Astronomy Cafe

My book 'The Hidden Universe' includes 60+ full page images from NASA and provides a detailed description of what you are seein g in each image. But in addition, it provides an image scale ( 1cm = 1 light year etc) that will let you use a milimeter ruler to investigate the image and get a real sense for how big things are. This is a unique feature that teachers would be interested in to add math to their science content in astronomy. My blog describes one of these images and a link to the book. Enjoy!

Desciphering Webb Telescope Images | Sten's Space Blog Astronomy, NASA Desciphering Webb Telescope Images March 13, 2023 StenBlog Leave a comment Astronomers can look at images of celestial objects like planets, nebulae and galaxies and immediately see their significance, but for the average person seeing them on the Evening News the pictures are, of co...

http://sten.astronomycafe.net/welcome-to-the-22nd-century/

Welcome to the 22nd Century! | Sten's Space Blog Astronomy, Space Travel Welcome to the 22nd Century! March 27, 2023 StenBlog Leave a comment (Excerpt from my upcoming ebook ‘The Next Billion Years’) A not unlikely interplanetary spacecraft design using known technology. Image Credit. Thinking ahead to the 22nd seems no more of a challenge tha...

Its been several years since I posted at this page, but I am now re-starting my blogs at Astronomy Cafe (http://sten.astronomycafe.net) and will upload a ne post every few weeks. Here is my new posting!
http://sten.astronomycafe.net/this-is-not-your-fathers-universe/

This is Not Your Father’s Universe! | Sten's Space Blog Astronomy, Brain Research, Physics This is Not Your Father’s Universe! January 3, 2023 StenBlog Leave a comment When I was learning astronomy in the 60s and 70s, we were still debating whether Big Bang or Stady State were the most accurate models for our universe. We also wondered about how galaxi...

Hi Everyone! I have been running a citizen science sound measurement project called Silent Earth over at anecdata.org. At first I wanted to hunt and find the quietest places in my community using the smartphone app that measures decibel levels, but quickly discovered that it is very hard to find areas below about 40 decibels even in the middle of large green spaces where you can still hear birds singing. I would like to invite you to download the anecdata.org app and join the Silent Earth project to contribute your measurements and do your own hunting. Not only have I found it terribly informative, but it has now become addictive as I travel to different places and make measurements. I often annoy my friends by saying 'Stop the car. I need to make a measurement' but then when they see the emerging map THEY become addicted too! Please consider helping!!! http://www.anecdata.org

Anecdata.org A free online citizen science platform

Latest Blog about Space Travel For those of you interested in space travel, here's another of my blogs about new opportunities...I call it Hohmann's Tyrany for reasons you will

You will notice that my old website at www.astronomycafe.net has now been changed to my blog webpage at sten.astronomycafe.net. After 20 years I decided that it was time to retire the old offerings and update to one in which I can feature my blogs, as well as continue to offer the most popular FAQs and other resources from the old website. I hope you all enjoy the new blog website!

The Astronomy Cafe | Sten's Space Blog This is my main website for astronomy education and discovery. Developed over 20 years ago and updated ever since, it contains my complete collection of published popular essays on topics from cosmology and black holes, to space travel and weird things in nature.

Make sure you check out my blog every week because I post something new on a weekly schedule. This week I discussed cancer research but previously have written about space travel, cosmology and weird things. My next blogs will be about methane on mars and astronomy so stay tuned! The blog page is at
Http://sten.astronomycafe.net

For those of you interested in smartphone astrophotography, here is my very first attempt using my new iPhone 6s and a 12x telephoto lens. The camera was set up to auto focus and light meter on the sharp edge of the moon, and I used the 5-second delay on the exposure button to minimize vibration. The 12x lens and camera were tripod-mounted, and I used a high-end 12x lens that cost $20.00. I release any copyright restrictions on others using this image so long as you are kind enough to credit me!

I would be interested to collect comments/likes on how you think by new blogs are goiung over at http://sten.astronomycafe.net

Please send me your comments here so I can update my writing themes and approaches. I really want to make the blogs interesting to you. Coming up next week will be a wider selection of topics now that the current thread is coming to an end.

Sten's Space Blog | An astronomer's point-of-view on matters of space, space travel, general science and consciousness

I am having a great time writing my new blog series over at sten.astronomycafe.net. Right now, and on wednesdays and fridays, I will be posting on topics related to perception and brain research. This will lead to discussions about the nature of space, time and our model for the evolution of the universe. Hope some of you find these topics ass interesting as I do! Please leave comments on the blog page too!!!

