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26 June 2011
Spectacular New MSL Animation!
You guys. Drop everything and take a look at this spectacular 11 minute animation of Curiosity landing on Mars!
19 June 2011
Seeing Bases and Faces on Mars
Did you hear about Bio Station Alpha? No, it’s not a new video game. It’s a mysterious feature that someone spotted in Google Mars. In the northern hemisphere of Mars, at coordinates 71°49’22.11″N 29°32’35.64″W there is a cluster of white pixels just barely visible if you zoom all the way in. And obviously, the most logical expanation is that these pixels are a secret Mars base. Obviously. It is definitely not a glitch in the image caused by a cosmic ray hitting the detector and then exacerbated by compressing and map-projecting the image.
25 May 2011
R.I.P. Spirit Rover
We all knew this day would come. Yesterday NASA announced that it would be stopping efforts to contact the Spirit rover after a final set of commands early this morning.
20 May 2011
Results of the 5th MSL Landing Site Workshop
Well, after three days of fascinating science and heated discussion, the 5th and final MSL landing site workshop has come to a close, and the consensus is… that all of the sites are pretty darn interesting.
22 March 2011
Open Laboratory 2010 Now Available!
Do you like science? Do you like blogs? Do you like blogs about science? I sure hope so, because if not, what are you doing here? Anyway, assuming you answered the above questions in the affirmative, you’re going to want to immediately follow this link to purchase your copy of OpenLab 2010. It’s a collection of “the best science writing on the web” from 2010. Inexplicably, one of my blog …
20 March 2011
Supermoon
Hey folks, did you know that tonight, the Earth doesn’t have just any moon? No, tonight we have a SUPERMOON. What’s that you say? The moon looks just like any other full moon? Well, clearly you haven’t been paying attention. You see, the “supermoon” phenomenon means that it will be ever-so-slightly larger in the sky than normal. This is because the moon will be at perigee: the closest point to …
12 January 2011
The Frontier is Everywhere
Every once in a while, a good dose of Carl Sagan is just what I need: And relatedly, I came across this nice blog post by sci-fi writer Nick Sagan sharing some memories of his father. It’s worth a read. (Hat tip to Brian Shiro for sharing this video)
2 November 2010
Vote
If you’re an eligible US citizen, please go and exercise your right to vote today! Don’t know where to vote? The internets can help you! just use this handy Google maps tool. A bit of searching on the internet, especially your local newspapers, can yield plenty of good information such as interviews with candidates so you can make an informed decision.
27 October 2010
Martian Chronicles 2.0
Hello and welcome to the new incarnation of the Martian Chronicles blog! I’m really excited and honored to be part of the shiny new AGU blogosphere. If you’re a new reader, let me take a moment and let you know what to expect here at Martian Chronicles. I write about a lot of different things because I’m interested in a lot of different things. As you might have guessed, Mars …
13 October 2010
Martian Chronicles is Moving!
Big news folks! Sometime next week, this blog will be moving over to the American Geophysical Union‘s new blog network! AGU is the organization responsible for the Journal of Geophysical Research – Planets, which is one of the most important journals in planetary science, particularly for the terrestrial planets. AGU also hosts the enormous “fall” meeting each December, causing 16,000 scientists to descend on downtown San Francisco like over-educated locusts. …
