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I've taken a ton of photographs over the last week, but it's taking me forever to go through them, make HDRs, upload them and tag them. I had hoped to start writing about them tonight but I'm still working on it. So I have to fall back on some links again. In this case, something that combines space exploration and maps, a chart made by National Geographic that give a visual representation of 50 years of missions to explore our solar system and space beyond. The original National Geographic page is here, which has a special viewer, or you can view the whole thing in one big image here. **** Oops. Gregg's right, I already wrote about this two weeks ago. current weather: Partly Cloudy/Haze, 37, Wind: calm; Man it was cold today Tags: astronomy, maps, national geographic, space
Current Location: 41.144N 81.501W
Current Mood:  tired
Current Music: none
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One of my favorite parts of the new Star Trek movie was when the Enterprise dropped out of warp in the atmosphere of Titan, and then rose up out of the atmosphere with Saturn in the background. Well, JJ Abrams, Paramount Pictures, and CBS Studios released high-resolution images of the shot today, and it looks fantastic. In the real world, and only somewhat related, I saw today that the first rocky planet outside of the solar system has been found. Although it is not a gas giant, it's 5 times more massive than Earth. And way too close to its star. But it's still a breakthrough. I read a couple of weeks ago that the new Kepler space telescope may actually be able to detect not only rocky planets within the habitable zone of a star, but even moons of gas giants, as small as 0.2 times as massive as Earth. I know there are all sorts of exciting discoveries being made in all sorts of different fields, but for me personally, the search for planets outside of our solar system is by far the most interesting and exciting to me. current weather: Clear, 56, Wind: N 1 Tags: astronomy, exoplanets, star trek
Current Location: 41.144N 81.501W
Current Mood:  excited
Current Music: none
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There was a story on All Things Considered this evening about an observation made by a Carnegie Mellon grad student in Pittsburgh: The Grant Building (no relation to myself), which has been continuously blinking out "PITTSBURGH" in Morse code from a red beacon on its roof since 1929, was apparently spelling "PITETSBKRRH" instead! He noticed it while waiting for July 4th fireworks to begin. NPR asked him to go out and check on it again yesterday, and here was the result; whatever the problem is, it's gotten worse: On a not-entirely-related note (but I have a lot of random links to post), I came across this map which gives an idea what Earth radio and television signals are currently arriving at nearby stars. Regulus and Mizar are still pretty much in the dark, and Capella is getting ready to watch the final season of Star Trek and the moon landing. At Wolf 359, a Federation fleet is attempting to defend Earth from a Borg invasion, I mean, getting ready to watch Janet Jackson's boob slip out at the Super Bowl. It's a neat diagram but I have to admit the idea of aliens really being able to watch Earth broadcasts seems a little dubious to me. I can't even pick up Channel 19 from Cleveland, and it's only 19 miles away. Does that signal really reach that far into space? By the way, that first story really makes me wish I knew Morse code. It just seems like one of those useful things. current weather: Partly Cloudy, 65, Wind: calm; This has been a very oddly temperate summer... Tags: astronomy, maps, npr, pittsburgh, space, video
Current Location: 41.144N 81.501W
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Caprica - Bear McCreary - A Tauron Sacrifice
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Hmmm... it's 15 minutes until 2009 and I'm still awake. That means I'm in danger of breaking my general policy of sleeping through a year change, but I guess there's still time to get into bed before midnight. But since I'm up, I might as well sneak one last post in for the year. Today's Astonomy Picture of the Day was actually a series of 7,000 time lapse images from The Sky in Motion: túrána hott kurdís by hasta la otra méxico! from Till Credner on Vimeo. If you click the link beneath the video you should be able to go the Vimeo page to see the video in higher resolution. These are all from still images - and on The Sky in Motion they give details about the shots, specifically the exposure and interval of shots. Maybe that's something I'd like to try in 2009. The hard thing would be storing all the images and also finding the appropriate software to make a video out of them. current weather: Snow, 19, Wind: NW 6; We were supposed to get 1-3 inches of snow last night but ended up with more like 5-6 in Stow Tags: astronomy, photography, video
Current Location: 41.197N 81.433W
