Archive for the ‘Relinking’ Category

Seattlites, and anyone who is visiting before March, I just have to say I am so proud of my institution.

We’re hosting Lucy (yes, the Lucy, the 3.2 million-year-old hominid fossil), exhibit to open on Saturday. Not only does the exhibit rock, effectively showing the region in which Lucy was found (Ethiopia), helping you discover for yourself why Lucy is such an important find, and majestically introducing you to Lucy herself … but our marketing department took a big step: the new tagline for Lucy’s Legacy:

“An ancestor to humans in the course of evolution.”

It says it, right on the posters! Phew. Step right up to the plate. There’s no controversy here. (I do have to admit, I might be misremembering the words slightly. I’ll double-check tomorrow.)

Don’t miss Lucy’s Legacy. Really, it’s beautiful and makes you stop and think … and when else are you going to see your great^160000 grandmother? (assuming 20-year generations)

In celebration of NASA’s 50th Anniversary, this week’s Carnival of Space is in the form of an acrostic.

H – Hills and what they have to do with moons are discussed by the Bad Astronomer over at Bad Astronomy

A – All’s quiet on the solar front, should we be worried? Alan Dyer of What’s Up Astronomy says “Nope.”

P – Posted by Space Video of the Day: the Falcon of SpaceX achieves orbit!

P – Poor Galileo – his saga is like a Mexican Soap Opera, or so claims Dr. Bruce Cordell of 21st Century Waves.

Y – Yummy planetary science from Maria Brumm and Green Gabbro.

B – Back in 1989 a program called Lunar Oasis was proposed, and David Portree examines it over at Altair VI.

I – Interstellar flight in a long-term context. Paul Gilster analyzes the survival of civilization and expansion into the cosmos over at Centauri Dreams.

R – Research the history of the NASA meatball and worm with Astroprof this week, in celebration of NASA’s 50th Birthday!

T – Trouble comes to Hubble, and Steinn Sigurðsson of Dynamics of Cats takes a look at what the problem is.

H – Huge telescopes held in place by magnetic flux pinning and other giant mirrors are approached by Next Big Future.

D – (the) Death of a Martian moonlet is exposed by Ryan Anderson Briony of Martian Chronicles.

A – Approaching martian winter, Ray Villard of CosmicRAY talks about Phoenix’s limited future and extensive past discoveries

Y – You know analogies always help, so Wayne of Idea Festival reviews J. Richard Gott’s discussion of the Space Colonization Imperative, and how it’s similar to basketball and the Titanic.

T – To NASA! 50 years of exploration and collectibles, discussed by none other than collectSPACE.

O – On counting stars and cells – Ethan Siegel of Starts With A Bang wonders which is bigger, the number of stars in a galaxy, or the number of cells in the human body

Y – Yikes! Watch out for unruly astrophysicists wielding calculations over at the Lounge of the Lab Lemming (by Dr. Lemming)

O – Oh my, iPhone apps galore – including an awesome Starmap & Planetarium app reviewed by Flying Singer in Music of the Spheres.

U – Universal Babe (I mean, A Babe in the Universe!) discusses Hubble’s difficulties this past week.

D – Decelrating oddly, the Pioneer spacecraft are veering off course. Twisted Physics’ Jennifer Ouellette looks at why.

E – ESA’s new Planck spacecraft‘s plant (oops, typo) plans to look at the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation is discussed in detail by dj at OrbitalHub.

A – Accretionary Wedge, the carnival from the Geoblogosphere was hosted this past week. Check out GoodSchist’s artwork about Geology in Spaaaaace.

R- Research meets poetry with “Endeavour Calls” by Stuart Atkinson of The ‘Verse.

N – Nuclear decay rates, are they related to the distance to the Sun? Ian O’Neill of astroENGINE tackles this question, by looking at the Cassini mission.

A – “Action on Asteroids!” says Alan Boyle in Cosmic Log.

S – Shubber Ali of Space Cynic is interviewed on The Space Show.

A – Anniversaries (specifically NASA’s) are celebrated over at Potentia Tenebras Repellendi by Alexander Declama

! – !! I wish I had an “M” for Emily Lakdawalla’s Monday Mercury MESSENGER Madness in the Planetary Society Weblog!!

That’s it for this week! Tune in somewhere else to next week’s Carnival for more – or go to Universe Today’s Carnival of Space page to learn what it’s all about. Thanks for your entries, and thanks for your help, Fraser!

I assume since you’re reading this, you like what I’ve been writing. Great. Here are two ways to support Alice’s AstroInfo.

This one directly supports AstroInfo, because it supports my organization and my organization pays me to write the articles that I also post here:

Support Pacific Science Center

This one supports that which AstroInfo stands for (cool astronomy education for anyone who wants it):

International Year of Astronomy: US Branch

International Year of Astronomy: International Umbrella Organization

The International Year of Astronomy is making a BIG push for astronomy education for the masses throughout the year of 2009. I’ve got a project and a half up my sleeve (you’ll be hearing about them as they occur), but IYA needs money and hours to make IYA as big as they want it to be.

… back to our regularly scheduled programming … up next – more details about Haumea (I hope).

