Category: Misc

Check out these beautiful sculptural clouds of dust in the Rosette Nebula (NGC 2244). The Rosette Nebula spans about 50 light-years, and lies about 4,500 light-years away.

You've got check out the work of Australian sculptor Ron Mueck. His work is amazingly realistic, and sometimes it is only the scale of the piece that gives away its artificial nature. The link above will take you to an article about a exhibition of his work at the Brooklyn Museum, and this link will take you to the Wiki page about him.

Check out this amazing shot of Europa (one of Jupiter's moons) rising above the Jovian horizon. This image was taken by the New Horizons spacecraft during its fly-by of Jupiter on its way to Pluto. I did some work on New Horizons, and I'm very proud to have been part of what has so far been a very successful misson.

I know that Mom at least had heard about the newly-discovered (and first) Earth-like planet discovered orbiting another star. For anyone else who hadn't heard, this is pretty exciting. The planet is what is called the "habitable zone" of its parent star. Meaning that the planet is in the zone where liquid water - and therefore life - is possible. The planet is called Gliese 581c, and orbits a red dwarf star that is about 20 light-years away. The picture below is an artist's interpretation of the possible view from the surface of this planet, based on the assumption that the planet may have liquid water oceans on its surface.

"Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws."

- Douglas Adams

I am currently reading a book called The Quantum Zoo, by Marcus Chown. It is sort of a layman's guide to quantum mechanics, and so far it is fascinating. Also, amid the science is also a lot of very interesting and suprising trivia. For example, (hopefully) most of us remember from high school science classes that atoms contain a lot of empty space. But I never really realized how much until I started reading this book. Did you realize that if all of the empty space in atoms could be removed, the entire human race would fit into the volume of a sugar cube? A great read for anyone interested in the science, without being bogged down by the math.

Dang! I missed the lunar eclipse a few nights ago! But I did catch this great shot of the eclipse on the web.

Orbital Express launched on March 8, 2007. I did a ton of work on Orbital Express - I've got over ten thousand lines of code flying on that mission. And this isn't just a routine satellite mission either. Here's a quote from the DARPA website:

"The goal of the Orbital Express Space Operations Architecture program is to validate the technical feasibility of robotic, autonomous on-orbit refueling and reconfiguration of satellites to support a broad range of future U.S. national security and commercial space programs."

Is that cool, or what?! w00t w00t!

I've found another interesting sculptor online. Jeff de Boer creates (among other things) suits of armor for cats and mice. The level of detail in these pieces is amazing. The images speak for themselves - check them out!

"It is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry 'I could have thought of that' is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn't, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too."

- Douglas Adams

I don't have much to say about this one, other than that I wholeheartedly agree with it.

Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka, are the three brightest blue stars from left to right along the diagonal in this vista. These three stars make up the belt of the the constellation Orion, and are hotter and much more massive than our Sun.