Current Mood:  thoughtful
Current Music: none
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Astonomers used to think the Milky Way Galaxy was a spiral galaxy, which are the most common type observed (about 70% of observed galaxies are spiral galaxies). Then in 2005 it was confirmed that the Milky Way Galaxy might actually be shaped more like a barred spiral galaxy. Now, a new survey using the Spitzer Space Telescope (which led to the confirmation of the bar in 2005) is suggesting that we need to redraw what we think our galaxy looks like yet again, that rather than having four major spiral arms, there are really only two, and the other arms are much smaller. current weather: Cloudy, 65, Wind: S 6, Rain today: 0.53"; Clouds and rain today Tags: astronomy, mapping, nasa, space
Current Location: 41.197N 81.433W
Current Mood: tired
Current Music: none
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The Kaguya moon probe that I talked about recently is now in orbit of the moon, and JAXA has started releasing HD video and pictures that it's taken. This page has some really cool digital photos that were taken of the Earth from the orbit of the moon. I like this zoomed-in shot of the Earth in particular. The reddish-orange landmass in the upper-left part of the Earth is Australia, which is "upside down" compared to the way you might be accustomed to seeing it. Earthrise and -set pictures and videos like this can really only be taken while orbiting the moon, since the moon is tidally locked with the Earth. The end result of that is that we always see the same side of the moon from Earth, and on the moon, the Earth seems to just hang in the sky if you're on the near side, and is never visible on the far side. There are also some cool videos taken with the HD camera, unfortunately they take forever to load, but my two favorite are: lunar orbit time lapse and Earthsetcurrent weather: Mostly Cloudy, 54, Wind: SW 5; This is the weather I like - changing. It was warm and breezy today, it's going to rain in less than an hour, and then it's supposed to be cold tomorrow Tags: astronomy, earth, japan, jaxa, moon, space
Current Location: 41.197N 81.433W
Current Mood: impressed
Current Music: none
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A quick Cool Earth Images post, from a Remote Sensing geek. The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched a lunar probe in September. It's called Selene or Kaguya, depending on whether you want a Western or Eastern mythological reference. The probe is cool in its own right, very few spacecraft have actually orbited the moon, from the United States, Russia, European Space Agency and Japan. But it looks to be one of the first of a whole new series of moon missions, as China, Japan, India, Russia, Germany, the USA, and heck, even Google have missions planned at the moment. In the case of China and the USA, crewed missions. Anyway, all that is cool, but what caught my attention in this particular case was that Kaguya has an HDTV camera on board, which they turned towards Earth at a distance of 110,000 km while en route to the moon. The image came out back at the beginning of the month, but unfortunately I haven't seen anymore HD images taken of the Earth since then. I'm hoping for more. On a somewhat related note, NASA's Earth Observatory put up two images last week, which are artificial globe images of the Earth using data from multiple satellite sources, combining land surface, sea ice, ocean, clouds, city lights, and topography to create an image resembling a photograph taken from space. They look really cool! current weather: Partly Cloudy, 51, Wind: calm Tags: astronomy, earth, remote sensing, satellites, space
Current Location: 41.197N 81.433W
Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Duran Duran - Save A Prayer (Single Version)
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I don't know how many people will really be all that excited about this, but a new version of Google Earth was released today, and it has a really awesome new feature, which they're calling Google Sky. Basically, you can now click a button that will invert the view, so that rather than looking at a 3-D representation of Earth, you view the sky as seen from Earth. It's loaded up with all sorts of telescope imagery, and the functionality works just like Google Earth, so you can just type in "Orion Nebula" and fly right to it, view constellations, star catalogs, and animations of positions of the moon and planets. It's really cool! They've got a video up on YouTube which shows a bit of how it works, but believe me, it's a lot more fun to play around with on your own. current weather: Cloudy, 79, Wind: S 4; After a few months of near-drought, suddenly we've been getting more rain than we know what to do with Tags: astronomy, google, google earth, space
Current Location: 41.197N 81.433W
Current Mood: impressed
Current Music: none
