http://www.netwhatever.com/astrodownunder Down Under, Looking Up Thu, 29 May 2008 11:06:43 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en This has been all over the astrosphere, so I don't really need to talk much about the spectacular success of the Phoenix lander. I just wanted to share this amazing image: That's Phoenix, still hanging from its parachute and descending on Mars, as seen by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera, ... http://www.netwhatever.com/astrodownunder/2008/05/29/phoenix-lands/ One of the most important events in Greg Egan's novel Diaspora happens when a pair of neutron stars in the constellation Lacerta collide, sending out a powerful gamma ray burst and causing the extinction of most life on Earth. I was reminded of that while reading, earlier today, about an ... http://www.netwhatever.com/astrodownunder/2008/05/20/flare-in-ev-lacertae/ The Carnival of Space has reached edition number 50! It's hosted at KySat, the website of the Kentucky Space Program. This week, you can read lots and lots of articles about Mars and its satellites, plus information about the Rocket Racing League (yes, it is as fun as it sounds) ... http://www.netwhatever.com/astrodownunder/2008/04/21/more-carnivals/ This is a bit embarassing, but I missed posting about a few editions of the Carnival of Space... so, here they go! Two weeks ago, New Frontiers hosted the record-breaking (in number of articles) Carnival of Space #41, where we learned about cosmic cannibals, uses for the Wii remote, the Columbus ... http://www.netwhatever.com/astrodownunder/2008/02/29/carnival-of-carnivals/ Techcrunch is reporting that Microsoft is expected to launch a "virtual planetarium" application later this month, on 27 February (probably 28 February for those of us in Australia), during this year's TED Conference. Under the name WorldWide Telescope, it is reported to be significantly better than Stellarium, the very useful ... http://www.netwhatever.com/astrodownunder/2008/02/19/microsoft-virtual-telescope-to-be-launched-27-feb/ Most people must have heard by now that there will be a total lunar eclipse later this week, on Thursday (or Wednesday, depending on your time zone). Unfortunately Australians will miss this one; it will be visible, at least in part, basically everywhere else but here (that's not entirely true: ... http://www.netwhatever.com/astrodownunder/2008/02/18/lunar-eclipse-21-february/ This Week at NASA reports that the Mythbusters are recording an episode about the "Moon hoax" — you know, the claim by conspiracy nuts that the Moon landings of the late 60s and early 70s were faked. The show has recorded segments at several NASA centres, but I have no ... http://www.netwhatever.com/astrodownunder/2008/02/12/moon-hoax-busted/ Shared bookmarks for del.icio.us user wafonso Evolution and Those Baby Blues Tagged as: [science] http://www.netwhatever.com/astrodownunder/2008/02/10/delicious-$now/ It's Friday (in Australia), so it means a new Carnival of Space is up. This time it's number 40, and it's at the Orbiting Frog, who introduces a brand new way to browse through the articles. And it does look like there are more and more articles in the carnival each ... http://www.netwhatever.com/astrodownunder/2008/02/08/carnival-of-space-40/ This Thursday we'll have the first solar eclipse of 2008, but very few people will actually see more than a very small partial eclipse. It won't be a total eclipse, but an annular one: this happens when the Moon is not large enough in the sky to cover the whole ... http://www.netwhatever.com/astrodownunder/2008/02/05/annular-solar-eclipse-07-february/