This is your chance for your name to go to Mars!

This is your chance for your name to go to Mars!

Fill in your information below and your name will be included with others on a microchip on the Mars Science Laboratory rover heading to Mars in 2011!

More at:
http://marsparticipate.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/participate/sendyourname/

Amateur astronomers to shed light on solar storms

more armchair astronomy work for the internet masses.
–Ben

Amateur astronomers to shed light on solar storms

“…Becoming a solar storm tracker involves setting up a ‘Zooniverse account,’ logging into the Solar Stormwatch site at http://solarstormwatch.com and completing a short interactive training programme. Almost anyone can help the project says Dr Davis. “Many motivated individuals will always be able to scrutinise the data far more carefully than small dedicated science teams ever could. Contributing will enable more information to be gleaned from the data than would otherwise be possible.”

The site requires members to study video footage and photographs to identify past solar storms, described as big lightbulb-shaped explosions. Then they may be asked to look at data of real-time space-weather conditions. Dr Davis says, “the real-time data is less detailed but potentially provides a means of making true predictions about any solar storms heading towards Earth.” …

http://www.astronomynow.com/news/n1003/02solar/

TENTH ANNUAL ISAAC ASIMOV MEMORIAL DEBATE 3/15 @ AMNH in NYC

for anyone who happens to be in NYC next Mar 15th.

wonder how long till the podcast is posted?

http://www.amnh.org/podcast/index.html

–Ben

AMNHlogo

Media Inquiries: Department of Communications

212-769-5800 communications@amnh.org

www.amnh.org

_____________________________________________________________________________

AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY’S

TENTH ANNUAL ISAAC ASIMOV MEMORIAL DEBATE

ASKS “Where Next for the Manned Space Program?”

WHAT Tenth Annual Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate Moon, Mars and Beyond: Where next for the manned space program?

What is the future direction for manned space flight? Should we proceed straight to Mars? Should we return to the Moon, or should multiple destinations be the goal?

Where to go next is one of the hottest topics for NASA’s manned program. Central to the subject are thorny issues that relate to science, launch hardware, international competition, national security, shrinking budgets, and political will. The Obama administration’s recent decision to delay indefinitely of our next voyage to Moon while simultaneously planning a new launch vehicle to take us out of low earth orbit makes this Asimov Debate particularly topical and newsworthy.

Moderator

Neil deGrasse Tyson, astronomer and Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium

Panelists

Kenneth Ford, Institute for Human & Machine Cognition, is Chairman of the

NASA Advisory Council.

Lester Lyles, United States Air Force (Ret), is a member of NASA’s Human

Space Flight Plans Committee.

Paul Spudis, Lunar and Planetary Institute, has experiments on lunar orbiting

missions to map permanently dark regions poles and search for water ice

deposits.

Steven Squyres, Cornell University, is the principal investigator for the Mars

Exploration Rover Project, among others.

Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society, with a focus on exploration and

settlement of that planet, is also the President of Pioneer Astronautics, an

aerospace research and development company.

WHEN Monday March 15, 7:30 p.m.

WHERE LeFrak Theater, first floor – Enter at 77th Street

American Museum of Natural History

ADMISSION $15 adults $13.50 members, students, seniors

# # #

No. 25a

===========================================
http://www.amnh.org/programs/programs.php?src=p_h&date=2010-03-15&event_id=1633

Forest of Jets

fyi:

More images from Enceladus flyby last Nov. 21 2009.

–Ben

Forest of Jets
Cassini’s close flyby of Enceladus last Nov. 21 revealed a forest of new jets spraying from the prominent fractures crossing the south polar region and yielded the most detailed temperature map to date…

http://ciclops.org/view_event/129/Forest_of_Jets

STS-130 as seen from ISS @ Sunrise

cool pic.

–Ben

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/shuttle/sts-130/html/iss022e062674.html

lots of other STS-130 pics here.
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/shuttle/sts-130/ndxpage1.html

