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Greece
interactive map created by Gisèle Mounzer. “Odysseus’ Journey”

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Applications to ESA Teacher Workshops closing 3 April!

2016 Summer Teachers Workshop

This year ESA is organising two teacher workshops dedicated to European primary and secondary school teachers. The summer edition will take place from 11 to 14 July 2017; the autumn edition from 5 to 8 October 2017. Both will take place in Leiden, the Netherlands.

Due to the huge number of applications already received, the deadline to apply for both workshops is now anticipated to Monday 3 April 09:00 CEST.

Built around space themes such as Earth Observation, Satellites and Rockets, and Space Exploration, the workshop, identical in both editions, will provide teachers with an inspirational professional development opportunity, and, through training sessions, will demonstrate how space can be used to teach STEM curricular subjects in school.

The workshop also features keynote lectures from top-level space experts.

Who can apply?
The workshops are open to primary and secondary school teachers of STEM-related subjects residing and working within any of ESA's Member and Associate States *.

Please note that priority will be given to teachers who have not participated in previous ESA teacher workshops.

How and when to apply
Teachers wishing to participate in one of the workshops should complete the application form. Teachers are selected based on the information provided. It is mandatory to complete all the fields of the online form.

The deadline for receipt of applications for both workshops is 3 April 2017, 09:00 CEST. Successful applicants will be informed about a place at the workshop before 14 April 2017.

What to expect

Primary and secondary school teachers will have the opportunity to participate in practical sessions dedicated to their respective student age group.

Inspired by real/actual ESA space missions and programmes, participants will be given ideas and training on how to improve their lessons so that they can make science and technology exciting for their students. During the practical sessions they will explore and discuss classroom experiments and demonstrations.

Many didactic resources developed by ESA in collaboration with its European ESERO network will be showcased at this workshop.

In addition, participants will have the opportunity to network with education peers and experts from across Europe.

Workshop details

Both workshops will take place in Leiden, the Netherlands, close to ESA's ESTEC establishment.

The summer workshop will begin at 09:00 CEST on Tuesday 11 July and will conclude at 16:30 CEST on Friday 14 July 2017. A day will be dedicated to visiting ESTEC as well as the Space Expo museum

The autumn edition will begin at 9:00 CEST on Thursday 5 October and will end at 15:00 CEST on Sunday 8 October 2017 . On this last day, workshop participants will visit ESTEC and take part in the ESTEC Open Day.

Attendance to the entire workshop is mandatory. Participants are expected to bring their personal laptops. Free internet access will be organised on location.

The working language of the workshop will be English. The workshop is therefore only open to participants who have proficient knowledge of the language.

Follow this link if you want to make a self-assessment of your English level.

Sponsorship and costs
There is no fee to participate in the workshop. ESA will arrange and sponsor the cost of hotel rooms for 4 nights, necessary local transport during the workshop, lunch and refreshments, as well as one social dinner.

Participants are expected to cover the full cost of their travel to and from Leiden, the Netherlands, and the cost of evening meals, with the exception of one social dinner offered by ESA.

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Applications to ESA Teacher Workshops closing 3 April!

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This year ESA is organising two teacher workshops dedicated to European primary and secondary school teachers. The summer edition will take place from 11 to 14 July 2017; the autumn edition from 5 to 8 October 2017. Both will take place in Leiden, the Netherlands. Due to the...

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Space is where things happen. Time is when things happen. And sometimes, in order to really look at the universe, you need to take those two concepts and mash them together. Space-time is a pretty confounding subject to wrap one's head around, though, so we asked CERN scientists (and all-around super nerds) Andrew Pontzen and Tom Whyntie to break it down for us. Below, the full three-part series, complete with black holes, space-time diagrams and a load of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff.

In this first lesson, our hilarious hosts go through the basics of space and time individually, using a flip book to illustrate how we can begin to look at them together.

Light always travels at a speed of 299,792,458 meters per second. But if you're in motion too, you're going to perceive it as traveling even faster - which isn't possible! In this second installment, Pontzen and Whyntie use a space-time diagram to analyze the sometimes baffling motion of light.

In the first two lessons, we dealt with objects moving at constant speeds with straight world line, in space-time. But what happens when you throw gravity into the mix? In this third and final lesson, Pontzen and Whyntie explore what gravity means for space-time - or rather, what space-time means for gravity.

Want to see more of our collaborations with CERN scientists? The beginning of the universe is a great place to start. >>

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CERN scientists simplify space-time in 3 short videos

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Space is where things happen. Time is when things happen. And sometimes, in order to really look at the universe, you need to take those two concepts and mash them together. Space-time is a pretty confounding subject to wrap one's head around, though, so we asked CERN scientists (and all-around super nerds) Andrew Pontzen and Tom Whyntie to break it down for us.

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We're celebrating a new discovery! A treasure trove of new planets were found around a tiny, nearby, ultra-cool dwarf star called TRAPPIST-1. Three of the seven planets are firmly in the habitable zone. Details: http://go.nasa.gov/2lvVN7G

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NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

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NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

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We're celebrating a new discovery! A treasure trove of new planets were found around a tiny, nearby, ultra-cool dwarf star called TRAPPIST-1. Three of the seven planets are firmly in the habitable zone. Details: http://go.nasa.gov/2lvVN7G

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Beautiful dance of the Earth and Venus around the sun

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Beautiful dance of the Earth and Venus around the sun

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http://www.pwr-tools.com/simsolar/

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Beautiful dance of the Earth and Venus around the sun

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Such a beautiful experience!!! Thank you so much!!!

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We just released our 2017-2018 software catalog, granting the public free access to technologies for earthly applications. Get the details: http://go.nasa.gov/2m0GlAD

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NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

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NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

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We just released our 2017-2018 software catalog, granting the public free access to technologies for earthly applications. Get the details: http://go.nasa.gov/2m0GlAD

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Discovered in 1999 in Germany, the 3,600-year-old Nebra Sky Disk is recognized as the oldest known depiction of cosmic phenomena.
In a series for the first day of each month, Hyperallergic is exploring some firsts in art, from the earliest known depictions of things to pioneers in the visual fields.
An over 3,600-year-old metal shield, embedded with images of the moon, sun, and stars, reflects a Bronze Age vision of the cosmos. UNESCO, which lists the Nebra Sky Disk in its Memory of the World Register, states that it "features the oldest concrete depiction of cosmic phenomena worldwide."

