Jack Horkheimer, well known astronomer who achieved national recognition on PBS for his short “Star Gazer/Star Hustler” segments for 25 years, passed away on Friday at the age of 72. He worked at the Miami Planetarium for over 45 years, most of them as Executive Director. His official bio also bore his pre-written epitaph based on his closing tag line and bearing his humor: “”Keep Looking Up was my life’s admonition, I can do little else in my present position.”

The Chandra X-Ray Observatory snapped this interesting image – is Apollo giving us a message?

Here is a cool, narrated video showing the launch of Apollo 11 up close using a 500 frames per second camera. If you’ve ever wondered how they protected some of the structures from the intense heat, fire and steam at launch, you’ll learn something here.

This seems to be making the viral rounds, but has since been picked up by the British tabloids The Telegraph and The Sun. A strange, tetrahedral shape (often described as a pyramid, but from what I’ve seen it is more a tetrahedron) seemingly just hovering and rotating in the skies over Moskow. Goa’uld coming for the Stargate, or just God rolling a d4?

“Billionaire Richard Branson’s spaceship was unveiled today. Imagine the delight of Star Trek fans to see that it was named the VSS Enterprise.

Please check out my blog entry on the subject at: http://dailyspace.blogspot.com/2009/12/star-trek-legacy-continues-this.html“ — Yes, this one at least is likely to actually reach space…

This post was submitted by TheThunderChild.

The zany scientists at Cool Cosmos have been making interesting yet educational videos based on information coming from the Spitzer Space Telescope. The latest is a mockumentary about making a show on colliding galaxies – featuring a rather smart Felicia Day having a difficult time with the way the subject is being presented, with a little (VERY little) help from Sean Astin. Read More to watch the video, then head over to IRrelevant astronomy for more of their videos.

(continue reading…)

NASA’s LCROSS mission, a “cheap” $79 million attempt to determine if there is enougt water on the moon for future use, successfully impacted a Centaur rocket into the moon’s surface at Cabeus Crater, and then followed it with the scientific platform to detect particles in the plume and then likewise impact the surface. However, it failed to produce the “spectacular” plume images everyone expected. It remains to be seen what the scientific data shows. More information is available at the LCROSS mission site. Hopefully we did not anger our lunar overlords…

David Martin writes “This is something I came across recently and though I would share it…

Enjoy!”

When the third SpaceX Falcon 1 launch vehicle failed to achieve orbit (due to failure of the second stage to separate from the first) it did so with the ashes of 208 people on board, including actor James Doohan (Lt. Cmdr. Montgomery “Scotty” Scott on Star Trek, as if I need to tell you) and former astronaut Gordon Cooper. I haven’t seen much data to know whether the rocket at least achieved “outer space” before it was (presumably) destroyed. It also had 3 satellites on board. Despite yet another failure (the Falcon 1 is 0-for-3), SpaceX founder Elon Musk vows to continue, with plans for the much bigger Falcon 9 pressing forward.

Better start rewriting those science books. The International Astronomer’s Union (IAU) have kicked Pluto out of the planetary club, in the process making our solar system consist of only eight planets.