h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

thanks Dave!

and look, http://earthsky.org/space/asteroid-eros-at-its-closest-since-1975-on-january-31 although a tad early for Valentine's Day

I wondered where the picture of my prize potato went

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/9097480/Astronomers-discover-new-type-of-planet-the-water-world.html

but is the tide in or out ???

Splish-splash I was takin' a bath...although it would be a hot steam on that planet

Largest composite photograph of the night sky ever attempted, 37000 photos grouped into one huge presentation you can zoom/pan/scan or seek specific info about individual stars and constellations. By Coudal. I rarely use the word "awesome" but I think this qualifies:

http://coudal.com/archives/2012/02/biggest_photo_o.php

bookmarked

Front row seats to this week's planetary alignment:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/02/live-feed-planets/

Design your own nebula! Select a color and move the cursor slowly around the playing field:

http://29a.ch/sandbox/2011/neonflames/#

I'll have time to play with that tomorrow...

Oh last night's heavenly spectacle was awesome, with the and Venus in the same field of my binos, with Jupiter not far behind, all in a blue sky just after sunset.

re post #628 Dave, when I clicked your link all I got was a black blank page, when I clicked on the main page I got his blog, and couldn't find how to design my own nebula

depends if you have a script blocker onlike on Mozilla

that I don't knowI'm now on a notebook laptop thing, since the collapse of my last pc. It only does a few things, which is all I need really.

A87744054 March edition of Babe Among the Stars

Didn't mean to torture you with a black screen. That's not very sporting of them.

Try right-clicking to see if it will let you start the JAVA applet that way.

Ah, I don't have enough memory to download Java.

My condolences. Maybe this will make up in some small way?

This is a Vimeo video of a series of time-lapse photos, taken in North Dakota, and strung together to form a narrative. If I read right, there are images of the aurorae produced during the CME two weeks ago. These would not have been visible to the naked eye, but the 20-30 second exposure times caught them. For non-USians, North Dakota is at the top of the Great Plains next to Saskatchewan, largely uninhabited, and with very few sources of ambient light (YAY!) Enjoy!

http://vimeo.com/36684976

OMG! Awesome! Thanks Dave

My oldest laptop is an old Dell with several keys that stop working if the temperature goes over 16C/60F and only 18 gigabytes of memory, not enough to accept even the Windows XP 2000 it originally came loaded with along with all the updates for that which have been issued since.

I salvaged my photos and files, all I had on it that I really wanted to keep and wiped it clean, loaded it with Linux Ubuntu OS, which requires only between 3 and 4 gigabytes of memory.

Java Sun (Oracle) Solaris Unix OS is similar, easy to load and use.

Java Sun Free BSD Unix is somewhat more difficult, is the base for Solaris and allows even more discretion than Ubuntu or Solaris with respect to functionality and demands on the system.

A major advantage with these is that they can be downloaded from the internet free of charge.

I would recommend that you first save them to DVD before attempting to install on your computer.

Also, you can backup your entire computer including the OS to DVD or removable memory; even boot from DVD; maintain an archive of bootable DVDs.

One cannot do that with Windows, except to retain one archival copy of a Windows OS.

The major disadvantage is time, since it does take time to copy one's computer.

Another is that not all ISPs can handle Unix or Linux.

It is possible to run more than one OS on the same machine in separate partitions.

If you're running Unix or Linux with Windows, Windows needs to be installed first or it will erase all other programs on the hard disk.

If you're running Unix with another operating system (including Apple), it needs to be installed in a Linux swap partition in the last partition on the hard disk, since it will erase all programming that comes before it on the hard disk.

The best partitioning tool I know of is Gparted.

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

This one is free and is booted from a CD or DVD, so it needs to be saved to disk when downloaded.

Always back up everything possible before making major system changes.

Did anyone see the fireball which crossed the UK last night (9.40pm)?
Apparently it was orange with a green tail. I was indoors at a concert till 10pm, shame!

Meteor cam: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np8U68KiDoQ