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Copyright: davep's astronomy

Happy X-Files plot day everyone. ;-)

Via this tweet

Now I want a Prof Brian Cox nodding doll for the back window of my car. :-D

This post has just turned up on the SPA BB.

The UK's Federation of Astronomical Societies will be holding its 2008 convention on September 20^th 2008 at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge.

Via Stuart (of Astronomy Blog) who got it via Will Gater and Orbiting Frog: the Phoenix Mars Lander is on Twitter.

That's pretty cool.

And it takes me back almost 11 years. Back on 23^rd June 1997 I subscribed to the Majordomo mailing list for Mars Global Surveyor. It was a great service, with emails coming every so often with reports of what was happening and the status of the spacecraft. The last report I received was on 9^th April 1999:

Mars Global Surveyor initiated normal mapping operations on...

I've been noticing a few "mystery objects" while browsing around with WorldWide Telescope, most look like they're aircraft trails and similar things. The most unusual (well, the most attention-grabbing, for me) seems to be a bunch of these:

I'm guessing it's some sort of "reflection" within the telescope?

Look what I just found in WorldWide Telescope's planet browser:

Some sort of easter egg, or an example of how you can extend the application and use it for other things?

I've now got WorldWide Telescope installed. The download and install was fast and painless and I was up and running in no time.

My initial impression? Wow! It's nice. Very nice. Very, very nice. It's easy to navigate, things feel like they're set out in a pretty logical way. Things like the little tray of "bookmarks" along the bottom of the window, which change as you move around the sky, are a very nice touch. I also like that you've got the ability to view different planets in a...

Oh, hello! It looks like Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope is available for download. I guess I need to go play at some point real soon...

This evening I've been catching up with my observing logs. Recently all I've been managing to do in terms of observing is sunspot counts and I've got a nasty habit when I do them. Given that I do the counts during the day (dur!) I tend to pop into the garden with the solarscope, do a quick count (or not so quick if things look interesting — I'll even photograph the sunspots if I think it'll be interesting enough), and then pop back into the office and write the key details on a scrap of paper...

Via Astronomy Blog, the Jodrell Bank song:

Catchy.

I've just had an email to alert me to the fact that the government has responded to the physics funding petition.

And now I'm trying to make sense of it. At the moment I'm struggling.

A little earlier I was typing up some recent solar observation reports and I realised that it's now over two years since I started observing the sun as often as possible and keeping a log of sunspot counts.

The weather seems to have been against me lately. Over the past few months I've not managed to log many observations (see March this year for example: only 6 counts recorded) and that's kind of frustrating.

Still, the graphs of solar activity seem to be coming along nicely. Even though there's...

Given that he seems to have appeared in an xkcd strip the other day, and given that he's obviously part of the team who are going to destroy the Earth, this kind of had to be done... ;-)

And, yes, really, that's Professor Brian Cox to you.

xkcd tells it like it will be. ;-)

And, is it just me, or is the one with the black hair Dr Brian Cox?

Further to my last attempt at some star trails with my Lomo Lubitel 166B I've now received a scan of the developed film of one I did I did during a session on 2008-02-09.

This time I was using Ilford HP5+ 400. Conditions were less than ideal, the sky was rather hazy for the whole observing session and everything got rather damp pretty quickly (hence the reason there's only one trail for the whole session). However, despite all of this, it's turned out better than I thought it would.

Thanks once...

Yay! Finally! Google Sky Map is here!

I've had a quick 5min play and so far so good.

I really must pull my finger out and go and have a play with the API and see how I could possibly use it on my own site.

Edit: There's a Google blog entry discussing the history of the project and, of course, a YouTube video:

The Jodrell Bank website now has a handy page that outlines the problems that could be caused by any cuts in funding. Head over there and bookmark it, it might be useful to refer back to at some point.

Via Stuart's twitter:

[10:40:26] astronomyblog: Just found a Downing Street petition to save @jodrellbank http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/jodrellfunding/

[10:40:57] astronomyblog: There appear to be two petitions http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/RadioAstronomy/

The BBC are now carrying an article about the possible threat to Jodrell Bank.

More news about worries over Jodrell Bank, this time from The Guardian.

Choice quote:

"If Merlin does not run, Jodrell Bank does not exist"

Via this tweet on Jodrell Bank's twitter: an official response the STFC Programmatic Review.

Even more bad news under the save astronomy banner: The Times is running a story today suggesting that the famous telescope at Jodrell Bank faces closure.

I'd gathered from the list of possible cuts on the Save Astronomy website that Merlin was under threat but I hadn't even considered the idea that this might mean that the Lovell Telescope itself would be under threat.

This whole STFC nonsense was depressing to start with, it's almost impossible for me to find the right word to describe my mood...

Via this thread on the SPA's BB, a new online planetarium written in Flash. To quote the opening page:

The Flash Planetarium Project aims to produce the best online planetarium available, allowing you to view the night sky from anywhere in the world from within your browser (no telescope required!)

If you've a passing interest in Astronomy or you're are an enthusiastic amateur astronomer or science buff, then we're sure that you'll find this site interesting and above all, fun!

Pop over and take a...

Okay, not exactly astronomy, not really astronomy at all to be honest, but.... it was pretty cool anyway.

I was woken up by an earthquake last night, quite a strong one by UK standards. I've written more about it over on my general weblog.

I'm not sure if I'll get to observe next week's total lunar eclipse (assuming the weather will be fine) due to the fact that a) it's during the working week and b) all the fun stuff happens at silly hours. Which is sort of annoying given just how enjoyable the last one was (even if I did manage to destroy a pair of glasses).

However, if anyone is thinking of staying up for it, you might find this article by the Society for Popular Astronomy useful as it as all the information you'll need. This...