In the Spirit of Wierd Al

If you've already seen astronaut Chris Hadfield's video version of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" song, then you'll love the Glove and Boots parody. Chris did too! :)



And if you haven't seen the original, you can see it -Here-.

Wordless Wednesday

On a Tuesday... are we ready for the weekend yet?! :)

Finally got a chance to take a stab at processing these tonite. Meh.

World Outside a Window

Cool stuff!

Significance

I couldn't help thinking of this old Calvin & Hobbs cartoon strip tonite after I'd watched the video below.

Your mileage might vary... but feel free to measure it in "ly" (light years). Proof that none of us are big shots in the real scheme of things.

Leftovers!

Something of comet ISON actually survived the trip around the sun! Yesterday during the Google+ Hangout session with NASA scientists the outcome looked bleak. In fact many of them predicted doom but justified it by saying that "comets are notoriously unpredictable". That may be... but the pictures don't lie. Something made the passage. Now it remains to be seen if anything is out there for viewing come the first few weeks of December. If so look to the same eastern skies before sunrise.

Comet ISON

Tomorrow we eat turkey (in the USA). But our sun may eat comet ISON when it makes its close approach. Will it survive? Will ISON break up? We'll see. By the way... there are actually two comets in this video. The smaller second one is comet Encke.



And for those of you in the USA traveling today to see family and loved ones... be safe and have a great holiday!

Juno Earth Flyby

Lend a bit of your mass today, and with the rest of planet Earth give the Juno probe to Jupiter a slingshot assist. You are approved for an extra bowl of ice cream if that's what it takes.

Moon Hoax Not

A question frequently asked but seldom convincingly answered is, "Did USA astronauts really go to the moon in 1969, or was it all faked?" Well, it turns out that in 1969 it was probably more impossible to fake than to actually go.

Watch this and judge for yourself.

Curiosity

Is this all far too complicated, or not? We'll see. Mars has not been an especially good host to Earthly visitors in the past. The latest chapter is about to be written.

So be sure to watch the evening news tonight. One way or another *something* is going to happening way out there today!

UPDATE: Curiosity Has Landed! As crazy as the idea was the nerds at NASA made it work!

Transit

EXIF:  1/500s f/11 at 300mm iso1600.

Every once in a while I still enjoy a little astronomy... no where near as much as I once did, but when something like today's transit of Venus across the sun happens I need to find a way to be a part of it. No one will get to see this happen again for another 105 years!

Years ago I bought a small Questar telescope. Its mirror was only 3.5" diameter but it was perfect for planetary astronomy. What I used it for most however was for watching and tracking the movement of sunspots because of the handy little built in solar filter it had. It was the perfect rig to set up in the backyard on weekend and just observe. I used it more for sunspots than anything else.

One of my early observations with it included at night watching Io transit the face of Jupiter. I didn't even know it was going to happen but as I noticed Io getting closer to one edge it began casting a shadow on the face of the planet. Over the course of the evening I watched the tiny speck of Io's light go out, the shadow transit, then disappear, and then Io pop out the other side. It made an impression.

Watching Venus move over the face of the sun today was no less impressive. I made this image in the middle of my workday hand held with a Nikon D3 DLSR and a home made solar filter taped (draped is a better word) over the lens. Nothing fancy... just good old backyard astronomy. Something must have gotten a little wonky on the second image. I'm just happy they all came out as sharp as they did.

You'll surely see better images on television or in the magazines, but there's nothing like seeing something like this with your own eyeballs. That quality simply can't be beat whether you record it somehow or not.

Astronomy

Keck in Motion from Andrew Cooper on Vimeo.

In 1998 my local engineering group organized a full day long tour of the Keck Observatory. We started in Waimea at their ground facility offices and talked about cosmology, toured the labs, and computer center. From there we drove 30 miles or so to the mid-level center at 9,000 ft MSL, had lunch, and acclimated to the altitude for a couple of hours before heading up to the summit of Mauna Kea where we spent the rest of the afternoon going through the observatory itself.

They do amazing work up there every day, and many if not most of the discoveries of the universe you hear and read about are made by the people who use this world class pair of telescopes.

Cudos to Andrew Cooper of www.DarkerView.com for putting this together. His blog link is on the right side of this page. He's always got good stuff like this.