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posted: May 09, 2008

Greg O'Byrne

That's German for "counter glow".

On the darkest nights, 180 degrees around from the sun there is a reflection of light from the sun called the Gegenschein.  This is a reflection of light off of dust particles in the asteroid belt. 

Check it out. 

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posted: Mar 20, 2008

Greg O'Byrne

We gotta keep this telescope operational: Hubble discovers 67 new gravitationally lensed galaxies

What is gravitational lensing?

Gravitational lensing occurs when light travelling toward us from a distant galaxy is magnified and distorted as it encounters a massive object between the galaxy and us. These gravitational lenses often allow astronomers to peer much farther back into the early universe than they would normally be able to do.

Here is a cool video of an Einstein Ring.

An Einstein ring is a complete circle image of a background galaxy, which is formed when the background galaxy, a massive, foreground galaxy, and the Hubble Space Telescope are all aligned perfectly.

Therein creating a complete circle lense effect.

So pretty pictures are nice, but what impact do these discoveries have on astro-physics?  Well read on dear surfer, read on.

...they can be used to create a census of galaxy masses in the universe to test the predictions of cosmological models.

Basically, since we understand how gravity works here, and we can get estimates of galaxy size out there, we can then compare and contrast and see if gravity remains constant from one side of the visible universe to the other.

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posted: Feb 29, 2008

Greg O'Byrne

Free.

Probably available this month.

Made Robert Scoble cry.

WorldWide Telescope, created with Microsoft's high-performance Visual Experience Engine™, enables seamless panning and zooming across the night sky blending terabytes of images, data, and stories from multiple sources over the Internet into a media-rich, immersive experience.

Official WorldWide Telescope site: 

you can zoom in and zoom and zoom and zoom...

It stitches together views from all the best telescopes in the world...

It's "like a magic carpet ride".

Technology rocks.  We are living in the age of miracles.

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posted: Feb 01, 2008

Greg O'Byrne

BTW, that site is a great resource for finding wallpaper candidates.

oh and BTW I'm on a dual monitor system.

oh yeah one more thing, here is an indispensable tool for spreading an image over two screens in Vista: Display Fusion.

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posted: Jan 22, 2008

Greg O'Byrne

I don't see the benefits in this plan: Space leaders work to replace lunar base with manned asteroid missions

Well let me re-phrase that, I see the benefits, but I don't think they're compelling enough to make a political argument.  Which is the battle the space program needs to always fight.  And in general they suck at it.  They're engineers, not politicians.

What they need to realize is the the whole man-in-space thing is a tough sell to congress.  And the only things that spark the political will when it comes to the whole man-in-space thing is big mountaintops to summit.

Asteroids are small and pointless.  Small foothills in the landscape of space.

The MOON!

MARS!

Those are marketing messages a politician can sell.

So my space program engineer side says, "duh, the moon doesn't help us get to Mars much."  But my congressional lobbyist side says, "Gimme something I can sell to joe sixpack, 'cause the asteroid belt ain't it."

If it was MY space program I'd be spending way more money than 15 Billion, but it isn't mine, and that is the budget and you can't do everything you want and you HAVE to sell the program.

Sell the moon, sell Mars!

Don't try and sell small rocks with names like numbers...it won't work.

Comments [2]

posted: Jan 14, 2008

Greg O'Byrne

2007 WD5 Mars Collision Effectively Ruled Out - Impact Odds now 1 in 10,000

Looks like it will miss by at least 4000 kilometers and most likely by somewhere more in the neighborhood of 26,000 kilometers.

Oh well.

Comments [0]

posted: Dec 11, 2007

Greg O'Byrne

Accelerating change is going on all around us.  We see it in entertainment from computer games to movies.  We see it in telephones as they keep getting smaller and more feature rich.  We see it in cameras and music players and personal GPS devices.  Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

All of this creeps into our lives and becomes ubiquitous.  The changes quickly becomes invisible, expected and, in a weird sort of way, un-important.

But accelerating change is also affecting the sciences.

For example the hunt for extra-solar planets.  The first one discovered was in 1991.  Since then there has been a rapid pace of discovery.  The bulk of the discoveries essentially done by inference: careful detection of the wobbling of the star around which the planet[s] orbit. 

