Dohiyi Mir

Monday Overheadblogging

Even a half moon with ice rings is enough to wash out Orion, but I like this off-focus scene all the same.

ntodd

You Want The Moon, Michelle? Move To China, Bunny.

There will be no "Barack Obama lassos moon" embroidery in the White House I'm afraid.  I had such high hopes--that's change I can't believe in.

Currently, the brightest moon of 2010 is peeking out behind the tree line.  I'd hoped to shoot it with Mars and a neat arrangement of stars last night, but by the time everything was high enough the sky clouded over.  Of course it's wicked cold and windy, so I'm sure I'll get frostbite when I try tonight.

Ah well, it belongs to China now, I guess.  Wonder if we'll still get to explore the moon on Google...

ntodd

Speaking Of Mars

Poor little Spirit is stuck!  Wonder if there will be an expedition to find its remains a century from now...

ntodd

Wiretapping, Old School

Since I'm a space geek, I think this story via (and partly about) my friend Glenn is pretty damned cool:

In July of 1969 a Louisvillian by the name of Larry Baysinger accomplished an amazing feat.  He independently detected signals from the Apollo 11 astronauts on the lunar surface.  Fortunately, his accomplishments were recorded and promptly published in the Louisville Courier-Journal, by another Louisvillian by the name of Glenn Rutherford, in an article entitled “Lunar Eavesdropping:  Louisvillians hear moon walk talk on homemade equipment”.

...

Baysinger’s lunar eavesdropping is an independent verification that men were on the moon, by a local person who is not part of the scientific establishment.  Had there been more Larry Baysingers eavesdropping on Apollo, or had there been more Glenn Rutherfords to record the work of the Baysingers who did eavesdrop, there would be no Apollo deniers.  I just this semester (Fall 2009) presented a copy of Rutherford’s article to a student who doubted that we went to the moon.  Having the evidence come from the Courier-Journal, from Louisvillians, and not from NASA, was something new, and it obviously had an impact.

Clavius should grab this audio before conspiracy theorists convince Neil Armstrong he never did this...

ntodd

Where's Martin Landau When You Need Him?

Uh-oh:

NASA has made a series of critical strides in developing new nuclear reactors the size of a trash can that could power a human outpost on the moon or Mars.

Three recent tests at different NASA centers and a national lab have successfully demonstrated key technologies required for compact fission-based nuclear power plants for human settlements on other worlds.
...
NASA's current plan for human space exploration is to return astronauts to the moon by 2020 on sortie missions that could lead to a permanent outpost for exploring the lunar surface and testing technologies that could aid a manned mission to Mars.

The space agency has been studying the feasibility of using nuclear fission power plants to support future moon bases. Engineers performed tests in recent weeks as part of a joint effort by NASA and the Department of Energy.

They'll never learn...

ntodd

Ocean Of Storms

Everybody talks about the weather, but NASA never does anything about it:

Thunderstorms are threatening to delay NASA's planned launch Saturday night of space shuttle Endeavour, already running a month late.

Endeavour is back from a series of hydrogen gas leaks for a third launch attempt. But forecasters say there is a 60 percent chance that storms could force a postponement.

Scary stuff coming from above!  The sky is falling!  The sky is falling!

Speaking of which, I recall spending part of my summer at NTodd's Pa's Wife's Folks' house in North Carolina in 1979 when Skylab was to crash to Earth.  The 30th anniversary is this weekend, and a small town in Western Australia is marking it:

This Sunday marks 30 years since parts of the NASA space station crashed over Esperance, scattering debris in and around the south coast town.

Merv Andre from the Esperance Historical Society says it is a significant anniversary.

"It could have been a tragedy and this is really a celebration of the fact that it landed safely," he said.

Esperance Shire president Ian Mickel says the foundation for a special Skylab monument will be unveiled on Sunday.

"Lots of people remember it, it's become an iconic event and it's certainly put Esperance on the map," he said.

Invited guests to Sunday's commemorations include an American radio host who raised $400 to pay the littering fine Esperance rangers imposed on the US Government in 1979.

The fine was finally paid off by a local radio host in April.

Anyway, the first manned Skylab mission was commanded by Charles "Pete" Conrad, Jr.  Pete was also commander of Apollo 12, which was struck by lightning during its rainy launch (pictured on the right) a few months after I was born.  That caused more than a few problems with the spacecraft's platform, so I guess NASA became more cautious after that.

