Warning: Addictive.

The Spitzer Space Telescope site now has a section of "zoomable" Spitzer images.
I killed a good hour on this thing the other day and I only looked at a handful of images.

Check it out here.Above: The Helix Nebula as photographed by Spitzer.

When I was their age...

I was only interested in finding the closest convenience store that would sell us beer without ID.

Astronomy is a rare science. Someone like me is never going to discover the gene mutation that causes some terrible disease or develop a car that runs on air, but virtually anyone with a teensy bit of knowledge and access to a basic telescope can make amazing discoveries just like people with PhDs who work at observatories and get interviewed on Space Place Live.
(See Comet Hale-Bopp as an example.)

Congratulations, kids. Very inspirational.

Students Find Exoplanet

Ohhhhhhhhhhh yeah.

"Scientists predict Leonid meteor STORM for November, 2009."

See, I like when they tell me these things way in advance, so I can save up for airfare to my dark-skied hometown.

Another good job by The Onion.

NASA Simulator Prepares Astronauts For Rigors Of An Interview With Larry King

I'd also like to see them develop an "Elementary School Assembly Hall Simulator."

In other news...

Korea has unveiled a prototype lunar lander it's developing.

The first comment at UT?

"Surely this is My Little Pony's lunar lander?"


Here it is, in all its pink and teal glory:

Not gonna rise from the ashes this time.

Phoenix is officially dead, and no one's even listening for it anymore.
Thanks to the entire Phoenix team for a fantastic few months.
From the moving goo on the lander legs to a Martian snowfall, this was a really entertaining mission.
(Oh yeah, and scientifically-groundbreaking, too.)

So long, little fella.

Fifty years ago today.

Fifty years ago on November 30, Ann Hodges was napping on her couch in Alabama when she was struck by an 8 pound meteorite.
Sounds funny and all, until you see the photo of the unfortunate woman's hip and read about how her landlady successfully sued her for the meteorite, citing her rental agreement did not provide "mineral rights."
Mrs. Hodges had to buy the rock back from the landlady.
And that landlady was a young Leona Helmsley.*



*No it wasn't.

Toasts. Not the buttered kind.

Anyone who knows any Russians knows about their crazy toasting habits. To Russians, American parties are exceptionally bland. At most, we might, once or twice in a night, mumble "Cheers" or "To us", but that's about the extent of it. Russian drinking follows a lengthy, set pattern of toasts.
I read the following and smiled. It's obvious that our astronauts have spent some time drinking with their cosmonaut comrades.

"We decided to propose a toast," Pettit said. "So here's our cup filled with tea, and Steve has a cup filled with tea, and again, this is using the contact angle wetting phenomenon that rocket engineers use in fuel tanks in rockets to make a tea cup. And what we're going to do is propose a Thanksgiving toast on orbit.

Both astronauts tipped their cups and took a sip of tea.

"And now we're going to propose a toast to Thanksgiving, wishing everyone on Earth and off Earth a good Thanksgiving," Pettit said.

The astronauts took another sip.

"And now we're proposing a toast for future explorers."

The astronauts took another sip.

"And finally, we're proposing a toast just because we're in space and we can!

Even though Pettit sort of violates the rules of toasting (the first toast he makes is rather generic - he doesn't really toast anything - he just informs us that he's going to toast), he is following the pattern of repetitive toasting.

Here's a rough guide: The first toast is to the occasion, the second to the hosts, the third to our spouse. (Traditionally, to "the woman we love." After all, shots are historically a male thing, surprise surprise.)
After that, knock yourself out, but keep it interesting. It's also customary to toast world peace when you're among foreigners.

Russian toasts are usually accompanied by a story/joke. It's not uncommon for the pre-toast story to last quite a few minutes. Here's one of the shorter ones:

There were two best friends, Ivan and Sergey. One day, they were walking down the street. "Hide me!" yelled Ivan suddenly. "Why?" asked Sergey. "Do you see those two women walking up the street? That's my wife and she's walking with my girlfriend!"

"No it's not," said Sergey. "That's MY wife walking with MY girlfriend."

To best friends!

More fun facts.

Our Sun is so big that if you hollowed it out, it would hold 1,300,000 Earths.

If you hollowed out the star Antares, it would hold 64,000,000 of our Suns.

A star in the constellation Hercules is so big that, if hollowed out, it would hold 100,000,000 Antares stars.

The largest known star, Epsilon, is so big that if hollowed out, it could hold several million Hercules stars or 27,000,000,000 of our Suns.

Consider the thickness of a standard sheet of paper. Imagine that the thickness of one sheet of paper represents the 93,000,000 mile distance from the Earth to our Sun.

If every sheet's thickness represents 93,000,000 miles, how high would the stack of paper have to be to represent the distance from Earth to our next-nearest star, Alpha Centauri?
That stack of paper would need to be 70 feet high to represent that distance.

How high would the stack of paper be, with every sheet's thickness representing 93,000,000 miles, to represent the diameter of the Milky Way Galaxy?
That stack of paper would have to be 310 MILES high.

How high would the stack be if we wanted to represent the distance to the edge of the known Universe from Earth?
That stack would have to be 31 MILLION MILES high.

Fun Facts.

An average sandbox (whatever that is) has been said to contain as many grains of sand as the Milky Way has stars.

If every person on Earth had a sandbox, the amount of sand grains contained therin would still not approach the number of stars in the Universe.

A teaspoon contains as many grains of sand as stars you can see on a perfectly clear night.

The Milky Way is bright enough to cast your shadow on a perfectly clear night.

Most of the Universe is empty. The space between stars contains less than one atom per cubic centimeter. In contrast, at sea level, one cubic centimeter contains a billion trillion atoms.

In the time it takes you to read this sentence, the Universe will increase by 100 trillion cubic light-years.