There's been no shortage of controversy and speculation around the Nebra Sky Disk since it was, as Discover magazine relates, exhumed illegally in 1999 in Nebra in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Some unsanctioned treasure hunters found it buried with two swords, two axe heads, a chisel, and two armbands. The hoard was seized by police in 2002, and since then the roughly 12-inch in diameter disk's home has been the Halle State Museum of Prehistory. The German museum has detailed discovery information and scientific analyses on its site, including this interpretation of its imagery:

Features of the sky at night and by day are mingled, against the background of an abstract representation of a starry sky. The sun and moon's course across the heavens is not only depicted, but also explained. For, between the horizons, a ship is making a nocturnal journey across the celestial ocean. This is the first time this image occurs in Europe as a central mythic symbol. The Sky Disc gives us a glimpse into our ancestors' knowledge of the course of the universe and its religious interpretation 3600 years ago.

Although its ancient age was confirmed by laboratory testing, and its metals identified as copper from the Eastern Alps and gold from the Carpathian Basin of Central Europe, some researchers have maintained their doubts as to its authenticity. Nevertheless, the majority of debate has been over the striking item's use. Some believe it is an astronomical tool, others think that it portrays a 17th-century BCE lunar eclipse. Its 32 gold dots have been determined to be stars, including the Pleiades, while some scholars have considered them purely decorative. On a BBC episode about the disk, archaeologist Miranda Aldhouse-Green described the disk as an "encoded sacred message," representing symbols of belief.

There's now a soaring Arche Nebra interpretive center that opened in 2007 near the discovery site, its angular architecture contrasting to the surrounding landscape of low hills. Whatever the original creators' intent, the Nebra Sky Disk with its worn patina represents our long human history of looking to the sky, and considering our place in the vast universe.

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The First Known Depiction of the Cosmos Adorns a 3,600-Year-Old Disk

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Discovered in 1999 in Germany, the 3,600-year-old Nebra Sky Disk is recognized as the oldest known depiction of cosmic phenomena. In a series for the first day of each month, Hyperallergic is exploring some firsts in art, from the earliest known depictions of things to pioneers in the visual fields.

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NASA has just published its 2017-2018 software catalog, which lists the many apps, code libraries and tools that pretty much anyone can download and use. Of course, most of it is pretty closely tied to... you know, launching spacecraft and stuff, which most people don't do. But here are a few items that might prove useful to tinkers and curious lay people alike.

If you're interested in a piece of software, head to the link provided; it should provide the release or license type (some things are limited to the U.S., for instance), a contact you can hit up for more info and sometimes a dedicated site for the app or service.

Flying around looking at things, NASA style

Say you're building a drone or satellite from scratch. I mean, why not? You may want to start with the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems File Delivery Protocol, a standard tool for getting large files to and from spacecraft. File integrity is sexy.

Once you've got the imagery on the ground, you might want to put it through PixelLearn, which lets you set rules about certain pixels and patterns, letting the program automatically find and categorize things like craters, buildings and so on. If it's fancy multi-spectral imagery, consider snatching the self-explanatory Lossless Hyper-/Multi-Spectral Data Compression Software, as well, and you may also want JPL's Stereo Vision Software Suite to help set up stereoscopic cameras. Use Video Image Stabilization and Registration to keep things steady under turbulence.

Of course, you'll have prepared for that turbulence with Cart3D, also known as Automated Triangle Geometry Processing for Surface Modeling and Cartesian Grid Generation. It helps visualize fluid dynamics problems.

When it's time for the bird to come back to the Earth, the Autonomous Precision Landing Navigation System might come in handy. It combines camera images with elevation maps using methods "employed by cruise missiles for decades," although you don't hear a lot about safe landings by cruise missiles.

If you're putting together a flock of drones or a constellation of satellites, there's the Formation Flying System for UAVs and Satellites; it's a mesh communication architecture that lets multiple vehicles (of multiple types) operate in tandem and maintain a formation.

Exploring the planets, NASA style

But perhaps your inclinations lean more toward simulating and exploring the planet and solar system. No worries, NASA has you there, too.

There are Global Reference Atmospheric Models for Earth, Mars, Venus and Neptune. And Titan, for some reason. These models are not toys, but they might help if you're planning an off-planet excursion and need to know exact pressures and temperatures somewhere. Venus probably hasn't changed much in the last decade or two but the Earth one has been updated to 2016, the hottest year on record.

For something a little more practical, you might try the NASA Forecast Model Web, which does a bit more of the work for you, or the Worldview Satellite Imagery Browsing and Downloading Tool, which is a way to navigate the tons of Earth imagery coming from NASA satellites. You'll get the latest shots as early as 4 hours after they're taken, which is pretty amazing.

HazPop is a full-on iOS app that lets you browse through a constantly updated worldwide database of natural hazards like fires, storms and earthquakes, and combine that with data on populations to determine the number affected, range of people who could come to aid and so on.

If you're a conspiracy theorist who thinks they can prove the existence of Planet X, Nemesis, the Black Knight or any other crypto-object in the solar system, make it so with SNAP, "an N-body high-fidelity propagation program that can model the trajectories of the planets, the Sun, and virtually any natural satellite in the solar system." Probably not super easy to learn, though.

Hiring and evaluation, NASA style

Tell HR they're about to blast off with aerospace-grade hiring practices. First there's the Integrated Cognitive Assessment Tool: Combining Person, System, and Mission, which tells you whether someone is capable of performing a certain job in space - or in sales.

Then, in order to be sure you're not hiring a klutz, submit them to the Fine Motor Skills iPad test. It'll prove they can operate a touchscreen interface without bringing the company down. (In fact, this might be useful for testing prosthetic hands and robotics.)

Never read a cover letter again. Just unleash the Semantic Text Mining and Annotation for Information Extraction and Trend Analysis Tool on the pile of resumes you've got waiting for your attention and have it flag any with certain combinations of "social media" and "guru" it might find.

Just kidding, but here are some anyone can actually use

There's a neat Unity-based Spacewalk game in which you or students can simulate various EVAs conducted by ISS astronauts. You can play it online, on Mac or on PC.

