Saturday 10 October 2009

Astronomy Night At The White House


Wow, that’s quite a star lineup! I wish I could’ve been there too. Maybe next year…
And the quote of the night from the President, who said this in response to a young girl who was 14 when she discovered a supernova, and a high school sophomore who found a rare type of pulsar:
NASA’s equipment is some pretty powerful stuff. But astronomy also depends on the curiosity and contribution of amateur astronomers. [...] If they can discover something great, so can any of you other students who are here tonight. All you need is a passion for science.
Damn straight. And awesome.
Source:  Blog / Bad Astronomy
October 9th, 2009

Thursday 8 October 2009

Foto van die teiken


Kliek op foto om te vergroot.

Hier is `n voorstelling van die botsing.

Watch Nasa bomb the moon


The LCROSS shepherding spacecraft attached to the Centaur upper stage. Credit: NASA


Seth Borenstein
Washington - Nasa will throw a one-two punch at the big old moon Friday and the whole world will have ringside seats for the lunar dust-up.
Nasa will send a used-up spacecraft slamming into the moon's south pole to kick up a massive plume of lunar dirt and then scour it to see if there's any water or ice spraying up.

The idea is to confirm the theory that water - a key resource if people are going to go back to the moon - is hidden below the barren moonscape.
The crashing spaceship was launched in June along with an orbiter that is now mapping the lunar surface.

LCROSS - short for Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite and pronounced L-Cross - is on a collision course with the moon, attached to an empty 2.2-ton rocket that helped get the probe off the ground.
Thursday evening, about 10 hours before smashing into the moon, LCROSS and its empty rocket will separate.
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