Straight off the pages of a Syd Mead or Robert McCall art book, The Moon is the next mega-hotel/casino planned for Las Vegas. Instant 1970s-era retrofuture! Where’s my back issues of Omni Magazine? I am so there.
[via Boing Boing]
Leonids from atop the San Andreas Fault
Went to my usual spotting place on Lone Pine Canyon Rd. where the San Andreas Fault passes through Cajon Pass. Counted 80 meteors in the 40 or so minutes onsite (2:30 am – 3:10 am PST) and “hints” of a lot more that the light from the full moon washed out. Pretty good shower, but not particularly memorable.
Leonids meteor shower flux estimator
If you’re getting ready for the Leonids shower on Monday night/Tuesday morning, here’s a handy Java-based calculator that can give you an idea of what to expect.
Apollo lunar landing videos
We’ve all seen the famous “inside the LEM” video of Apollo 11 making the first manned landing on the moon. Here are the other four (doesn’t have Apollo 15 up yet).
Music Really From Outer Space
The Kronos Quartet and Terry Riley jam with the plasma waves and magnetic field emanations from Jupiter and Saturn as recorded by the Voyager spacecraft. First performance tomorrow night at the University of Iowa.
[via DroneOn]
Yesterday’s Vandenberg launch and Brian Webb’s Southern California Astro/Space Alert list
A lot of bloggers were commenting on the Minuteman III launch from Vanderberg last night. Anyway, if you were a subscriber to Brian Webb’s “Astronomy/Space Alert for Southern California” list, you would have been ready for it.
Cool list. Great guy. You should join.
Ferrari’s red paint to fly to space
Civilization may crumble, but Ferrari’s famous “Rosso Corsa” red paint will endure – on Mars. Representative of Rolls-Royce and Mercedes Benz were unavailable for comment on if they plan to send their distinctive hood ornaments into space.
God reboots in single-user mode and types “fsck -y ^M reboot”
Everyone is mentioning this story, so I’m obliged to join in. Asteroid 2002 NT7 is on a “collision course” with Earth with the closest approach on February 1, 2019. NT7’s orbit is still not refined enough to judge whether or not an impact is certain, but it’s a close one. If anything, since 1 Feb 2002 is a Friday we’ll have the whole weekend to recover from our hangovers.
Today’s Astronomy Picture Of The Day is worth checking out too. Sure, space is empty, but that plot of the inner solar system would give even the sharpest air traffic controller the Mother Of All Anxiety Attacks.
[via everyone]
Cool NYT article on forensic astronomy
Neat profile of Dr. Donald Olson, a researcher at Southwest Texas State University, who pinpoints the time and place of paintings, photographs, historical events, art masterpieces, through astronomy.
Yesterday’s Partial Solar Eclipse
I didn’t have a decent-enough filter on me to take a direct picture of the eclipse, but the shadow pictures turned out rather nice. Here’s what it looked like from UC Irvine. It’s kinda cool to be able to walk out of my office and immediately see this on the wall.