NASA has a large collection of 3D models, images and textures that you could use for education or personal purposes. All free of charge, naturally.

Glenn Research Center: The Early Years is an iPad app that takes you on a tour of this amazing R&D facility in a bunch of interactive media from between 1941 and 1979.

You can check up on the latest coronal mass ejections and magnetosphere changes with the Space Weather app for Android.

Lastly there's "Knife, Version 1.0," which "calculates the boolean subtraction of arbitrary watertight triangular polyhedral in order to make near-field sonic boom predictions." Admit that you need this in your life.

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NASA released a ton of software for free and here's some you should try

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NASA has just published its 2017-2018 software catalog, which lists the many apps, code libraries and tools that pretty much anyone can download and use. Of course, most of it is pretty closely tied to... you know, launching spacecraft and stuff, which most people don't do.

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With insight from today's brightest minds, this is the story of how humans colonize Mars.

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Thanks to a new book, these female pioneers who helped the U.S. win the space race are finally getting their due

smithsonian.com

It's rare that a scientist's name becomes a household one, no matter how great his or her discovery is. And yet, a handful of brilliant American innovators in rocket science still enjoy name recognition: Werner Von Braun, Homer Hickam, Robert Goddard, among them. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, is where many of the brightest rocket scientists collaborated on the early achievements of the space program, and JPL's website is quick to hail the men behind the missions. Even lesser-known figures, such as Frank Malina, Jack Parsons and Ed Forman, who founded the lab in the 1930s, are remembered fondly as "rocket boys" and "rocketmen." What's missing from an otherwise detailed history online, however, is major part of the story: the rocket girls.

When biologist and science writer Nathalia Holt stumbled, serendipitously, upon the story of one of NASA's first female employees, she was stunned to realize that there was a trove of women's stories from the early days of NASA that had been lost to history. Not even the agency itself was able to identify female staffers in their own archival photographs.
The book came about when you discovered a special connection to one of the women that you researched, Eleanor Frances Helin. Can you tell that story?
Holt took on the cause and was ultimately able to find a group of women whose work in rocket science dates back to before NASA even existed. In her new book Rise of the Rocket Girls, Holt documents the lives of these women, who were not only pioneers in their profession, but also in their personal lives. The "rocket girls" worked outside of the home when only 20 percent of women did so, had children and returned to work, went through divorce when it was first becoming socially accepted, and witnessed the first wave of feminism, not to mention other social revolutions in the decades that spanned their careers.

Holt spoke to Smithsonian about discovering this lost chapter of history, the choices she made in how to tell their stories, and the state of women in the sciences today.

In 2010, my husband and I were expecting our first baby and we were having an incredibly difficult time coming up with names. We were thinking about "Eleanor Frances," so I Googled the name, as you do these days to make sure there isn't anything bad out there. The first picture that came up was this beautiful picture in black and white of a woman accepting an award at NASA in the 1950s. It was very shocking to me that there were women who were part of NASA during this time. I had never heard of them.

I found out more about Eleanor Frances. She had an amazing career at NASA. She discovered many meteors and comets. But one of the most surprising things to me was that she wasn't alone. She was one of many women that worked at the space agency, and so it was because of her that I found out about this really incredible group of women that were at NASA right from the beginning.
The chapters incorporate not only the women's professional trajectories and accomplishments, but also detail their personal lives, especially their relationships with spouses and partners. How did you balance the science part of the story with those humanizing, personal anecdotes?
I didn't know I was going to write a book. I just became very interested in who these women were. When I started contacting the archives and going through records at NASA, I found that they had these wonderful pictures of women who worked there during the 1940s, the 1950s, and on through today, yet they didn't know who the women in the pictures were. They couldn't identify them, and they had very little contact information at all for anyone from that time. It ended up being quite a lot of work just to hunt down the right women. Once I did find a few of them, it became easier. They're a group of women who worked together for 40, 50 years and they're still friends today.

I'm very grateful that we named our daughter Eleanor Frances, who unfortunately passed away a year before our Eleanor was born, but she was a really inspiring person. It would have been nice for her to make a bigger appearance in the book, but it focuses on the core group of women who started out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) right from the beginning and worked as "computers," and on how they became the first female engineers at the lab.

In the beginning, I was worried that spending too much time talking about their lives would somehow detract from their contributions, but I wanted to make sure the book was about the women. We've had many books that have looked at the early days of NASA, and so I wanted to make sure that I was really celebrating what they did. What I found as I was writing it is that so much of what they were working on at the time mirrored things that were happening in their lives.
Your book opens with the story of the launch of Explorer I, the first American satellite to go in orbit, and closes with the 50th anniversary of that event, in which two of the "Rocket Girls" are excluded. Why did you choose to frame the whole book that way?
One great example I feel like was when they were working on Jupiter-C, an early frontrunner to the first American satellite. This project could have beaten Sputnik possibly, certainly the women feel like that could have happened, but much of it was held back for political reasons. The women had these positions where they were incredibly skilled mathematicians, and yet they weren't being given full credit and the full ability to show what they could do.

In 1960, only 25 percent of mothers worked outside of the home. So it is important to celebrate the fact that these women were able to have these careers where they had to work a lot of late nights and had very demanding jobs and were really part of the science at JPL - and also we have these stories of them trying to balance their home lives. I think it's very relatable for women and mothers today no matter what your profession is or what you're doing. There's something about seeing that struggle in the '50s and '60s and comparing it to today.

In one section, there is a passage in which the women "bristled at the term" "computresses" and called themselves "the sisterhood." Later, you write that they weren't called "engineers" until 1970. Can you talk about the ways these women labeled themselves and thought about their role in space research, as opposed to how men or the outside world thought of them?
The book, overall, is a joyful story because these women ended up having incredibly long careers and getting many of the achievements that they really strived for, but they did not necessarily get the recognition. There are some very sad parts in the book, where you have these two women who were in the control room, who were a vital part of the first American satellite, who were not invited to the big celebration 50 years later.

Despite how much they were able to accomplish and what a vital part they played, their stories were lost to history. Of course, it isn't just them. There are scientists all over who played a vital role in our lives but haven't gotten the recognition they deserve. This happens to women scientists in all areas. Though, I feel right now like there's a lot of attention. People are interested to learn more about these turning points in history and more about the women that were part of them. So it was important to me, in writing this book, to try to bring as much attention as I could to what these women did because it's incredible. When you look at what they did in these 50-year careers, the number of missions they were part of, it's amazing and inspiring.