GeoStationary HighWay

Cool astro photo ‘movie’ by Babak A. Tafreshi .
–Ben

Geostationary Orbits are over five times the radius of the Earth, approximately 36000 km above sea level. Objects in such orbits have orbital period equal to the Earth’s rotation and would remain stationary over the same point on the Earth’s equator. Geostationary objects appear motionless in the sky, making extremely useful for communications (including TV broadcast) and weather satellites. While in 1945 Arthur C. Clark was the first to suggest the usefulness of such an orbit, there are now over 370 satellites in Geostationary orbits. But while they are motionless relative to the Earth surface, they are moving objects against the background sky as they are rotating around our planet in this space high way with speed ten times faster than an airliner. Although they are some of the furthest satellites, but surprisingly, given dark enough skies, it is possible, armed with a telescope or a pair of binocular to spot some of the them in the geostationary ring. Typically these satellites are at magnitude. +11 or fainter (over 100 times fainter than naked-eye visibility), but as recorded in this video they are brightening by several magnitudes when the geometry is favorable. Most satellites in the video are at 7th to 9th magnitudes but there are few of them at about magnitude 5, visible to the naked-eye under dark skies! The time-lapse video is made using an 85mm lens on a modified DSLR camera under an ideal dark sky. It is a sequence of 12 shots each 45s exposure on a tracking mount. Majority of GeoSats are visible at 5 degrees below the equator on the Orion Nebula declination. Mintaka , the western most star of the Orion Belt, is the closest to the equator. All of the satellites in this highway has moved about 2.5 degrees during the 10 minute shooting period, equal to 360 degrees for a complete 24 hours. Babak Tafreshi

http://twanight.org/newTWAN/case.asp

Jurassic Space: Ancient Galaxies Come Together After Billions of Years

more cool HST galaxies gone wild pics.

As always, be sure to zoom in to the FULL frame (2758 X 2567)
6.8MB JPEG

http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2010-08-a-full_jpg.jpg

to see all the ‘tiny’ galaxies.

I like pair in the bottom left.

–Ben
==================================
Jurassic Space: Ancient Galaxies Come Together After Billions of Years

February 18, 2010: Imagine finding a living dinosaur in your backyard. Astronomers have found the astronomical equivalent of prehistoric life in our intergalactic backyard: a group of small, ancient galaxies that has waited 10 billion years to come together. These “late bloomers” are on their way to building a large elliptical galaxy. Such encounters between dwarf galaxies are normally seen billions of light-years away and therefore occurred billions of years ago. But these galaxies, members of Hickson Compact Group 31, are relatively nearby, only 166 million light-years away. New images of these galaxies by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope offer a window into what commonly happened in the universe’s formative years when large galaxies were created from smaller building blocks. The Hubble observations have added important clues to the story of this interacting foursome, allowing astronomers to determine when the encounter began and to predict a future merger. Astronomers know the system has been around for a while, because the oldest stars in a few of its ancient globular clusters are about 10 billion years old. The encounter, though, has been going on for about a few hundred million years, the blink of an eye in cosmic history. Everywhere the astronomers looked in this compact group they found batches of infant star clusters and regions brimming with star birth. Hubble reveals that the brightest clusters, hefty groups each holding at least 100,000 stars, are less than 10 million years old. The entire system is rich in hydrogen gas, the stuff of which stars are made. Astronomers used Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys to resolve the youngest and brightest of those clusters, which allowed them to calculate the clusters’ ages, trace the star-formation history, and determine that the galaxies are undergoing the final stages of galaxy assembly.

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2010/08/

Happy BD Nicolaus Copernicus

Happy BD Nicolaus Copernicus

19 February 1473

the first astronomer to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology, which displaced the Earth from the center of the universe

–Ben

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Copernicus

Prometheus Popping in 3-D

Saturn’s potato-shaped moon Prometheus is rendered in three dimensions in this close-up from Cassini.

This 3-D view is a color composite picture made from two different black and white images that were taken from slightly different viewing angles. The images are combined so that the viewer’s left and right eye, respectively and separately, see a left and right image of the black and white stereo pair when viewed through red-blue glasses…

http://ciclops.org/view/6133/Prometheus_Popping_in_3-D?js=1

“PLUTO IS A PLANET IN NEW MEXICO DAY”

‘Is it Legal?’ Really IS just a matter of time and/or geography.

I’m not sure I like the gov. defining my science.

Although they do define the weights and measures.

I heard Indiana tried declaring pi = 3.0000 awhile back (1897). Well at least they tried to.

–Ben

===================
2010 Regular Session

HM 17

“PLUTO IS A PLANET IN NEW MEXICO DAY”

Sponsor: Joni Marie Gutierrez

Current Location: Passed

http://legis.state.nm.us/lcs/_session.aspx?Chamber=H&LegType=M&LegNo=17&year=10

“…WHEREAS, thanks to Dr. Clyde Tombaugh, Pluto will always
be considered a planet in New Mexico;
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES OF THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO that February 18,
2010 be proclaimed “Pluto is a Planet in New Mexico Day” at the
house of representatives in honor of the eightieth anniversary
of the discovery of Pluto by Clyde Tombaugh…”

http://legis.state.nm.us/Sessions/10%20Regular/memorials/house/HM017.pdf