Eppur Si Muove

Astronomy

  • ASKAP Time-Lapse

    Here’s another one of these time-lapse videos associated with astronomical facilities. It’s amazing how far the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) has come, with all 36 antennas now on site, and a couple of them fitted with the phased-array feeds (PAFs). These PAFs function like a multi-pixel camera, enabling the ASKAP to view a… Continue reading

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  • Temporal Distortion

    Another inspiring time-lapse video of the night sky, by Randy Halverson (dakotalapse). Featuring an original score by composer Bear McCreary of Battlestar Galactica fame, what more could you ask for? 🙂 Continue reading

  • One Small Step for a Man, One Giant Leap for Mankind…

    Today, on 26th August 2012, we all woke up to find out that Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon, passed away at age 82. I was surprised to see on Facebook, how many of my friends considered him to be a role model or a childhood hero. People are commenting on news websites about… Continue reading

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  • Another Milestone…

    It’s been almost 5 months since my last post! A lot has happened, of course, in the scientific world since then. First, there’s the exciting announcement of  the  discovery of a particle whose properties are consistent with that of the Higgs boson. Then there’s the landing of NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars. Of course, here in… Continue reading

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  • Voyage through the Universe

    Nicely done video giving a quick tour of the Universe, with clips taken mostly from the National Geographic documentary ‘Journey to the Edge of the Universe’. My personal favourite is the scene where the ‘camera’ flies directly into the jet of a quasar. Can you identify all the objects shown? Continue reading

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  • Australia and NZ’s bid for the SKA

    Scientists and engineers who want to construct some of the worlds best telescopes in remote locations all over the world often find themselves in awkward situations when confronted with the issue of native land titles. When these involve sacred sites, like the Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii where some of the best optical telescopes in… Continue reading

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  • theSkyNet Comes Online!

    Are we staring into a bleak future where self-aware machines nuke the planet, take over the world, and send assassin robots back in time to hunt down John Connor? Who would have predicted, that a citizen science project initiated by the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) would eventually lead to the demise of humanity… Continue reading

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  • Have We Stopped Dreaming?

    Cost overruns in large-scale scientific projects occur more frequently than not, with NASA being one of the biggest culprits. The most recent high-profile casualty is of course the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). There are serious concerns that the entire project may be cancelled, after proposals for… Continue reading

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  • The Lost World of Genesis: 2 – Countering the Dominant Culture

    In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Such a statement would not have been made callously. It was deliberately provocative. It flew in the face of everything the ancient Mesopotamians believed. As the first sentence to a creation story, the origin of God is glaringly omitted, implying that in fact, God has no… Continue reading

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  • Starry Nights Over Malaysia…

    Staying on the topic of astronomy related time-lapse photography, here’s one that I stumbled upon recently on youtube. It’s made in Malaysia by a fellow Malaysian! In fact, this is the first that I’ve seen from Malaysia, and it’s quite good. Considering that tomorrow is Merdeka Day (Independence Day) in Malaysia, I guess it’s an… Continue reading