I was very struck when I first found out that these women were called computers. Of course today we think of computers as devices, so it was interesting to me that there were many, many people, men and women, who worked as computers. Many of the male engineers I spoke to, who worked with the women, called them computresses. It just sounds horrible, and that's certainly how the women felt about it. They hated being called that.
Today, around 18 percent of American engineering students are women, and only 13 percent of engineers working in the U.S. today are women. Can you talk about if and how the field has changed, and how these women set some of that into motion or helped other women who came after them?
So to overcome that, they gave themselves their own names. They called themselves "Helen's Girls" for a long time because of one very influential supervisor named Helen Ling. Helen did an incredible job bringing women into NASA and was a powerhouse in bringing women engineers into the laboratory. They also called themselves the sisterhood because they were a close group that supported one another. They were really there for one another, and you can see that in the way that they went and had kids and came back: They looked out for each other and made phone calls to make sure women were coming back after having kids. It was a really special group. They really enjoyed each other's company and they really loved their careers at JPL.

It's a big turning point in the book when they become engineers, when they finally get the label they deserve, and, of course, the increased pay that comes with that. Although it didn't change everything: In the book, I talk about Susan Finley, who is NASA's longest-serving woman. She doesn't have a bachelor's degree, which many of the women didn't. A few years ago, NASA changed some of the rules, and if you did not have a bachelor's degree, then you had to be an hourly employee, you couldn't be a salaried employee. And so they actually changed her pay. It was really shocking to me that this kind of thing would happen to someone to who's been there since 1958. It ended up that she was getting so much overtime that they changed the rule for her, so she is on salary now and she's doing fine.
There are some devastating moments when pregnancies or motherhood threaten their careers. Then at one point, JPL lets the women change their working hours to accommodate childcare. The book acts as a fascinating time capsule, capturing what it was like to be a working woman at a time when only 20 percent of women worked outside the home, or when a woman could be fired simply for being pregnant. How did these women make it work?
The number of women graduating with degrees in computer science has actually fallen in the last 20 years quite significantly. This is a problem. I feel that what Helen did [in keeping women in the lab] is remarkable. You have women not only not pursuing degrees in science and engineering and tech, but even when they do get degrees, you often have women dropping out of the career. Half of all women in STEM fields leave their jobs mid-career. We talk about the problem of sexual harassment in science. We talk about problems of sexism. There are many ideas of what might be going on.

What I really like about this group of women is not just all that they accomplished at a time when they had to deal with difficult sexual harassment and many challenges, but what they found: that by being this group of women with a female supervisor, they were really able to advocate for each other. And there's actually been a lot of research that supports this. Researchers have found that when you have a gender balance in a specialty that tends to be a male dominated field, it reduces sexual harassment for both men and women.

The institutional policies at JPL were key for this group of women having the long careers that they did. You can see that when you look at what was happening at other NASA centers at the time. They also had groups of computers, many of them women, many of them hired after WWII. (During WWII, there were not enough men to take these jobs, so you had women mathematicians that were able to get in the door at these centers all over the country.) But [despite the circumstances], at these centers, they did things very differently. Many had very strict schedules. The women had to work 8-hour days, they had set breaks, many of them didn't allow women to talk to one another, they had to work in complete silence. These policies are not only not family-friendly, they're really just not friendly at all. Who would want to work under these conditions?
Some of the women were also pioneers in a different kind of domestic arena: divorce. How did various social changes impact the women and their work?
JPL was always different. It was founded by this crazy group of people called the "suicide squad," who were trying to push the limits and do crazy experiments. So even though it was an Army lab, it always had this association with Caltech and this university culture that was very different. And because of that, you see a difference in what happened to the women who were computers at JPL. For them, it was never about a set number of hours. It was about getting the job done. They were able to come in earlier in the morning when they needed to, there were times when they had to work all night, they had to work all kinds of crazy hours during missions, but then they were able to modify their hours at other times when they had family needs.

It was also a very social place where they had parties and beauty contests. That seems ridiculous by today's standards, and yet for the women that were part of it, it actually ended up fostering relationships between the women and the men that they worked with. Because of that, many of these women were included on scientific publications that were authored by the men. During that time, it was very unusual for women to be included on these publications. And so these social activities could end up bolstering their careers quite a bit. Many of these factors made JPL a unique place, and really made it ideal for them.

Social changes permeated their culture everywhere. One of these is divorce, one of these is the birth control pill, another is the rise of feminism. These are all really interesting points that impact what's happening with NASA, with our women, and with Margaret Behrens in particular. It is heartbreaking to see her marry so young and be in this horrible marriage. She ends up getting out of it and coming back to the lab, and things change for the better, but it was such a difficult time for her. She really felt like she was the only person in the world getting divorced, even though at that time, divorce rates were going way up.
As recently as 1974, the men and women of JPL worked in separate buildings. Can you talk about some of the specific aspects of sexism and gender segregation these women encountered?
Sylvia Lundy, too, goes through an experience like this, and it's reflected in the other things happening in her life. She becomes a very important engineer at JPL, directing the Mars program office, and experiencing losses with some of the missions that she wishes were funded. It sounded like a similar emotion, when I spoke with her about it, that she felt about divorce. It's interesting how loss can sometimes feel the same when you're so invested in the science that you're doing.

For the most part, the women had so many different types of experiences. You have women in long, happy marriages, but that had really no family support nearby and felt stranded sometimes. There were women who had strained relationships. There were women who had a lot of family nearby and were able to figure out childcare very easily because of that. There were all different kinds of relationships going on in these women's lives, and yet they all worked together and were able to make it work. It's inspiring.

All of the women were in one building, and all of the men were in the other, which seems so crazy by today's standards. Many of the men who worked at JPL at the time, though they weren't making decisions about which offices people worked in, look back and have regrets about how things were done. They kind of can't believe this is the way that the women were treated, that they weren't treated as equals during that time. They can look back with some perspective.
How can we do a better job bringing women and girls into the hard sciences?
And many of them, at the time, were trying to change things right along with the women. It wasn't like the women were out there alone trying to change their positions. Many of the men were trying to change how the women were involved in decision making, how they were brought in on projects, and how they were put on papers.

