The next meteor shower I attend, and that will be the Orionids, peaking October 20,21, I'm pointing my camera and telescope at the Moon. The above animation was taking by amateur astronomer Robert Spellman shows a Perseid Meteoriod blasting into the Moon to the equivalent of around 100 lbs of TNT, quite a site, sign me up for a piece of that.
Some updates on the Phoenix Mars Lander, the above animation was taken with the Lander's surface stereo imager, it is a clip of 10 frames over a time frame of 10 minutes and shows ice clouds moving over the landing site. This helps scientists track winds on Mars, the clouds are made of ice crystals similar to the cirrus clouds here on Earth. The Lander has also gathered another soil sample into one of it's ovens. This sample came from the Stone Soup 7 inch deep trench, the deepest todate, "We are anxious to find out what makes this deeper soil cloddier than the other samples" Doug Ming, Phoenix science team member.
The little rover guys are still going strong, the above image shows the tracks of Opportunity coming back out of the Victoria Crater, notice two sets of tracks, it came back out over the same tracks it went into the crater with. Spirit's batteries are charging up again and is still doing science, both have made it through another Martian winter, a couple robots that were only to last 30 days have now been working for around 4 years, geez they keep going and going, the Phoenix should be so lucky.
Get thee over to Google Chrome, download this browser, it's fast and it's clean, it's a clean machine. The only problem with it I've found so far is that when you do your posts it doesn't underline like Firefox your spelling mistakes, which for me is quite a big thing, my posts usually have a gazillion words underlined, right now nothing is underlined, which means I've either spelled everything right or I'm screwed, so I may end up surfing the net with Chrome and then doing my posts with Firefox.
I'll leave you now with a Sunset I took a few nights ago.
33 comments:
I always like your animated sunsets or moons! Thanks for the interesting post again.
I downloaded Chrome too! I love it. There are a couple things I don't like also. One is that when you pull your Favorites tab down, it always goes back to the top. I like when it loads back to the place I left off. If that makes sense!
Hi Bob - It is so amazing what they are doing on Mars. 4 years and still going - wow.
I haven't decided about Chrome yet - once I hear a bit more about potential spyware, then I will decide. I have heard good things about the program though.
Hi! The first animated image is awesome although I had visions of an astronaut flashing his light at us to get our attention. I hope they haven't left anyone up there!
The second two remind me so much of our earth, with the clouds above us and our four wheel driving at the local beach.
Yes, I do have a great imagination!
Take Care,
Peter
Hi! Me again! I'll give that Google Chrome a go and as for my image, head over to:
http://www.dumpr.net/
and you'll find plenty to play with, just like the one I used.
Take Care,
Peter
Hi! I downloaded Google chrome and it's a lot faster than IE7 but:
1. Some widgets are not recognized and it suggests downloading adobe flash movie plugin to get them going. I didn't download this.
2. The fonts in this comment section and mine, are now extremely small and one may need a magnifing glass to read them.
3. Does not recognise Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
4. Some images that were centered are now aligned left.
5. Animated images play up until th e mouse cursor is passed over them.
6. Spell check is active for some words and not others.
7. Images in post title now too large, with them crossing over into the title.
That's all I've found out so far, probably more to come.
Take Care,
Peter
Thanks Susanne, glad you find these posts interesting.\m/\m/
Hi Ruth , it does make sense, hopefully some changes will be made when the Beta phase is over.\m/\m/
Hi Kathy, can't say enough about the little rover guys, Chrome I think will be a leading browser once all the bugs are out of it, being the Beta stage there are bound to be some faults to start with.\m/\m/
Lol Peter, interesting take on the impact.
First Peter you pretty well need flash for lots of the stuff going on in the internet world, NASA and alot of the big boys use it quite frequently, firefox came with it automatically.
As far as IE7 goes, I hate it like dirt,lol, slow, and I can't even get into some sites with it, You Tube is an 80% rejection rate with it, if you don't like the Beta version of Chrome you should give the tried and true Firefox browser a go.
