I learned too late from Amanda at AstroPixie that Sunday was International Women’s Day. I wish I had known in time to write something for then, but I guess that’s OK. The point of the day is to raise awareness, and it made me think about a couple of issues. So let me talk to you about th...

The HiRISE camera onboard MRO just took this phenomenal picture of one of the moons of Mars, Deimos: That is so cool! Deimos is the smaller of the two moons, a lumpy ball 15 x 12 x 10 km in size (Phobos is 27 x 22 x 18). Deimos has incredibly weak gravity; its escape velocity is only about 20 km/hr,...

More science and politics news, and this time it’s heartening: as promised last week, Obama has signed an Executive Order today reversing the ban on federal funding of stem cells. You may recall he promised to do this during his campaign, and made a point of it in his answers for Science Debat...

The post I made last week about McCain being antiscience has made quite a splash, more than I expected (and I expected quite a bit). As usual when I post on politics I have been lauded as a voice of reason, told I am a political moron, had my arguments backed up by others with evidence, and attacked...

So, what’s wrong with this picture? Answer: Aaaaiiiiieeeee! OK, first, a little background. The crescent Moon can be a stunning sight. It hangs near the Sun after sunset (or before sunrise), up in the west (or east) while people are still out and about. The shape itself is lovely, and it shine...

There are some things science needs to survive, and to thrive: eager, hardworking scientists; a grasp of reality and a desire to understand it; and an open and clear atmosphere to communicate and discuss results. That last bit there seems to be having a problem. Communication is key to science; with...

The new Open Lab 2008 is here! This book is a collection of 52 essays representing some of the best science blog writing from 2008. It includes essays from a lot of the usual suspects, plus others I bet you don’t know. My own post about WR 104, a potential nearby gamma-ray burst progenitor, is...

Jon Donni of Bad Psychics has posted footage footage of Neil Armstrong’s first step on the Moon on the site TV is Cool. It comes from the 16 mm Data Acquisition Camera mounted in the lunar module. The camera had multiple settings; it was set to normal speed for this occasion, and was later set...

Astronomers Todd Boroson and Tod Lauer have found what appears to be the best candidate seen for a tightly bound binary black hole, a close-knit duo of death in the center of a quasar. They sifted through over 17,000 quasar signatures to find this rare pair, sitting in the center of quasar SDSS 1536...

The folks working with the fantabulous Cassini Saturn probe just released a very cool image indicating a very cool discovery: a moonlet embedded in Saturn’s G ring. Saturn’s G ring is the second outermost ring (one more ring, E, is outside G, but very wide and diffuse). It’s about ...