The men and women working in different buildings was one thing. The beauty contests, as I mentioned before, were just ridiculous. One of the women, Barbara Paulson, was in the contest when it was Miss Guided Missile. When I went through these pictures, it seemed so absurd. But the interesting thing was that when I talked to her about it, she really felt that this was never about how you looked. It was more just a fun social moment, and it was about popularity. She was the second-runner-up which was a big deal, she got to ride in a convertible around the lab and wave at all her colleagues, and then she was made supervisor just a few years later. So as absurd as all of this seems, there are parts of it that were surprisingly helpful to them.

Numerous studies have found that role models are key to increasing underrepresented groups into the sciences. When young people see scientists who look like them, it makes the dream of pursuing careers in STEM attainable. Bolstering the presence of women scientists in education is critical and my hope is that by shedding light on the groundbreaking women of NASA, young women will find in their stories a reflection of themselves and what they aspire to be.

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NASA's "Rocket Girls" Are No Longer Forgotten History

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smithsonian.com It's rare that a scientist's name becomes a household one, no matter how great his or her discovery is. And yet, a handful of brilliant American innovators in rocket science still enjoy name recognition: Werner Von Braun, Homer Hickam, Robert Goddard, among them.

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A soli quindici anni, il giovane Giacomo Leopardi scrisse la "Storia dell'astronomia", un trattato scientifico che raccontava la grande storia dell'universo dalle origini fino al suo tempo. Una sorta di summa delle conoscenza sull'argomento fino a quel momento. Era il 1813. Giacomo viveva ancora a Recanati, nel suo paese natale, stava attraversando gli anni dello studio "matto e disperatissimo" chiuso nelle stanze della biblioteca paterna. Quel testo di carattere scientifico, però, avrebbe visto la luce e sarebbe stato dato alle stampe solo nel 1888. Ma quali eventi, nella vita del giovane Giacomo, lo avevano condotto alla decisione di scrivere un trattato di astronomia?

L'eclissi del 1804 a Recanati

Secondo i biografi di Leopardi, quest'interesse per la scienza del giovane Leopardi, si deve a due eventi che incisero particolarmente sulla sua percezione dei fenomeni astronomici. A un giovane studioso, dal fisico debilitato, senza grandi amicizie o interessi diversi dallo studio, osservare le stelle deve aver stimolato l'interesse per le questioni scientifiche. Prima l'eclissi del 1804 che coprì il cielo di Recanati, poi qualche anno dopo l'osservazione di una cometa. Come reagì a questi due eventi che squarciarono il velo degli infiniti mondi oltre il nostro il giovane Giacomo? Fu così che nacque la " Storia dell'astronomia", poema in prosa dedicato alla scienza del cielo.

La riscoperta del Leopardi "scientifico"

In passato si è spesso liquidato l'interesse scientifico di Giacomo Leopardi (soprattutto del più giovane) come un esercizio di pura erudizione. Negli ultimi tempi, invece, come dimostrano i diversi libri pubblicati sull'argomento, si è iniziato a considerare la "Storia dell'Astronomia" non solo per le citazioni e la capacità di sintesi di tutte le informazioni astronomiche, ma anche per l'incredibile modernità di alcune questioni. La possibilità di mondi infiniti, della vita su altri pianeti, l'esistenza degli alieni, oltre al giudizio negativo sull'astrologia e su chi la pratica e alle felici intuizioni sul lavoro di Newton e Galilei. Senza dimenticare mai che l'opera leopardiana, anche quando passa attraverso un trattato scientifico,

Il sequel del trattato a opera di Margherita Hack

Come è ovvio che sia la "Storia dell'astronomia" di Giacomo Leopardi si ferma all'anno in cui fu scritta. Per questo, e soprattutto per omaggiare la figura del "Giovane favoloso", che la scienziata Margherità Hack pubblicò il seguito dal titolo "Storia dell'astronomia. Dalle origini al Duemila e oltre". Un modo per sottolineare, ancora una volta in più, l'importanza del pensiero leopardiano nella formazione di tutti gli italiani, trasversale alle discipline, dalla letteratura alle scienze applicate.

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Il bambino che guardava l'infinito: la "Storia dell'astronomia" di Giacomo Leopardi

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A soli 15 anni Giacomo Leopardi scrisse la 'Storia dell'astronomia', trattato che oggi viene riproposto per il suo valore scientifico, oltre che letterario. Eppure non tutti sanno che, dietro l'interesse del giovane Leopardi per la scienza, ci sono i cieli stellati di Recanati scrutati per ore dall'autore de 'L'infinito'.

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This one does not need gyroscopes, nor polar star, nor navigation charts 😳 I'll make one... 

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This one does not need gyroscopes, nor polar star, nor navigation charts 😳 I'll make one... 

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Create Augmented Reality (AR)/Virtual Reality (VR) tools for integrating spacecraft designs and real-time mission telemetry for multiple domains over a mission lifecycle: Pre-phase A concept design Hardware integration & test planning and execution Tele-robotic operations

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Create Augmented Reality (AR)/Virtual Reality (VR) tools for integrating spacecraft designs and real-time mission telemetry for multiple domains over a mission lifecycle: Pre-phase A concept design Hardware integration & test planning and execution Tele-robotic operations

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Watch Paper Ships and Vikings Set Sail on a Stop Motion Adventure

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WATCH: A young viking learns how to identify the proper tree to build a ship, nails the craft together, and sets off on a journey around Europe.

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06-03-217 Astronomy Picture of the Day Colorful Aurora over Iceland Image Credit & Copyright: Sigurdur William Brynjarsson; Annotation Advice: Sævar Helgi Bragason Explanation: You don't always see...

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Beyond our solar system lies the Oort cloud. The Oort cloud is made of icy pieces of space debris the sizes of mountains and sometimes even larger. The Oort cloud is where some comets come from.

What's out there?

Way past Neptune's orbit, even past the Kuiper belt, what is there out there? Have you ever wondered? Watch this video to find out!

Download the 8.5x11 poster! Download the 11x17 poster!
This poster summarizes the video and makes a great wall decoration!

Click here to read a transcript of this video

Where does the solar system end?

