Blogs / Bad Astronomy

For the record, I think SETI is a good idea, and that most people misunderstand Drake’s equation (it’s a way of estimating the number of civilizations in the galaxy, not a way of determining their number), but still, this XKCD cartoon is funny (click to see the punch line):

Hold the mouse over the picture on the XKCD page to see what he really thinks. I disagree with him on that, too. We’ve only just started looking.

The Delta II rocket that will loft GLAST into space in May has arrived at Cape Canaveral.

How’d you like to see that pass you on the highway? Anyway, I’m posting this a gentle reminder to keep suggesting names for GLAST. As you can see, things are rolling along for launch. Get naming!

BABlogee Jim Atkins thought that an astronomy book would be aptly photographed in the stratosphere, or in this case, The Stratosphere:

That’s the view form the Las Vegas casino The Stratosphere. Even more appropriate, of course, is that this is near the annual Amaz!ng Meeting location.

Jim mentioned he uses the book as a reference for the 7th grade enrichmnent astronomy homeroom he runs. Cooooool. I imagine the trip to Vegas was to give him insight in statistics for his teaching, as well.

So, do you own a copy of the book? Take a picture of yourself holding it in some fun location, send it to me, and I’ll post it here!

Well, like I said before, the NASA budget put together by the White House has to be vetted by Congress, and they’d have something to say about it.

Boy, did they.

The Political Action for Space blog reports that the House subcommittee on Science and Technology is not pleased with the amount of money President Bush allocated to NASA for the fiscal year 2009. In fact, Bart Gordon (D – TN) said:

I believe that the Administration has to date failed to provide resources to NASA that are adequate for what it has asked NASA to do and what it agreed to in the Authorization Act.

This is interesting. The more I read about the budget proposal for NASA, the less enthusiastic I am about it. I praised it before, but that was before I read it carefully. The synopsis sounded great… but I should have known better.

My own Representative, Mark Udall (D – CO), is on that House subcommittee. He said:

The Administration has chosen not to request any additional funding for the Constellation program in this latest budget request, despite congressional encouragement from both sides of the aisle to do so. . . I intend to work hard this year to develop legislation to reauthorize NASA.

I recently met with a Udall staff member in DC about a different issue, and now I think it’s time to up the ante a bit. I’ll be contacting Udall’s office, and I’ll see what I can do to help.

Carl Sagan was an inspiration to a generation of astronomers, skeptics, and just average folks. He was able to take the beauty, complexity, and breath-taking awe of the Universe and bring it down to us, show it to us, and make us understand it.

If ever there was a guy who deserves to have a stamp commemorating him, it is Sagan.

Cornell University, where he worked for many years, is unveiling four different stamps in honor of Sagan. My favorite is by my friend Pat Linse (she does the artwork for Michael Shermer’s Skeptic magazine). It shows Sagan’s twin passions: astronomy (the comet) and critical thinking (his masterpiece book The Demon Haunted World was subtitled Science as a Candle in the Dark).

The official unveiling to the public is February 28, and when I learn more about how we can help the US Postal Service adopt these stamps, I’ll post about it.

Colbert decides that if he loses his job as pundit, he can always become an astrophysicist.

It’s easy. Just go to school for 13 years! Then leave all that behind and become a beloved blogger who can’t get Colbert’s attention! Worked for me!

And don’t forget, Neil will be our keynote speaker at TAM 6.

NOTE: This is an unconfirmed report. But given that it’s from the AP, it’s worth noting. Stay tuned.

The Associated Press (via CNN) is reporting that the US may try to destroy a spy satellite that will re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere in March.

The satellite is damaged, and cannot maintain orbit. In low Earth orbit, the atmosphere is extremely thin, but over time even that can slow and degrade a satellite’s orbit. The spysat’s orbit is dropping, and that’s bad. When this happens, there is no control over where it might fall, and that means it could drop potentially hazardous debris over populated areas.

The chance of that is extremely small, but in an effort to minimize it, the AP reports that the US Navy will be used to launch a missile to blow up the spysat.

Now let’s be careful here. Unlike the way the AP article phrases it, you can’t "shoot down" a satellite; it’s not an airplane being held aloft by its wings. If you blow it up with a missile, the parts will continue to orbit the Earth (which is why the Chinese angered everyone in the space industry recently when they purposely blew up one of their satellites, sending debris into orbit that will potentially threaten other satellites for years). Imagine driving behind a truck with gravel flying off it and you’ll get this picture.

However, the advantage is that smaller pieces will burn up more readily when they finally de-orbit. So blowing it up is an option, if done very carefully. If this is done a few days before the satellite makes its final descent, for example, the debris won’t be in a place where it can harm other satellites; by that time the spysat will be very low over the Earth, and other satellites will be much higher and out of the way. However, in the last few days the orbit is changing so rapidly that I think acquiring the target with a missile may be difficult. But they cannot do it earlier without creating thousands of pieces of space junk.

We don’t have any real info at this time, but when I learn more I’ll post.

Tip o’ the Whipple Shield to Rob Sparks.