Category: Astronomy & Space

By now, you’ve most likely heard the buzz about the Transit of Venus, occurring Tuesday, June 5, 2012. This cosmic event is worthy of all the attention it has received this week – after all, it only happens every 105.5 or 121.5 years. During the transit, the shadow of Venus will be visible against the […]

Comet Lovejoy takes a death-defying journey through several-million degree solar corona as it passes the Sun on December 15th, 2011.

The Sungrazer project allows amateur astronomers world-wide to discover comets in images from NASA’s SOHO and STEREO missions… now with over 2000 discoveries!

Wow! Take a look at the map on the Great World Wide Star Count website. The fall campaign started yesterday and already there are oodles of citizen scientists from around the world posting their data. Citizen scientists from China, Australia, India, Kuwait, Egypt, South Africa, the European Union, Canada, United States, and Mexico have gotten involved so far. They are all looking at how bright the stars are overhead to help us get a better understanding of how streetlights, porch lights, car headlights and other nighttime lights affect how we see the stars in the sky.

As summer comes to a close, a young person’s fancy may turn to fretting at the thought of being cooped up in a classroom. But for fans of science and nature—and by that we mean kids who like to watch clouds, hunt mushrooms, prowl around graveyards, and check out what gets squashed on the side […]

Researchers at Penn State University need your help to study the distribution of microorganisms in household hot water heaters. Turns out your everyday hot water heater can double as a model hot spring, one of Earth’s extreme environments where important clues about microbial life in the Solar System might be found. First, researchers want to […]

Wherever you are – anywhere in the world – on June 21st consider taking and submitting a photo of a blank white piece of paper between 5:00 and 8:00 pm. Your photo will not be just a picture of a pretty white piece of paper, it will be scientific data used to calculate earth’s albedo […]

What does it mean to think scientifically? If you asked me this question when I first moved back to New York three years ago, I’m quite positive I would have said something like, “What do I know? I’m not a scientist,” and pointed the questioner in the direction of the nearest pocket-protecting nerd in the […]

Whoooohoo!!!

This guest post was contributed by Dr. Stuart Farrimond, a science teacher at Wiltshire College in the United Kingdom. If you’ve ever felt like you could be an undiscovered genius, then today’s blog post is for you! Get ready to use your grey matter to push back the boundaries of science… by playing video games! […]