The solar system we call home has our sun, eight planets, all their moons, the asteroid belt, and lots of comets.

Outside Neptune's orbit is the Kuiper Belt. An almost empty ring around the sun that has icy bodies, almost all smaller than Pluto, making slow orbits around the sun.

But what's beyond the Kuiper belt?

Beyond the fringes of the Kuiper belt is the Oort Cloud. Unlike the orbits of the planets and the Kuiper Belt, which are pretty flat like a disk, It's a giant spherical shell surrounding the sun, planets, and Kuiper Belt Objects. Like a big bubble with thick walls around our solar system.

It's made of icy pieces of space debris the sizes of mountains and sometimes larger. This is where some comets come from.

The voyager 1 spacecraft took 35 years to leave the sun's magnetic influence. It's traveling one million miles each day. At that speed, it will take 300 years to reach the inner layer of the Oort Cloud. And then it will take 30,000 to get through it all. It's that thick.

Find out more about our solar system and what lies beyond it at NASA Space Place!

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Archaeoastronomy is the study of how people have understood, conceptualized and used the phenomena in the sky and what role the sky played in their cultures, by analysing their material remains. According to the historical and ethnographic records, most (if not all) societies have looked up at the sky and related to it. The stories, myths, art, religious beliefs, rituals and symbolism of many cultures are associated with the Sun, the Moon, stars and planets. In most cases where texts and/or academic ethnographic works were found, this is easily verifiable. However, when a study extends further back into prehistory (before writing), researchers have to rely on the remains and ruins left behind. In this case, the research is based on the archaeological record which is used to reveal an ancient society's notion to the celestial sphere and its objects.

Archaeoastronomy therefore focuses on the material elements present in the archaeological record. For instance, it can recognise whether particular structures (houses or monuments) were intentionally built in such a way as to capture sunlight on particularly important days of the year. Famous examples include the passage tomb of Newgrange (Ireland) whose entrance and roof-box captures sunrise on December solstice, and the main axis of Stonehenge (United Kingdom) that aligns with sunset, also at December solstice. The wider archaeological evidence attests to the fact that these sites were used during the winter season and, particularly around Stonehenge, were the centre of large celebrations which might have culminated with the observation of sunset. Archaeoastronomy, therefore, is one more element that can help us make sense of and understand past societies, their beliefs and world-views.

Archaeoastronomy is part of a wider field of study known as Cultural Astronomy, and which includes also the study of Ethnoastronomy, as well as the History of Astronomy and the History of Astrology.

What would I do every day?

The archaeoastronomers' job tends to be part archaeologist, part statistician. It involves equal amounts of reading, doing fieldwork, and analysing data. Literature review is a key component in any academic field, particularly so in the Humanities. In archaeoastronomy it is essential to read what other scholars have said about the society under study, as well as about the site(s) or archaeological artefact(s) being researched. Fieldwork is very important - and the most fun part of the job. It involves actually visiting the site(s) to take measurements and/or photograph the site in relation to celestial events at appropriate times. Subsequently, the fieldwork measurements need to be processed and the data analysed in the office, which can entail a combination of statistical, photographical, phenomenological and computational tools and approaches.

How much and what do I need to study?

The current generation of archaeoastronomers has been trained in the exact sciences (astronomy, physics or engineering) so the real task lies in understanding, and coming to terms with, the challenges, pros and cons of research in the humanities. However, there is a new generation of skyscape archaeologists that, in tandem with wider cultural astronomers, put the training emphasis on the humanities and cultural studies. Nevertheless, for the near future, archaeoastronomers and cultural astronomers are likely to be placed along a continuous spectrum of backgrounds ranging from the pure humanities to the pure natural sciences.

There are very few places worldwide where one can study this topic in a structured, academically recognized degree. The University of Wales Trinity Saint David is the only place in the world where it is possible to study for a Masters Degree (MA) in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology which covers the entire span of fields mentioned above. In addition, it includes Skyscapes, Cosmology and Archaeology course covering everything from the basics of archaeological research, to archaeoastronomical fieldwork, data analysis and interpretation.

Where can I work?

Since this field is quite unique, there are very few jobs in archaeoastronomy. Most are academic researchers and tutors whose main research projects are often in different fields, such as astronomy or anthropology/archaeology. And only a few are lucky enough to do pure archaeoastronomy full time.

This is the job for me, if...

you are interested in both astronomy and ancient cultures and societies.
An archaeoastronomer should be:
Comfortable both with the natural and the social sciences;

Motivated to travel for fieldwork (not always under the best climatic conditions);

Have a true passion to immerse him/herself in the culture and period they are studying.

Learn more about archaeoastronomy:

- Archaeoastronomy for Archaeologists: a Guide

- Journal of Skyscape Archaeology

- Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture, University of Wales Trinity Saint David

- European Society of Astronomy in Culture

- International Society for Archaeoastronomy and Astronomy in Culture
The article is written by Dr. Fábio Silva, a lecturer in the Sophia Centre at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David Lampeter. Image: Summer Solstice Sunrise over Stonehenge 2005​
Credit: Wikipedia

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Archaeoastronomy is the study of how people have understood, conceptualized and used the phenomena in the sky and what role the sky played in their cultures, by analysing their material remains. According to the historical and ethnographic records, most (if not all) societies have looked up at the sky and related to it.

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Αρχαιοαστρονομία - Βικιπαίδεια

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Αντικείμενο της αρχαιοαστρονομίας είναι η μελέτη των αστρονομικών πρακτικών, της ουράνιας γνώσης, των μυθολογιών, των θρησκειών και των κοσμολογικών πεποιθήσεων σε όλους τους αρχαίους πολιτισμούς, ουσιαστικά του ρόλου που έπαιξε η αστρονομία και οι αστρονόμοι στη διαμόρφωση γηγενών πολιτισμών. Ουσιαστικά η αρχαιοαστρονομία περιγράφεται καλύτερα ως " ανθρωπολογία της αστρονομίας", προκειμένου να διακρίνεται από την " ιστορία της αστρονομίας".

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Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Saturn's moon Pan is a weird one.

The little moon, which has been compared to a ravioli, President Donald Trump and a UFO, seems to have a rocky ridge growing out of its middle section.