Updated September 18, 2008

Haumea:

Diameter: 1,320-1,550 km
Orbit Radius: 35.161-51.525 AU
Moons: Hi’iaka and Namaka
Composition: almost all rock
Discovered: 2003 Mike Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David Rabinowitz or Francisco José Aceituno Castro, Pablo Santos-Sanz, and Jose-Luis Ortiz
Resource: http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001649/, http://web.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/2003EL61/
Other Classifications: Plutoids, Trans-Neptunian Object, Kuiper Belt Object

Make-make:

Diameter: 1,600 km
Orbit Radius: 38.666-52.809 AU
Moons: ?
Composition: ?
Discovered: 2005 Mike Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David Rabinowitz
Resource: http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001553,
http://www.mikebrownsplanets.com/2008/06/whats-in-name.html
Other Classifications: Plutoids, Trans-Neptunian Object, Kuiper Belt Object

Eris:

Diameter: 2400 km
Orbit Radius: 38.17- 97.61 AU
Moon: Dysnomia
Composition: roughly half rock, half ice
Discovered: 2003-2005 Mike Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David Rabinowitz
Resource: http://www.planetary.org/explore/topics/trans_neptunian_objects/eris.html
http://web.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/planetlila/
Other Classifications: Plutoids, Trans-Neptunian Object, Kuiper Belt Object

Ceres:

Diameter: 950 km
Orbit Radius: 2.98 AU
Moons: none
Composition: rock with 17-27% water ice
Discovered: 1801 by Guiseppe Piazzi
Resource: http://www.planetary.org/explore/topics/asteroids_and_comets/ceres.html
Other Classifications: Asteroid

Pluto:

Diameter: 2,306 km
Orbit Radius: 30.164- 48.494 AU
Moons: Charon, Nix, Hydra
Composition: probably a mixture of 70% rock and 30% water ice
Discovered: 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh
Resource: http://www.nineplanets.org/pluto.html
Other Classifications: Plutoids, Trans-Neptunian Object, Kuiper Belt Object

Want More?

Planetary Names List of Dwarf Planets
Planetary Society List of Notable Trans-Neptunian Objects

Where’d I Get My Info?

Thanks to Mike Brown, Emily Lakdawalla, and Bill Arnett

I thought you all might be specifically interested in this month’s Science with a Twist (science for a 21 and over audience) here at Pacific Science Center. The topic of the fun, interactive evening is “Are We Alone?”

Science with a Twist presents “Are We Alone?”
Thursday, September 18
6:00 – 9:00 p.m.

Alien encounters – fact or fiction? Sip on eerie cocktails while exploring other galaxies in our planetarium, listen to accounts of extraterrestrial sightings and then decide for yourself if you are a believer! The evening begins with a paranormal happy hour featuring a presentation by Joe Hutchings, member of the Society for Sensible Explanations, entitled “Why Skeptics Can’t Win,” followed by “UFOs of the Northwest” presented by Charlette LeFevre and Philip Lipson, curators of Seattle’s Museum of the Mysteries. Decide if we are truly alone and then end the evening with a private space-themed Laser Show in the Seattle Laser Dome.

6 p.m. Happy Hour & Presentations
8 p.m. Laser show

Click →here to purchase tickets. Tickets include your first drink from the bar and snacks. $15 per person; $12 for Pacific Science Center members. 21+, ID Required.

Information at: http://www.pacsci.org/twist/

I’ll be there, doing some activities with you about exoplanets.

What did I tell you?

Video’s not as great on this one.

Just click it.

Why do I keep hearing news about rockets exploding, crashing, and generally not doing what is hoped for? I’m glad I’m not a rocket scientist right now.

Here’s the rundown of what I’ve seen:

August, 22, 2008

NASA tried to launch a couple hypersonic suborbital experiments. It didn’t go so well.

August 19, 2008

NASA tried out their new parachutes for the Orion crew vehicle (the one that will be going to the Moon soon). Um. Watch eighteen-million parachutes not deploy in this hilarious video. From what I can tell from the press release, the first parachute failed, and everything depended on that. The following parachutes failed because the lander wasn’t at the correct speed or in the correct position.

August 18, 2008

There’s no video of the Ares 1 tests that I can find, so here’s an old test (2006) instead.

And then there’s NASA’s Ares 1 Engine Tests. While not a failure, they’ve got some issues left to work out. Basically, due to the design, the rocket vibrates so much that people on board the Orion Crew Vehicle would probably not survive. They’re going to install shocks, and they’ve got years to figure this out.

August 2, 2008

SpaceX (a private commercial space company) tried to launch their Falcon 1 rocket for the third time. Basically the second stage doesn’t blast off enough faster than the first stage rocket was already going, so the stages do not separate. This is bad. This causes an explosion.
Launch takes place 4 minutes into the video.

July 28, 2008

The one thing that seems to be running as planned is Virgin Galactic‘s SpaceShip Two. On July 28 they unveiled the carrier for SpaceShip Two: White Knight Two. It’s named EVE.

I’m glad we are in the testing phase. In fact, I’m glad we HAVE a testing phase.

No people or animals were harmed in the making of this post.

I’m long overdue for a post on my new agreement with (or is that understanding of?) the theory of dark matter. I promise I’ll work on it, but till then, here’s a hilarious music video of a new rap song about Cern’s new LHC (Large Hadron Collider)

The beginning is great, then you may start to feel like it’s dragging, but if you last through the first 3 minutes or so, you’ll get an pretty cool explanation of this “Higgs” that everyone is talking about.

Found it on BoingBoing.
Did you like that? Here’s more from AlpineKat.