Ah, I knew that was one of yours, yet when I checked APOD this morning (10:00), your name wasn't in the credit line (which I thought was a bit out of order).

Perhaps they just want to make the most of their new Apple wireless keyboards.

Personally, I think it's too little, too late. There are some experts who believe all written languages will be obsolete in just 50 years...

I think you'd better get yer tea-bags out (for throwing at yourself), since you've recently used program (as in TV show), meter (as in distance) and favorite. Those are just the ones I recall from memory; I'm sure a forum search would dredge-up a few more.

I'm afraid the thermostat that brings the heater on cannot be overridden; you have to wait until the minimum setpoint is reached, and then the heater stays on, and on, and on...

It also had the effect of sending the kooks into overdrive. In case anyone missed it, here is a couple of choice snippets from yesterday's briefing. In all my years of listening to NASA briefings, I've never heard such silly behavior before.

 2008_05_14_chandra_newsaudio.mp3 ( 213.27K ) Number of downloads: 787

I've captured the Kaguya stream and have placed the downloadable files here:

http://www.meridiani.co.uk/other/man_de_1m.wmv
http://www.meridiani.co.uk/other/man_de_2m.wmv

Enjoy!

Just finished submitting your name for LRO? Now send it on Kepler!

http://www.seti.org/kepler/names/

Sleeping Satellite - one of my all time favorites! I remember first hearing it on the Xmas '92 Top of the Pops TV show on my then-new NICAM digital stereo VCR (quite a novel thing back then). It's a shame YouTube doesn't support stereo sound... I don't listen to much music these days, but I do very much like the voice of Hayley Westenra. No, I'm not a classical music snob; to prove it, I quite liked this astrophotography video.

Looks like a damaged adapter beam (they've apparently already organized and tested a replacement). Processing will continue on Monday, so only a short delay.

They used an Argon ion laser at 514 nm, so that would give you a green beam.

That's as good an explanation of any that I've heard lately.


Nah, UV light from the parent star will prevent any molecules from forming.

Astonishing precision and stability of the measurement of 1 part in 10,000!

CO should be dominant, given the high temperature of 1000 K, so I'm surprised that so much methane was detected (50 ppm)...

PLATO has now been installed at 'Dome A' in Antarctica. Look forward to learning how the telescopes cope with the harsh conditions up there on Dome Argus.

If NASA doesn't receive any good suggestions, they could name it TWAIN (Telescope Without An Interesting Name).

On the contrary, Chandra has several CCDs, and they are also sensitive to visible light (optical blocking filters are used to allow only X-ray photons to pass).

I had hoped that they would give it a shot with the NICMOS coronagraph (NIC2). Given that the system is no longer observable to Hubble under 2-gyro mode, the opportunity to observe it has now passed (sigh).

Perhaps AO-equipped ground-based observatories took aim...

Would this monitor be any good for viewing MER panoramas?

Galileo could have reached Jupiter directly, had it been allowed to use its original liquid-hydrogen-fueled Centaur IUS instead of that pansy solid-fuel IUS...

SPICA is under development and is on track for a 2010 launch.

Here's how the various best sites around the world compare in terms of seeing:

Median Seeing

0.07 Dome C in Antarctica (no telescopes yet)
0.45 Mauna Kea Observatory
0.55 Mt. Graham (Emerald Peak sites)
0.60 MMT (Mt. Hopkins/summit)
0.66 VLT (Paranal)
0.76 Magellan (Las Campanas) & ESO (La Silla)

It is quite remarkable how much the seeing varies, even at the same site. For example, at Mauna Kea, Subaru's average is 0.6 arcsec, versus 0.43 for CFHT.

The individual telescopes also produce "wakes" that interfere with other telescopes' seeing -- thus you don't want to populate the summit dome-to-dome.

Good thinking, although it would be nice to study it up-close before we mine the heck out of it...

Regarding disposal a la luna, I don't think that would be compatible with expected future uses of the Moon.

The fluff has always been there -- it comes as standard with every Sky box.

Repeated transit observations isn't enough -- you also need radial-velocity measurements to really determine the mass of the transiting object.

Looks like an RCA Satcom K1 (geostationary communications satellite).