That ridge - which is prominently seen in new photos taken by the Cassini spacecraft - also gives the moon a distinct Saturn-like look, almost as if Pan is trying to emulate the large planet it orbits.

It's pretty cute when you think about it.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Cassini took the raw images of Pan on March 7, and while they haven't been cleaned up yet, the moon's distinctive shape is still obvious.

Pan's ridge, which looks like it spans the entire circumference of the 8.8-mile-wide moon, was formed by the strange interplay of gravity in Pan's part of space. (The ridge is technically known as an accretionary equatorial bulge.)

A study published in 2007 suggests that the ridge formed from particles from Saturn's rings that have fallen onto the surface of Pan and gathered around its equator. Another Saturnian moon, Atlas, also has a similar ridge observed by Cassini.

It's possible that there is still material from the planet's distinctive rings falling onto Pan's surface today, according to Cassini imaging lead Carolyn Porco.

Cassini is nearing the end of its more than 10-year mission to explore Saturn and many of its 53 known moons.

The spacecraft has been exploring the planetary system since its arrival there in 2004, and it should continue its mission until September when it will make a planned crash into Saturn's atmosphere, burning up in the process.

Until then, Cassini will keep beaming back amazing new images of the world and its many moons, revealing a new side to our solar system.

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Saturn's moon Pan is a weird one. The little moon, which has been compared to a ravioli, President Donald Trump and a UFO, seems to have a rocky ridge growing out of its middle section.

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Join it starts 17:30p.m. Space Awareness webinar "Intercultural science education on the example of the Space Awareness Islamic Heritage Kit!"...

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New ESA engineering positions published!

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Do you have a passion for space? Do you want to drive the development of spacecraft technology? Check out the new vacancies published in our Directorate of Technology, Engineering & Quality. We are looking for bright minds to join our teams.

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This will blow your mind

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This will blow your mind! 🚀 💦 All credit to Col. Chris Hadfield and the Canadian Space Agency

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How does math guide our ships at sea? - George Christoph

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What is Blood Moon?.

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Japanese architect Hajime Narukawa claims to have tackled a centuries-old problem - how to draw an oblate spheroid Earth on a flat plane.
He claims the above map, called the AuthaGraph World Map, achieves this task.

The projection, first created in 1999, frames the world's physical components in a 2D rectangle, attempting to represent their relative sizes as accurately as possible.

It does so by dividing the world into 96 triangles, making it a tetrahedron, then unfolding it to become a rectangle.

Unlike the traditional Mercator map, made in the 16th century, which overstates the size of northern areas like Greenland and minimizes that of central areas like Africa, the AuthaGraph World Map retains parity of area to a 3D projection.

The projection recently won the 2016 good design grand award in Japan, an awards evening founded in 1957 by the Japanese ministry of international trade and industry.

Narukawa also gave a Ted talk on his projection in 2011:

You can buy a globe version of the map, which you can dismantle, from Alexcious, though they will set you back roughly £40.

Also, because we love it so much, here's a clip from one of our favourite West Wing scenes, which explains why map projections are important, and how they can distort our world:
More: There's an amazing secret hidden in your world map

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This map of Earth is the most accurate ever produced, and it looks completely different

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Japanese architect Hajime Narukawa claims to have tackled a centuries-old problem - how to draw an oblate spheroid Earth on a flat plane. He claims the above map, called the AuthaGraph World Map, achieves this task. The projection, first created in 1999, frames the world's physical components in a 2D rectangle, attempting to represent their relative sizes as accurately as possible.

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Celebrate the festival of colours, HOLI with the most colourful objects in Cosmos, NEBULAE.
HOLI in space

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Celebrate the festival of colours, HOLI with the most colourful objects in Cosmos, NEBULAE. HOLI in space 😊. HAPPY HOLI FRIENDS - play safe :). Subscribe to our Hindi YouTube channel for more Space related videos: www.youtube.com/aakashgautaminspace .

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Dear Space Awareness colleagues, save the date! Space Apps Pula will be held during April 29th - 30th 2017 in Pula, Croatia. Space Apps Pula is part of the international Space Apps Challenge...

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This telescope can see a car on the Moon — here’s what it could find in space.

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This telescope can see a car on the Moon - here's what it could find in space.

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The past, the present and the future, there is no doubt that all the moments are wonderful and full of hope

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Whole New Worlds: An Aladdin History of Exoplanets | A Capella Science, Trudbol, SamRobson, Gia Mora

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The search for another Earth has gone from street-rat to Sultan. Now THAT's some #ScienceGoals. SUPPORT ME ON PATREON: http://bit.ly/ACSPatreon THANKS to Google's Making & Science Team!

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Dear #spaceMOOC participants, Don't forget about TeachMeet today at 17:00 CET (Brussels time)! Meet and greet four teachers who wants to share useful resources and projects with you. Don't miss it...

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Posted on 15/03/2017 by Marco Trovatello

On 10 September 2016, almost 1500 Europeans participated in the first Citizens' Debate on Space for Europe. ESA organised the event to gather opinions and ideas to help develop and nurture the future strategy for space in Europe.

When Jan Woerner was elected as Director General of ESA by its Member States he expressed the wish to boost dialogue with all stakeholders and to open up space to a broader public. This Citizens' Debate translated his intention into practice, by including people from all walks of life around Europe.

About 1600 people representing a broad diversity of citizens in 22 european countries debated space issues during the day-long event. This consultation exercise, on an unprecedented scale, was organised in all ESA Member States simultaneously, following the same approach.

In order to consolidate the 22 national results into one report at European level, the debates followed the same pattern and addressed the same questions. Although quantitative results were available soon after the debate, it required more time to analyse the qualitative results - in particular the creative session where participants were asked to imagine a space project for 2046 and 200 scenarios were proposed. The data have been made available in graphical form since 25 November 2016 on citizensdebate.space/results

We are now pleased to announce the publication of the raw data under a CC BY 3.0 IGO licence, which means you are free to use, share and remix the data as long as you mention "ESA Citizens Debate on Space for Europe 2016" as the source.

In particular, we assume that the data could be of interest for the educational sector, but of course everybody is welcome to use and build upon it.

Assets

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Citizens' Debate on Space for Europe 2016 results raw data

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Posted on 15/03/2017 by Marco Trovatello On 10 September 2016, almost 1500 Europeans participated in the first Citizens' Debate on Space for Europe. ESA organised the event to gather opinions and ideas to help develop and nurture the future strategy for space in Europe.

