• Astronomy

    Fireworks Galaxy & Moon + ISS alignment

    🙂 I hope you all had lots of fun yesterday while celebrating the coming of 2011. Apparently humans weren’t the only ones playing with fireworks… Here is a picture of some cosmic fireworks. This galaxy was nicknamed the “Fireworks Galaxy” for good reason. Over the last century, at least nine supernovae were discovered in that galaxy. By comparison, the average rate for supernovae in the Milky Way is about 1 per century. A supernova can be brighter than whole galaxies for some time after the explosion. That’s some fireworks! This beautiful spiral galaxy, also known as NGC 6946, is located 10 million light-years away in the constellation of Cepheus. It…

  • Space Exploration

    Inflatable Space Stations

    NASA is considering the use of inflatable modules for the International Space Station (ISS). This idea has been proposed as early as in the 1960s, but it has never been put to use in space until Bigelow Aerospace took over the idea and developed two working prototypes and tested them in space.