Via JREF and Skeptico comes the news that Randi’s interview on Anderson Cooper will be tonight:

Randi on CNN with Anderson Cooper, 10pm EST Jan 30
(Yes, this time it’s for real! – So they say…)

Tonight, Randi will be on Anderson Cooper Live. The show starts at 10:00 PM EST. A missing person’s case and missing identity. “360°” takes you inside the mind of a con woman. What makes her tick? Watch tonight 10 ET.

Yay! Oh– I saw the "Is It Real" show about life on Mars where I make a brief appearance. I may have something to say about that later.

Sure, Hubble’s main instrument is down, but the observatory itself isn’t out for the count just yet. A servicing mission is planned for next year, remember.

But for a while it wasn’t clear if NASA was going to give Hubble one last tune up or not. During that time, a couple of enterprising independent filmmakers put together a documentary called "Saving Hubble". The trailer is online, and it’s pretty interesting and engaging, and even — gasp — fun! They have a blog, too.

If NASA had PR guys like this I suspect a lot of their public image problems would go away.

Don’t forget, if you have an astronomy question — maybe about Hubble? — send it to me for "Q & BA"!

Was that a chill I just saw run over all my science books?

From the New York Times today (free registration required, and emphasis mine):

In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president’s priorities.

This strengthens the hand of the White House in shaping rules that have, in the past, often been generated by civil servants and scientific experts.

Yeah, this makes me feel better. That’s worked so well for science in the past. It goes on:

The White House said the executive order was not meant to rein in any one agency. But business executives and consumer advocates said the administration was particularly concerned about rules and guidance issued by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

[...]

Besides placing political appointees in charge of rule making, Mr. Bush said agencies must give the White House an opportunity to review "any significant guidance documents" before they are issued.

I’m shocked. Shocked.

One thing scientists do is analyze patterns, and this one is pretty clear. No good will come of this, and much ill certainly will. Expect James Hansen’s head to explode any minute now.

I’ll cut right to it: the Advanced Camera for Surveys, a primary instrument on Hubble, is pretty much dead.

It shorted out the other day. Most instruments on Hubble have backup electronics (called "Side B"), but ACS was already using that system because the primary electronics (called "Side A") went on the fritz last year. While the camera isn’t totally dead, it is severely crippled. It’s main purpose is to take deep, wide-field views of the Universe, and that capability is gone.

Hubble itself is fine, I’ll add. This is one camera among many. The Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 is still functioning, as is NICMOS, the infrared camera. STIS, the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, shorted out in 2004.

Right now, there is a servicing mission to Hubble planned for September 2008. It will replace WFPC2 with the Wide Field Camera 3, which will be able to take over a lot of what ACS does (and it can see into the ultraviolet and infrared a little, too). They’ll install the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, an ultraviolet camera, then as well. STIS may get fixed, which would be cool, but it’s an intense and intensive repair job. 111 screws have to be taken out, to get to the part to be replaced! Yikes.

Anyway, the servicing mission is booked solid, and there’s little chance they can do anything for poor ACS. It has an excellent history — it took images for the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, the deepest survey ever taken, as well as the COSMOS survey which just released the first ever 3D map of dark matter.

I have many friends who used ACS, and no doubt they are trying to figure out how to work with the data they have, knowing they won’t get any more. For some (like Julianne at Cosmic Variance) they can make do, but for others who were waiting to get their observations in, they are out in the cold. This is life in space-based astronomy. You don’t get clouded out, but it still has its drawbacks.

The picture above is of two interacting galaxies, dubbed "The Mice", taken by ACS. If it looks familiar, you may have seen it over my shoulder in my video blog entries. I have a framed copy of it given to me after I gave a talk at the Space Telescope Science Institute a few years ago.

This sucks, but honestly, that really is the way things go. ACS was designed for a five year mission, and it shorted out just barely shy of that goal. So we got our money’s worth out of it… but that’s cold compensation.

