National Geographic Mars Rovers Special

Just a heads up people, mark your calendars and get the popcorn going for this Sunday night November 2 at 8:00 pm ET for three hours of Mars, the Rovers and the search for aliens on The National Geographic Channel.

The premier of Five Years On Mars gets things rolling. Journey with the little rovers Spirit and Opportunity on what was to be a 90 day mission on the red planet that has now lasted nearly 5 years. Using computer generated high-definition photorealistic animation you'll see how the rovers conquered mechanical failures and the harsh Martian environment to send back literally 100s of thousands of images and enough scientific data to keep scientists busy back here on Earth for years to come.


Very cool, right near the beginning of the show it cuts to a scene of a bunch of scientists all wearing 3D glasses looking over some assembled 3D images taken by the rovers. Well anybody that has read this blog will know that I am one with all things 3D, ........ I so want a job where I have to wear 3D glasses, I can't imagine... well maybe a little.

Intercom system: "ATTENTION! ATTENTION! would Bob Johnson please report to the 3D mission room and bring your 3D glasses with you, there is a lot of 3D scientifical discoveries to be made that will benefit all humankind and we need your expertise and 3D glasses, thank you.... and have a nice day".


Immediately following Five Years on Mars will be an encore showing of Life On Mars, then the premier of Calling All Aliens, about how we are reaching out to the heavens in hopes of one day making alien contact, speaking of which do you remember Jodie Foster in the movie Contact?
well you'll meet the lady her character was based on, Jill Tarter the director of the Allen Telescope Array.


Partially funded by Paul Allen co-founder of Microsoft, the Allen Telescope Array is used by the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI), 24/7 to collect and monitor datastreams from outer space to see if anyone not of this Earth is trying to make contact.

All in all a great night with 3 awesome programs you won't want to miss. Right now the Canadian dates and times aren't confirmed, once I find out I will update this post.

Also as you're out Halloweening tomorrow night with the kiddies or just out by yourself, look low in the SW just after Sunset for a beautiful gathering of the crescent Moon and Venus.

I'll leave you now with an animation of the Full Moon and clouds.

Magnificent Desolation

Just when I thought I'd have to wait until February/08 to watch Astronauts walk on the Moon I happened to be surfing the net and found a newly released DVD called " Magnificent Desolation Walking on the Moon ", it's tag line being, "Only 12 have walked on the moon, YOU'RE NEXT". So within a half hour I had picked it up and double bonus just as I arrived at Rogers they were unpacking Guitar Hero III for the PS3 which I picked up for my boss, you can not find this game anywhere in town, so killing two birds with one stone made both of us happy and made 10 bucks in the process, the tip from the Boss. The movie is Narrated by Tom Hanks and you can't go wrong with Tom Hanks as a narrator, second only to James Earl Jones in this category, oh and both Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg are the executive producers.

Buzz Aldrin the second man to walk on the Moon and the Apollo 11 Lunar Module pilot actually coined the phrase "A Magnificent Desolation" when he stepped on the Moon , magnificent for the ability of man being able to go to the Moon and desolation for the extreme desolation of the Moon. There is a lot of rarely seen footage on this DVD, some of the astronauts would be walking along just talking to capcom (capsule communications from Earth) when they would trip over a rock or just trip up and fall, quite funny the amount of times this would happen, never saw this on the live versions. Another very interesting thing I learned from this DVD is that the Moon played visual tricks on the astronauts, because there was no buildings or trees on the Moon the astronauts perspective was out of sync, they had a hard time telling how big or far away things were, example, Capcom was asking the Apollo 15 astronauts about how far away they were from Hadley Rille, they replied they weren't too sure but estimated about 50 metres, right after that they were surprised when the edge gave way and it started to slope down to the bottom of the Rille, now Hadley Rille is a gorge comparable to the Grand Canyon, yet they couldn't see it coming, I found that very interesting and as they put it they had to be very careful because of it.

Overall a very good movie, if you like the Moon and space travel it is a no brainer pick it up.

There is a newly released computer network sharing program called Cosmology at Home. Works on the same principle as SETI at Home, you donate your computer's free time, resources and bandwidth for the greater good of either looking for aliens as with SETI or help solving the mysteries of the universe with cosmology at home. Some of the things you will be helping research with cosmology at home are items such as the universe acceleration, distribution of galaxies and fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background, right now as I'm doing this post I am also looking for new pulsars as well as aliens, no flys on me! All you do is go to their web site and download their interface a program called Boinc and you're good to go. You don't have to do aliens or cosmology stuff there's numerous research programs you can help with, such as temperature patterns if you're in to global warming, to researching malaria.

E.T. phone home

Do your part, use your pc for the search for aliens. http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/