NASA’s Wide-field Infra-red Survey Explorer (WISE), a powerful infra-red space telescope, is running out of coolant, and has warmed up to the point where the longest wavelength detector is no longer functional.  The coolant is necessary to keep the detectors at a frigid 260°C below zero – any warmer and their own heat overwhelms the faint infra-red light that WISE is supposed to detect. WISE was never intended to last long (not more than ten months) and the gradual venting … Continue reading →

The lunar landscape is ancient, pocked with craters and mountains that are billions of years older than anything on Earth.  Because the Moon has no atmosphere, there is no erosion to wear down geographical features.  Because the Moon is (geologically speaking) dead, with no churning magma beneath the crust, there’s no volcanic or tectonic activity to lift up new mountains.  Almost every major feature we see on the Moon has been there for almost 4 billion years (since the Late … Continue reading →

Cosmos episode 2: One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue Dr Carl Sagan (1934 – 1996) is probably most famous to the general public for being the face of Cosmos, a 13 part series introducing and explaining the wonders of the universe to a prime-time TV audience. The show’s influence was enormous (Somebody once joked that if you asked somebody what an astronomer was before they’d seen Cosmos, they would answer “Somebody in a lab coat hunched over a telescope”, but … Continue reading →