The fonts for Chrome can be adjusted in the minor tweaks area in the options tab if you want to make them bigger, like I did, my eyesight isn't that great the older I get,lol.
Some of the other points will hopefully be addressed like CSS during the Beta phase, right now I am liking it because it is very orderly and fast, but the spelling for me is important, hopefully that will be addressed as well.\m/
Thank you for the heads up on chrome - Peter
Hey Bob
That video of the Perseid meteriod hitting th moon is something else. The stuff you come up with!
Also, I to downloaded the Google chrome but didn't like it. Probably my computer is too slow, I like running Apple's Safari because its lightweight, streamlined and doesn't feel bloated like all the other browsers out there.
Also, I emailed you at your hotmail address listed in the about me section of your blog.
Take care my friend.
~JD
No problem Peter, hope it works out for you.\m/\m/
Thanks JD, Safari is cool, I have it on my IPhone, it works well, never thought of getting it for my lap and desk tops.\m/\m/
Never got your email though, my email is,
bjohnson555@hotmail.com
Bob:
Very interesting. I love the shots of the Perseid meteor hitting the moon. Bang! Never saw anything like it. The clouds over Phoenix are cool too. Are they water ice, and, if so, how do they know that?
Neat water reflections, as always.
Happy stargazing.
WOW! I have never considered that a meteor shower could be captured when hitting the moon.
Those rover tracks sure look other-worldly. I wonder how long they will survive on the Mars surface? I suppose a wind storm could blow them away. The more I think about this stuff, the less I think I know. :D
Super post and photos, Bob. :D
Hugs, JJ
Wow... the meteor hit is great! I might try firefox... I think I'll wait on the chrome though until it's out of beta... love your animations - the sunset is just beautiful!
Hey swubird, the meteor impact is pretty cool, the clouds are ice water, they have a sensor that can tell they are made up of ice water crystals.\m/\m/
Thanks JJ, come to think of it the winds can get pretty strong, we shall see how long they can last, probably longer then NASA is willing to fund,lol.\m/\m/
Thanks Shirley, if you haven't tried Firefox, give it a try , an excellent browser.\m/\m/
The ice clouds looked like they are really going fast. Did you speed it up? I would like to know what is in the deeper soil too, I can't wait for that post.
Love and Blessings,
AngelBaby
damn, no chrome for Mac :(
Hi Bob, I have really enjoyed your post. Imagine getting that meteor strike on film.
I will have to whatch the dates in your posts so that I do not miss the next meteor showers.
The Mars updates are alo interesting
That would indeed be incredible to capture a meteor striking the moon. I think you will get one! I imagine it must be very dangerous for astronauts with all the "left over" stuff flying around this system.
Any cool events coming up for views of the night sky?
Hi AngelBaby, yes actually it is 10 frames in a 10 minute time frame so it is speed up quite a bit, we shall know in the next week or so what the results of the dig are.\m/\m/
Hi Priyank, nothing for mac yet, just Vista and XP, that should be rectified soon I would think.\m/\m/
Thanks max-e, hopefully have some luck with the shower October 21/22.\m/\m/
Hey Jesse, we shall see come the 21/22 of October, alas I may have to go to a seminar on those exact dates in Toronto.
As far as what is happening in the night sky, September 10, 30 minutes after Sunset we have a trio of planets , Mercury, Mars and Venus all gathering low in the west, we have Jupiter in the south, beautiful as usual and a minor meteor shower, the Delta Aurgids peaks late September in the North East.\m/\m/
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LOL, isn't it amazing, what lasts the longest. I'm sure glad the rovers are still going strong - every day of their continued operation is a "free" day of scientific discovery.
For sure marvin, they are amazing.
Wonderful shot. I love it very much
Thanks roentarre.\m/\m/
Thanks for sharing the link, but argg it seems to be offline... Does anybody have a mirror or another source? Please reply to my post if you do!
I would appreciate if someone here at blackholesandastrostuff.blogspot.com could post it.
Thanks,
Charlie
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