produced by Brian Lynch by combining the thumbnail images from Curiosity’s Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) with the audio from the control room during landing night and a detailed timeline from Patrick Blau’s  spaceflight101.com.
via Video, sound, and timeline of Curiosity's descent | The Planetary Society.
“Well, this was a nice surprise. The MARDI images from Curiosity’s descent to Mars were posted to the Curiosity raw images website several hours ago, but I didn’t notice until someone on unmannedspaceflight.com pointed out that among the nearly 300 thumbnail frames (200 by 150 pixels) there was a single full-resolution image, and it contained the heat shield far below the rover. So cool. It is still mind-blowing to think that this snapshot was taken by a spacecraft flying in the air above a different planet.”
First full-resolution MARDI frame: Bye-bye, heat shield | The Planetary Society.
My name in galaxies:
thanks to steven “the bamf” bamford at the university of nottingham, you can now write words with real images of galaxies from the galaxy zooproject!   check it out…
via astropixie.
OK, it seems when I was talking to Brian yesterday evening about the Curiosity landing on Mars it was landing, it was about 7pm so I could have watched it but I don’t know how interesting it would have been. Maybe historic though. They have only released a few photographs on Twitter.
Aug 5, 2012   10:31 p.m. Pacific (USA)
I saw this photo by Erik Heitfield of a sphere that his grandfather designed this “bucky ball” and commissioned a woodworker friend to build it. This got me interested in looking into Bucky Balls and the magic of Phi, 1.618.
SpaceX Falcon9 launch
SpaceX launches Falcon 9/Dragon on historic mission – Astronomy Magazine.
Some interesting molecular jewelry, my favorites based on how much I like the particular things made of the molecules depicted, Alcohol and Caffeine. The model is quite beautiful as well.
Caffeine and Alcohol
Effects of drugs on spider webs, well actually the spiders making the webs
I’ve been wanting to do this so I figured I would take a stab at it.
measuring my macro setup magnification ratio
So, this shows about 30/64 = 0.469’s of an inch across the sensor, or 0.469 * 25.4 = 11.91 or 12mm
The D700 sensor is 36 x 23.9 mm. so the ratio of 36mm : 12mm is ===== 3:1 or 3X magnification
This is using my 150mm Sigma lens with a Sigma 2x converter and a 36mm Kenko extension tube. I could get more with the 60mm Nikon Macro if I still had one.
this pleasantly frustrating statistics question was recently seen on a chalkboard somewhere:
via astropixie.
Scientists at CERN, the worldâs largest physics lab, announced a startling finding yesterday that would be enough to make Albert Einstein roll over in his grave: Subatomic particles, called neutrinos, have been found to be traveling faster than the speed of light.
Einstein
CERN scientists are now asking others to verify the measurements before claiming the discovery to be true.
âThe feeling that most people have is this canât be right, this canât be real,â said James Gillies, a spokesman for CERN.
Rob Plunkett, a scientist at Fermilab, one of only two labs in the world that can try to replicate CERNâs results, says heâs keeping an open mind, but âitâs dangerous to lay odds against Einstein. Einstein has been tested repeatedly over and over again.â
Post science writer Joel Achenbach says that heâs sticking with Einstein, at least for now, because:
Einsteinâs theory… isnât based primarily on measurements.
Einsteinâs theory emerged from thought experiments. It was a deep insight into the nature of the universe. Subsequent experiments for more than a century have verified that he was right.
For the new finding to carry a lot of weight, it would need more than an instrumental measurement. It would need a theoretical foundation. Otherwise you have something that is enigmatic rather than revolutionary.
When CERN clocked the neutrino beam, it was traveling 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light. Scientists put the margin of error at just 10 nanoseconds, making the difference significant.
If the results are confirmed, they wonât change how we live or how the universe behaves. But it will shake the very foundation of what we believe.
via Neutrinos may have traveled faster than the speed of light – BlogPost – The Washington Post.
They will also boil and clean your dead animal (even human but not from the public) then send it back. Â They were on the show “Dirtiest Jobs”.
Skulls Unlimited International: The World’s Leading Supplier of Osteological Specimens!.
The Codex Gigas or the Devilâs Bible at the National Library in Stockholm is famous for two features. First, it is reputed to be the biggest surviving European manuscript. (Codex Gigas means âgiant bookâ.) Secondly, it contains a large, full page portrait of the Devil.
My birthday is Feb 2, which is the purification day of the Virgin Mary.
“…feasts of the Virgin Mary, commemorating important events in her life, such as her birth, purification and annunciation (Nativitas Mariae 8th September, [309v] Purificatio Mariae 2nd February [306r] and Annuntiatio Mariae 25th March. [311r])”
Look at the center dot and then move your head toward and then back from the center point in this graphic.
Then, if you are interested in the “why” of it all, read this.
Jan. 28, 1986 I remember hearing about the explosion while at work. Wow, I was still down in South Carolina at the time and I didn’t even know my ex-wife then. I’ve got a bunch of Newspaper clippings of the event that were in the papers in Columbia, SC.
I didn’t do much today besides get home and then head out to T-Mac for a few beers. I met up with a dude who is a photographer as well, does mainly birds in the Florida area, down in the Canaveral area as a matter of fact.
Messed a bit more with the StopShot but still nothing I really like has come out of it. I am still just using the trigger to activate the shutter on the camera.