For more info on the ACS issue you can read an article in the New York Times (free registration needed), or you can go to NASA’s Hubble page.

To remember happier days, try the ACS website, which has lots of beautiful images from the camera.

My good bud Paul Harris from KMOX St. Louis interviewed James Randi the other day. If you like my videoblog with Randi, then you should give Paul a listen too! Actually, you should either way.

And I have more Amaz!ng Meeting news coming. Be patient!

I note in passing that the sitemeter on this blog (on the right sidebar, down a bit) informs me that I just had the two millionth visitor to BA.

Wow.

I wrote about getting the 500,000^th visitor on March 22, 2006. It took a little less than a year to get there, and now less than a year later we’re at 2,000,000. I just want to thank those folks who come here and read my blatherings. New things are afoot, of course, with more planned. Let’s see how high we can crank that meter.

Don’t forget to submit questions for "Q & BA"!

Announcing a new feature on the Bad Astronomy Blog!

I’m starting a new feature on this blog: video answers to reader questions! Do you have a burning question about astronomy you want answered by a real live™ professional astronomer? Or by me instead?

Now’s your chance. Send them to me (instructions are below), and I’ll pick one question per week and answer it via the webcam. I’ll then post the video here on the BA Blog.

I call it…

Q & BA.

Get it? Yeah, I know. But it’s the best I could do for now.

Here’s a video intro to what this is all about:

All the info you need is below. I will post the first video answer on Monday, February 5. So read the instructions below and start sending in those head-scratchers today!

How does this work?

All you have to do, my BABloggees, is to send me questions about astronomy — whatever you want to know. What’s the largest telescope in the world? How do we know how hot stars are? Why are so many astronomers so gosh-darn smart, funny, and wonderfully good-looking?

Maybe you have a bad astronomy question. Is the Moon hollow? I saw a movie where there was a lunar eclipse the day after the Moon was new; is that possible? Why won’t Hoagland simply admit that he’s totally 100% incontrovertibly wrong?

Any and all astronomy questions are fair game. A caveat, though: please search the main BA site and see if I’ve answered the question before. Original questions will get more weight. Also, remember that I will answer these via webcam, so try to ask something that I can answer in 2 minutes or so. Things like "Explain the history of the Universe" may very well get skipped, unless I can come up with something funny (like, "Google search ‘Great Green Arkleseizure’").

My limited capabilities include editing video and using still images, crappy models, hand-drawn pictures I can hold up to the webcam, and so on. Don’t expect some slick NASA production. It’s just me and my webcam. And your questions!

I’ll post a new answer every Monday morning (actually, probably more like Sunday night). Remember, the first one goes up on Monday February 5, from questions I receive this week.

How to submit a question:

There are two methods to submit a question. You can email me at thebadastronomer "at" gmail "dot" com (replace the "at" and the "dot" with their symbols), or, if you’re more of an exhibitionist, you can post the question to the Bad Astronomy/Universe Today Bulletin Board. I have created a thread in the Questions and Answers section, and it’s a sticky, meaning it will always be near the top of the page.

I will read your question on the webcam and answer it as best I can. If you don’t want your name to be used, I suggest you email me and state that specifically. Otherwise I’ll use your name together with your city and state (or whatever the local equivalent is). Like, "Neil Tyson from New York New York asks…". You get the picture.

Why am I doing this?

Lots of reasons, actually. One is that I really just like answering questions. I get zillions of emails, and I can’t answer them all, so why not increase that load?

Wait. Nuts. Oh well, too late now.

Also, I enjoy working in front of a camera. Answering email is fun, but being able to set up a repository of answered questions seems like even more fun.

Also, I plan on ruling the world, or at the least the online astronomy aspect of it, and this seems like a good way to start.

That’s it!

I’ve added an image on the right hand sidebar that says "Q & BA". Clicking on it will take you back to this post.

So send me those questions, and I’ll see you on the webcam! Well, I guess you’ll see me on the webcam and not the other way around. But you get the point. Just send me those questions!