A very nice image capture sequence video presented by an Astrophysicist I trust on a news channel I don’t… thanks to Comcast Dot Net for the source video for this presentation, and The Hubblesite in the US and Space Telescope in Europe for the science behind it.
As it often does at this time of year, it will be raining rocks tonight and tomorrow morning, during the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. It should be good viewing everywhere without a lot of cloud cover, since it will be a moonless night. This is the main event, but not the complete show; while the peak is tonight as we hit the densest part of the cluster, from beginning to end takes a week or two to go through. You can see some good pictures already from this years presentation over at the National Geographic site, and Space Dot Com is reporting a quite bright fireball over Alabama the other night. The peak from the US East Coast is 3PM this afternoon to 3AM tomorrow morning, while the UK should be local midnight to dawn tonight. If you are looking for a list of other meteor showers to catch this year, Stardate has a short list of the good ones, and as always Heavens Above can be configured to inform you about anything interesting to watch in the sky at your location. Happy viewing!
This video came from NASA itself, and shows the ATHLETE rover (All-Terrain Hex-Limbed Extra-Terrestrial Explorer) deploying in boogie mode; what a hoot.
As has happened many times before, and always on a Friday, this Friday is Mars Day at the National Air and Space Museum. Started in 1996 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Viking Landing on Mars on July 20th, 1976, the museum hosts a public gathering of their planetary sciences team. This means you can meet and ask questions of the people who plan the missions to Mars and other planets surrounded by the exhibits, up to and including the director of NASA’s planetary science division, Jim Green. They also have a number of special events, exhibits, and presentations on tap for all age groups, infotainment at its finest.
This isn’t very Sci-Fi or Space Cadet, but it was a wonderful stunt and I just had to include the video; Jewel doing Undercover Karaoke! Thanks to @feliciaday for the heads up on this one!
How could I avoid mentioning it? It is not quite a Sci-Fi con, but some of the same people will be there. SETI Con is a convention centered around the question of where everybody is… everybody that didn’t evolve on this planet, that is. It is coming up August 13th through the 15th in Santa Clara, CA., and will be running four tracks: Main, Science, Education, and Q&A. The panelists and speakers lean heavily to the sciences (with a whole subsection just for the astronauts), but includes Sci-Fi Authors, some of whom are scientists, and Sci-Fi actors, one of whom is also an astronomer. And if it wasn’t already obvious to you, this party is put together by the SETI Institute, and yes, SETI does stand for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Thanks to the bloggers at Discovery for the heads up on this one.
I am going to rethink the Con postings, as I have had several comments that finding out about them a few days before they happen doesn’t leave time to make arrangements and attend the event. But here is a fun site to check out: Part Time Scientists, who have decided to put a robot on the moon. No, they are not kidding; in fact they are so serious that they are registered with the Google Lunar X PRIZE as one of more than 20 teams worldwide in the competition. They are looking for volunteers in several disciplines if you want to get in on the action. Ad Astra!