Tag Archives: science

Star Walk is AMAZING and it’s on-sale for iPhone and iPad!

Posted on May 5, 2012 | Leave a comment

This stellar planetarium in your pocket is an application called Star Walk, and it’s only 99 cents on the iPhone, this is normally $2.99 and worth it for the price (the cheapest I’ve ever seen). It’s also available for the iPad for $1.99 (which is much cheaper than the usual $4.99).

This is listed as a Mother’s day sale so I’m not sure when it’s ending, that’s not for a week (right?!?) and that would be a long sale (unless they got their weeks mixed up!).

I did a much longer Star Walk review a year ago with many screen captures and a lot more information that you’ll have to read for all the details.

This is a planetarium in your pocket. If you device has a the GPS and gyroscope, you just tilt it up at the sky and it will identify what you’re point it. It’s awesome! There are some similar products, but I think this might be the most polished.

Other than some small bits of information (and the space image of the day) you DO not need to be connected to the internet to use this information. So this is useful anywhere you can see the stars!!!

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Posted in App Store

Tagged App Store, Apple iOS, astronomy, outer space, planetarium, portable, science, Star Walk

Star Walk for iPhone is just stellar!

Posted on April 9, 2011 | Leave a comment

This amazing planetarium in your pocket is an application called Star Walk, and it’s only 99 cents on the iPhone until April 12, 2011, this is normally $2.99 and worth it for the price. It’s the 50th anniversary of spaceflight and they’re celebrating by giving us a deal! It’s also available for the iPad for $4.99.

Star Walk shows you all the stars and constellations, just by holding it up to the sky and pointing, it’s amazing! It uses the GPS for hassle free alignment, on other models it’ll use the gyroscope to have you set it up and then it’s supposed to follow along from there. Plus, it calculates this all based on where you are all with no internet connection required*.

This is the startup screen (called “sky live”).

Two views holding my phone to the East (one above and one below the horizon).

A portion of the animated detail screen for Betelguese (internet not needed).

They also have a another app just for our Solar System called Solar Walk (3D Solar System model) which is more detail on just our solar system. It’s $2.99 but it’s universal and runs on iPad and iPhone; and they make Solar Walk for Mac but no Star Walk (yet!).

* Additional information (beyond the paragraphs and stats that are included) on planets (and stars?) is available and does require internet. Also the astronomy picture of the day requires the internet.

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Posted in App Store

Tagged App Store, Apple iOS, astronomy, outer space, planetarium, portable, science, space, Star Walk

Shuttle Crawler path – panorama

Posted on April 6, 2010 | Leave a comment

This is the path the shuttle takes when it’s on the massive crawler and has to go from the VAB (vehicle assembly building) to one of the launch pads.

It’s the wide dual dirt/gravel roads (with the grass strip in the middle) towards the back.

The launch pad all the way to the right is 39A and the other (a little to the left) is 39B.

If you click on the photo you now get the huge version which is 3,900 pixels across and 700 pixels down (if it only shows up as wide as your browser, click again, then you can scroll right and left). You can click for a more normal 1024 pixel size too. Sorry, I appear to have problems uploading the huge version of the panorama from my phone. I’ll fix later at hotel.

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Tagged Crawler, photos, science, Shuttle

STS-131 rolls out to launch pad 39A

Posted on March 3, 2010 | Leave a comment

This is a time lapse of the roll out from the VAB (Vertical Assembly Building) to the launch page, I’d guess it’s about an hour of moving per minute. I’ll admit it’s not the most exciting time lapse video but it’s a lot faster than the live video was last night (it was about seven hours until attached).

Just before midnight last night, space shuttle Discovery began its slow roll from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39A. Riding aboard the crawler-transporter, the shuttle completed the 3.4-mile trip and was secured to the pad by 7 a.m. EST.
— NASA’s Kennedy Space Center

Here’s the direct link to the roll out video.

So I’m pretty excited about this, not the roll out itself, but once it’s been on the launch pad a few more days and the figure out if there are any issues it’ll help firm up the launch date. I figure once the GOES-P mission goes off this week that’ll help too, I don’t think there is anything else big in the meantime.

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Tagged 39A, science, space shuttle, STS-131

What does a Black Hole look like up close?

Posted on February 10, 2010 | Leave a comment

So what do you think it would look like if you wandered too close to a black hole? Scientists at the University of Stuttgart in Germany created a black hole simulation to let you input some different parameters to see how it would look.

The program’s creators say it could be an excellent tool to familiarize people with the weird ways that black holes warp light.

The video below is a narrated sequence with a few different views. Here’s the original article at New Scientist.

Direct link to the black hole video.

Found at the Woot blog (which is not generally where I get my science news).

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Tagged black hole, science, simulation, technology

LCROSS spacecraft hits the moon on it’s quest for water

Posted on October 9, 2009 | Leave a comment

I was excited to watch but the results were boring…
Click for a larger version of the CNN moon crash Video.

Here’s the animation, which was much more interesting.
Click for a larger version of the CNN moon crash Animation.

I hope the animation is pretty much what happened, we just couldn’t see it. I hope the data that they get is good data. I’d prefer that it shows there is water;ut if there isn’t, I hope the results show there isn’t. No data / bad data means failed mission…

The LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) spacecraft was also passing by a little bit later (90 seconds?) so that should have have some additional data.

LATER: A little more info on this at CNN. They said this was the fifth most watched webcast ever.

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Tagged H2O, LCROSS, moon, NASA, science, water

Space Shuttle STS-128 is ready for launch

Posted on August 28, 2009 | Leave a comment

The Space Shuttle Discovery is on the launch pad right now. This always excites me and still gives me chills when it takes off! You can watch NASA TV live on their site. At this point, they are in a hold and I think they are still supposed to launch in the next hour (11:59 PM EST).

I’ve always wanted to see a launch, I don’t know why I’ve never made this happen. I was supposed to go a few weeks ago to see this launch (STS-128), but they moved the date so it didn’t work out. I’ve got to make this a priority over the next year before they stop the shuttle launches.

It’s been 25 years since this ship’s maiden voyage, it was August 30th, 1984 when Discovery had it’s first launch! It was the third orbital vehicle in service (OV-103) and is now the oldest running shuttle. Wow!

Once they introduced the shuttle, I always thought they’d have some way to take passengers. I always assumed that’d be airplane type seats in the bay, like envisioned in the 1970’s James Bond movie Moonraker (anybody have an image of this?).

So let’s just plan to catch a shuttle launch in the next year, okay? Anyone have any tips on going to a launch?

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Posted in me + myself + i

Tagged Discovery, NASA, news, science, space shuttle, STS-128