The Internet Book Database of Fiction

name-dropper (I'm teasing... and envious!) How is Dr. Clarke, btw?

Aside from the fact that my information (what little I have) is very dated, I'm not really at liberty to say. I defer to Charlie on that.

ok, I'll shut my trap then

Reminder - perseids tonite ... E/NE sky, start 9/10pm (EST) and peaks 2am (EST).

I'll be out watching it later with my wife ... with a cold bottle of wine.

aaaaand of course it's cloudy here *grumble*

We'll head out a bit later tonite, closer to the 2-4/min peak ...

Cloudy/rainy here, too.

Becomming partially cloudy ATM here, and we may have rain later tonite.

/me wander off to check live-stream realtime regionak radar ...

We had some breaks in the clouds at about 3am, when I was still moving my stuff across campus, and it looked pretty good.

Scott

It was mostly cloudy all night here ... we gave up and went to bed.

Same here. Then again, it's always cloudy down here. Unless the sun wants burn your skin off. If that's the case, the clouds will gladly part to allow that.

Out til 1 a.m. Onboard a boat in Northern Arkansas. Clear skies. Meteor showers were sparse. The ones we saw were luminous-white and slow-moving. They were mostly confined between the Big Dipper and Casseiopia.

I got sort of stranded in Manhattan. The skies opened up - but of course, bright lights. Bright lights. And then the children forgot that part about never, never feeding me after midnight. - - Charlie P.

It's odd you should say that, since we watched Gremlins II on Saturday

Houston (except for the last year or so) has a large blue sky. Then at night when all the lights come on the residual effect (light pollution) create a fairly sparse sky. It may be clear but few stars overcome the manmade illumination. I have a boat in infinite dry dock at Holden Beach, NC. The sky there is also of reasonable size, but at night there is enough light from Myrtle Beach and Wrightsville Beach that the stars are somewhat over powered.

There are areas in rural Texas, far from cities or towns of size, where the stars shine so brightly it looks like white crystals and powder overwhelming a black surface; the shear intensity is overwhelming. With such limited skys where most people live it is no wonder that the majority of people cannot grasp how crowded our portion of the universe really is or how vast. This most natural aspect of science is denied to a majorty of the population. This may induce a reluctance to fund space exploration; the 'deciders' have no real grasp of the horizon they only see the earth as flat.

The most beautiful backbone of night I have ever seen was in New Zealand - and Centaurus, our first destination, overhead.

- - Charlie P.

I learned something new about space from this intelligent lady:



Help me! I'm being drawn towards India! Intense Elephantial Gravitational attration!

*DIES* omg that was PRICELESS I wonder how dumb that woman feels now.

Voyager 2 left Earth today... thirty years ago. And, oh - what a different people she left behind. - C.R.P.

Did she really? I loved that story in the fifth grade. I still do. I wonder where they are now. Last I remember from the story was that the crafts were studying solar wind out there. I forgot when we'd loose contact with them too. But I don't think we have just yet.

Charlie: Voy-2 is out in the heliosphere now, right ?

The Space Shuttle landed ok, despite the 3" gouge in the insulating tiles.

I was very glad. Both my sons are Air Force so I "worry" about those guys....

Brad wrote:The Space Shuttle landed ok, despite the 3" gouge in the insulating tiles.

Well, that is a relief. I was very worried about this insulation problem, after the disasters that already occured. And the bad weather, too.

I had mixed feeling on their deciding not to attempt the new spray foam repair. On the one hand, given the fact that if it had dislodged on supersonic re-entry, it could have caused further damage ... possibly catastrophic. On the other hand, although simulations indicated they could re-enter without needing the repair, they missed a golden opportunity to test it anyway.