The Mary Sue

My Top Seven Favorite Women in Space: Awesome Boots, Vesty-things, and Acts of Ass-Kickery

by Sara Goodwin May 14th

Space - the Final Frontier. The Black. The Intergalactic Highway. The Galactic Empire. Whether you prefer Space Pirates, Space Cowpersons, Space Officers, or Space Princesses, there's a sci-fi for that. Maybe it's my love of amazing boots, leather, and holster-y things that wrap around your legs and arms, but I would like to apply for the position of Space Pirate. Or Space Princess. Or better yet, Space Pirate Princess.

Fictional Character Crushes: Don’t Pretend You Don’t Have Them

Sara's Top Fandom Crushes. Apparently, I kind of have a "type." Don't judge. ;-)

by Sara Goodwin Mar 13th

Different characters can "speak" to different parts of our psyche at different times in our lives and heck, let's be honest - at different times of the same day. I have broken down my fictional crushes into some categories to help organize my thoughts on the matter. Feel free to share your own crushes and opinions in the comments!

If We Had a Really Big Telescope, Could We See Star Wars?

And then if we get the super-high-tech-laser from Paycheck, could we watch Firefly, too?

by Maia Brown-Jackson Aug 13th

Everyone likes watching Star Wars. They're awesome movies, and I think we've all had that majorly trippy moment when we realize "A long time ago" means that everything we're watching happened in the past. But if it was so long ago, and so far away, that the light is reaching us now-- does that mean we could theoretically watch Star Wars live?

Nice Knowing You: Our Favorite Images From the Herschel Space Observatory

by Ian Chant Mar 7th

The Herschel Space Observatory's mission to photograph the stars is winding down, so we wanted to take the chance to remember some of the finest images Herschel captured during its three-year tour of duty. Now, yes, some of these images are color corrected and touched up to highlight the more spectacular points contained within them -- like the star forming inside a galactic bubble eight times more massive than our sun. In our view, that doesn't make them any less valuable to astronomers studying them, which is the whole point. It also makes them way better eye-candy for the rest of us to gape at, so we're just going to be thankful for it, rather than nitpicky.

Two Great New Looks at the Andromeda Galaxy From the Herschel Space Observatory

by Ian Chant Jan 29th

We can't think of a single better way to start your day than with the Herschel Space Observatory's two latest incredible photographs of our nearest galactic neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy. The new images use Herschel's ultra-sensitive instruments to get a better look at the gas and dust that make up so much of Andromeda, resulting in photos that suffuse the galaxy with an otherworldly glow. Which is actually pretty appropriate, when you think about it. Keep reading for more images and details on how Herschel captured them.

Keep Watching The Skies: You Can Help Find Star Clusters In The Andromeda Galaxy

by Ian Chant Dec 5th

We suspect a lot of you kind of enjoy looking at pictures of space on the Internet. That's a reasonable thing to enjoy, and if you do, we've got a project for you that's more enjoyable than whatever you're doing at work and also offers a helping hand to further scientific research. A group of astronomers from the University of Washington, University of Utah, and several other institutions wants your help identifying star clusters in the Andromeda galaxy in your spare time using their new database -- The Andromeda Project.

Hubble Data Confirms Milky Way Collision With Andromeda Galaxy, But We’ll All be Long Dead

by Max Eddy Jun 1st

On Thursday, NASA scientists announced that after scouring reams of data from the Hubble Space Telescope they can say with certainty that our Milky Way is destined to eventually collide with our neighbor the Andromeda galaxy. Of course, it won't happen for about 4 billion years, but it can't hurt to be prepared.