Look behind you!! -Soyuz TMA-16 launch

TMA-16 flight to the ISS just launched last night after midnight Seattle time. Always on time, no delays, scrubs or problems with the 40 year old technology. The flight is carrying Cirque du Soleil billionaire Guy Laliberte as the space tourist this time.
Ok, the part that really confuses me is this video. The reporter is so close to the launch pad (she would be killed dead if that thing blew up), but she never turns around to watch the rocket launch!? Wha?? If I was offered the chance, I'd risk getting blown to tiny bits if I could stand there and see a launch. That would be so totally freaking awesome! What is wrong with her? WHY doesn't she turn around, stop talking and say "Ooooohhh!" like most normal people?
Total waste of a good VIP launch pass.

Messenger went into Safe Mode - better then a blue screen!

Yesterday's Messenger flyby of Mercury didn't go quite as planned. Just as it passed the planet the spacecraft kicked into safe mode and there were no images from after the flyby. Kind if a bummer, but the pass was more of a 'gravitational steering' pass to get the spacecraft aimed toward orbiting the planet in 2010 - and that part was a complete success. At least a CTRL-ALT-DEL isn't needed.
There were some very cool photos that came back before the computer barfed. The pass was 142 miles over the surface at a speed of 12,000 mph.

| More details on Emily's blog on Planetary Society |

Another old spacecraft found on the moon.

This time Surveyor 1 is the latest spacecraft that has been re-discovered on the moon by the LRO. Surveyor 1 was the first spacecraft to make a soft landing on the moon on June 2, 1966. So here it is seen again finally after sitting there for 43 years!

| Full swath of the LRO image. Find it in this image? |

Transition from Summer to Fall skies...M31

Fall and winter seem to be the best times to view M31 since it's getting higher in the sky after sunset and gets better as the night goes on. The last few days of our long summer gave a few more clear nights and still warm temperatures, but that seems to have come to an end now with cold weather, rain, clouds, and snow possible above 4,000 feet now. Bleah.
This image of M31 Andromeda was taken over two nights. I think I'm finally happy with a shot of this thing now. My plans for a long time were to get an image good enough to make into a nice, big 16x20 print that I can put on the wall. I still have a way to go on this one, hopefully getting more images to stack over the next few months for the ultimate M31 from a light polluted location! This one is a combination of 24 frames stacked over 2 nights. Each exposure was 5 minutes at 800 ISO and I carefully went through Jerry Lodriguss' CD book to as a processing guide. More to come....

(click on image for full size)

M-33 from my backyard.

I took this shot last night from the backyard "Astro-Shack". It's the M-33 galaxy which is about 3 million light years away from us. Looking back in time again, this is what the galaxy looked like 3 million years ago. Does the little photon that traveled through space like the fact that it spent 3 million years to get here, only to be sucked up in the telescope and saved to a hard drive? Who knows!

But at least it was a photon that wasn't wasted. I'm writing this from out back in the observatory again, tonight's target is M31 Andromeda. Looking ok so far, but I'll know if I have anything good after stacking and processing. Could be fantastic, or just another light polluted waste of time. Never know with this hobby, just gotta keep trying, the good images show up now and then!

(Click image for full size)

Texas to expel Armstrong from history?

Disturbing, annoying, frightening, and just plain stupid. There is talk that the Texas Board of Education wants to remove Neil Armstrong from the school social studies books. Their reasoning? Armstrong is not a scientist! Ok, we all know that the state of math and science education in this country is lacking, but limiting historical figures that are not scientists is not going to make more kids want to study math and science more.
I do have high respect for scientists and kind of consider myself an "amateur scientist" but if I was riding along in the LM plunging toward a boulder field with 30 seconds of fuel left, the guy on my left hand flying the ship, and 1201 alarms going off - I'd rather have an experienced test pilot there than a scientist flying the ship. No offense to Dr. Harrison Schmitt of course, even though he was the only true scientist to walk on the moon, he was more of a button pusher, altitude reader, gauge watcher for Gene Cernan when they landed Apollo 17 on the moon. BUT....in Texas he could end up being the only person mentioned to walk the moon if the Education Board has their way. This could lead to exposure of the other 11 guys though, since wouldn't some kid have a question about them if there was mention that Schmitt was on the last mission? Who were the others that came before them? Who was the first? Some guy name Lance or Louie Armstrong wasn't it?
The decision won't be made until January, but let's hope Neil doesn't get "Plutoed" out of the history books even if the earth is only 5,000 years old and was created rather than evolved! *Ugh!*

| SciGuy article on this |
| "Bad Astronomer" Phil Plait's comments |

PIggyback return home.

Discovery made it back home to Florida this morning. This may be the last time that we ever see a shuttle come home on the back of the 747 from California...maybe. We have 6 more flights until these old bird's wings are clipped forever, so we never know yet if another landing will happen in California. The shuttles will all get at least one more ride on the 747 - when they are delivered to museums around the country. Of course we'll get one of them here in Seattle! (At least I'm sure hoping Dr. Dunbar can pull this off and get us one).

More images from Saturn Equinox.