Now that I am no longer writing blogs for The Huffington Post, I decided to 'go rogue' and set up my own blog page over at

http://sten.astronomycafe.net

Please have a look at my writings from time to time as I explore topics about the universe, the human mind, and other fun things that have puzzled me over my lifetime as a scientist. The blogs are all written in a non-technical style so that at long last I can finally explain my own journey in life, to my parents, family and friends. It has been quite the adventure, for sure!

Please also feel free to add comments to my essays as the mood moves you. I would love to hear your thoughts and opinions too!

Sten's Space Blog | An astronomer's point-of-view on matters of space, space travel, general science and consciousness

Just posted my latest Huffington Post blog about the new planet Proxima Centauri b...enjoy!
http://tinyurl.com/gmzm7h5

Two new books about space travel...written by an astronomer! Astronomers tend to be regarded as the 'shrills' for technologists peddling their latest designs for advanced propulsion systems, however we are the experts that will allow Society to decide if space travel makes sense or not as a massive financial investment. Before we can make interstellar or interplanetary travel a reality we have to address three questions:Where should we go? What will we do when we get there? and How will it benefit folks back home? The first two questions can be answered by astronomers and have nothing to do with the technology of travel. My two books 'Interstellar Travel:An astronomers guide' and 'Interplanetary Travel:An astronomers guide' lay out in a dispassionate way the very real considerations of space travel, with some very surprising conclusions! (books now available at Amazon.com)

What will it really take to open up the solar system to trips to Mars and beyond?
Ion engine technology is rapidly making a week-long journey to Mars a reality.
Check out my Huffington Post blog to learn about recent progress and future expectations!
http://tinyurl.com/q2nqshf

Latest Huffington Post blog about anniversary of Einstein's general relativity is next month. Space is still stranger that you can imagine!
http://tinyurl.com/p7pfewj

Happy Birthday Einstein! 100 years of General Relativity On November 25, 1915, Albert Einstein finally announced the complete mathematical details of his General Relativity Theory in the last of a series of four papers, but gravity and the nature of space itself, remain as mysterious today as they were back then.

Anniversary of Einstein's general relativity is next month. Space is still stranger that you can imagine!
http://tinyurl.com/p7pfewj

Before the new school year, and government shut-down begins, I managed to write one more book...I know we all hate authors talking about their books...but this one was a necessary sequel to my Interstellar Travel book. It's called Interplanetary Travel:An Astronomer's Guide. It is now available on amazon. The first book was about Dreams without Technology. This book is about Technology without Dreams. http://tinyurl.com/orywqde

Interplanetary Travel: An Astronomer's Guide Interplanetary travel? No one ever thought it would be this hard, especially the folks that are not literally ‘rocket scientists’! Why is it that 50 years after the official start of the Space Age we do not have colonies on the moon and Mars already? Why are we still plodding along ...

My latest book is now available on Amazon.com. It's titled 'Eternity:A Users Guide' Here's the blurb! My talented niece Nathalie Rattner did the cover art! "Between the birth of the universe and eternity are an incredible number of key events that trace the emergence of the physical world, our earth, the appearance of life, and the ascent of humans and their intellectual culture. Most books trace only one of these threads of events through time so that you rarely get a sense of how episodes in astronomy or geology impact human history. This book features over 2,400 events culled from the scientific literature and from future speculation to fill-in our piece of eternity with meaningful events that made us who we are as individuals, a species, and as a living system. Presented in 'sound-bite' form with over 300 colorful illustrations, this book offers a guide to our small portion of eternity, and how by taking possession of it we can become its Users rather than passive travelers.

"http://www.amazon.com/Eternity-Users-Guide-Sten-Odenwald/dp/1507588259/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1439458393&sr=8-2&keywords=sten+odenwald

Eternity: A User's Guide Between the birth of the universe and eternity are an incredible number of key events that trace the emergence of the physical world, our earth, the appearance of life, and the ascent of humans and their intellectual culture. Most books trace only one of these threads of events through time so th...

My latest blog about Pluto is now available.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-sten-odenwald/welcome-to-pluto_b_7804252.html

A Closer Look at the Pluto Photos The first impressions you glean from the released New Horizons high-resolution images is that Pluto is vastly different from its dwarf planet cousin Ceres. Ceres lives in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and its surface has been pummeled by asteroids, leaving behind thousands of craters f…

Just posted a Part I blog about Pluto to get you excited about tomorrow's encounter! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-sten-odenwald/the-pluto-encounter-a-view-from-afar_b_7756230.html

The Pluto Encounter: A View From Afar! Next week on July 14, the NASA spacecraft New Horizons will have completed its nine-year journey to Pluto. There is no telling what we will discover when we get there, but it will certainly be both alien and exciting!