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Preparations to Eratosthenes Experiment - Primary School no 26 in Wrocław, Poland & Primary School Novska, Croatia

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Module 4 and final is online! In this module of #spaceMOOC you will be looking at the modern advances of navigation and how they contribute to our daily life. You will get the idea behind satellite...

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nobel prize sean carroll neil degrasse tyson minute physics uncertainty principle phd comics stephen hawking brian greene henry reich grinnell college physic...

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Simply put: cool physics and other sweet science. "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." ~Rutherford via Einstein? (wikiquote) Created by Henry Reich

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The March equinox for 2017 begins on March 20th at 10:29 UT (6:29 am EDT.) The Spring or Vernal Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere is the Fall or Autumnal Equinox in the Southern Hemisphere and vice versa.

But what is the equinox exactly?

The astronomical event, known as an equinox, occurs twice each year around March 20th and September 23rd, when the plane of Earth's equator passes through the center of the sun.

Not Entirely Equal Day & Night

On an equinox the Sun shines directly on the equator and the length of day and night is nearly equal - but not quite. They are not exactly equal because the angular size of the sun and atmospheric refraction. The word equilux is used to mean a day in which the durations of light and darkness are equal to distinguish the day from an equinox.

The March equinox marks the moment the Sun crosses the celestial equator - the imaginary line in the sky above the Earth's equator - from south to north and vice versa in September. The equinoxes are the only times when the solar terminator (the dividing line between night and day) is perpendicular to the equator. Then the northern and southern hemispheres are equally illuminated.

Equinoxes are the only times when the subsolar point is on the equator, i.e. the Sun is exactly overhead at a point on the equatorial line. The subsolar point crosses the equator moving northward at the March equinox and southward at the September equinox.

= The Sun's position directly overhead (zenith) in relation to an observer.

= The Moon's position at its zenith in relation to an observer (Moon phase is not shown).

Civil Twilight = lightest shade

Night, no twilight = darkest shade

The equinoxes and solstices, are directly related to the seasons of the year. In the northern hemisphere, the vernal equinox (March) conventionally marks the beginning of spring while the autumnal equinox (September) marks the beginning of autumn. In the southern hemisphere, the vernal equinox occurs in September and the autumnal equinox in March.

We can even see how the sun illuminates Earth during equinoxes and solstices thanks to NASA satellites.

credit: NASA/ www.timeanddate.com/ www.wikipedia.org

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Happy March Equinox 2017 - The Sun Today with C. Alex Young, Ph.D.

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The March equinox for 2017 begins on March 20th at 10:29 UT (6:29 am EDT.) The Spring or Vernal Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere is the Fall or Autumnal Equinox in the Southern Hemisphere and vice versa. But what is the equinox [...]

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Today is the #FirstDayOfSpring in the Northern Hemisphere! Why do we have seasons? https://go.nasa.gov/2hazWlM

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Por fin se dejo medir este equinoccio. Gnomon: 674 mm Sombra: 75 mm Distancia al Ecuador: 697.2 km Latitud calculada: 6.612°

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Strong electric currents in the upper atmosphere are known to vary according to the season, but the Swarm satellite mission has discovered that this seasonal variation is not the same in the north...

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Information from the magnetic field Swarm mission has led to the discovery of supersonic plasma jets high up in our atmosphere that can push temperatures up to almost 10 000°C. Learn more:...

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In our ongoing look at the sounds from space, here's another angle: the same day as astronauts Thomas Pesquet (ESA) and Shane Kimbrough (NASA) were making an "Extravehicular activity" (EVA / "space walk") outside the International Space Station, we have publicly available, openly licensed sound from that experience.

This is more spoken word than ambient sound, of course. At the same time, you get a feeling for what the routine of this work is like. This is humans doing what still challenges robotic instruments - space maintenance. (Without humans, the in-flight repair of Hubble, for instance, would never have happened.) That's narrated most clearly by CAPCOM Jessica Meire and PAO Dan Huot. ("CAPCOM" is a now-anachronistic term, referring to Capsule Communicator; PAO is the Public Affairs Officer, narrating a bit like color commentary over a golf tournament, only even slower and way geekier.)

So, it's routine. But now... to those silences, imagine peering over your feet at open space above the planet. (And tell me you don't get a little dizzy doing that.)

As Thomas said of the picture: "This is what a spacewalk is: 400 km of void under your feet."

So, there you are, music lovers. Challenges for our community:

Can audio like this prove useful in samples and remixing, without falling back on the cliché of dull CAPCOM chatter over techno tracks?

Can you envision other means of sound collection in situations like this? (Before you say "there's no sound in space," various forms of vibration detectors can capture the equivalent of sound even in something like an EVA.)

And with or without this audio, can you produce music that sounds like 400 meters of nothingness? (No, just stealing that title for your next ambient album does not count. I can see you.)

I'll leave you with that thought.

But the important thing is, ESA has shortened the time to releasing content. That's a glimpse of a real-time commons that follows science, including audio - and that says a lot about the promise of what commons material could provide for culture:
Space Sounds from ESA are Now Free to Use on SoundCloud European Space Agency just gave away a bunch of space media for use
More on today:
Two more spacewalks for Thomas Pesquet

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Now hear the audio from an ISS spacewalk - and sample and remix it - CDM Create Digital Music

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In our ongoing look at the sounds from space, here's another angle: the same day as astronauts Thomas Pesquet (ESA) and Shane Kimbrough (NASA) were making an "Extravehicular activity" (EVA / "space walk") outside the International Space Station, we have publicly available, openly licensed sound from that experience.

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What causes the seasons? :: NASA Space Place

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Let's understand the seasons https://go.nasa.gov/2hazWlM

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Most questions about this, are answered in the description below. Download this in full HD here - for home use only http://dakotalapse.com/2011/06/plains-milky-way/ Windows Media Quicktime During the month of May, I shot Milky Way timelapse in central South Dakota, when I had the time, and the weather cooperated.

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Stellarium is perhaps the easiest way to introduce a astronomy ICT tool to kids. They can use it for some simple task (like the one asked) to understand the different movements in the sky.

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https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/seasons/en/