Like Icarus, minus a few million miles.

Astrophotographer extraordinaire Thierry Legault snapped a killer image of Atlantis and Hubble transiting the Sun yesterday.
Wow.
(Click to enlarge, natch.)

A fond farewell...

...to the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, otherwise known as WFPC2, otherwise known as "wiff-pik-too."

WFPC2 not only saved the Hubble after a disastrous beginning


,it went on to bring us almost all of the HST's most spectacular and memorable images:

The Spirograph Nebula

The Crab Nebula


The Hubble Deep Field


The Pillars of Creation



the Shoemaker-Levy collision with Jupiter



and finally, the last official "pretty picture" from WFPC2 - Planetary Nebula Kahoutek 4-55, located in Cygnus.

University of Chicago grad to once again repair telescope named for University of Chicago grad.

I'm looking at you, Ivy League snobs.

A graph I made after watching CNN today.

I always just kind of assumed it was The Universe's 5th Grade Science Fair Project.

There is a supabad program on The Hitlery History Channel right now called How the Earth was Made.
Apparently, it's been on for a little while now, but as usual, I'm the last one to the party. (I've still never seen one second of "24".)

It is a series of shows about the creation of a few specific locations on earth. So far, episode subjects have included Hawaii, Krakatoa, Iceland, New York, Yellowstone, and the Marianas Trench. They call it "Mariana", though. That's annoying, like people who say HAR-rassment and Sa-CA-gawea. I learned it as Marianas, Marianas is prettier, and I'll be damned if I'm going to change now. Sod off, History Channel.

Anyway.

All of the episodes are interesting, but my personal favorites have been the ones on Krakatoa and Hawaii. Ever since childhood, volcanoes in general and Krakatoa specifically have scared me. ("Thrilled" scared, not scared-scared.) I did find myself yelling at the TV though because the narrator kept insisting that Krakatoa erupted and "caught everyone by surprise" and that "no one had any idea that anything bad was going to happen."

Excuse me, History Channel, but Discovery Channel begs to differ. In the excellent program "Krakatoa: Volcano of Destruction", the diary of Johanna Beyerinck of Ketimbang plays a starring role. From the time the pre-eruption earthquakes began and all through the minor eruptions in the summer of 1883, Johanna was pleading with her husband to get the family out of there. He didn't listen to his silly wife, of course, and Johanna's 14-month old infant died and the rest of the family barely escaped when Krakatoa erupted for the final time.

The Hawaii program was fascinating and, for someone whose brother lives on Maui, pretty nervewracking. Let me just say something: Hawaii. is. a. freaking. timebomb, y'all.
Hawaii is to natural disaster as Michelangelo is to ceiling painters.
Hawaii, like so many other beautiful places on earth, is beautiful because it was created by chaos and destruction and wackiness. My favorite part of the program dealt with the famous Wailau Landslide which created the world's steepest sea cliffs and (bonus!) a tsunami 2,000 feet high.
25 miles of Molokai just broke off one day, and the landslide was so huge and moving so fast that it tumbled out 120 MILES offshore. Not only that, the last 80 MILES of its journey was UPHILL, climbing 900 feet out of the Hawaiian Deep. As the geologist on the program said, "1,400,000 years ago was a very bad day in Hawaii."
And sometimes my hair gets frizzy in the Florida humidity.

Watch this show, and then go curl up in a ball in the corner to await your inevitable annihilation. Thanks for nothing, Earth.

Above: Beautiful Molokai

My dad has died

My dad is probably why my sisters and I so love the night sky. He loved to take us outside and try to impart his limited knowledge of the night sky. He knew the Big Dipper, of course, and he knew that the Pleiades (the seven sisters, which, in later years, he said were me and my sisters, along with our Mom) were being chased by Taurus the Bull, who was being tracked by Orion the Hunter who was being trailed by his faithful dog, Canis Major. When we were in Tampa, living on MacDill AFB, he bought a cheap telescope because he knew that men would be walking on the moon. Then he, once again, hauled us all out of bed to show us the moon when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were walking on it. Other kids watched it on television, but he thought it was important that we look through the telescope. We were all disappointed that we couldn’t actually see them, but we believed him when he said they were there.

I am sure that it is because of him that my sisters and I are still crazy over the night sky. We will basically drop what we are doing to head to Fernandina, where the night sky is still dark, for a decent comet sighting or meteor shower. All of us, me, Vicky, Alice, Dot and Mary, were there for the Leonids last year, which were disappointing. Cathy, who is nuts over the night sky but lives in Chicago, couldn't make it, but we had her on the cell phone, where she sang "Aquarius" and intoned the beginning of Star Trek-- "Space, the final frontier..." with us. As it turned out, the meteor shower wasn't so great, and the dew got to us all, so most of us gave up and went inside. I stayed outside, because, well, I am stupid. I did see five shooting stars after everyone else went in, but that seems hardly worth it.

I am looking forward to this year's Leonids, which are supposed to be not just a meteor shower, but a meteor "storm." We will be there. And we will all be thinking of my Dad, who would have been so pleased to have his daughters out in his backyard looking up at the sky. At least, I like to think so.