See my TedEd talk about the age of sunlight! http://ed.ted.com/lessons/sunlight-is-way-older-than-you-think-sten-odenwald

Sunlight is way older than you think - Sten Odenwald It takes light a zippy 8 minutes to reach Earth from the surface of the Sun. But how long does it take that same light to travel from the Sun’s core to its surface? Oddly enough, the answer is many thousands of years. Sten Odenwald explains why by illustrating the random walk problem.

My latest book on interstellar travel has some interesting mathematical interludes in it that you may find helpful in sorting out fact from fiction in this very popular topic! You may also enjoy some of the astronomical issues clarified. The biggest worry is about what we will do when we arrive at the destination, and whether the travelers be reduced to a pile of fertilizer along the way! http://www.amazon.com/Interstellar-Travel-Dr-Sten-Odenwald/dp/1512056278/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1433348955&sr=8-2&keywords=sten+odenwald

www.amazon.com

Just published my latest book 'Interstellar Travel:An Astronomer's Guide' that presents the big picture of just what a trip to the nearest stars will be like based on our best astronomical knowledge. Where would we go? What happens to humans on long space trips? What will we do when we get there? are just a few of the questions covered...with surprising answers!

http://www.amazon.com/Interstellar-Travel-Dr-Sten-Odenwald/dp/1512056278/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1431427891&sr=8-4&keywords=sten+odenwald

Interstellar Travel: An Astronomer's guide This book describes the many astronomical and human-scale issues that make interstellar travel a formidable challenge, even with the right technology for making the actual trip. Since the 1920's, science fiction authors have invented dozens of ways to make interstellar travel a reality. Sadly, af...

What is space and how should we think about it?

In my recent book ‘Exploring Quantum Space’ I take you through 2000 years of people thinking very seriously about space, and I don’t mean the distracting stars and planets that fill it! As an astronomer, I think the strangest thing in my world is space itself. What is it that you walk through to get from one place to another? Even when you are in ‘outer space’ this weird thing is still there, and lots of it! Science is wonderful because it takes the most trivial thing in the world and focuses our attention on it, sometimes for the first time in human history. Space is one of those things. Today, it is the last things physicists are trying desperately to understand, because it holds the keys to a profound understanding of what the physical world actually is! This book will show you all the different, and bizarre, ways that physicists use to try to visualize what space is all about, and reveal some of the truth to Einstein’s enigmatic comment, ‘Space and time are modes in which we think and not conditions in which we live’. Available at Amazon,com

Every night, a network of NASA all-sky cameras scans the skies above the United States for meteoritic fireballs. Automated software maintained by NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office calculates their orbits, velocity, pe*******on depth in Earth's atmosphere and many other characteristics. Daily results are presented on Spaceweather.com. On Apr. 16, 2015, the network reported 10 fireballs. These are their orbits. Of course they all intersect at Earth!

Sten just published his latest book: Exploring Quantum Space: The mystery of space and how we think about it
What is space? For thousands of years philosophers and physicists have wondered about this, and during the 20th century the search for answers has taken us to the very bedrock of Reality itself. The ways that astronomers and physicists now think about space are now quite different than your every-day experience of it. This book takes you through 2000 years of speculation and science, and reveals through illustrations and analogies, what space may be as a physical thing, and how dramatically different it is from anything else we experience in the physical world.

Now available at Amazon.com: http://tinyurl.com/ldv3tmn

Please support science popularization by actual astronomers by purchasing this full-color guide to the mystery of space!

Exploring Quantum Space: The mystery of space For thousands of years humans have flirted with understanding space. But now it seems there are so many lose ends in 20th century physics that we are forced to have a closer look at this thing we call space. What we do know from where we stand today, is that virtually everything we thought we kne...

Posted latest Huffington Post blog about interstellar travel.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-sten-odenwald/interstellar-travel-so-where-should-we-go_b_6971584.html

Interstellar Travel: So Where Should We Go? Will we just point the ship towards any star and commit these resources to a random journey and outcome, or will we know a LOT about where we are going before the fuel is loaded? Most of us will agree that the latter case for such an expensive "...

This before and after view of a crater formed on the moon is simply amazing....visit this NASA page and scroll the bar left to right to see the crater appear and disappear.

http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasas-lro-spacecraft-finds-march-17-2013-impact-crater-and-more/index.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-sten-odenwald/when-nasa-had-nuclear-roc_b_6872008.html

When NASA Had Nuclear Rockets Most people think that Star Trek-style nuclear rockets are a thing of the future, but the fact is we had them in the 1960s... and gave up on them....