Launch Day

Launch day for the Discovery. Still a chance the launch might be delayed due to incoming clouds but as of this writing they are fueling up the shuttle. Despite concerns raised by an independent safety group about cracks in the shuttles wing panels the launch will proceed at 11:38am EDT. NASA is saying "the defects are too small to allow hot gasses to burn through the composite carbon covers and destroy the spaceship during atmospheric re-entry".

Shuttle Discovery's main mission is to install the Harmony module. They will also be testing new space shuttle heat shield repair methods, also moving a solar truss segment, this will be a huge job, or as they put it " like moving an entire house from one neighborhood to another. There are 5 planned spacewalks, the most ever during a shuttle flight, plenty of opportunity to catch them on NASA TV which is what I'm watching right now as I'm doing this post. T minus 3 hrs and holding, that's what the guy just said now on NASA TV, I will be watching the launch as well, remember cool TV camera angles during launch. The shuttle is planned for return on November 6th. 4:47 am EST.




I love Earthshine! Moonlight is what we see when the Sun's light bounces off the Moon onto the Earth, Earthshine is what we see on the Moon when that same light is bounced back off Earth onto the Moon again. Earthshine is the faint glow on the dark portion of the crescent Moon. I took the above image during the last waning crescent. The Moon was low on the horizon so it got a nice yellow tint to it. You can see because of the Earthshine some of the Lunar surface features on the dark portion of the Moon, like the dark Maria,(seas) Another cool thing is, look at the terminator, you can see the highlight of craters as it makes it's way across the Lunar surface.

Leonardo Da Vinci first discovered what Earthshine was back around 1510, he said the ghostly glow was due to sunlight bouncing off Earth's oceans and , in turn hitting the Moon, well he was partly right, the reflected sunlight bouncing off the Earth's clouds is the major source of Earthshine.

My name that puppy poll is now closed and it looks like drowseymonkey won, so unless me and drowseymonkey have some sort of falling out, which is kind of hard to do since we never had a falling in, don't even really know this person, (in fact I'm beginning to suspect drowseymonkey isn't her real name), I will be naming my puppy drowseymonkey. It will be a good conversation starter as I try to explain the name to friends and family, but deep down inside I know it's the right name. I'd like to take a moment to thank all of those who participated in the poll and to those of you who didn't, don't complain when I mention my dog's name drowseymonkey in my posts, you had your chance.