 

So the point here is that before 1991 we had NO evidence of planets orbiting other stars.  In theory we were 100% sure (or so close as to make no difference) that most stars had some planets, but we had no direct evidence.

Now there has been over 250 planets identified.

But wait that's not all!

Now there is a new technology under development by the Lyot Project, it's goal to create the necessary instrument and associated software to remove starlight from images thus allowing the much fainter planets to be viewed directly.  Astronomers will no longer need rely on inference to discover new planets.

This would be a remarkable achievement and would allow for a much greater number of planets to be discovered.  It would probably also allow for the discovery of Earth like planets and the reading of spectrums from the planets themselves.

What would the reactions be if we found a planet with a spectral analysis that matched Earth?  Orbit, temperature, water, oxygen?...

Would that spur some research into a viable star probe?  Just asking...

Accelerating change is cool.

Sites of interest:

• Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia
• How do astronomers find planets orbiting other stars?
• The Futurist is a big proponent of observing the accelerating change going on in many facets of our world and even in places we don't normally look. There are several entries that discuss the accelerating change that is going on in telescope technology.

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posted: Nov 15, 2007

scooter

I was able to find the video of this awesome footage on YouTube today. 

The rising image Wide Shot taken from near the North Pole, and the Arabian Peninsula and Indian Ocean can be observed on the Earth.

The setting image Tele Shot taken from near the South Pole, and we can see the Australian Continent (center left) and the Asian Continent (lower right) on the Earth.

Scooter
GadgetGrid.com

Comments [3]

posted: Nov 14, 2007

scooter

A Japanese moon probe, Kaguya, has recaptured the Apollo "Earth-rise" photograph but, this time it was captured with high-definition imaging.

The relative locations of the Kaguya probe: the moon, and the Earth as the imagery was made. Credit: JAXA/NHK:




Earth-rise (2): In the image, made from a moving image taken onboard the Kaguya spacecraft, a region of the moon's surface near its north pole is shown.  Credit: JAXA/NHK:

Earth-set (1): This still image was taken from a moving image shot by the HDTV onboard Kaguya and sent to the JAXA Usuda Deep Space Center. The Moon's surface is a region near its south pole.  Credit: JAXA/NHK:
 
Earth-set series:


Via Space.com

Scooter
GadgetGrid.com

Comments [0]

posted: Nov 12, 2007

Greg O'Byrne

So interplanetary travel...cool yes?

How do we do it?

Shane Ross gives a compelling speech about the use of LaGrange points as entry and exit points into orbits of planetary bodies. The Interplanetary Transport Network

Essentially there are low energy paths that lead from Earth orbit to L1 or L2.  There are then low energy paths that lead from L1 to the Earth-Sun LaGrange point called E1 or E2.  And from there more low energy paths to the LaGrange points around other bodies in the solar system.

He uses the Genesis project as an example of very low energy orbits.  The Genesis project used these low energy pathways to make its way from Earth to L2 and from there to E2 where it stayed and sampled the solar winds for 2 years.

It then used the reverse of those paths to make its way back to Earth again.

Genesis was able to do all this travel while using "...five hundredths of 1% of the fuel that it takes to get a rocket into Earth orbit."  That is remarkable.

The major point of this whole speech was summed up early: Once you reach Earth's orbit you are halfway to anywhere.

Here is a little lighthearted graphic from the speech defining the low energy pathways as a Metro map.

Transit stop

Professor Ross argues that the Lunar L1 location become a gateway station. 

It's the best location for a manned space station because: travel time is a matter of days from the Earth, launching craft and maintaining craft from that location is cheap, launching from L1 up to E1 or E2 is cheap and therefore exiting the local Earth system to head to other planets is cheap as well.

It becomes the closest rest stop on the interplanetary highway.

Can we get into orbit cheaply?

So then the remaining hurdle is getting into Earth orbit.  If we can make that cheap then the entire process of interplanetary travel becomes inexpensive. 

What technology are we working on right now that might lower the cost of getting payloads into orbit?

Space Elevator.

Does it feel like we are on the cusp of a convergence here?  If we are able to tie these two sciences together, the engineering feat of a space elevator with the comprehensive knowledge of how to navigate the solar system's "currents", what will the bounds of our exploration be?

