Fryeburg Academy Physics

After the Hubble Space Telescope was repaird in 1993, the photos it sent back were nothing short of stunning. Humans had never seen the universe in that way before, and more scientific papers have been written from Hubble’s images than any other piece of scientific equipment in history.

There is a space shuttle mission happening right now (STS-125), in which the crew of Atlantis is making some modifications, upgrades, and repairs. These repairs are intended to allow the telescope to function until 2014, at which time Hubble will be decommissioned after more than 20 years in space.

This series of photos from The Big Picture is pretty amazing and features the astronauts and scenery from the mission. My personal favorite is #18 with the shuttle and telescope silhouetted by the sun.

Here’s another post of The Boston Globe’s feature The Big Picture, this time a series of photos of a recent eruption of the volcano Mount Redoubt in Alaska. #1 is now my desktop background. There are some great photos in here, I recommend you check them out.

When human beings first left Earth in 1961, a completely new viewpoint of the planet was discovered.  Astronaut and cosmonaut photos from orbit were something people had never seen before, and they were, quite simply, stunning.  Since then, permanent satellites and observatories have been launched, and with programs like Google Earth, satellite images are available to the general public.  I bet many of you (maybe all?) have looked for satellite pictures of your house; I certainly have.

The Big Picture from the Boston Globe has a series of pictures taken from orbit, and they are amazing.  What do you think?

The Astronomy Picture of the Day is a website maintained by NASA that posts, as you might guess, an astronomy-related picture each day. Today’s picture features the launch of the space shuttle Endeavour passing in front of a nearly full moon during a night launch, and is just really cool. 

Enjoy your holiday!

…you should get a load of this place!  The Boston Globe features a picture or series of pictures each day from various places around the planet, and on Monday they had 32 pictures of Antarctica, including many of the scientific bases there. Some of these photos are spectacular; and yes, before you ask, penguins ARE birds.

Cool pictures from Antarctica