A Leslie Wong Blog

An Astronomer’s Paradise from Babak Tafreshi on Vimeo.

This video made me think about interstellar space travel. Voyager 1 is currently the fastest moving man-made object, traveling at approximately 38,100 mph (61,300 kph). At that rate, it will take 17,614 years to travel one light year. At warp 9.9, (ref. The 37′s), it would take 24 minutes and 29.66 seconds.

via Phil Plait / Bad Astronomy

See it on the Shark Lagoon Cam at the California Academy of Sciences.

It’ll be over for us soon.

by Quentin Lindsey, Daniel Mellinger, and Vijay Kumar at the GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvania.

from NASA Goddard

From Popular Science: Helicopter with Rocket-Powered Rotors Could Go on Sale This Year

The line starts at Swisscopters America.

Moon Jellies, from the Monterey Bay Aquarium:

“These alien-looking creatures are named for their translucent, moonlike circular bells. Instead of long, trailing tentacles, moon jellies have a short, fine fringe (cilia) that sweeps food toward the mucous layer on the edges of the bells. Prey is stored in pouches until the oral arms pick it up and begin to digest it.”

Nikon D70, 18-55 f3.5-f5.6, 18mm, f5.6, 1/4 sec, ISO 400. 2-25-10, 3:17:19 PM PDT.

I follow @twisst on Twitter. twisst gives you alerts from its Twitter account when the International Space Station (ISS) will be passing over your exact location.

The International Space Station AND the Space Shuttle (STS-129) flew over our house tonight at the same time. I made a 30 second time exposure and the ISS and the Shuttle each made their own track. There’s a bigger version on Flickr.

Dr. Michael R. Gallis, at Penn State Schuylkill, gives some perspective on the 10,000 galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image that has photons from 13 billion years ago.

HubbleSite