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I really like today's news:

Probe's powerful camera spots Vikings on Mars

It is a feat millions of times more impressive than finding a needle in a haystack. The new Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has spotted about a dozen spacecraft on the Martian surface and, incredibly, taken pictures of such sharpness that scientists have been able to identify individual rocks that were first photographed by the Viking landers in 1976.

Full story and pictures are at http://space.newscientist.com/articl...s-on-mars.html

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hip Priest

Interesting article. Thanks.
That reminds me. A friend of mine has a powerful telescope, and he once showed me the american flag that was planted on the moon by the apollo astronauts. Can't remember the exact coordinates, but it was amazing to see from here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tokolosh

Dude! They never landed on the moon. It's such an amazingly well-pulled-off fake! :p

very interesting Rob.
I'm ended up right in this week an art/musical project focused around the Helix Nebula NGC 7293.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kegmama

I figured your fav would be Uranus. ;)

Hey oh!

^ I was just about to post that one! Too slow...

This one's good too. It seems that water has flowed on Mars within the past five years, and is probably doing so right now, which means a much better chance of finding life: http://space.newscientist.com/articl...very-eyes.html.

Peak of Geminid meteor shower set to dazzle

* 19:29 11 December 2006
* NewScientist.com news service
* David Shiga

The annual Geminid meteor display is expected to peak on Wednesday night. With up to 100 meteors per hour visible from a dark site, the Geminids rival the Perseids in August for the title of best meteor display of the year.

The paths of Geminid meteors appear to point back to a spot near the bright stars Castor and Pollux in the constellation Gemini, giving the shower its name.

For observers at mid-northern latitudes, this spot – called the radiant – will be almost directly overhead between 0100 and 0200 local time the night of 13–14 December, when the display should reach its peak. But the entire meteor shower runs from 6 to 18 December.

Observers in the southern hemisphere can spot some Geminid meteors, but will not see nearly as rich a display as those in the northern hemisphere.

Although the meteors will point back towards Gemini, they can appear anywhere in the sky. For the best results, do not stare directly at the radiant, but watch as large a patch of the sky as possible, ideally centred on a spot about 45° away.

Later in the evening, the Moon will be up. From a darker site, its glare will noticeably reduce the number of meteors you can spot, so try to keep it out of view behind a tree or a building.

Most meteor showers are caused by the Earth ramming into a cloud of rocky debris left behind by a comet decades or centuries earlier. The debris, most of which is smaller than a pebble, hits the atmosphere at blistering speed, burning up and leaving the bright trails that we see as "shooting stars".

The Geminids are unusual, however, because they follow the path of an object that appears to be an asteroid. Called 3200 Phaethon, it was discovered in 1983 by NASA's Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS).

Because its orbit takes it into the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, 3200 Phaethon may have collided with another large space rock there. The resulting debris could have spread along its orbit around the Sun, creating a trail that would produce the Geminid meteors.

Alternatively, it is possible that 3200 Phaethon is a comet that lost all of its ice after too many close passes by the Sun. In that case, the object has nothing left to vaporize to produce the glowing tail normally associated with comets and the meteors would be produced by material shed from the comet long ago.

A wave of radiation sends the austronauts to cover.

http://www.floridatoday.com/floridat...ion-crews.html

I think it was Brion Gysin who said we are here to go.

Welcome to the NASA TV Public Channel
Welcome to the NASA TV Media Channel
Welcome to NASATV Education Channel

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/
NASA TV is providing live coverage of Space Shuttle Discovery's STS-116 mission to the International Space Station

never mind outer space, what about inner space man.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3492919.stm

Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, Man...

If you're into outer space, you need to check out this page: http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/ETEmain.html
A scientific Encyclopadia of Astrobiology, Astronomy and Space Flight.
Especially the parts about exobiology and theories regarding extraterrestrial intelligence are really interesting.

Astronomers have mapped the cosmic "scaffold" of dark matter upon which stars and galaxies are assembled.

