Koppernigk

To the Moon on Coke and Mentos: a hopeful beginning

Build a Moonbase in five minutes

If you're an astronomy buff, an engineer and a gamer you might enjoy Moonbase Alpha, a "American Army" style game released by NASA, based on the Steam platform. You can read more by following the link, with download pointers.

Now I'm off to get drunk because we're in the finals of the Soccer World Championships. Go, Oranje!

Seriously, I should buy enough beer to get drunk. And not go to bed like I plan to now. Sheesh.

(NASA)

Why dogs should wear safety belts

Want to be an astronaut? Start training in zero G and float around. That's not very difficult: just let your airplane coast in free fall and experience weightlessness with it. Like these two guys. It's fun for the dog as well.... I think.

Thanks, Discovery.

Build your own space mission

Okay, here's a tip for those who are bored: build your own space mission. I especially like the "choose your hair style" section. (NASA)

Stellarium updated to 0.10.4

Nobody told me Stellarium 0.10.4 is out. So probably no one told you too. So I tell you now. Download. Install. Run. Enjoy. Free.

Download Stellarium, 0.10.4 here.

Wanted: astronauts

Sometimes the career section holds something special. Bigelow Aerospace has a career section as well. Look at the second "job opportunity":

"Bigelow Aerospace seeks professional astronauts to fill permanent positions. Qualified applicants need to have completed a training program from their government or recognized space agency and have at least some flight experience on a recognized space mission. Specialized training and/or experience (ie: Medical, Payload Specialist, EVA, Pilot, etc.) is not a pre-requisite, but is definitely a plus. (...)" (Bigelow)

I agree with that last remark about experience. Good assessment!

Milkyway@home

"At this very moment, tens of thousands of home computers around the world are quietly working together to solve the largest and most basic mysteries of our galaxy.

Enthusiastic and inquisitive volunteers from Africa to Australia are donating the computing power of everything from decade-old desktops to sleek new netbooks to help computer scientists and astronomers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute map the shape of our Milky Way galaxy. Now, just this month, the collected computing power of these humble home computers has surpassed one petaflop, a computing speed that surpasses the world's second fastest supercomputer. ..." (ScienceDaily)

Brainstorming into space

If you want to participate in a discussion about the future of space exploration by NASA, you should check out OpenNASA, part of the Obama Open Government initiative. You can sign up here.

This day, 49 years ago....

Some websites kill the romance for every single day. This one is a good example. I don't know why I bring it up. It might have something to do with my fascination for January 23, 1961.

Anything astronomy related on that day? Nope. Let's look at the stars that evening, around 20.15 local time. Why? Just because. Click on the picture for a larger size. The screenshot comes from Stellarium.

You can see the Moon high in the sky (too bad it was overcast that day, at temperatures of one degree Celsius above zero, but no wind) and in the vicinity of Orion, a bit to the right, up, you can see a bright Mars, which is these days again visible and in opposition. Yeah, some night on January 23, 1961.

We're all stardust

This day, six years ago, my niece Annette died of breast cancer. Our birthdays were only two months apart. Her funeral was on my birthday, five days later.

Annette was an avid amateur astronomer who liked to write articles about a lot of things astronomy related. About the solar system, comets and a lot more. She had a special interest in the history of observing and observatories in the nordic countries. On her funeral card it read that she was happy to become stardust again, as that's where we all come from in the beginning.

Now she's a star child again. It reminded me of 2001: a Space Odyssey, depicting each new and more advanced cycle of humanity where he learned to live: either as a man ape, a beginning spacefarer or in the end an embryonic star child.

The second act of 2001 starts with the discovery of the mysterious black slab in a Moon crater, Tycho. Small chance I will ever go to the Moon in my lifetime, but where's hope - there's life. With minute study of pictures of Tycho I can prepare to go to that piece of estate on the Moon and wave to all star childs from there! Here's a page with some pictures of the beautiful crater with the spikes showing off on the Moon's surface.

And here's a link to the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month website - if you're Dutch, go here.

The whole universe in one logarithm

Here you can find some extremely cool pics. You want an explanation? Go to the Bad Astronomer for more.

And I like logarithmics. A lot.

Checkov?

Chekov 75% Geordi LaForge 65% Will Riker 60% James T. Kirk (Captain) 50% Mr. Scott 50% Data 48% Uhura 35% Jean-Luc Picard 35% Worf 35% Leonard McCoy (Bones) 30% Deanna Troi 30% Spock 29% Beverly Crusher 20% An Expendable Character (Redshirt) 5% Mr. Sulu 0%

Brash, rash and hasty, but everyone loves you.

Breaking news: aliens landed on Brooklyn Bridge

No, of course they didn't. But isn't life in all it's diversity here on Earth every now and then pretty weird? We don't need no aliens from the universe; we've plenty to encounter here.

Click on the picture to see the whole scene, and click here to read what 'alien' we're talking about if you didn't guess already. It landed on Brooklyn Bridge BTW.

evewything you wanted to know about astwonomy...

