Incredible Space Telescopes

Hubble Space Telescope

How Many Space Telescopes Can You Name? Most people will immediately thing of The Hubble Space Telescope and all the amazing images that have been on TV and the Internet. Believe it or not, there are dozens of telescopes orbiting Earth right now, and dozens more whose mission has been terminated. 

Telescopes are placed into orbit around the Earth or are sent farther out into space to get a clearer view of the Universe. There are many different types of space telescopes. Some are used to study a special object like the Sun. Others are used to study the different types of light given off by objects in space. 

X-ray and gamma-ray telescopes study the hottest and most explosive objects in space. Infrared telescopes study the places where stars are born and can look into the centers of galaxies. Optical telescopes study the visible light from space and ultraviolet telescopes study very hot stars. Many of these types of light (such as x-rays, gamma-rays, most ultraviolet, and infrared) can only be studied from space because they are blocked by our atmosphere. Reference 

NASA has four large powerful space-based telescopes called the Great Observatories. Their mission is to examine a particular region of space using differing technologies. 

Spitzer Space Telescope

The Hubble Space Telescope: launched in 1990 aboard Discovery, it observes visible and near-ultraviolet light. 

The Compton Gamma Ray Observatory: launched in 1991 aboard Atlantis observes gamma rays. In 2000 it was deorbited due to a failed gyroscope. 

The Chandra X-ray Observatory: launched in 1999 aboard Columbia observes soft x-rays. 

The Spitzer Space Telescope: launched in 2003 aboard a Delta II rocket it observes the infrared spectrum. 

Kepler Space Telescope

The Hubble and Kepler (see my post about the Kepler Space Telescope HERE) are optical telescopes, which captures optical or visible light. There are no atmospheric effects in space, so the resolutions are significantly higher. This is why placing a space observatory on the moon makes so much sense. 

Cameras images are monochrome, meaning one color. Different filters are used to capture infrared (deep red in color) or ultraviolet channels (deep blue in color). These images are then combined to make a single image. So those amazing images we see are not how the space telescopes capture them. Rather, they are combined to make a false color version. This method is used by astronomers to make the images more comprehensible. 

Example: Here are actual images of the asteroid Ida taken by NASA’a Galileo satellite. On the right is a false color image. This reveals more of what elements make up the asteroid. 

Here are a few more examples of false colored images:

Comet Halley

I hope you enjoyed this post. We live in an incredibly amazing universe and with the use of space telescopes are beginning to unravel the secrets of our cosmos. 

You can visit Stephen Tremp at his Website Breakthrough Blogs. Stop by Friday through Sunday for the Weekend Follies, a great way to get a few laughs as you wind down the work week.

Storytelling A to Z: Themes, tags, and tales!

Sign-ups have started for the 2015 A to Z challenge (yay!) and this year's list is already shaping up to greatness - and involves storytelling in more than one way!

First off, you probably already noticed that we have some hew tags:

You can now use the shiny Mythology (MY) tag if you plan on blogging about myths, folklore, legends, urban legends, ghost stories, and other traditional stories or myth-related topics. (I personally will be rocking this tag on my main blog with a theme - which will be revealed soon!)

The Writing (WR) tag, for the first time this year, also includes Storytelling! So if you produce, perform and share stories in a non-written format, feel free to take advantage of the broader concept of the tag!

As a co-host, I will once again be keeping an eye out for the year's storytelling participants on the side, and possibly create a blog hop that focuses on storytellers of the performing kind. Last year was the first time we gathered them, and it was an impressive list. Good news: Many of them are returning in 2015!

Of course you don't have to be a storyteller to have a story-related theme. In the next two months many bloggers will be hunting for themes (and revealing them... more about that later!). I am a big advocate of themes. I have participated in A to Z for three years, and have done folktale-related themes for the past two - Weird Princesses in 2013 and Tales with Colors in 2014. They were immense fun, and made me feel like they also gave people a chance to discover new things that they could play with. If you have always wanted to introduce us to your 26 favorite Greek deities, or the 26 magic treasures you always wished you could own, or the 26 most traumatic Grimm experiences of your childhood... Do share :)

Keep signing up, keep blogging!

Oh, and also: If you would like to volunteer as a minion helper to the A to Z team, or my team in particular, do let me know!

@TarkabarkaHolgy
The Multicolored Diary - Adventures in Storytelling
MopDog - The crazy thing about Hungarians

How Do You Find Your Ideas?

How do you find your ideas? Authors are often asked this question in interviews. Or perhaps; Do you have trouble finding ideas to write about? My problem is the opposite. I have too many ideas. What I’ve found is that having an idea and getting the idea down in words that actually say what I imagine they should, is a totally different pot o’ honey. Does that metaphor work? I also don’t have enough time to actually write a different story for every idea that I have.