Cheap Planetary Travel

It would no longer require huge chemical rockets to get from Earth to Mars or Jupiter or anywhere for that matter.  It would be like nudging a stick out into a stream and watching it float on down to the next stop.  Only you would be able to nudge the stick back upstream as well, whenever you wanted.

Download and watch the video it's compelling.

Comments [0]

posted: Sep 27, 2007

Greg O'Byrne

Just an example of accelerating change.

There were rooms and devices in history that could be categorized as planetariums dating back to the 13th century, but the first true planetarium was created in Munich in 1920.  [ref. linky] [wikipedia]

That planetarium used a metal dome with holes poked in it to project the lights onto a domed ceiling.  This technology remained largely unchanged for 60 years.

Since then we have seen rapid change.  With computer processing  power increasing continuously it is now possible to provide dynamic content up onto the dome.  I went to a local planetarium last year and the experience was more like a trip through space than a lecture from an instructor.  It was remarkable.

But it doesn't stop there.

We now have sophisticated programs available to everyone for free that exceed the capabilities of ANY planetarium that was built before the year 2000.  Stellarium [linky] is only the most sophisticated example.

The power of a full planetarium placed in your hands for free.

Accelerating Change:

This is only one trivial example of accelerating change in our lives.  We have the capabilities at our fingertips that only large institutions have had in the past.  And even those institutions, whether business or government, have only had THOSE capabilities for a hundred years or so, before that essentially nobody could do these things.

And we take it all for granted.

We shouldn't.

We live in an age of miracles.  It is not an age of once in a blue moon someone gets healed by some mysterious means or someone walks on water or something trivial like that.  It is an age where the miracles are so common and ubiquitous that they have become mundane.

Comments [0]

posted: Sep 26, 2007

Greg O'Byrne

http://www.stellarium.org/

Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.

It is being used in planetarium projectors. Just set your coordinates and go.

Remarkable program.

Go get it.

Send a link for it to your Dad or Uncle who is into astronomy.

Comments [0]

posted: May 04, 2007

Greg O'Byrne

So I've read this great book just lately called: A Man On The Moon. It's really cool.  The author, Andrew Chaikin, does a great job. He interviewed a lot of the astronauts and gives a great telling of the adventure.

I highly recommend it.

I got to thinking and I wondered; what sort of videos of the moonlandings might be available out on the web.  I grabbed a few and I encourage you to go look up some more.

And then if you want to explore some more go over here: Nasa - Apollo

An amazing period in the history of the United States and Mankind.  Unbelievable what they achieved.  The longer it's been since the landings the more amazing it becomes.

Apollo 11 liftoff:

Niel on the surface:

Apollo 17 on the surface:

Golf on the moon:

Feather and Hammer

Comments [0]

posted: Apr 27, 2007

Greg O'Byrne

The Drake Equation is the equation formulated by Frank Drake.  It is a speculative equation that is used to attempt to estimate the number of civilizations alive and kicking in the galaxy today.  It is stated as such.

N = R* × f_p × n_e × f_l × f_i × f_c × L

So why are you bringing this up Greg?  Well I'm glad you asked.  Astronomers have been using highly specialized techniques lately to detect planets around nearby stars, in general by detecting the wobble in the star's path caused by massive close orbiting planets. 

So historically we have been able to Estimate R*, which is the estimate of the number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. 

And recently, with our new capabilities, we have been learning about how our estimates play out with f_p, which is the estimate for the fraction of the stars that have planets around them.

But the rest of the variables have been wild ass guesses.

Now Astronomers have spotted a potential n_e data point.  n_e is the number of planets per star that might sustain life. [linky] They believe they have spotted a candidate planet.  Now this in its own right doesn't tell us much.  What it does reveal is the growing capability of astronomers to detect smaller and smaller planets.

"On the treasure map of the universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X," Delfosse said.

As the technologies and skill of the astronomers continue to increase, we may very well nail down the front end of the Drake equation.  We may statistically "know" three of the seven variables.

If we can refine our techniques and increase the power of our telescopes even further we might be able to answer f_l which is the fraction of planets where life evolves.  Spectroscopic analysis comes to mind.

With knowledge of four of the seven Drake equation variables we will have a much better grasp of our standing in the universe.

Beyond that we really need a way to communicate with the intelligent life supposed in f_i and f_c.  But still...

Update: Let's hear what Carl Sagan has to say about it: