Yeah, yeah, I know ... it's been going on (sans comments from snarky onlookers) for billions of years ... but this is the first time NASA has seen it happen in real time, as it occured.

Moderators: Mr. Titanic, Charlie P., ed_the_engineer
I mean, wtf?! Of course the odds will be higher. It isn't as if they could get lower, is it?Bill Cooke said that while the odds of a direct hit with a big meteoroid were almost nil for an individual astronaut, they might be shorter for an entire lunar outpost.
It was that bad, was it? I would imagine though, and can relate to such situations, during the summer, we are constantly pestered by bands of continuous thunderstorms/showers. Being right off the ocean doesn't help either. Almost nothing gets to me like some powerful lightning-thunder does. Sixty MPH gusts, now they really put on a show..wolfspirit wrote:MrT: We had hellacious thunderstorms for close to 12 hours that night/morning/midday, and then had 40-60mph gusts to back them up. There were all sorts of electrical problems from nature and stupid drivers.
OTOH, I have some nice pictures from camping of the night sky that I'll put up on here whenever I get the chance. I always have better luck with my Nikon EM than a digital camera with the telescope.
wolfspirit
The author of this book shares your feelings, and gives some particularly painful inside examples of imbecilic funding cuts, idiotic/petty research grant decisions, and the like. It's a very good book ... I think you'd probably enjoy it, if you're interested in astronomy.I hate the government in it's neutering of NASA. There used to some really brilliant minds there (and there still are some), but I think they will be going elsewhere in the future, the way things are shaping up
Wow, I imagine that was quite an experience. I do know down here we get excellent sunrises and sunsets, and I'm positive an often clear view of the sky. City lights do contribute, but I like to think pollution also has an effect, and with cities such as Los Angeles, it's a clear given.Ghost wrote: We had a house on the mountain for a lot of years and I got to see some fantastic sights (including sunset on the solar telescope with the flash of green – some neat stuff).
IMHO: From my experience city lights are what are going to kill astronomic observations.
Drudge Report: NASA'S CASSINI DISCOVERS POTENTIAL LIQUID WATER ON ENCELADUS, Thu Mar 09 2006 11:21:33 ET
Orlando Channel 13: 'Big NASA Announcement Set For Today'... // 'NASA is planning to make a huge announcement today, about possible life in our own solar system' <---- this erroneous announcement has since been yanked {thankfully}
UPDATE: NASA Will Not Announce Life Find; News Station Misinterpreted Agency's Release.
Charlie Pellegrino wrote:Dear Rip, Adam, Roy:
Stoff and I had worked out Enceladus interior 25 years ago for Darwin's Universe, Time Gate, etc. Adam, you were mentioning Dust this morning and you may recall that Enceladus' ice geysers were an intricate part of the novel - "Clasp the monkey, Saturn." Indeed, it was mine and Powell's design of the melt-through probes at Brookhaven National Laboratory that got me sailing with Ballard and the deep-ocean robot Argo in 1985 - and which dropped me into the Titanic saga totally by accident (when it all comes down to bottom, Titanic was just another interesting thing happening on the way to the moons of Saturn and Jupiter). See you later,
- - Charlie P.
BTW: I still have correspondence of what I had pointed out over a year ago (I had CCed you, Brad) of what was clearly a recently erupted cryo-volcanic peak on Enceladus' surface - but it brought only yawns from JPL group (too soon on the heels of the Nesarose incident, I guess).
John: I have a bad cough at the moment (walking pnemonia - the doc. observed last week that it wouldn't be worth wasting his breath telling me to take a break and go to bed) - but this certainly has been an interesting week for Vesuvius and Enceladus news.