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When I read what Beth wrote about this afternoon, I immediately remembered that I had meant to post this video some time ago, and as a Francophile I'm sure Beth will appreciate it even more so. This is a clip from the French version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." As such it's in French, but don't worry, you'll understand what's going on just fine, especially once you know what the question is, which is: "What is it that orbits around the Earth?" a)the Moon b)the Sun c)Mars d)Venus He polls the audience (look at what they picked!), and then makes his selection: Hahaha, fits right in with what Beth was writing about. Very interesting, although I always find these sorts of studies sort of depressing. Wired ran an article on this sort of thing this month, one of the more interesting findings by a Pew Research study was that Daily Show/Colbert Report viewers know more about current events than Fox News viewers (highest was those that read major newspapers and their websites, Daily show was second best, followed by NPR, and Fox News was last), and that Americans in general, across all education levels, know less about politics or current events than they did five years ago, with the exception of being able to name the Secretary of Defense. current weather: Partly Cloudy, 79, Wind: calm; Got kind of hot today, into the mid 90s Tags: astronomy, beth, education, humor, video, youtube
Current Location: 41.197N 81.433W
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Daft Punk - Aerodynamic
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If you haven't heard, apparently a comet in the sky currently has brightened quickly and is now the brightest comet seen in the last 30 years! Unfortunately the viewing hasn't been as easy as Hale-Bopp was in 1997. But there have been some really cool pictures taken of it in the northern hemisphere over the last 3 or 4 days. It's brightened significantly. At the moment your best chance to see it is immediately before sunrise or just after sunset. It will continue to brighten as it gets closer to the sun, but unfortunately as it does so it gets a lot harder to see because of the proximity to the sun. Mom and I both tried looking for it this evening (we had clear skies here in Stow and also in Columbus) but with no luck. I'm hoping to try again tomorrow, but this time of year, the chances of a clear enough sky during such a small window of the day are pretty low. Still, it's worth giving a look outside for! current weather: Mostly Clear, 21, Wind: S 1; There's about 2 inches of snow on the ground in Stow, from lake effect Tags: astronomy, comet, space
Current Location: 41.197N 81.433W
Current Mood: excited
Current Music: none
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On August 11th, 1999, I was in Munich, Germany with my parents, viewing a total solar eclipse. It was at the time (and remains today) the most incredible thing I have ever seen. No photo will ever manage to completely relate exactly what the experience was like - it truly is the sort of thing you really need to see for yourself. But today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is of a composite 33-exposure image of the solar eclipse that occurred last week, and it actually looks much closer to what I remember in 1999 than any other solar eclipse picture I think I've ever seen. I still have this weird recollection of there seeming to be movement in the sun's corona, but I think that may have been clouds playing tricks on me. As you can see on this map, a major solar eclipse will cross the United States on August 21, 2017, and one will actually pass directly over Cleveland on April 8th, 2024. Quoting from the "Interesting Future Eclipses (1999-2035)" Earthview page: 2017 August 21 -- Finally, another total eclipse in the United States. This one sweeps a 70-mile wide path from Salem, Oregon, to Charleston, South Carolina, crossing coast-to-coast from mid-morning to early afternoon on this summer Monday. Points in the path include Mt. Jefferson in the Cascades and Grand Teton peak in the Rockies, as well as Casper, Wyoming, and Lincoln, Nebraska. In Missouri, Kansas City lies near the southern edge of the path, St. Louis near the northern edge. The eclipse reaches its maximum in western Kentucky, with the Sun at an altitude of 64 degrees and a duration of totality of 2 minutes 40 seconds. In Tennessee, Nashville is near the southern edge of the path, Knoxville near the northern edge. The shadow then passes over Greenville, Columbia, and Charleston, South Carolina, before racing out across the Atlantic. 2024 April 8 -- Another North American total eclipse only seven years later! This 120-mile wide path crosses Mazatlan, Dallas, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Montreal,with over four minutes of totality. Tags: astronomy, solar eclipse
Current Mood: impressed
Current Music: I have a theory - people talk louder in hotels for some reason
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