The mission flyby description is now up.

975 km altitude, focusing on the southern hemisphere, lots of RADAR observations including a bit of SAR...

I wish I had the time to read every post, but... UMSF is part of my morning routines (e.g. whilst having breakfast), where I spend 2 hours downloading stuff for offline reading later in the day (although I've had broadband for years, this offline method is a habit that persists from the days of dial-up). As I like to save the best for last, UMSF is the last link from my list. Depending on how much time is remaining, I may skim through quickly just to see what is happening mission-wise, or carefully read and post. I use the 'View new posts' option, click on threads that are of interest to me, and use backspace to return to the search list. I then return to the forum 4-5 hours later and more carefully read threads, although some threads I save until I get more time to read them (the downside to that is that I've then missed the boat in terms of contributing to them).

We measure large distances by looking at the object's color, or redshift. The wavelengths are stretched by the expansion of space, as the objects move further apart from each other, getting redder. The light that we see is the light that was emitted at the time the object existed (as light travels at a finite speed, it takes time to communicate information) - most of the deep galaxies in the deep fields no longer exist; they have merged to form larger galaxies. We won't know of their existence until the light reaches us several billion years from now.

Incidentally, I think Emily mentioned that she doesn't do cosmology, but I couldn't resist answering anyway.

After a couple of days of getting used to the Pro skin, I definitely would not want to go back to Verdana. In fact, I like Arial so much that I've set my browser fonts to override (already have colors on override, so what the heck). So if the old font is applied to the new theme, I should still see Arial.

Minus the RAT holes, too. When Steve said they wouldn't deviate from the path to the band, he really meant it...

Here's the figures from the most recent NASA budget: (2007 development cost estimates $M)

Technology development 0.0
Spacecraft, rover, & carrier 424.8
Payload 64.9
Systems I&T 46.5
Launch vehicle/services 182.6
Ground systems 45.5
Science/technology 11.4
Other 292.8

Hmmmm, I wonder what other is? Coffee tabs at Starbucks?
It's worth remembering that the science instruments were competitively selected. Perhaps Las Alamos Labs deliberately underestimated the cost of ChemCam in order to sweeten the deal (knowing full well that they could get a few extra million from SMD later on)? Or perhaps it was a genuine estimate, and complex projects of these types have a way of over-spending, who knows. Whatever the reason, the actual cost of the instruments is largely out of the hands of NASA HQ, and they have to trust the proposers that they will deliver what they say they will at the cost estimates given. Stern was right to nip that in the bud; I'm sure LANL will find some money for ChemCam - they wouldn't want to miss this opportunity to get an instrument on Mars...

You must be thinking about Phoenix, as MSL uses both a HGA and UHF system, much like MER.

Works great here on IE6/Win2000. I see only one issue on the new version: the lack of alt-text on the emoticons when replying (they had alt-text previously) - now I have to right-click "show picture" on each one to find the one I want.

Chandra sky tour for gSky:

http://chandra.harvard.edu/about/ge_tours/skytour/

The RAT WTC memorial was discussed at length on NASA TV by the RAT team in 2004, so I'm not sure one could consider it a little-known fact.

The builder of the RAT was Honeybee Robotics -- their offices are just a few blocks from the WTC site.

Perhaps they are, but Enceladus is continuously re-coating them. After all, Enceladus spewings touch at least 11 other moons...

First image from Robotic Arm Camera received on Earth:

http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/rac_image.php

Sweet! I have to confess that I've never been terribly impressed with the image quality of any LCD monitors I've seen. Mind you, I've only ever seen low-end models (BenQ, Video7 etc...)

Continuing the theme of the thread, my monitor set-up includes a LaCie electron19blueIV 19" CRT (2003) and Philips 107E6 17" CRT (2006). Although the Philips is a budget shadow-mask, it has remarkably good color accuracy, and was a steal at £20 (brand new but damaged box). I was so impressed with it that I bought 4 more. Eventually, common sense prevailed (what the heck am I going to do with them all?) and sold 2 of them at £60 each - the tidy profit meant that the other 3 were effectively free.

Since I mostly work in a darkened room, a low black level is important, and have my web-browser set to override colors, as seeing white backgrounds can really make my eyes sting. Here's a screenshot of Emily's Blog, which makes me feel like I am in space with Rhea hanging right in front of me:



Now if I could just get rid of that darned blue scroll bar.

30th anniversary discussed on BBC TV news:

RealVideo stream

The most productive work at Palomar is spectroscopy, and there's no way to correct for the mercury vapor light pollution which puts emission lines all over the band. Replacing the mercury lamps with sodium lamps is the only way forward. Already, a lot of work at Palomar is more engineering-oriented (testing new technology) rather than science gathering. If the situation gets much worse, I expect Palomar to be decommissioned, as happened at Mount Wilson.

The total separation between planet and star will be 0.3 arcsec, so that should be easy for Lucky and AO-equipped ground-based telescopes in terms of resolving power. Contrast is a different story, however. I'm not sure whether HST can do this, given that ACS/HRC and its handy occulting mask is no longer available - it will be difficult to pick it out of the optical scattering artifacts using WPFC2.



Heh. Happens to me every morning.

Like this?

Although the system can work with existing AO systems, Lucky itself is not an AO system, and in fact the creators of Lucky apparently have a dim view of AO:

More from NASA's Arctic Mars Analog Svalbard Expedition:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/news/amase/index.html

Steve's journal entry:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/new...e07_entry5.html

http://www.planetary.org/news/2007/0831_Ma...ate_Spirit.html

Looks like Steve Squyres was busy with other rovers (and polar bears) this month:

I wonder if the need for Oppy to conserve power meant that it didn't always 'stow' the Pancam when not in use (the actuators would need to be heated at certain times of the day to allow it to be moved).

The person who made the decision at NASA HQ never owned-up to it, so the true motivation was never revealed. It was a pretty slimy act to quietly remove funding from the forthcoming year's budget and not have the decency to tell the project that they were about to be canned.

Swift was designed for 3 years, and NASA will continue to fund it as long as it is healthy and scientifically productive.

The ultimate limit is the orbital lifetime of between 8 - 20 years, depending on solar activity.

You can also download extra images/features for Google Sky from HubbleSite:

http://hubblesite.org/explore_astronomy/gsky/

It's worth remembering that an RTG's output can be degraded by dust accumulation on the radiator fins. On MSL, the RTG is angled to (hopefully) reduce such deposition.