400 years since Galileo

By Stars & Astronomy On March 19th, 2009

Its been 400 years since Galileo first peered through a telescope in 1609 but astronomy and the universe remains as mysterious as ever. And it’s been 400 years since Galileo brought about basic astronomy. In this, the International Year of Astronomy, the centuries-old discovery will be celebrated.

Science provides resources to schools to help encourage a less intimidating, more interesting approach to learning science for elementary and secondary school students. However, there’s a lot more to talk about these days, especially considering the discovery of “dark energy” in 1998, when it was determined there was 75 per cent of the universe we didn’t even know existed.

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Something Strange on Mars

By Stars & Astronomy On March 9th, 2009

Mars

This picture was recently taken by HIRISE. It shows dark stuff growing on water ice. The spotted area is about 3 miles across. The larger spots are about 500 feet across. It looks almost organic. Clearly something is different about the patches where this defrosting has started before any other locations. One possibility is that these are (frost covered) dark sand dunes that heat up more easily than the surrounding terrain. However, we will need to take a new image in the summer time to really know what is happening here. 

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