Quick roundup of spacey things

I am busy and there’s too much to write about! So.

1) Go see Emily. She has cool stuff about 3D animations and very pretty pictures of the Moon from Kaguya!

2) Go see Fraser. He has cool images of Deimos and Phobos, the moons of Mars.

3) Go see Wired. They have a hilarious story about Futurama.

Tomorrow: new cool Hubble image. Stay tuned.

November 28th, 2007 5:01 PM by Phil Plait in Astronomy, Cool stuff, Humor, Science | 5 comments | RSS feed | Trackback >

5 Responses to “Quick roundup of spacey things”

1. Magnus W Says:
November 28th, 2007 at 5:11 pm

And go and see this: http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMS9773R8F_index_1.html#subhead1

If you haven’t
2. Peter Says:
November 28th, 2007 at 5:45 pm

Nibbler: “Everyone, out of the Universe – quick!”
3. MandyDax Says:
November 28th, 2007 at 6:37 pm

I’m so glad to see Futurama coming back. Sometimes I mention this and people are unaware of its return. Then we get to do a happy dance together.

In the article on Phobos and Deimos, Fraser has a misprint:
>Phobos is only 21 km (13 miles) across, and orbits Mars once
>every 7 days, 39 minutes. Because the moon orbits Mars faster
>than it rotates, Phobos would appear to travel backwards across
>the sky from an observer on the ground. This is just an illusion,
>though.
It orbits in 7 =hours=, 39 minutes. This is about 3.2 orbits per Martian day.

These images that they’re getting from the moon are awe-inspiring. O.O
4. Sili Says:
November 28th, 2007 at 7:21 pm

I just registered on the forum to ask if that time to orbit could be right. And now I see that it’s already been clarified here.

Impressive readership!

(For the record, it said that Deimos is the further away yet had the shorter ‘orbitation time’ – I couldn’t square that with my recall of Kepler. Glad to see I haven’t wholly lost it yet.)
5. Thomas Siefert Says:
November 29th, 2007 at 12:33 am

Iâ€™m so glad to see Futurama coming back. Sometimes I mention this and people are unaware of its return. Then we get to do a happy dance together.

I sometimes meet people who have never heard of Futurama, I would never fit in socially in those circles.

About Bad Astronomy

Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He's written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.

The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking, movie reviews, and all that) can be found here.

Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com




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