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

Here's a great look at the Moon's North pole to 60°N in one absolutely, gobsmackingly, huge mosaic. Since this comes from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Imagery I almost posted this in my "What I Do" thread, but I don't actually work on that project, just on a ancillary project in conjunction with them. (Their imagery is much newer, by 40 years or so, and has a higher resolution and much better control for lighting. Mine imagery just happens to have been taken by actual astronauts.)

I recommend clicking on the "snapshots" for some of the more interesting features on the lunar surface.

http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/gigapan/

Spectacular Ejecta... weren't they a short-lived 70s punk band? I'm sure I saw them play the Hope and Anchor in Islington that one time. Think they might have done a session for John Peel. Self-released one single and disappeared without a trace.

Happy memories

Heh... Once, years ago when a friend was trying to find a name for his musical side project, I looked at the cover of my Discover Magazine. The feature article was about a new and exciting material that had an extremely low density. The feature articles title on the cover would have made a good band name.

"Superfluff and the Wispy Aerogels".

My friend wasn't that impressed. He ended up calling the band "Lugnut".

I think your suggestion is a fantastic name for a band Although I suppose it wouldn't work so well if they play grindcore, or death metal, or hardcore punk. Unless they're being ironic.

No, the name didn't fit. Their sound was a bit grunge with Primus influences. I also remember suggesting Elvis Terrestrial but Dave said there were already too many "Elvis" bands.

Monday night was the "Blood Moon" total lunar eclipse. I didn't stay up for it as it occurred well after midnight CDT. But we had some beautifully clear skies in Texas as a very strong front had moved through earlier in the day. A very talented professional photographer took advantage of the conditions to take one of the best views I've seen of the eclipse.

"Looking Up" by Mike Mezeul

"You've seen the lunar eclipse up close by now, so how about the lunar eclipse over an amazing field of bluebonnets in Ennis, Texas? I stayed out til 6am this morning photographing the different phases of the eclipse over this field on Mach Road, and composited them to create this image. Let's share the heck out of this, a ton of hard work went into creating this shot Also, see it better here:" Mike Mezeul
http://mikemezphotography.smugmug.com/Night-Sky/i-WPvLsCw/A

I didn't stay up either. To be honest, I was a bit pissed off with all the fuss the meeja was making about it, almost as if there'd never been one before, which there has and I've seen it, enough times that I don't feel a pressing need to go out of my way to see it again, nor are tetrads as rare as the meeja seems to be hyping it up as.

But that is a splendid image

Yeah, the best one in my memory was when I was in high school, around 1984. It was at its deepest red right after sunset local time, so it was just above the treeline. This creates the illusion that it's larger than it normal. I went down to the shore of Galveston Bay to view it. It was rather impressive. I didn't figure this one would be any better than that one, so I chose sleep.

I did once stay up into the small hours for one - gradually leaning further out of a window in a flat in Kentish Town, with a woman from New Jersey, to try and catch sight of the moon as it slowly moved behind the building and out of view.

I can really appreciate the work these folks are doing.

http://www.wired.com/2014/04/lost-lunar-photos-recovered-by-great-feats-of-hackerdom-developed-at-a-mcdonalds/

LIVE! From SPACE!


Here are a couple of rather cool space ISS links.

The first is live HD video feeds from the ISS. This is a bit of gravy from an experiment to see the effects of long duration space exposure on cameras to find ways to improve them. While these cameras are strapped to the skin of the ISS, might as well see what they're looking at and show the feeds to the world.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/05/07/earth_from_space_live_hd_video_from_the_space_station.html

The second link goes really well with the first. It's a good example of what people can do by combining open resources on the web. Take NASA ISS ground track info and feed it into Google Maps to get a live "view" of where the ISS is and what's directly below it.

http://iss.astroviewer.net/



Share & Enjoy

Very

Oh, and you can use the second one to figure out when the ISS is on the daylight side so you don't end up staring at a black camera image from the first and wonder if it's working or not

Have you posted here about the ISEE-3 Reboot Project? Might have just missed it in the thread, I guess, but I've been following that lately - first the crowdfunding, and now the progress reports - and it's pretty exciting. Those guys are so cool!

(Same guys from the lunar photos thing you posted about some weeks ago.)

No, I haven't posted about them here. What's the latest from them? I read a few articles about them but it wasn't clear whether they would get the access they needed to communicate with the spacecraft or be able to find/hack the equipment and language to send and receive commands and communication with it. They seemed optimistic so I assume they've made some good progress.

Well, the crowdfunding was very successful - they got what they were aiming for, and a little extra. So that's neat already. And they set up camp at Arecibo and got an amplifier shipped from Germany, and locked on the ISEE-3 signal (and found out it was off-course relative to what they originally thought), and... stuff.
They're posting updates at spacecollege.org, and as someone who actually has an idea what they're talking about, you'll probably enjoy reading them. These recent two posts cover quite a lot:
http://spacecollege.org/isee3/isee-3-reboot-project-updates-from-the-front-at-arecibo-by-dennis-wingo.html
http://spacecollege.org/isee3/we-are-now-capable-of-making-first-contact.html

I really wish them , it's an amazing project.

Oh, and since I've mentioned crowd-funding, these guys are pretty cool, too (a friend of mine is their systems engineer) :

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/join-spaceil-s-mission-to-land-the-first-israeli-spacecraft-on-the-moon

Thanks for those links to the ISEE-3 project. Wow! They're having a more exciting time than they expected. It's off course by 250,000 km! Yikes!

I wonder if this was just a small error in precision measurements from decades ago that has compounded or if something unexpected caused it to deviate from it's expected course. Too early to tell right now.


While crowd funding space missions is exciting stuff, I really hope we don't have to rely on it in the future. The NASA budget needs to be doubled (see http://www.penny4nasa.org/ ) and it needs to be less susceptible to whims of politicians, especially in this age when so many of our elected officials are willfully scientifically ignorant and actually hostile to some of the evidence NASA is providing regarding Anthropogenic Global Warming. Nearly the entire republican party, especially the Tea Party contingent have expressed doubts or outright denial concerning climate change. It's also simply ridiculous that we have left ourselves unable to launch humans to space without hiring the services of the Russians at a time when Russian politics is getting especially hairy.

Crowd funding is going to start looking less attractive for large science projects because of the conflicting natures of science and the personal expectations of those who donate. Big science projects are inherently risky and fail quite often. That's why it makes more sense to have governments fund them as they can absorb these seeming failures. Private donors will get a bit hesitant if they see expensive projects not deliver amazing results and that's just not how science works.

You make a good point, BG.
I think the crowd-funding thing is better for smaller, civilian projects (like the ISEE-3 reboot, or SpaceIL), and there's something neat about how it causes and/or showcases public interest - it's great to see so many people so excited about space - but big-time government funding is more important, especially for ongoing science, for the things that are not necessarily cool or exciting (not to a layperson anyway), for the things that could fail, for all that stuff.

You're a lot more involved in these things than I am, so your pessimism definitely carries weight, but I've heard other people speak of two developments in recent years as things that might help re-energize space exploration: first, the growing involvement of nations such as China and India (China's moon plans, India's MOM craft, etc.), which could possibly get some sort of a new 'space race' going, and second, the growing involvement of private companies (especially SpaceX, because SpaceX is pretty darn awesome), which might help open up new opportunities (like the modified Dragon possibly replacing the Soyuz launches sometime in the future). Would love to know what you think about all this.