Now that we've hunted down Orion and been bull ridin' with Taurus, it's time for us to discover a pair of celestial brothers – the Gemini twins. Gemini is one of the members of the zodiac which means the imaginary path the Sun, Moon and planets follow across the sky passes through the stars of this constellation. But what happens when you don't have these solar systems objects to point the way to the pair? Then look over the top of Orion's left shoulder and you'll see two bright stars that live about a thumb's length apart from each other – Castor and Pollux. For many of us, Gemini will be almost directly overhead at sky dark. (...)
Read the rest of Astronomy for Kids: Gemini – Twins Everywhere! (593 words)

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This Week in Space with Miles O'Brien highlights: Space hits the red carpet: IMAX: Hubble 3D debuts at the Air and Space Museum, a Falcon 9 "hot fire" disappoints, the shuttle program manager says "no problem" for shuttle to keep flying, and safely — it's only a question of money — and Obama gets ready to speak up for his controversial new plan for NASA…and braces for what promises to be a firestorm of protest at planned April 15 conference on the future of America's space program.

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If you don't know this face, then let me introduce you. His name is Ken Crawford and he's the man "behind the curtain" of some of the most amazing works of astrophotography just this side of the Hubble Space Telescope. This northern California resident embarked on his celestial imaging journey almost a decade ago and his work graces everything from magazines to NASA's "Astronomy Picture of the Day". So what does the current President of the Advanced Imaging Conference, Inc. do when the skies are cloudy? Then step inside to find out… (...)
Read the rest of A Deep Sky Celebration… (123 words)

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All 9 Merlin 1C engines fired successfully today, March 13. This photo shows the fire generated from the flushing of fuel and LOX, but no engines actually started during an aborted test on Mar 11. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX announced that today’s (Mar 13) test firing of all 9 Merlin first stage engines was successful at Pad 40 at Cape Canaveral. This is a major milestone towards the planned inaugural first flight of the Falcon 9 rocket which SpaceX is building. This success follows an aborted test firing attempt on Thursday (Mar 11) and several other delays due to poor weather at the Cape this week.

The Falcon 9 will play a crucial role in resupplying cargo for the International Space Station after the scheduled retirement of NASA’s Space Shuttle program set for late this year or early 2011.(...)
Read the rest of Successful Engine Test Firing for SpaceX Inaugural Falcon 9 (236 words)

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The most powerful operational heavy-ion collider in the world, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) recently recorded the highest ever temperature created in an Earth-based laboratory of 4 trillion Kelvin. Achieved at the almost speed of light collision of gold ions, this resulted in the temporary existence of quark-gluon soup – something first seen at about ten to the power of minus twelve of the first second after the big bang.(...)
Read the rest of Astronomy Without A Telescope – Home Made Quark-Gluon Soup (504 words)

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