There is a fascinating workshop being held this week in Baltimore at the Space Telescope Science Institute: Habitable Worlds: Across Time and Space.

The symposium is designed to provide discussion of topics related to the challenges life faces both beginning and developing on a planetary body — either within our solar system or on distant #Exoplanets  

+Tony Darnell, +Carol Christian , physicist Eva Villaver, and +Mario Livio will hold a hangout this week to discuss, among a great many other interesting topics:

•How well does the specific challenges facing habitability on Earth extend to other planets in our solar system and exoplanets?
•What role does the galactic habitable zone play? How important is it?
•What are the limits to Earth-like life?
•Habitability of planets and moons during all phases of stellar evolution
•Habitability in low-luminosity environments

We hope you can make it live. But if you can’t, remember that it will be archived on our YouTube Channel.  Please bring any questions and comments and we’ll try to answer them. 

See you there!

Find out more about the Habitable Worlds Symposium here:
http://www.stsci.edu/institute/conference/habitable-worlds/

Watch webcasts of the talks here:
https://webcast.stsci.edu/webcast/

Terra Sapiens: The Human Chapter in the History of Earth
Dr. David Grinspoon, Library of Congress

Considering that Earth’s history extends back more than four billion years, our species is an absolute newcomer, though one with significant impact. Dr. Grinspoon will discuss the
current human-dominated phase of our planet¹s life in a broader context; juxtaposed against previous geological eras in Earth¹s history, as well as what¹s known from studying changes on other planets. The goal is to better understand the essence of our current moment in geological time and what it means for intelligent life in the universe and for the future of our civilization.

Host: Dr. Frank Summers

Recorded live on April 29, 2014 at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, MD, USA

For more information: http://hubblesite.org/about_us/public_talks/

Backyard stargazers get a monthly guide to the northern hemisphere’s skywatching events with “Tonight’s Sky.” May features the Eta Aquarid meteor shower, and could feature a meteor storm later in the month as Earth passes through the debris from Comet 209P/LINEAR.

“Tonight’s Sky” is produced by HubbleSite.org, online home of the Hubble Space Telescope. This is a recurring show, and you can find more episodes — and other astronomy videos — at HubbleSite.org.

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The Monkey Head Nebula (also known as NGC 2174) is a star-forming region in which bright, newborn stars near the center of the nebula illuminate the surrounding gas with energetic radiation. This radiation, along with strong stellar winds, erodes away the lower density gas. Pockets of higher density gas resist this erosion, and form pillars and peaks along the inner edge of the roughly circular cloud.

This video showcases visible and infrared light views of a collection of pillars along one edge of the nebula. The sequence begins with a view of the night sky near the constellation of Gemini and Orion. The view zooms through observations from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 to reveal a Hubble Space Telescope visible light view of the top of this region of pillars.

A cross-fade transitions not only between Hubble’s visible and infrared light views, but also from a two-dimensional image to a three-dimensional sculpted model of the region. The camera then pulls back to reveal the landscape of evaporating peaks of gas and dust surrounded by stars. Note that the visualization is intended to be a reasonable interpretation (not scientifically accurate) and that distances within the model are significantly compressed.

For more information and to download this video:
http://hubblesite.org/videos/video_details/23-evaporating-peaks-pillars-in-the-monkey-head

For more videos, visit: http://hubblesite.org/videos/

Astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute have devised a new technique that allows the +Hubble Space Telescope to more accurately measure distances to stars within our galaxy – up to 10 times farther than previously possible using a method known as parallax.

Parallax is the most reliable method for directly measuring distances to stars within our galaxy. It uses the geometry of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun to see tiny, almost imperceptible shifts of background stars behind the object being measured.

Previously this technique was only effective for distances up to 750 light years. Anything further away and we couldn’t see the background stars shift; the change was too small.

This new capability allows astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope to measure parallax distances up to 7,500 light years away – an astonishing increase in precision of a factor of 10!

Please join us as +Tony Darnell and +Scott Lewis discuss this new technique with Dr. Adam Riess, winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics and Dr. Stefano Casertano, the developers of this new ability for #Hubble .

I decided to see whether the Heart Rate Monitor/Sensor would still work after the Samsung Galaxy S5 was burned in fire for about 20 seconds.
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How well does the newly released Samsung Galaxy S5 stack up to a test against fire? See for yourself!
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The Samsung Galaxy S5 may be water resistant, but is it boiling hot water resistant?
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