There was a big release of new images today from JPL with the newest shots from the Cassini spacecraft at the Saturn Equinox. The rings are hidden from Earth since they are edge-on to us, and just look like a thin line, but Saturn is going behind the sun right now so we can't see it anyway. Cassini sent back more amazing images, and a video showing how the rings cool down with the lack of sunlight.
I think I have a new favorite Saturn image. Kind of a dark and spooky looking view of the planet from above, but really nice if you ask me!


NASA - ESA Equinox at Saturn, cassini 2009.09.21

| See more images at Ciclops |

NASA budget chart

I'm not very good at politics, government spending and all that stuff, so I don't talk about it much. (I barely passed US Government in high school - now you know!) I was looking for info on how much money goes where, and this chart made it easy to visualize. Kind of like playing "Where's Waldo" when you first look for the NASA logo in this chart. (click for full size)

The end is in sight - STS-133 crew named.

Space shuttle Discovery will be the ship chosen to bring the shuttle program to an end with the STS-133 mission. The final flight will be September 16, 2010 - we know that date will change like it always does though. But for now, that is it.
Flaps - up, transponder - standby, avionics switch - off, mixture - cutoff, master switch - off, secure aircraft. ....well not quite, but you get the point.
The final crew has been named as, Steve Lindsey, Eric Boe, Al Drew, Mike Barratt, Tim Kopra and Nicole Stott as the last crew of the space shuttle. Interesting that Nicole Stott and Mike Barratt are currently on board the ISS at this time. I wonder if this is the first time a crew has been assigned to another flight while currently on a mission? Lucky them, at least they know they will get one more trip to space.
I have a lot of mixed feelings about the shuttle cancellation. It mostly really bugs me that we don't have a replacement in place for possibly another 5 years after the shuttles are tucked away in museums. Even more frightening is the fact that there isn't enough money for the ambitious plans NASA has for the future with manned trips to the moon, and who knows if the Ares 1, Orion, and Ares V will even become a reality? The drive and ambition is there, but nothing can be done, rockets don't fly, moon landings don't happen, space stations get scrapped, if there isn't money.
As for recycling technology into a hybrid "Apollo on steroids" mix of shuttle and Apollo technology, I feel it's a step backwards. We go from flying the most complex machine ever built in history, to flying bottle rockets again. Sure, the shuttle has had it's problems, delays, near disasters, full blown disasters killing 14 people, and never lived up to it's plans of the "routine" flying UPS truck to orbit. I feel that NASA has been on a fairly smooth highway to the stars (with some potholes and detours). Now the pavement is ending, and there is a very muddy dirt road ahead that isn't even included in the Garmin GPS database. Anyway....I could ramble on for a while about my thoughts on this, good, bad and very undecided at this point.

So what I need to do now is get up early on the NASA ticket sales day and be ready to hit the "[Purchase ticket]" button within the fist few minutes after 6am (or 9am Florida time) and get another trip over to KSC. I saw STS-117, and I WILL see one more of the final 6 flights before the old birds are permanently grounded forever.
Here is a rough schedule for the ending of the shuttle program:

Launch..Shuttle.....Mission..........EVAs...Payloads

2009
11/12...Atlantis....STS-129/ISS-ULF3...3....ELC-1; ELC-2 (external spares)

2010
02/04...Endeavour...STS-130/ISS-20A....3....Node 3 (Tranquility); cupola
03/18...Discovery...STS-131/ISS-19A....3....Logistics module; science racks
05/14...Atlantis....STS-132/ISS-ULF4...3....Russian research module; spares
07/29...Endeavour...STS-134/ISS-ULF6...3....Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer; spares
09/16...Discovery...STS-133/ISS-ULF5...0....Permanent Logistics Module; spares

| NASA news release on STS-133 |

X-15 + 50 years.

Time for another anniversary. This time is the 50th anniversary of the first flight of the X-15 rocket plane back in 1959. Scott Crossfield was the first brave guy to get dropped off the wing of the B-52 as if riding in a big black bomb with stubby wings. Then flipped a switch to light the engines and it became the fastest and highest flying plane - until Rutan beat the altitude record with his SpaceShip one.
NASA in it's effort to encourage the general public to become more interested in all this really cool space stuff, they came up with another interactive web page. Here is the latest page, this time on the X-15. Check it out and get distracted for a while. Good stuff!

| X-15 article |
| X-15 interactive page |

Gigagalaxy Zoom

Seems that the internet keeps coming up with more and more cool sites that once you get into them, you can end up spending hours there. The latest of these time-sucking beasts is a new site called "Gigagalaxy Zoom". This is an 800 million pixel image of the night sky with the Milky Way through the middle. The photo is composed of about 120 hours of images at 6 minutes each and assembled into a large image. Here is a quote from the site that describes it:

The painstaking production of this image came about as a collaboration between the renowned French writer and astrophotographer Serge Brunier, his fellow Frenchman Frédéric Tapissier, and ESO staff. Brunier spent several weeks during the period between August 2008 and February 2009 capturing the sky, mostly from ESO observatories at La Silla and Paranal in Chile. In order to cover the full Milky Way, Brunier also made a weeklong trip to La Palma, one of the Canary Islands, to photograph the northern skies.

Anyway, go check it out.

| Gigagalaxy Zoom |