Just over a week ago a conversation started on Twitter. This, itself, isn't unusual but what was unusual was that the conversation involved a Government Minister; the Science Minister no less. The conversation started with a comment by Colin Stuart who was worried about Lord Drayson acquiring responsibility for the role of Defence Procurement as well as Science. Several other science twitterers chipped in and it became a rare example of direct interaction between Government and the public.
I've saved the entire conversation including the comments about Lord Drayson's racing team at Le Mans (Science, Defence Procurement and a racing team!) to show what was said and some of the context.
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astro blog by Stuart on Tuesday 16th Jun 2009 (
21:52 BST) |
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I created the LookUP service to make it easy to find specific astronomical objects. It won't find everything though.
One of the reasons an object isn't found is because the user didn't spell it correctly. To help with that, I've added a 'Did you mean?' option that will learn from successful searches and use those to suggest what you might have meant. This should improve over time. Another reason that a search fails is because the input wasn't something astronomical. Some recent examples include: books, coffee, Jesus, Freemasons, fish food, local news, God, and movies. None of these things were found in an astronomical context. Interestingly, these have all come from people using the iPhone application version.
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astro blog by Stuart on Monday 08th Jun 2009 (
15:17 CEDT) |
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As I write this, the Newbury Astronomical Society are hosting a MoonWatch event live on Twitter. This virtual star party started at 21:30 BST and runs for another hour. The Moon is looking pretty good right now and amazingly there is a clear sky here in Manchester. As well as the Moon, Saturn can be seen a handspan away from it.
Below is a picture of the Moon taken with my cheap and cheerful digital camera pushed up against an eyepiece of my 10x50 binoculars. Not the best image in the world but you can make out some crater rims on the terminator.
The Moon imaged with a cheap digital camera looking through 10x50 binoculars.
CREDIT: Stuart
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astro blog by Stuart on Saturday 30th May 2009 (
22:43 BST) |
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Tom reports (and so does Amir) that JAXA's KAGUYA (SELENE) spacecraft is planned to impact the Moon on June 10th at 18:30 GMT.
KAGUYA was launched in September 2007. Since then it has been mapping the Moon and sending back glorious HD video of Earthrise. It has exceeded its nominal mission and has been in an extended operational phase since February 2009. As the JAXA website says, the impact will "conclude its scientific mission to the Moon". Hopefully they'll be able to get some science out of those last seconds too.
Assuming that the time of impact doesn't change (it might), it looks as though KAGUYA will hit quite far south and on the dark side of the terminator. The final moments won't be visible in Europe, Africa or much of the Americas because we're on the wrong side of the planet at the time. If you live anywhere from India eastwards to Hawaii, however, you should get to see it. Hopefully Ian will get some pictures for the rest of us to see.
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astro blog by Stuart on Tuesday 26th May 2009 (
22:35 BST) |
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On 18th May the crew of the Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-125) disconnected from the Hubble Space Telescope after a successful mission to upgrade the instruments and replace a few parts. This is the last servicing mission and it was most likely the final time that humans would be in close, physical contact with Hubble in space. This has been a very special mission for those of us who've grown up with Hubble over the past 19 years.
Of course, only the crew of STS-125 were lucky enough to be there in person. Other Hubble fans had to live vicariously through NASA TV. At the time of the parting I was hugely disappointed to find that there was no live video of the view. This momentuous event was shown via rather disappointing computer simulations and the reactions of the people in the control room at Goddard Space Flight Centre. GSFC employees are great but they don't really cut it compared to seeing the grand old space telescope for the last time.
After a few minutes of speculation on Twitter about the possibility of bad coverage by ground stations over Africa, or cover-up conspiracies, it turned out that the downlink antenna for sending video was being used in radar mode to track Hubble. That was pretty vital so I'll let NASA off on that.
Tonight, after a plea on Twitter for pictures, Alberto Conti (STSci) pointed me to an amazing video on YouTube. The video shows the view, from inside Atlantis, of the final minutes. You see the astronauts preparating for release, moving around in the Shuttle and filming the view out of the window of the Hubble slowly drifting away with the Earth behind. It is a stunning "home video" showing a fascinating perspective that I don't think I've seen before. It is well worth six or seven minutes of your time.
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astro blog by Stuart on Thursday 21st May 2009 (
22:47 BST) |
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