Dark matter does not reflect or emit detectable light, yet it accounts for most of the mass in the Universe.
The study, published in Nature journal, provides the best evidence yet that the distribution of galaxies follows the distribution of dark matter.
This is because dark matter attracts "ordinary" matter through its gravitational pull.
Scientists presented details of their research during a news conference here at the 209th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Seattle, Washington.
It involved nearly 1,000 hours of observations with the Hubble Space Telescope.
According to one researcher, the findings provide "beautiful confirmation" of standard theories to explain how structures in the Universe evolved over billions of years.
Ordinary matter - gas, stars, planets and galaxies - makes up just one-sixth of all matter in the Universe. The remainder is unseen.
While previous studies of dark matter relied on simulations, this one details its large-scale distribution in 3D.
For astronomers, the challenge of mapping the Universe has been described as similar to mapping a city from night-time aerial snapshots showing only street lights.
Dark matter is invisible, so only the luminous galaxies can be seen directly. The new images are equivalent to seeing a city, its suburbs and country roads in daylight for the first time.
Yet puzzling discrepancies remain.

Light bending

The map of mass distribution is based on measurements of about half a million distant galaxies.
Lead author Richard Massey and his colleagues used a technique called weak gravitational lensing to detect the dark matter.
To reach us, the light from galaxies has to pass through intervening dark matter.
This dark material bends light in much the same way as light is bent when travelling through a lens.
"We understand statistically what those galaxies are supposed to look like," said Dr Massey, from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, US.
"If you place some dark matter in the way, this dark matter - through its gravity - bends the path of light.
"As the light gets deflected, it distorts the shape of the background galaxies. So we end up seeing them in a distorted way, as if through lots of little lenses - and each of those lenses is a bit of dark matter."
To add 3D distance information, the Hubble observations were combined with multi-colour data from powerful ground-based telescopes.
The map of dark matter distribution confirms that galaxy clusters are located within clumps of this invisible material.
These clumps are connected via bridges of dark matter called filaments. The clumps and filaments form a loose network - like a web.

Cold and dark

Dr Eric Linder, from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, US, said the study was a "big step forward" in understanding the influence of dark matter on our Universe.
"It's still a small fraction of the sky we're talking about - something like two square degrees out of 40,000 square degrees in total; but they are definitely the clearest pictures we have to date," he said.
Professor Carlos Frenk, from the University of Durham, UK, told BBC News: "The technique they used really is the future.
"In the next decade, I think most studies of the Universe's large-scale structure will be dark matter structure studies. In this sense, I think galaxies will be relegated to a secondary role."
He added: "For the first time, we can see what's really out there."
The University of Durham astronomer said that, overall, the results were a "beautiful confirmation" of the cold dark matter theory on which he works.
This theory is a leading model to explain how structures in the Universe evolved over cosmic time.
Soon after the Big Bang, cold dark matter formed the first large structures in the Universe, which then collapsed under their own weight to form vast halos.
The gravitational pull of these halos sucked in ordinary matter, providing a focus for the formation of galaxies.

'Naked' clumps

But astronomers will have to resolve discrepancies in the otherwise tight connection between ordinary matter and the dark "stuff".
Concentrations of ordinary matter almost always overlap with concentrations of dark matter - but not absolutely always.
Conversely, the researchers saw that dark matter concentrations sometimes seemed to have no corresponding ordinary matter.
"It's not forbidden, but you get a little uncomfortable because you would think the two should go together," said Dr Linder.
Carlos Frenk commented: "Finding what I would call 'naked' clumps of dark matter where there are no galaxies for me is very strange. All dark matter clumps of sufficient size should have galaxies - if our understanding is correct."
For the moment, no-one is talking about needing to revise cosmological models; but Professor Frenk said everything hinged on the size of these anomalies.
"What would be an enormous puzzle would be to find big, luminous galaxies sitting out there in the middle of nowhere with no dark matter around them. That really would be shocking."
The discrepancies could turn out simply to be artefacts, caused by noise in the data. But then again, said Carlos Frenk, they could be real.
Dr Massey said the anomalies were "tantalising" and that his team was eager to investigate them more closely.
But, he told BBC News, "the discrepancies are not yet at a level of significance where I am definitively convinced they are something other than noise or isolated defects in our analysis."
The findings come from the Cosmic Evolution Survey (Cosmos) project - the largest ever undertaken with Hubble Space Telescope.

wow! that dark matter stuff is weird and interesting.

i used to be well into space, but when i found out that they add the colours to their photographs it lost a lot of its appeal. i know thats a lame reason to not like space so much but there you go. i felt SO CHEATED.

they colour in all the pics! oh man well thats it then i am uttery devastated.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lucyrulesok

They normally do that with infrared images and also to enhance photos that have been affected by light pollution.
Besides, almost all photography is photoshopped nowadays.