Is this heaven? No, but there are pieces of the heavens in Iowa — and 135 countries, all U.S. states and the United Nations. Specifically, four rice-grain-sized pieces of moon rock from the Apollo 11 mission, the first to land on the Moon. In total, the mission returned to Earth with 47.5 pounds of lunar […]
Astronomy
Posted inCommunity/News
Peak Iowa: ‘Meteor excitement’ brought a small fortune to the Amana area in the 1870s
On Friday, Feb. 12, 1875, shortly before 10:30 p.m., “one of the most brilliant meteors of modern times illuminated the entire State of Iowa, and adjacent parts of the States of Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.” “The meteor, in rapidly moving through the atmosphere, produced a great variety of sounds — rolling, rumbling, and detonations […]
Posted inCentral Iowa, Central Iowa Community/News, Community/News
Deep in a Des Moines golf course sits a haunted observatory with a far-out history
The Drake Municipal Observatory is probably the only scientific facility of its kind more familiar to local golfers than local school kids. Since 1921, it’s sat between the green on the 17th hole of Waveland Golf Course and the tee of the 18th. It’s an anomalous presence among the fairways and the nearby tennis courts, […]
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UI astronomers studying a ‘super-weird’ nebula want 30 minutes with the Webb Space Telescope
Twenty-six years ago, NASA announced a project to launch a space telescope into orbit a million miles from Earth in order to study deep space and light from the early universe. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) transmitted its first images last month, providing a view of the cosmos never seen before. The images were […]
Posted inCommunity/News
My God, it’s full of stars: Eastern Iowa Observatory to host viewing party, discussion this Saturday
The Cedar Amateur Astronomers (CAA) are holding their first public event of 2014 at the Eastern Iowa Observatory this Saturday at 7:30 p.m., offering amateur…
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An IC man’s journey to research high-powered robots
Michael Webb grew up in Iowa City where he cultivated a fascination with all things DIY. That’s why, when he submitted his resume to Stone Aerospace last year, it was entitled, “Michael Webb, I’m a Maker.” Stone Aerospace is an aerospace engineering firm founded by Bill Stone, who explained in a TED talk that he would like to send an exploratory robot called Valkyrie to Jupiter’s moon Europa…
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The aurora borealis might be visible in Iowa and all we can see are these damn clouds
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released an alert this morning concerning an exploding sun spot that could possibly allow…
