Cross your eyes and you'll be on the shuttle.

Not quite, but I can see that a couple frames from the fly-around video of the ISS taken from the shuttle could give a whole bunch of cross-eyed chances to make a 3d image. Patrick Vantuyne of Belgium put this one together. Stare at it with both eyes and kind of cross them a little bit until you see a third image in the middle. Soon it will jump out at you in 3d. As usual, click the photo to see a full size.
This is easy, it's not like those photos where you stare at a bunch of static until you see a clown riding a dinosaur jump out at you!

Complete (at least in area) ISS

This week the International space station has reached it's full size - at least in the area it covers by the solar panel "wings" and the truss. The rest of the construction is in the modules including the possible node named "Colbert" or maybe even the "Colbert" toilet!
The station looks pretty much like most of the old concept drawings. I looked around for the most goofy looking concept and found this one. So compare the "then and now" images of the station. Impressive sight, even from ground telescopes.
At this time (Friday) there are 13 people in space. Three on the ISS, three (including our friend Charles Simonyi) on board the Soyuz, and 7 in the shuttle which will land sometime Saturday. I'd have t look it up, but I'm not sure if this is a record amount of humanity in orbit.
(be sure to click on the images for full size, the new ISS is quite impressive!)

Mt. Redoubt eruptions.

The other day Mt. Redoubt decided to quit shaking and do something exiting. It blew up and sent an ash cloud to 65,000 feet in one of the several eruptions. Today it did another one and sent a cloud to about 32,000 feet.
I was looking at the Alaska Volcano Observatory web site and found this image. It's from a geostationary weather satellite which is parked in an orbit 23,000 miles above the equator over Asia.

(Click image to see clearer full size)

| Link to more images |

Picture of the Century restored

November 24, 1966 Lunar Orbiter 2 took this photo of Copernicus (the crater not the guy) from an altitude of 28 miles over the lunar surface. The crater is 150 miles north of where this was taken.
Most of the photos taken at that time were straight down, since NASA was trying to find good landing sites for the Apollo spacecraft. This was the first image that really showed some of he roughness of the moon's topography.

According to Wikipedia: "In 1966 the crater was photographed from an oblique angle by Lunar Orbiter 2 as one of 12 "housekeeping" pictures that were taken to advance the roll of film between possible astronaut landing sites being surveyed. At the time this detailed image of the lunar surface was termed by NASA Scientist Martin Swetnick and subsequently quoted by Time magazine as "one of the great pictures of the century."

This is just the latest of the old re-processed images that the The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) has released. The resolution of the photos is about 1 meter per pixel. If you have enough memory in your computer to qualify for at least "Vista Capable" sticker, plus more, and about 2.2 gigs open hard drive, you can download the full .tiff image. I tired it at work on my Mac and it kind of choked, but what would I do with a 2 gig image file anyway? Try if you dare!

(Click to enlarge image)

| The full sized 2.2 Gig .tiff |
| A much more reasonable sized image (you want this one!) |
| All the details from Moonviews.com |

Equinox at Saturn, balance those eggs (or moons?)

Here on Earth we celebrate the equinox by the fact that the long winter nights are now the same length as the days, the controversial practice of balance eggs on the pointy ends is performed, and here in Seattle we know that maybe someday in the next two months it might be spring.
So way out in the Saturn system, the rings are nearly edge on with the sun. When that happens the moons in the ring plane can leave some pretty long shadows on the rings themselves. Cassini has sent back a few spring photos from way out there.

| Ciclops Saturn Site |

A peek at Saturn last night

I missed a really good ISS pass last night at 7:30, due to clouds. Then again, if it was clear, it was so close to after sunset that I don't know where I would find a star to focus on anyway. I did watch it go over and could see it through the clouds fairly well.
Later, skies cleared up and despite lousy transparency, the sky was pretty stable for a change. Saturn looked very sharp, so I had to hook up my $30 Ebay webcam and try a few shots of it. I still have some processing to play with, but here is an early photo. I'm using the new Registax 5 that was just officially released yesterday. I'll have to read some tutorials so I can use it well and get some decent images.
This shot is with the rarely used 3x barlow. So this was taken at f/30. I forget how many frames are stacked, but I'll play with it some more to see if I can improve it some more.

More info:
Telescope - Meade 12" LX200
Camera - Vesta Pro
Frames/Sec - 10
Capture software - K3CCDTools
Stacked with - Registax 5 (just got the latest and need to learn more!)

