Catalina Sky Survey Spawns Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey

this should be  good on-line resource.

–Ben

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Catalina Sky Survey Spawns Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey

The Catalina Sky Survey detects potentially hazardous asteroids and comets. Now a spin-off survey is finding a windfall of “optical transients” in the same data…

…Thanks to the $890,000 NSF grant awarded this month, the CRTS team soon will construct a Web site that will make roughly 10 terabytes of data taken by the Catalina Sky Survey over the past five years –- as well all new CSS data that continues to stream in — available over the Internet to astronomers worldwide, professional and amateur.

The Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey will be the first and only fully public synoptic sky survey, team members say. It’s a bargain-rate boon to astronomers who are trying to figure out how to manage enormous data streams to be delivered by future synoptic sky survey telescopes…

…Researchers will be able to compare real-time CSS images to any image in the 5-year CSS archive…

http://uanews.org/node/26922

http://crts.caltech.edu/

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/css/

Is Mt Wilson Burning ???

bad news… stay tuned…

“…Driven by high winds, flames continued to burn out of control high in the mountains as they neared the Mt. Wilson Solar Observatory and onsite communication towers.

“It’s a serious situation,” said Bob Shindelar, operations branch director of California Incident Management Team 5. “Is the observatory going to make it? We’re doing everything in our power. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it is impacted by fire today or tomorrow.” …

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2009/08/huge-amounts-of-forest-lost-to-station-fire.html

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Podcast: Slackerchat

We have a new podcast on the feed! Refresh your iTunes and/or click below to listen. This episode features chatter from Michael, Doug and Mike. Topics include:

• Citizen Sky
• Jupiter Impact
• Galileo Scope
• Mars
• Scorpius
• Starhunt
• Super Planetary Nebula
• Stardust@Home
• Active SETI

Check it out and let us know what you think!

Download

Losing the outer solar system

Read a disturbing post about no more funding for Pu-238 for TNGs

Its REALLY hard to explore beyond Mars if you have to drag a few football fields of solar panels with you.

http://www.universetoday.com/2009/08/10/nasa-may-have-to-revamp-science-without-rtgs/

Stay tuned…

Greeting Slackerpedes!

Doug and I have been underwater lately. Sorry about the lack of new shows! But the gears have been turning and we will have new shows, new blog posts and new new new fun fun fun things coming around the bend in the not-so-distant-future.

So stay tuned!

Got a question or show idea? Email us!