Blood Moon in the garden

This is the second in a row of four consecutive total lunar eclipses in 2014 and 2015, photographed on October 8th from our garden in Menlo Park, CA. If you’ve missed it, here’s our photo of the first total lunar eclipse in this series of four taken in April from much the same location. This time around, we kept true to the name of our blog and added a little pink flavour to the composition:

The second in a row of four consecutive total lunar eclipses in 2014 and 2015, photographed on October 8th from our garden in Menlo Park, CA.

And here is a more conventional photo. You can see the stars come out as the Moon is dimmed – and not only the stars! The bright point to the left of the Moon, about a lunar diameter away from its limb, is the planet Uranus.

Total lunar eclipse on October 8th, 2014.

 

 

How black holes shape giant galaxies

WRITTEN BY: NORBERT WERNER NASA just published a beautiful collage of images of four giant elliptical galaxies, taken with the Chandra X-ray Observatory, from a study I published together with Aurora and several other collaborators. Giant ellipticals are the largest galaxies in the Universe. They also appear to be very old: most … Continue reading

Episode 8: Galaxies and black holes grew up together

WRITTEN BY: AURORA SIMIONESCU AND NORBERT WERNER If our previous episode left you wondering whether black holes are too strange to actually exist in the real Universe, you’ll be happy (or shocked) to find out that, by now, astronomers have quite convincing evidence that these exotic objects aren’t just a … Continue reading

News: There IS a spoon.

Universe in a cup

A study lead by Norbi and Aurora will appear in the October 31st issue of Nature. This article provides new evidence that the universe underwent a turbulent and violent youth more than 10 billion years ago. At that time, billions of exploding stars created vast quantities of heavy elements. This was also … Continue reading

Episode 7: Fascinating facts about black holes

WRITTEN BY: AURORA SIMIONESCU We all wish we could experience time in a different way – something other than the inexorably regular tick-tock of your wrist watch or wall clock. Einstein’s genius consisted in daring to envision, and prove, that this wasn’t just a human dream, but a part of … Continue reading