Kids with balloons at 30,000 meters.

It was pretty cool when I was in Jr. High School that there was an actual rocketry class that I took. Yes, I did get an A+ in the class. Duh!
Mr .Balfour also had a competition to design a rocket that would stay aloft for the longest time with a wimpy little "A" sized motor. All the other guys in the class were building boost gliders, multi-staged monstrosities and other fancy things. I mad a simple rocket, big fins, no paint, an 18" chute lubed up with talcum powder to open fast. I won the $10 credit toward any Estes model (I paid an extra $2 and got the Mars Lander with the fancy shock absorbing landing gear) when my wee little rocket stayed up for a whole 24 seconds.

Anyway, I came across this photo essay from about some high school teens in Spain that built a helium balloon with a camera payload. The balloon reached an altitude of 30,000 meters (about 19 miles!) before dropping the payload back to the ground 38 km away after just over 2 hours. What fun! Where do I sign up for this class?

| Boston.com Big Picture |

Shuttle reusable spare parts.

When STS-119 launched on Sunday it flew on the 100th set of SRB rockets flown since Challenger was taken out by one of them. Here is some interesting trivia on the flights that each of the segments has flown on:

• STS-1, the first shuttle mission (right uppermost cylinder)
  
• STS-5, the first operational mission (left uppermost cylinder)
  
• STS-41D, the first flight of Discovery (right cylinder)
  
• STS-31, Hubble Space Telescope deploy (right aft dome)
  
• STS-61, first Hubble Space Telescope repair mission (right cylinder)
  
• STS-88, first shuttle to the International Space Station (left cylinder)
  
• STS-95, John Glenn's shuttle flight (left and right cylinders)
  
• STS-114, return to flight after Columbia (left and right cylinders)

(Thanks to Robert Perlman of Collectspace.com for sharing the info)
(Photo: Ben Cooper Launchphotography.com)

Sad fate of a deflated Atlas

It's hopefully well known that the old Atlas rockets (such as the one that John Glenn rode on) were basically big balloons. Let the fuel pressure out, and the thing would deflate. The rocket basically got it strength and rigidity from the pressure of the fuel inside.
I saw this video on The Space Review web site email I get every week and liked it since I've never seen it before. You know those really scary 15 foot tall snowmen that people buy at Lowes to haunt their front lawns during the holidays? If you let the air out of one of those you would get the same effect as this rocket deflating. It kind of flops over into it's own lap.
Although, this rocket seems to flop over like an overcooked piece of asparagus!
They didn't always explode in a huge ball of fire.

| The Space Review article |

Saturn and 4 moon transit.

I've see this on a few other blog sites, but it's such a nice photo I have to add it to mine also. Titan, Dione, Mimas and Enceladus crossing the face of Saturn seen from the Hubble. Be sure to view the full size image and the video, definately worth a bit of bandwidth for the download.

| Saturn and moons from Hubble |
| Hi-Definition video |

First bat in space - or maybe partway.

Seems that Sunday's launch of STS-119 had one extra crew member. Since seating was full on board, the extra crew member now known as "bat-ronaut" rode outside on the external tank. He must have been a later addition to the crew since he doesn't appear to be wearing an official mission patch on his sleeve.
You can see him clinging to the tank earlier in the day awaiting his trip to space. It's always a long wait for launch and relaxed astronauts have been known to fall asleep while waiting. He was one of those pretending to be a veteran astronaut so nervousness wouldn't give him away as a stowaway.
Around sunset he got his wish and headed into space!
It's not known if he reached his goal of being the first bat in space, but if he was lucky maybe he made it past throttle up? Closer examination of photos would be needed to see of he reached space to obtain his "bat-ronaut" wings. I have a feeling he may have failed in his attempt.
Godspeed bat-ronaut!

(click photos to enlarge)

UPDATE: Seems that bat-ronaut died in the 1400 degree C exhaust from the SRBs, but he possibly did clear the tower. Probably let go before max-Q for sure. Still, this is pretty darn cool for a bat! (See update on Universe Today)

Twittering the shuttle launch from all over Florida

I haven't used Twitter, but it has been kind of useful for passing quick info and photos around. Recently, passengers used it while landing in the Hudson with Captain Sully at the controls of the Airbus glider. Now there is an almost instant view of yesterday's shuttle launch from many different locations in and above Florida.
Fun stuff!
(Photo from fmckinnon)

| See the Twitter photos here |