24 March 2009
Carnival of Space #95
The Carnival of space is up over at Orbitalhub! Why are you still here? Go check it out!
LPSC 2009: Day 1
Unfortunately I missed the earliest sessions today because I had to drive down to Johnson Space Center to get a badge. I am going to be working there for four weeks after LPSC and another five weeks later in the summer, characterizing rock samples and shooting them with a laser, so I needed a badge to be able to do that work. I got back to the conference just in …
22 March 2009
Cosmos on Hulu!
I just heard the other day that the entire Cosmos series is available for free on Hulu now! Carl Sagan inspired many of today’s astronomers, and making the series available ensures that his influence will continue to last. Take a look, and share the link with your friends.
Blogging LPSC 2009
Greetings from Texas! With the Arizona field trip over, today I hopped on a plane to Houston for the 40th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. It will be going on all this week, starting on Monday and I will do my best to post my more interesting notes here. LPSC is a great conference, with the latest news from all aspects of planetary science, and a special focus on more …
The Painted Desert and Petrified Forest
(This is the final day of a week-long field trip in Arizona. Get caught up with days 1,2,3,4,5, 6) Friday was the last day of the field trip, and we spent it at the Petrified Forest national park. We were there to study the colorful clays and river deposits, but we began the day with an unexpected bonus: our guide, Bill Parker, is a paleontologist at the park, and he …
20 March 2009
Grand Falls and Sand Dunes
(This is day 6 of a week-long field trip in Arizona. Get caught up with days 1,2,3,4,5) Today we visited Grand Falls and the nearby dune field. Grand Falls is especially interesting because it combines many of the processes that are active in shaping planetary surfaces. The falls are the result of a huge lava flow pouring into the ancient canyon of the Little Colorado river, filling the canyon and …
19 March 2009
Meteor Crater, Walnut Canyon, and Red Mountain
(This is day 5 of a week-long planetary geology field trip to Arizona. Get caught up with days 1,2,3,4) Today was a long and awesome day. We started out at meteor crater, the youngest and best preserved impact crater on Earth! Our guide today was Shaun Wright, a colleague from the Hawaii field workshop, among other places. He showed us infrared images of the crater taken from an airplane and …
18 March 2009
The Grand Canyon
Today we visited the Grand Canyon. If you haven’t been there before, there is no way to convey what it is like. It is the only place I’ve ever been with a view that literally took my breath away. John Wesley Powell, a one-armed civil war veteran and geologist wrote extensively about his pioneering voyages through the canyon and summed it up quite well: “The glories and the beauties of …
16 March 2009
More about LROC
I posted the other day about visiting the Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter Camera control room and being very impressed by the mission, the instrument, the control room and of course the folks running everything. Well, Dr. Sam Lawrence, a member of the LROC team, got wind of my post, and sent me some more great info! First of all is a nice virtual tour of the control center that also talks …
SP Flow and Sunset Crater
(This is day 3 of a week-long field trip to Arizona. Catch up with days 1 and 2!) Today was all about volcanoes. We started early, driving north out of Flagstaff and skirting around the huge San Francisco peaks, which are the remnants of a huge stratovolcano (think Mt. Fuki or Mt. Rainier). The volcano formed between about 1 and 0.4 million years ago. It is currently 12,633 feet high, …
