HST

This spring, the Hubble outreach office started a Hubble Treasure Hunt The challenge was to browse through the Hubble raw data archives, and look for undiscovered images, ones that had not been published and were interesting or beautiful. There are a lot of Hubble images. The finalists for the contest have now been announced, in two different categories: one for unprocessed images; the other for processed images. The decision on the winners, will be done by public vote, and the selection of finalist images is up on the web and open for voting:unprocessed images are hereprocessed images are…
"If you don't like what you're doing, you can always pick up your needle and move to another groove." -Timothy Leary Up in the night sky, shortly after sunset, the night sky holds some spectacular sights. Some are permanent, some are transient, some have been known for thousands of years, and some are still being discovered. Looking to the west after sunset tonight, this is what you're likely to see. Image credit: Me, using Stellarium, available free at http://stellarium.org. The Big Dipper, perhaps the most famous collection of seven stars in the night sky, looms large over the horizon. As…
"Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody." -Mark Twain Back before the telescope was invented, Saturn was known as the Old Man of the Skies. The slowest-moving of the naked-eye planets, it's the only one that would reliably be in nearly the same location, year after year. You can find it all summer, after sunset, by following the "arc" of the handle of the big dipper all the way until you run into the brightest northern-hemisphere star, Arcturus, and then speeding on to the very bright Spica. Saturn is right next door. Image credit: EarthSky.org. But…
Image by pugetsoundphotowalks. Apologies in advance for a very Warning - a proudly Canada-centric post today.  First, a bit of background - we Canadians pay two kinds of sales tax. The goods and services tax (5%) which is consistent across Canada, in addition to provincial sales taxes that varies from location to location (with the exception of Alberta, which has no provincial sales tax at all).  If I understand it correctly, neither the PST nor GST applies to all purchases (for example basic groceries are exempt from both, while in Ontario gym fees are exempt only from the PST).  Ontario…