Meade Instruments Corp. to be acquired by Jinghua Optics & Electronics

Meade Instruments Co…

Meade Instruments Corp. (est. 1972), one of the world's largest designers and manufacturers of telescopes and accessories for amateur astronomers, and Jinghua Optics Electronics Co., Ltd. (JOC) announced May 17 that Meade and JOC's wholly owned subsidiary, JOC North America…

Meade Instruments Co…
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Archive for NASA's Astrophysics Division

Planetary Society Hangout: Feb 21st – The Sequester at NASA with Jon Morse

By alkaon on February 20, 2013 No Comments

See other posts from February 2013

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Thursday at noon PST/3pm EST/20:00 UT

Posted By Casey Dreier

2013/02/20 12:02 CST

Topics:

This week we will be talking about the effects of the impending Sequester, the across-the-board cuts to almost all federal programs, on NASA and the U.S. Space Program. The Sequester is scheduled to begin on March 1st, 2013, unless Congress acts to replace it with targeted cuts and/or revenue of equal value.

Joining me is a very special guest from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Dr. Jon Morse. Dr. Morse previously served as the Director of NASA’s Astrophysics Division in Washington, D.C., and was a Senior Policy Analyst for the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). He currently serves as the Associate Vice President for Research for Physical Sciences Engineering at RPI.

Dr. Morse will bring a wealth of experience on how last minute budget cuts can effect the direction and capability within NASA, how a division makes decisions to prioritize programs, and what it’s like to work for NASA headquarters.

As always, we will be taking your questions on our Google+ event page, Twitter via the hashtag #planetarylive, or on the YouTube comments thread for the video. Please feel free to submit a question in advance if you cannot watch live.

The video will be posted here a few minutes before noon PST/3pm EST/2000h UTC on Thursday, Feb 21st, 2013. If you don’t see the video, or the video is not displaying properly, please reload this page.

Background Reading:

Since I don’t know how best to represent the concept of sequestration with a picture, here’s a portrait of William Herschel.

William Herschel (1738-1822)

National Portrait Gallery, London

William Herschel (1738-1822)

Portrait by Lemuel Francis Abbott. Herschel discovered the planet Uranus in 1781.

Article source: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/casey-dreier/2013/20130221-planetary-society-hangout-nasa-sequester-jon-morse.html

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NASA Image of the day

Launching Balloons to Study Space Weather

 
In Antarctica in January, 2013 – the summer at the South Pole – scientists released 20 balloons, each eight stories tall, into the air to help answer an enduring space weather question: when the giant radiation belts surrounding Earth lose material, where do the extra particles actually go? This NASA-funded mission is called BARREL, for Balloon Array for Radiation belt Relativistic Electron Losses. Each balloon launched by the BARREL team floated for anywhere from three to 40 days, measuring X-rays produced by fast-moving electrons high up in the atmosphere.BARREL works hand in hand with another NASA mission called the Van Allen Probes, which travels directly through the Van Allen radiation belts. The belts wax and wane over time in response to incoming energy and material from the sun, sometimes intensifying the radiation through which satellites orbiting Earth must travel. Scientists need to understand this process better, and even provide forecasts of such space weather, in order to protect our spacecraft.› Read MoreImage Credit: NASA
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