Články dle značky: space

The moon has fascinated us for most of recorded history: a guiding light on dark seas, a sacred disk illuminating the heavens, a symbol of the unattainable, a god. For most of human existence, its stark, cratered surface remained impossibly beyond reach. All that changed 50 years ago, on July 20, 1969. As some 500 million people watched a live televised broadcast (the largest ever TV audience at the time), the commander of the Apollo 11 mission Neil Armstrong emerged from the Lunar Module called the Eagle and – in his NASA spacesuit - became the first man in history to step onto the Moon’s dusty surface.

TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has been searching the sky for exoplanets outside our solar system since 2018. Charles University’s Petr Zasche was part of the international team that made a new sensational find: an eclipsing six-star system.

The Bolzano lecture series, organised by the Learned Society of the Czech Republic and the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, returned to Charles University this week. The guest lecturer invited to speak this year was German-born astrophysicist Reinhard Genzel, co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2020.

A year-and-a-half since it was launched into orbit 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has proven to be an overwhelming success. The infrared observatory has stunned viewers from the get-go with images of unparalleled precision.

Advancing higher and professional education in the field of Earth observation is the main goal of the ESA initiative Earth Observation Training Academy, to be led by Charles University. Representatives of the institutions involved outlined the project’s aims this week.