Need some fresh wallpaper for your computer Desktop? Try checking out NASA’s top 10 Pictures, including the rather nice pictures of an active lava flow on Io pictured to the right. Cool stuff.
[tags]NASA,Space[/tags]
NASA’s Top 10 Pictures
Category Archives: Astronomy
Stardust – NASA’s Comet Sample Return Mission
Reader Bill Harris reminded me that tonight is the night that Stardust, NASA’s comet sample return mission, will return to earth carrying its cargo of aerogel that was exposed to the particles in the wake of Comet P/Wild 2. At 2:12AM PST on Sunday morning, the probe will jettison it’s cargo at 105,000 feet over Utah, and helicopters will recover the cargo. Interestingly enough, they anticipate that only 45 hits will be recorded in the square foot or so of aerogel, so they have a project similar to Seti@Home planned to scan the plates, but instead of needing your computer time, they need your eyes. The entire panel must be examined under high magnification, and they want to employ volunteer labor to help find these particle hits.
In any case, check out the link, consider volunteering, and stay tuned for more info as it becomes available.
Stardust – NASA’s Comet Sample Return Mission
Addendum: Phil Plait has a nicer writeup and reminds that if the weather is clear, you might be able to observe the reentry of the probe from the Western U.S. It’s cloudy and rainy here, so I doubt we’ll get any chances here. Too bad.
Addendum2: Surprisingly, it looks like it might be clearing up. I’m thinking of trying to snap some quickie video of the reentry. It will be pretty low on the horizon when it shows up here, and I’m not sure exactly the best way to photograph this thing, but we shall see. 🙂
Addendum3: Nope, while the sky was clear, I suspect that the local horizon to the north was slightly too high, and the object passed behind it. Oh well.
[tags]Comet,NASA,Stardust,Space,Science[/tags]
What’s Up 2006
Courtesy of Phil Plait of the Bad Astronomy Blog, here’s a link to a book entitled What’s Up 2006, a collection of astronomy related “projects” that you can do, one for each day of the year. It’s a 13.7 megabyte download, but is over 400 pages. Enjoy!
[tags]Astronomy,Amateur Astronomy,Telescope[/tags]
Leap Seconds
Unnoticed amidst last night’s revelry was the passage of a scheduled leap second. If you ever wanted to know more about them, you could review the U.S. Naval Observatory page on Leap Seconds. After reading this page, you should be able to understand why the insertion of a leap second does not mean that the earth’s rotation has slowed down by a second out of the year, the source of many misguided extrapolation arguments given against the age of the Earth.
Nice view of Saturn Rings
Moon to Occult Spica
Sadly, it won’t be visible here in California, but for much of the United States, Christmas morning will feature a rare occultation of Spica by the moon. Thanks to Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy Blog for pointing out the rare event which, well, sadly won’t be seen from here.
Photo Fraud on Survivor!
Last night I watched the final episode of Survivor Guatamala (yeah, I know, reality television is the opiate of the masses, so sue me) and I spotted something that made me stop the TiVo, rewind, and note something to my wife.
The particular video shot is one of their classic “night vision” pictures of one of the Mayan pyramids, obviously meant to be a timelapse, with the Milky Way whizzing around and a lovely full moon. But there is one big problem:
The full moon and the stars weren’t moving in the same direction!.
The moon will visibly move against the background of stars since the moon take about an hour longer to go around the earth each day than the stars do, but the difference is pretty small (about 45 in rate) so in a shot like this, the moon will mostly look like it tracks the background stars. This shot was assembled from at least two different and possibly three different video layers.
For shame!
Phil Plait v. Bart Sibrel
Some of you may remember hearing the story about Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin punching some lunatic who was trying to badger him into swearing on the Bible that he really did land on the moon. That was Bart Sibrel, and he’s gonna be on the radio today to sell his brand of bullflop on 97.1 FM St. Louis. Luckily for all, Bad Astronomy astronomer and blogger Phil Plait has also agreed to be on the show. It will be at 5:00 PM Central time Monday, Dec 12th, and can be heard via their streaming website. I’ll be tuned in!
Update: Sigh. Their website requires IE, so I guess I won’t be tuned in. Bummer.
SETI@home a security risk?
This rather wacky report talks about the possibility that ETs could infect the earth’s computers with viruses by transmitting certain signals which cause (say) buffer overflows in our computers and infect the internet.
Dr. Carrigan thinks that the SETI scientists should implement some kind of decontamination procedure to clean the signals before they are distributed.
It seems kind of obvious to me that if we knew enough to conclude that a particular signal was trying to act as a virus, we’d have pretty strong proof that extra-terrestrial intelligence was a reality.
I tried to locate the actual article, but could only find this link to the abstract.
Whacky.
That’s no moon!
The Saturn probe Cassini snapped another nice photo of Mimas using the narrow-angle camera on October 13, 2005. It’s very nice, even if the sight of it does cause the rebel forces on Alderon to quake in their boots.
Addendum: Mimas has been mentioned here before.
First Light
Over the last couple of days I managed to skim a bunch of reports that scientists had discovered the light from stars which formed only 200 million years after the Big Bang, but the matter seemed pretty dry and uninteresting. But try reading Phil Plait’s account of the discovery. Not only does Phil do an excellent job of explaining the discovery in accurate yet understandable terms, he also conveys the thrill of new discovery. He’s psyched about this stuff, and it rubs off pretty easily.
Pluto has not just one moon, but three…
Breaking news from Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy Blog: Pluto has two previously undiscovered moons circling it. Neat! Nice press release, go read it.
Mars at Opposition
I haven’t blogged too much about things having to do with astronomy as of late, but last Friday I took time out of my normal telescope making activities to actually stare through one: actually the 8″ Alvan Clark refractor (nicknamed Leah) that’s at the Chabot Space and Science Center. Mars is currently closing on its closest approach to the earth on October 29-30th, and is currently well placed for observation. The air conditions were slightly foggy but rather still, so I could see lots of good detail on Mars. If you need help identifying features on Mars, you can use the Java Marslet, a cool little applet that shows the features of Mars as they appear through a telescope. An example view (corresponding to what I saw on Friday) appears on the right. I could see just the hint of the polar cap appearing as a very bright white dot near the bottom of the disk, and could easily see Serpentis and Meridiani Margaritfer as horizontal features crossing the disc. Syrtis Major was just coming up over the limb, and could be seen when seeing becomes particularly still. Overall, one of the nicer views of Mars I’ve seen in recent years.
If you get a chance to see Mars through a telescope, take advantage. It’s pretty cool.
Andromeda Galaxy in IR
Courtesy of the Bad Astronomy Blog, some very nice images of our closest galactic neighbor M31, the Andromeda Galaxy taken with the Spitzer telescope in infrared. It shows a great deal of detail which is missing from visible light photographs. Very nice.
(Okay, okay, there are the Magellenic clouds, and other dwarf galaxies that are closer, but you get the idea.)
Big Blue Marble
NASA has released a series of Earth images entitled Blue Marble Next Generation, which includes maps of the entire earth rendered without clouds in each f the 12 months of the year and resolutions of 2km per pixel. Very nice.