Learn Some Constellations

A quick online guide that leads you through some simple constellations and finding North using the stars.

Mars will look as big as the moon on Aug 27

NOT!

Every year an email gets passed around saying a one-in-a-lifetime event will happen on Aug 27 where Mars will appear in the sky the same size as our moon. It is a hoax email. The only special event on Aug 27 will be thousands of gullible people staring into the night with puzzled expressions.

NASA photos from recent mission

Awe inspiring. Click for high-res. Thanks goes to one of my favorite blogs, Dark Roasted Blend.

Computer Geek Boldly Goes

Charles Simonyi is a programmer's programmer, a true Übergeek among mere poseurs like myself. And now, the man who brought us workplace favorites like Excel has bought his way into space.

Excelsior!

And for the record, I think allowing people to pay huge sums of money to be astronauts is a fantastic way to help support and promote space exploration. I wish NASA would embrace this.

Even at $20 million a ticket, the Russian Space Agency is fully booked until 2009

Sea Launch Explosion

Sea Launch uses a mobile sea platform to out commercial satellites into orbit on Russian rockets. A webcast of yesterday's launch was halted and replaced with the message: "Anomaly on NSS-8 mission. Broadcast concluded."

No one was hurt because everyone moves off the platform onto the control ship before launch. Wise.

Sea Launch Rocket Fails to Launch New Communications Satellite

A commercial Sea Launch Zenit 3SL rocket disintegrated in a fiery catastrophe aboard its oceangoing platform Tuesday, destroying a sophisticated telecommunications satellite payload in a dramatic launch pad explosion reminiscent of the space program's early days.

Official press release

A Sea Launch Zenit-3SL vehicle, carrying the NSS-8 satellite, experienced an anomaly today during launch operations.

Sea Launch Explosion may delay DirecTV's 100 HD channels

IAU puts down Pluto

The draft resolution did not pass. The final version has gone the other way and instead of 3 objects to the old list of 9 planets, we'll be going down to 8. Pluto ,with its odd orbit, is demoted from planet to dwarf planet and will likely be joined by the candidates vying for that title of planet.

New planets

The IAU draft definition of "planet" and "plutons"

If you call Pluto a planet then there are other, larger objects in our solar system that should also be planets. So, either bring them all in or scratch Pluto from the list. Well, how about a compromise:

We'll count Ceres, Charon, and Xena (informal codename of the yet unnamed "2003 UB313") as planets, but distinguish them and Pluto from the 8 "classic planets" and as "plutons". That's the International Astronomical Union proposal anyway. The new definition of a planet would be:

A planet is a celestial body that (a) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (b) is in orbit around a star, and is neither a star nor a satellite of a planet.

But, that opens the door to another 12 objects being added later: 2003 EL61, 2005 FY9, Sedna, Orcus, Quaoar, 2002 TX300, 2002 AW197, Varuna, Ixion, Vesta, Pallas, Hygiea

I wonder is the IAU considered at all what impact this would have on my RPM version codename scheme.

As a fan of the Apollo program I say YAH!

The Moon Landings Were NOT Faked Scientist Jim Scotti goes point by point through the typical arguments and photographs from the "Moon Landings Were Faked" crowd.

This is perhaps the favorite argument of the TMLWF crowd. "There are no stars to be seen in any of the NASA Moon photographs." It is also one of the most easily countered arguments. The lunar photographs show no stars in them because they were exposed for the daylight lit lunar scenes! This badly underexposes any stars in the sky. Try setting up a manual camera (the autoexposure cameras won't easily allow you to do this) for a typical daylight exposure - use the "sunny 16" rule where you set the f-stop of your camera to f/16 and then set the exposure length to the recipricol of the ASA film speed - if you use ASA 100 film, use 1/100 of a second (or 1/125 which is more typically available). Then take a picture of the sky at night. To be sure you're simulating the lunar situation, be sure to light up a foreground object with full daytime lighting so that the printing process will be sure to expose that part of the image properly and not super stretch the dark sky. You won't find a star image there either.

Awesome picture

Self portrait

But black holes are so cool...

... but I guess so are "dark-energy stars". According to some physicist, black holes don't exist. The weird space effects we thought they were causing are actually due to these dark-energy stars. Possibly.

It's a near certainty that black holes don't exist

Space tourism is big business

Richard Branson has nearly a $BILLION and a half of booked flights into space.

X Prize Won

They did it. Commercial passenger travel to space is here.

The budget for their project was something like $20 to $30 million.

X Prize Almost Won

SpaceShipOne just completed it's first of two required trips to win the Ansari X Prize Challenge. Basically it's $10mil to the first company to take 3 civilians into space and do it again with the same vehicle in 2 weeks. Contact Sir Branson for a ride. For more hit the ars.

First private space flight

It's a great day for space exploration, the first private space voyage was just completed today. The company website has details on the project and lots of photos. Congrats to Paul G. Allen (yes, him) and Burt Rutan! It's exciting that we're so close to someone wining the X Prize. It's $10 million to the first company that

• Privately finances, builds & launches a spaceship, able to carry 3 people to 100 km
• Returns safely to Earth
• Repeats the launch with the same ship within 2 weeks

GPS and Galileo

Interesting PDF of the keynote speech from the recent European Navigation Conference (4 pages). Galileo is the new GPS style satellite global navigation system the EU is building. The document talks about how it will work with GPS and provides an interesting summary of GPS development. Example: I didn't know GPS was so old - the first satellite was launched in 1978.