Herschel Probes Huge Dog Star

The Herschel Infra-red Space Telescope, launched in May, is already giving good pay-off with the most in-depth imaging and spectrographic analysis of the hypergiant sun Canis Majoris.

Canis Majoris is, so far, the biggest star in the universe, first observed about two centuries ago, and it could go supernova, any millennium now! There is a good posting about it here at the BBC News website.

Info from Wikipedia states that, "If the Earth were to be represented by a sphere one centimeter in diameter, the Sun would be represented as a sphere with a diameter of one hundred and nine centimeters, at a distance of one hundred and seventeen meters. At these scales, VY Canis Majoris would have a diameter of approximately 2.25 kilometers."

So that's BIG, but big does not necessarily mean bright and it is often smaller stars that burn brighter and faster. Canis Majoris is also one of the coolest giant stars we know of and as a result is comparatively dim.

Hubble Trouble?

Space Shuttle Atlantis has ferried up the maintenance crew to overhaul the Hubble Space Telescope. For more information on this mission go here.

For more on Hubble and the universe it reveals, including a fantastic gallery of images, go here.

NASA , ISS, 2009, Calendar, Free.

Those generous, and heroic, folk at NASA have designed a calendar originally intended for teachers and made available to everyone as a free download (pdf 5.3 Mb). The calendar marks the Space Station's tenth anniversary and is illustrated with photos from the International Space Station and its missions. Key dates relating to the project are listed, as well as some facts and historic information...


Check out the ISS homepage and you can get the calendar there. It works best at A3 paper size, but A4 is also OK, if you don't mind some tiny text.

NASA International Space Station website

Ten years in orbit! Keep watching the skies...