14 October 2008
DPS 2008 Day Three: More Titan, More Exoplanets
This morning I spent my time in the Titan Subsurface and Interior sessions, and I’m glad I did because there were some cool talks. There were a couple that showed possible evidence for cryovolcanism (that is, “volcanoes” where the “lava” is actually water freezing to become ice). One talk by Rosaly Lopes showed radar images of locations called Hotei Arcus and Western Xanadu, and suggested that the lobate features that …
12 October 2008
DPS 2008 Day 2: Rings, Titan, Comets, Orbits
Today I didn’t go to most of the first round of presentations. They were about Titan’s upper atmosphere, asteroids, and the theory and dynamics of rings. Not really the stuff that gets me excited. I did catch the last talk in the rings session. It was showcasing a new program used to simulate ring particles, including the ability to make the particles stick together if they collide slowly. Apperntly some …
11 October 2008
DPS 2008 Day One: Mars, Exoplanets, Defining Planets and Enceladus
Today was the first day of the Division for Planetary Sciences conference here at Cornell. All the talks are being live web-streamed, but since most of you probably don’t have time to sit and watch esoteric scientific talks online all weekend, here are the highlights from the sessions I saw today. In the morning, the first session that I went to was Mars Surface and Surface/Atmosphere Interactions. DPS is an …
10 October 2008
MSL Still Aiming for Oct 2009
NASA is holding a press conference right now regarding MSL and it sounds like they are going to press on and try to achieve the October 2009 launch date. More info as it becomes available! Update: Emily has a much more detailed post about the status of MSL over at the Planetary Society blog.
DPS Meeting Live Webstreaming!
Planetary astronomers from around the world have been flocking to Ithaca over the last day or so to participate in the 40th annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences meeting here at Cornell. There will be tons of fascinating talks starting tomorrow morning and going until Wednesday. I’ll try to blog about the more interesting ones that I see, but in case you want to listen …
Carnival of Space #74
Get your weekly space fix over at Kysat with the 74th Carnival of Space! What are you waiting for?
Space-X Launch Video
Check out this video of the succesful Space-X launch, set to music. I especially like the glowing hot rocket nozzle.
9 October 2008
Dark matter around Earth?
Dark matter is one of those mysterious physics problems that, while really awesome in theory, almost never seems to have applications back here in the solar system. However, a new theory claims that dark matter might be lurking just overhead. A new study (Adler, J. Phys. A) has come out that sets an upper limit on the amount of dark matter between Earth and the orbit of the moon: 1500 …
8 October 2008
25km Enceladus Flyby!
Tomorrow the Cassini spacecraft will fly within 25 km of the surface of Enceladus. Yes, you read that right. Twenty five kilometers. Not 2500, not 250. Holy crap. I’ll let you read about all the details over at the Planetary Society blog. I just wanted to call attention to how freakin’ amazing it is to be able to command a spacecraft that is currently ~1,525,300,000 km away from Earth and …
Quite the Overhead Projector
Last night McCain called the projector at the Adler Planetarium, the first planetarium in the western hemisphere, an “overhead projector” and criticized Obama for seeking money for it. He is also on record as previously calling planetaria “foolishness”. Read more about it at Cosmic Variance and Universe Today. Update: the Adler planetarium has issued a statement about McCain’s remark, and Bad Astronomy (and many others) weigh in.
