SpaceMika

So, you thought Saturn’s rings were flat, did you?

It’s been crazy-busy around here recently, but I always have time for neat astronomy.

As I just recently finished a course in satellite image interpretation, I was deeply amused by this technique for finding penguin colonies from space.

(thanks for noticing the missing link, JDLH; I forgot the text for the link!)

Shuttle, Hubble, and Sun

Wow, this is a really cool image.

In Vancouver, the action will be at the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre on Saturday, May 2nd from noon until late. The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada is hosting a free public outreach event including night observations with telescopes (weather permitting) and Dr Aksel Hallin’s talk on the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory.

Oooh, look! Pretty pictures! To celebrate the 10th anniversary, NASA’s Earth Observatory is taking votes on their very best Image of the Day. Some of these are familiar to me, resonating with the familiarity of Apollo’s “Earthrise,” while others are totally unusual and I learned something new by reading up on the caption.

All the space lists have been jumping with news of the very small rock expected to create a nice light show in Sudan tonight, but I haven’t actually seen confirmation that the prediction was correct. It’d be neat if it was.  We’re famously bad at spotting Near Earth Objects, and even when we do see them we rarely have enough observations to make an orbital determination (although the Summer Science Program has switched to helping a tiny bit with that).

It’s a bit wack that the coverage all seems to focus on sensationalism (“Fireball to hit Africa!” “Asteroid impact tonight!”) when the whole point of the bulletins is to prevent observations from being reported as missiles or UFOs, and the real story is if this prediction is correct or not (the last one was a “not”).

Update: Yup, it hit. There’s a cookie-laden site with a photo, while I think the Times Online wins the contest for most overblown title.