The Japanese Moon Probe Kaguya has sent back stunning images of an Earth rise, the above picture and Earth set the below picture. Notice below in the Earth setting picture the Earth appears upside down, visible is Australia and Asia. The images were taken 62 miles above the Lunar surface. Bonus for us Canadians, the Discovery Channel HD in partnership with Japanese broadcaster NHK will be showing Return To The Moon which is about the probes mission to the Moon and will show the most current images. This program will be repeated throughout the coming weeks starting November 14/07. I will be PVRing mine this afternoon while I'm at work, very cool.
The Shuttle Atlantis made it's 7 hour 3 mile journey to it's launch pad in preparation for the December 6th. launch. This will be the 24th shuttle mission to the ISS. Atlantis's main mission will be to install the European Space Agency's Columbus module which will be dedicated to long term space research.
The Google AdSense ads have been working out great for me! So far I've purchased a 9.95 Earth rise Hi Res print, and 2,000 satellite TV stations for my laptop for only 50 bucks. the one ad said "Shocking discovery they don't want you to know", well who doesn't want to know what they don't want you to know? So now I have 2,000 satellite TV stations on my PC AND I now know what they didn't want me to know, check and mate, sometimes my own intelligence amazes even me.
I will leave you with a video I put together on Lunar travel using my Tycho perspective image, duplicated over and over again with the perspective changed a little each frame to give the illusion of moving over the Lunar surface.
Hot off the presses, my latest image of Comet Holmes taken last night. It is composed of 80 images at 10 secs for each image and the best stacked together. I then processed it in photo shop using the shadow/highlight feature to remove the whites of the dust particles to get underneath the exterior dust to see what was going on with the nucleus, I then increased the levels of the other colors to get a false color image showing the highly magnified nucleus releasing particles to feed it's ever expanding tail, isn't that just too cool! I put the before and after photoshopped images into a little clip above and entitled it, that's right "Comet Holmes Tail".
Comet Holmes is moving away from us now, and is also moving in the sky as well. Last night it appeared much closer as in the above image to the star Mirfak, and the comet will in the next few months make a semi-circle around the constellation Perseus. The best time for viewing is right now while there is a nearly new moon and the comet is still in it's bright phase, who knows how long it will last.
I signed up with Google AdSence, certainly not for the money but to provide a service for my guests. I was leery about the type of advertising they would supply for me, but the very first ad change my mind on that. It was an ad to purchase the newly released Apollo Hi-Res scans of the original Hassleblad lunar 70mm camera images, and get this you can get them in sizes of up to 3x4 feet! The images that have been scanned to date so far are kept at Arizona State University
Also on the site where you can purchase the framed prints is a Trailer for David Sington's directed documentary "In The Shadow Of The Moon". I definitely want to see this movie but it probably won't be released here in Saskatoon, have to wait for the DVD release February 12th. 2008. The film is a documentary about the astronauts who circled or landed on the Moon between 1968 and 1972. One astronaut said as he was standing on the Lunar surface looking back at Earth "I felt that I was literally standing on God's front porch" I am going to leave you with another one of my flying over Tycho perspective images. Tycho is the crater top center of the image with a Central peak.
Imagine with me if you will, you are orbiting the Moon in spaceship Boba at about 150 miles distant from the Lunar surface traveling 2,000 mph on your way to Tycho City (Tycho is the crater at the top of the image with a central peak), and you look out your window and snap an image, the above image is what you'd see, no it's not taken by a lunar probe or any of the Apollo missions, it is one of my highly magnified lunar images, I figured out how to change the perspective of an image in photo shop so that it looks like your flying over the Lunar landscape as opposed to looking at it through a telescope. I was going through some of the images taken by lunar probes and the Apollo missions in Virtual Moon Atlas and thought it would be cool if I could get the same effect on some of my images, so after many hours of fooling around with the free transform edit tool in photo shop I was able to come up with a totally different viewpoint hence the above image. You may ask why would I spend all that time doing that, I ask why not, it looks cool, takes me away even further then I already am from our Earthly constraints to a place where you can imagine the impossible, besides a had a few hours to kill the other night.
The Shuttle Discovery arrived home safely yesterday at 1:01 pm. EST. after a successful and complex mission. This is space exploration at its finest, from the ability and ingenuity of being able to develop things like cufflinks to repair one of the International Space Station's solar arrays to preparing the Space Station for further space exploration with the installation of the Harmony module, this is why I blog so much about the Shuttle program, these people are making things happen up there so we can reach for the Moon and beyond, they are our modern day Columbuses!
Okay this is just too cool. Japan's Lunar orbiter Kaguya has just sent back high definition Images of the moon along with a HD Movie. The movie has 2 sequences, one of the Lunar polar area as in the above image, and another sequence of the Oceanus Procellarum region. The images were shot about 100km from the Lunar surface, how exciting is this?!
NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center's Fabrication Plant released a picture of a mock up of the Orion crew module. It is America's first new manned spacecraft since the shuttle was developed 30 years ago. The Orion is part of the Constellation Program which will return us to the Moon by 2020.
