Learning, coding, exploring, living.
Another amazing picture from Mars.
This one’s taken with the high resolution imager and managers to take a shot of “Opportunity”.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/main/index.html
A big picture here:
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08816
#flag: Mars, Opportunity
Its been quite a holiday, if I can call it that.
I spent a week in Mallorca studying astronomy and planetary science with the Open University.
Sharon kindly drove me to the airport early in the morning and I caught the plane on to Mallorca. (Actually I only just made it to the plane as I was queing through security for an hour and a quater, I actually arrived at the plane five minutes after it had flown… or at least should have…)
The flight was uneventful apart from quite a lot of stomach turning drops as we flew over the Mallorca mountians, then over an hour wait for my luggage but after that a half hour trip to “Hotel Horizonte“
Just time for a quick walk into the centre to have a look around and get some essentials (Snickers and coke…) before the first coach ride into the heart of Mallorca and towards the “domes of knowledge” (telescope domes…). The coaches follow an ever narrowing road, eventually bearly much wider than the bus itself. (And we learned days later that the coach company uses the run as a “initiation test” and actually there’s a perfectly good motorway just up the road.)
After about an hour drive into the centre of the island we arrived at the observatory, I was expecting a panarama view of the island, but even though we were pretty high up the observatory was completely surrounded by trees, a problem we encoutered as some times the telescopes had to look right through the branches. (Apparently, this was all part of planning permission, to be able to build the observatories a certain number of rare and local plants had to be planted – unfortunately plants grow and had begun to crowd over the telescopes)
Check out some of my photo’s here
#flag: “Open University”, Mallorca, SXR208, Astronomy, “Planetary Science”, links
I’ve been watching star trek for years and years. I don’t even remember the first time I watch it.
I wouldn’t call myself a trekkie, but I would say I’m a big fan if the show and its positive outlook for all our future’s.
The bbc has some nice images from shows acroiss the decades here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/5306538.stm
And here’s the official star trek site:
http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/news/editorials/article/25215.html
#flag: “Star trek”, birthday
Are we soon to expand our solar sytem to include more planets?
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Charon and 2003 UB313 ?
Ceres orbits in teh asteroid belt, Charon was a moon of Pluto but now Pluto and Charon are two planets (or plutons) orbiting each other. 2003 UB313 (provisional name – thank goodness!) is one further out even than pluto, but thought to be much bigger.
Any suggestions for 2003 UB313 – your comments / suggestions welcome.
See also: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/08/060816082231.htm and http://www.iau.org/
#flag: space, planets
The stardust at home project is now up and running. Explore the cosmos from the comfort of your living room.
Check it out here:
http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/
Some great video clips from the recent launch of Discovery. To make the flight much safer, camera’s were attached all over the Shuttle and its rockets to check fall falling debris. But as an added bonus, the camera’s recorded some of the best space videos around!
Check them out at Nasa or you can just click these couple of clips (there may be more but I haven’t found them yet):
Solid Rocket booster looking down – a great view of the luanch in action
Solid Rocket booster looking up – a great view of the shuttle seperation then fall to Earth
#flag: SPace, shuttle, launch, link, video
Al last one of the shuttles returns to what is mostly another full mission. Lets hope they finish putting together that massive space jigsaw, the ISS, before the shuttle gets perminately grounded…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5146866.stm
And good luck to Thomas Reiter, Esa’s first Astronaut staying long term at the ISS.
ISS = International space station
I’ve just psycho-analysed my self here:
http://web.tickle.com/tests/inkblot/?sid=2647&test=inkblotogt&supp=nopop-CDCD1
And I think its pretty accurate. It’s one of those famous Ink Blot test you always see Psychologists doing. Try it for yourself. Let me know how accurate you think yours is.
And just so you know here’s mine:
You are full of questions about life, people, and your own potential. You spend more time than others imagining the possibilities for your life – and you’re open to things others are too afraid to consider. You have an almost physical need to know and do more. It’s only through new experiences that you feel a greater understanding of yourself and the world.
You also have a rebellious streak that shows up when you feel unable to truly influence the world or circumstances around you. Your appetite for novel experiences also shows an openness others don’t have, but wish they did. Your psyche is very rich; the more you lern about it, the more you will understand who you really are…
So there you go!
This is really new, but It’s still pretty good. Remember the Seti@home software you could down load years back, well its still running, but now there’s 10 other projects running to, and you can download all of them if you want and run them on your computer when it’s not doing anything.
My favourite ones are:
BBC Climate Change Experiment – Save the planet (running for half the time on my work computer)
LHC@Home – CERN’s particle accelerator
Einstein@Home – Pulsar search
SETI@home – Hello world!
#Flag: software, links
The stardust nasa mission has just returned to Earth after seven years in space and being bombarded by a comet. Its has on board material stolen from that comet, and should help to understand the origins of our solar system.
It was a successfully touchdown, the parachute opened and as far as is known, the material is on board waiting to be analyzed…
…and the good news is you can help to find it! Berkeley university has created a program that acts like a virtual microscope. You’ll be able to zoom in on the material to try to work out if its actually material that has come from the stars! But first you’ve got to pass a test! The website is here and you can register for the test by giving your email here – I’ve already signed up of course – Good luck!
#pic: http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/
#flag: science, space, links