Don't be afwaid to ask about it. If you'we ewwer lost in the woods about astwonomy, look no fuwthew.

Bwowse to Google hewe and seawch fow "astwonomy". Good wuck.

Why the world didn't come to an end so far

Years ago we had Nancy Lieder. She spoke to Zeta Reticulans and May 15, 2003 would mark the end of the world when phantom Niburu would pass by and reverse the polarity (hallelujah Geordi LaForge!) on Earth. The sheep following her cult discussed robbing hardware stores (honestly) to be prepared when escaping into the wilderness. Lieder even killed of a puppy dog to spare it the horrors of Planet X. It was an all time low I supposed; it was unfathomable that people were so stupid.

However an all new record has been set. This time it's about a movie - a movie, that's right, with actors acting like they're real people in the middle of special effects and CGI, in an attempt to amuse people in cinemas around the world. The movie has to do with 2012 and the end of a Mayan calendar. My calendar ends every year. When that happens, I hang a new calendar on the wall. So did the Mayans. Because my nifty eternal calendar I got as a gift ends in 9999, it doesn't mean the world stops in 9999.

Yes it is true. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to conclude that it's a miracle: a miracle that some people in this world are capable of autonomous movement, of formulating, albeit incoherent, words and utter phrases. That some people can move their legs without falling over, even progressing in a movement called walking.

Given the state of their brains that's a miracle. Thank goodness they're a minority. It might prevent the world from coming to a untimely end due to their sheer stupidity. And instead of building outposts around Saturn, or flying to Mars to build a city there, or develop a way to reach the nearby stars, NASA feels obliged to take on a crusade. How can you inform people who lack the brains to process information? Thank goodness it's all a NASA conspiracy.

To make it worse: I'm just a minion in the grand scheme of things, but I'm in it too.

Read more about it here.

Star Wars Yoga

So this is no science, just Star Wars. Okay, I know it's lame, but lame fun anyhow. Star Wars Yoga.

50 years of visiting our neighbors

Okay, so the Moon got the most knocks on the door - 73 missions to be precise. But which one was the host for more missions: Mars or Venus? You can check out on the map of the day from NatGeo here.

(Yes. Venus)

For those without a room with a view: GigaGalaxy Zoom

"The first of three images of ESO's GigaGalaxy Zoom project — a new magnificent 800-million-pixel panorama of the entire sky as seen from ESO’s observing sites in Chile — has just been released online. The project allows stargazers to explore and experience the Universe as it is seen with the unaided eye from the darkest and best viewing locations in the world.

This 360-degree panoramic image, covering the entire celestial sphere, reveals the cosmic landscape that surrounds our tiny blue planet. This gorgeous starscape serves as the first of three extremely high-resolution images featured in the GigaGalaxy Zoom project, launched by ESO within the framework of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009). GigaGalaxy Zoom features a web tool that allows users to take a breathtaking dive into our Milky Way. With this tool users can learn more about many different and exciting objects in the image, such as multicoloured nebulae and exploding stars, just by clicking on them. In this way, the project seeks to link the sky we can all see with the deep, “hidden” cosmos that astronomers study on a daily basis. The wonderful quality of the images is a testament to the splendour of the night sky at ESO’s sites in Chile, which are the most productive astronomical observatories in the world... " (ESA)

On a tight budget - pictures from space

"Two MIT students have successfully photographed the earth from space on a strikingly low budget of $148. Perhaps more significantly, they managed to accomplish this feat using components available off-the-shelf to the average layperson, opening the doors for a new generation of amateur space enthusiasts. The pair plan to launch again soon and hope that their achievements will inspire teachers and students to pursue similar endeavors.

Justin Lee and Oliver Yeh have always dreamed of seeing the earth from space, but until recently, they believed that they had neither the budget nor the technical expertise to get a camera into the stratosphere.

Early September, in a moment of creative inspiration, the pair devised an innovative low-cost, low-effort method for space photography. The device they created cost less than $150, and they were able to build it without any significant modifications to out-of-the-box electronics.

The secret behind their success was figuring out which consumer-ready components to pick-and-match to solve the problems space photographers face. Their device had to: rise to an altitude high enough to capture space photographs, withstand extreme temperatures of the stratosphere, and be trackable/recoverable..." (iReport)

Their MIT website can be found here.

Always check your sources

This is funny: some news agencies ran a story published by the satirical website The Onion. It's also weird. The amount of people around the world not believing that man have walked on the Moon is staggering. Why would you need to not believe a fact? And why would you think a random fact from world's history is a conspiracy? It's baffling me. The murder of John F. Kennedy: a hoax, a conspiracy. The Eiffel tower: a hoax, a conspiracy. People breathe oxygen and nitrogen about 20 times a minute: a hoax, a conspiracy. Antarctica is covered with an ice sheet: a hoax, a conspiracy. My car is fueled by petrol and I drive it nearly every day: a hoax, a conspiracy. I'm alive: a hoax, a conspiracy. Jeez, for some people, life must be hell.