Astronauts on the Shuttle Discovery have completed repairs on the solar array successfully using the home made cufflinks and are heading home. After the Shuttle Discovery undocked from the ISS they performed the 360 loop around the space station to take one final look to ensure nothing is about to fall off the station, it also allows the station's crew to take final images of the shuttles heat shield to analyze later for damage, which is now standard practice ever since the 2003 Columbia disaster. As the astronauts were leaving the ISS yesterday while closing the hatches Clayton Anderson noticed a ding on one of the shuttle's thick windows, NASA doesn't anticipate any complications from this, apparently the window was struck by a micrometeorite. Below is a picture of one of the cufflinks used to repair the solar array. The shuttle will be landing at Kennedy Space Center,Fla. 1 pm.EST Wednesday.
There are a couple of good meteor showers coming up in the next couple months to watch out for. Late evening on November 17th. through the morning hours of November 18th. sees the return of the Leonids meteor shower. The source of the shower is the parent comet Tempel-Tuttle discovered independently by William Temple in December 1865 and Horace Tuttle in January 1866. Look for the radiant, the place where the meteors seem to start from low in the NE. sky around 11:30 pm November 17th. that's where and when the constellation Leo rises. Leo will continue to rise until early morning bringing with it 20-30 meteors an hour.
The second major shower, the Geminids will occur December 14th. but you'll be able to catch them between December 7-16 with peak activity December 14th. The Geminids are the most reliable of all the showers with up to 120 meteors per hour. Look for the constellation Gemini, the radiant of the shower to rise in the NE. sky around 8pm. and will of course continue to rise and bring with it many meteors from dusk to dawn. Find yourself a comfortable spot or even a chair and get comfy, make sure you're warm, here in Saskatchewan 20c below is normal for December. If you find yourself relaxing too much to a stage where you're dozing off and seeing visions of Obi Wan Kenobi your probably getting dead, snap out of it man and get inside and warm up. Mars as a bonus will also be in the constellation Gemini. Every 26 months Mars and Earth get the closest they can be in their respective orbits around the Sun. On December 18th. at 6:46 pm.EST. Mars will be within 55 million miles of the Earth, I can't stress enough, get some binoculars, it'll be worth it
The best viewing of celestial objects is happening right now. I was up at 5am. Saturday morning, it's hard to put into words, the sky was full of gems. It's like all the players showed up for the performance of the century and I was the only one invited. Venus starts off the show a bright white gem low in the east; Saturn next, a bright yellow ball a little higher in the south east; a little further west was the Moon followed by Mars high in the south; west of Mars was the open star cluster the Pleiades and then just north west of the Pleiades is Comet Holmes. These are all naked eye candies, don't need a scope to view this stuff people, it was a busy quite, if that is even a term, it was remarkable!
I am going to leave you with a compilation of my best Comet Holmes images I took from October 25th to November 2nd. all at 200x. I put them all together in windows crappy Vista operating system's "Movie Maker", but that wouldn't upload properly, duh, Vista, so I uploaded to You Tube and embedded it to my blog. WARNING!!!, if you have an irrational fear of a comet crashing into the Earth destroying life as we know it, don't push the play button! Also just a note to let you all know I will be posting every Monday and Thursday nights from now on.
Saturday November 3rd. astronauts on the shuttle Discovery mission STS 120 will be making what they are calling the most difficult and dangerous spacewalk ever attempted. During the mission's third spacewalk which consisted of moving a large solar array panel on the " P6 truss" which by the way weighs 35,000 lbs, as they were extending the array astronauts noticed a couple rips in one of the panels. They immediately stopped the extending process fearing more damage and took pics to send home. The array is 80% deployed, is still generating 97% of its full capacity but NASA scientists are saying it is structurally unstable and must be repaired.
The plan is to "button-up" the two rips with "cuff links" which the astronauts crafted with supplies found in the station's lab. Astronaut Scott Parazynski will be attached to an extension, attached to the Canadarm (above picture), take the one hour ride out to the problem area and effect repairs. What makes this mission more difficult is that as Scott Parazynski is repairing the array there is a possibility of electrical shock as the panel is supplying 110 volts, generating 13.4 hp. and there is no off switch, once the array is deployed it's on.
Comet Holmes continues to get bigger! It's like I found a new toy, every night I look forward to getting out and viewing the comet. What is really unusual about this whole situation is that I have had clear skies almost every night since the comet increased a million times in brightness. If you haven't yet, get out and take a look, very easy to spot now, as it gets dark look to the NE half way up from the horizon, you will see a fuzzy yellowish ball, that's the comet. I'd like to have you all over to show you what it looks like through a telescope, it is too cool, if you can get or borrow someones binoculars do it, who knows how long it will last, maybe only a couple more weeks, enjoy it while you can. Below is the first image I took last Wednesday October 25th. at 200x, below that is my most current one taken October 31st. at just 74x. Notice the green halo around the comet on my most current image, that is fluorescing gases mostly carbon monoxide, one of the byproducts of the explosion.
Comet HolmesOctober 25th. 200X
Comet Holmes October 31st. 74X
Rose over at World Outside my Window , who by the way helps many people out with her tips and knowledge on blogging, has honoured me with the "Community Blogger Award" It is awarded to people who reach out and make the blogging community a better one. Again I thank you Rose and will proudly display it with my other awards along the side of my blog. I would like to pass on this award to Shirley over at Way Cool Pictures. Shirley always brightens up my day with cool pics from around the globe, and on her blog as you scroll down has a "Thank You" and a picture of a smiley cat, and I love cats, so she gets the award.
