website DeepAstronomy.com. I just finished one that discusses the Face on Mars, not because it’s controversial, it isn’t anymore - it’s been pretty well established that the face is just a […]

By Tony -- 2 comments