That said I’ve found that using more than one idea in a story can add not only a new dimension to it, but adding two, three or sometimes four different ideas can make the original idea much more profound, intricate, and beguiling to the reader.  Kind of like a photographer taking a shot with one type of lens and then finding that if a wider (or narrower) angle is used the whole view of the photo, the whole concept and direction of the photograph is changed, broadened and the focus encompasses more than the photographer originally dreamed of. Or a painter who finds a new color that brings a startling new life to his painting, a life not previously glimpsed, an ambiance not previously hoped for but now heartily embraced and enhanced. Or what about a musician who finally plays a note in a sequence he's never used before and falls into a piece of music the world must hear?

Do you use more than one idea in a story, different lenses on the same scene, more than one new color on your canvas? Do you mix and match, push your mind outside of your “normal” range to see what creation you are capable of producing? Because to me, finding the “newness” in ones “old” methods is what makes creating so beautiful and satisfying, even if it doesn’t always work the way we think it should.   

Images from:

www.piersidegallery.com

myphotographydesigns.blogspot.com

www.mindmapinspiration.com

Multiple By Twelve

Can you believe there's only one more day left in January, 2015? This first month flew by and I expect time to continue its fast wheeling. Have you accomplished what you  hoped to during these first thirty days of the year.

I wrote over 40,000 words during this month, wrote 23 blog posts and didn't keep count of the blogs I visited or how many Tweets I wrote and read 11 books. And that is 1/12th of my year. How great would 2015 be if I multiply those numbers by twelve? A pretty good year.

I don't do the New Year's Resolutions thing but I do make some general plans. January far surpassed my planning. Can I do all that 11 more times?

Look back at your past month. Did you do well? Can you multiply that by twelve? Or can you do even better.

I'd like to think I can all except for one month. APRIL! During that one month, my focus will be on blogging, making new contacts and having fun as well as making sure that participants have a good experience. Have you signed up yet?

Did you accomplish everything you planned on during January? Can you take what you did then and do that much twelve more times. Or do you need to step up your game? Are you better with short term goals or long term plans? Is A to Z part of this year's plan? What works best for you? Daily, weekly, monthly or yearly goals?

Confessions of an A-to-Z Road Trip Participant

How many (estimated) new blogs -- on the previous A-to-Z Signup List -- have YOU read between April 2014 and today? 

Let's be honest, visiting all of them is a massive undertaking. Needless to say, the "move along at your own pace" nature of our Post A-to-Z Challenge Road Trip is a relief for those of us who may have pulled our cars over for a tune-up, more than a few times. Whoever has managed to get through the entire list in April, let alone throughout the rest of the year (where road tripping helps participants get caught up to speed) needs to bottle their superpowers up into a productivity drink, and sell it! 

Having participated in the Road Trip for at least three years, you'd think I'd have this blog-visiting think down to a science. The truth is, like most things in life, I can only visit as many blogs as I am able...when I am able. Sometimes I visit more than a handful of blogs. On other days, I don't visit any at all. While I'm at it, allow me to confess some other things about what transpires during my Road Tripping activities:

• If I visited, read your content and left a response but you still don't see the comment, chances are it's not me....it's Blogger!

• When I have to prove I'm not a robot every single time I leave a comment on your blog, this task makes me less likely to visit again. That doesn't mean I won't ever return. It does, however, make me hesitant to bother with the extra steps involved with reading your blog posts...especially when there are a number of other blogs that provide a better, user-friendly experience.

Speaking of being user-friendly...

• If your blog takes forever to load, I'm not sticking around, regardless of how interesting the subject matter of the post you wrote (and/or the name of your blog) appears to be.

By the time April rolls around, I am certain that I will have not visited all 2,000+ blogs that signed up for last year's challenge. Still, between May 2014 and March 2015, I know I will have visited (many) more blogs that I didn't get to in April -- because of my participation in the Road Trip. That's good enough for me...and the bloggers who were, and will be, on the receiving end of those visits and comments, of course!

What confessions, if any, do YOU have to share about your participation in the Post A-to-Z Challenge Road Trip so far?

How many (estimated) new blogs -- on the A-to-Z Signup List -- have YOU visited between April 2014 and today?

A-to-Z Challenge Co-Host Nicole Ayers is listening to Beyonce's "Flawless (Remix)," among other tunes, while arranging this blog post. She currently supports members of the U.S. Armed Forces, discusses emergency preparedness and movies that make you cry at The Madlab Post. Connect with her @MadlabPost on Twitter.