Conrad died 10 years ago this past Wednesday in a motorcycle accident (not unlike TE Lawrence), just a few weeks before Apollo 11's 30th anniversary.  July is a particularly busy month for significant dates this year.  Stormy, even.

ntodd

My Favorite Jovian

Always have been entranced by the Great Red Spot--even have seen it with my old telescope (now in the hands of a very important 9yo).  I still am willing to volunteer for a mission to fly inside, perhaps to study how and why it is shrinking.

ntodd

The Last Man On The Moon

Gene Cernan's donating papers to Purdue, and here's part of his bio in the AP article I read:

Cernan, one of 14 astronauts selected by NASA in 1963, went into space three times. As a pilot on Gemini 9, he became the second person to walk in space in 1966; he was a lunar module pilot on Apollo 10 in 1969; and he was commander of Apollo 17 in 1972, when he became the last to walk on the moon's surface.

Hey, his LMP might have something to say about that!

[Jack] Schmitt was the Lunar Module pilot on Apollo 17, the last Apollo mission to the moon. On December 11, 1972, he became the only scientist and the last of 12 men to step on the moon.

Well, it depends on how you look at it: Cernan was the last man on the surface, but Schmitt was the last to set foot on the moon upon landing.  Reminds me in a tangental way of an anecdote about Wittgenstein:

Wittgenstein once asked a student, "Why do you suppose that people believed for so many years that the sun orbits the Earth?"

The student said, "I guess because it looks that way."

"Ah," said Wittgenstein, "And what would it look like if the Earth orbited the sun?"

And what would it look like if the moon orbited the Earth?  Perhaps Schmitt can tell us as an lunar geologist (along with Al Bean he is my favorite astronaut).

ntodd

And God Saw That It Was Good

40 Xmas Eves later:

After launching on December 21, 1968, the crew took three days to travel to the Moon. They orbited ten times over the course of 20 hours, during which the crew made a Christmas Eve television broadcast in which they read the first 10 verses from the Book of Genesis. The crew timed this reading to coincide with a full view of planet Earth hanging in the empty blackness of space while clearly showing the rich diversity of the living planet as indicated in Terran colors, seas, landforms, and weather patterns, rising over the dull gray horizon of the lifeless Moon. At the time, the broadcast was the most watched TV program ever.

To celebrate our first Christmas Eve together, among other things Ericka and I are watching the 1968 episode of From the Earth to the Moon.

Now about that Bible controversy:

Atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair later caused controversy by bringing a lawsuit against NASA over the reading from Genesis.  O'Hair wished the courts to ban US astronauts — who were all Government employees — from public prayer in space.  Though the case was rejected by the US Supreme Court for lack of jurisdiction, it caused NASA to be skittish about the issue of religion throughout the rest of the Apollo program.

I used to subscribe to American Atheist in college and even wrote to Reagan about the separation of Church and State my freshman year.  I consider myself an atheist, and firmly believe in and defend the Jeffersonian Wall.  Oddly, the Genesis reading never bothered me.

ntodd

I've Still Got My Gold Nose Out Of Joint

Ericka and I just so happened to be watching the Cosmos episode featuring Kepler and Brahe, so this caught my eye as a supernova caught Tycho's:

More than 400 years after Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe challenged established wisdom about the heavens by analyzing a strange new light in the sky, scientists say they've finally nailed down just what he saw.

A new study confirms that, as expected, it was the common kind that involves the thermonuclear explosion of a white dwarf star with a nearby companion.

The research, which analyzed a "light echo" from the long-ago event, is presented in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature by scientists in Germany, Japan and the Netherlands.

The story of what's commonly called Tycho's supernova began on Nov. 11, 1572, when Brahe was astonished to see what he thought was a brilliant new star in the constellation Cassiopeia. The light eventually became as bright as Venus and could be seen for two weeks in broad daylight. After 16 months, it disappeared.

Working before telescopes were invented, Brahe documented with precision that unlike the moon and the planets, the light's position didn't move in relation to the stars. That meant it lay far beyond the moon. That was a shock to the contemporary view that the distant heavens were perfect and unchanging.

I'm still annoyed with the heavens since it was cloudy on Monday so I couldn't shoot the Venus, Jupiter and Moon show, which we can predict thanks to the efforts of Brahe and Kepler...

ntodd