My dad is dying

My dad is probably the reason my sisters and I love the night sky. When I was a child, he taught me the constellations -- the Pleiades, which he assured me were SIX sisters, although if you looked through a really good telescope you could see a seventh, which was probably my mom; were pursued by Taurus, with Aldeberon; which was pursued by Orion the Hunter; which was followed by his faithful dog, Sirius.

Dad didn't really know about Betelgeuse or Rigel or any of the important stars in the Northern night sky, and, as time went on, he found it amusing that my sisters and I found the sky to be something worth paying attention to.

When I was 14 and we were living on an Air Force Base in Tampa, he bought a cheap telescope because he knew that men would be walking on the moon, and he thought we should pay attention. He woke us all up and dragged us out into the yard and said, "Look at the moon. There are men walking on that moon." We were all disappointed that we couldn't see them, but he assured us that they were there.
And we believed him.

He was a 90s dad in the 60s. He would come home from work and we would eat dinner. Then he would load us into the station wagon and drive us all over the Air Force Base where we lived, pointing out the critters -- birds, horseshoe crabs, snakes, whatever. He would rescue birds that had fallen from their nests and birds that had been damaged by oil spills. He would sit in the hall outside our bedrooms and sing songs and read poetry until we fell asleep. Songs like Lindy Lou, Go Tell Aunt Rhodie, Sleep, Kentucky Babe; Sweetheart of Sigma Chi and On The Road to Mandalay.

He will die soon. With my wonderful sisters and my brothers around him. And the stars will be a little bit brighter.

Of all the money that ere I had, I spent it in good company.
And of all the harm that ere I've done, alas was done to none but me.
And all I've done for want of wit, to memory now I cannot recall.
So fill me to the parting glass. Goodnight and joy be with you all.

Of all the comrades that ere I had, they're sorry for my going away,
And of all the sweethearts that ere I had , they wish me one more day to stay,
But since it falls unto my lot that I should rise while you should not,
I will gently rise and I'll softly call, "Goodnight and joy be with you all!"

Oh, if I had money enough to spend and leisure time to sit awhile
There is a fair maid in this town that sorely has my heart beguiled
Her rosey cheeks and ruby lips, she alone has my heart in thrall.
So fill me to the parting glass. Goodnight and joy be with you all.

Another Hubble triumph

Okay, I am revising my opinion of the coffee pot as the greatest technological marvel of our time. I have no words, but http://hubblesite.org does, so I am just going to use them verbatim:

About a month ago, the Hubble Space Telescope took a photo of four moons of Saturn passing in front of the planet. In this view, the giant orange moon Titan casts a large shadow onto Saturn's north polar hood. Below Titan, near the ring plane and to the left is the moon Mimas, casting a much smaller shadow onto Saturn's equatorial cloud tops. Farther to the left, and off Saturn's disk, are the bright moon Dione and the fainter moon Enceladus, along with their shadows.

These rare moon transits only happen when the tilt of Saturn's ring plane is nearly "edge on" as seen from the Earth. Saturn's rings will be perfectly edge on to our line of sight on August 10, 2009, and September 4, 2009. Unfortunately, Saturn will be too close to the sun to be seen by viewers on Earth at that time. This "ring plane crossing" occurs every 14-15 years. In 1995-96 Hubble witnessed the ring plane crossing event, as well as many moon transits, and even helped discover several new moons of Saturn.

The banded structure in Saturn's atmosphere is similar to Jupiter's.

Early 2009 was a favorable time for viewers with small telescopes to watch moon and shadow transits crossing the face of Saturn. Titan, Saturn's largest moon, crossed Saturn on four separate occasions: January 24, February 9, February 24, and March 12, although not all events were visible from all locations on Earth.

These pictures were taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on February 24, 2009, when Saturn was at a distance of roughly 775 million miles (1.25 billion kilometers) from Earth. Hubble can see details as small as 190 miles (300 km) across on Saturn. The dark band running across the face of the planet slightly above the rings is the shadow of the rings cast on the planet.

I'll take the Colbert Room, please

Stephen Colbert is a NASA fan. I mean, this is the guy who introduced our hero, Garrett, to the late night comedy tv audience. And all he wants in return is to have his name on the latest ISS room, which will be delivered later this year. Thus far, "Colbert" is leading in a NASA contest to name the room. I, personally, am okay with that. Of course, "Colbert" is up against some pretty hefty competition, like "Serenity," "Legacy," "Earthrise" and "Venture," all of which sound like 70s girls' names. The new room will feature lots of windows and a machine that converts urine into drinking water. Yum.

Other US rooms on the Space are named Unity, Harmony and Destiny, all of which sound like 80s girls' names.

NASA doesn't have to abide by the results of the contest, so Colbert is by no means a done deal. But, for what it's worth, I'm voting for "Colbert."

But the next room better be named the "Ward."

Neewww Moooonnn, you saw me standing alone..

The International Astromical Union has announced the discovery of a new moon in one of Saturn's outer rings. Cassini found the moon, which is only about a third of a mile wide in Saturn's "G Ring," which they now believe was formed from icy debris that scattered when meteorites crashed into the moon.

This means Saturn has a boatload of moons.

The Cassini orbiter that found the moon was launched by NASA's JPL. The Huygens probe that separated from Cassini to research the moon, was managed by the European Space Research and Technology Centre, was part of a mission launched from Canaveral in 1997.