Friday Cartoon Fun: Wad Shot Edition

"Look at that, you son of a bitch."

"The sky is very dark; the Earth is bluish. Everything is seen very clearly"

Explanation: On April 12th, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alexseyevich Gagarin became the first human in space. His remotely controlled Vostok 1 spacecraft lofted him to an altitude of 200 miles and carried him once around planet Earth. Commenting on the first view from space he reported, "The sky is very dark; the Earth is bluish. Everything is seen very clearly".

Click on photo for linkage.

Pictures Of The Sun

I Think I Am Going To Be Slick

NASA's Aqua Satellite Sees Sunglint on Gulf Oil Slick

At 3 p.m. EDT on May 18, NASA's Aqua satellite swept over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill from its vantage point in space and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument captured sunglints in a visible image of the spill.

The visible image showed three bright areas of sunglint within the area of the gray-beige colored spill. Sunglint is a mirror-like reflection of the sun off the water's surface. In calm waters, the rounded image of the sun would be seen in a satellite image. However, the waves in the Gulf blurred the reflection and created an appearance of three bright areas in a line on the ocean's surface.

According to the May 18 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) web update of the Deepwater Horizon incident, "satellite imagery on May 17 indicated that the main bulk of the oil is dozens of miles away from the Loop Current, but that a tendril of light oil has been transported down close to the Loop Current."

The May 18 NOAA update also noted that "NOAA extended the boundaries of the closed fishing area in the Gulf into the northern portion of the loop current as a precautionary measure to ensure seafood from the Gulf will remain safe for consumers. The closed area is now slightly less than 19 percent of the Gulf of Mexico federal waters."

Image credit: NASA/Goddard/MODIS Rapid Response Team
Text credit: Rob Gutro, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Apollo 11 HD Launch Video

I have always wanted to see a launch close up so I could see how they use water to keep everything from burning during launch. This video shows exactly how that giant steam plume at launch is created. Awesome!

Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch (HD) Camera E-8 from Mark Gray on Vimeo.

h/t XJ

Saturday Cartoon Fun: Not Very Original Edition

The Known Universe

Better late than never, I always say...

Sagan, Feynman, Tyson And Nye

Yes, It Is Real

Explanation: At about 100 meters from the cargo bay of the space shuttle Challenger, Bruce McCandless II was farther out than anyone had ever been before. Guided by a Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), astronaut McCandless, pictured above, was floating free in space. McCandless and fellow NASA astronaut Robert Stewart were the first to experience such an "untethered space walk" during Space Shuttle mission 41-B in 1984. The MMU works by shooting jets of nitrogen and has since been used to help deploy and retrieve satellites. With a mass over 140 kilograms, an MMU is heavy on Earth, but, like everything, is weightless when drifting in orbit. The MMU was replaced with the SAFER backpack propulsion unit.

My Commemorative Album

I have had this for forty years...

Happy 40th anniversary.

Monday Cartoon Fun: 40th Anniversary Edition

Some cool restored videos of the first moonwalk here.

Happy Valentine's Day

W5 is a nebula, a giant cloud of gas roughly 6000 light years away in the constellation of Cassiopeia.

Space Is Fucking Bitchin!

Two videos you need to see. They are both from Bad Astronomy, and they are awesome. You must watch them a couple times to grok their fullness. The first one is newer than the second, but both of them are very new, in space-time. The Bad Astronomer says:

First, the setup. The Deep Impact spacecraft was the one that smacked a chunk of copper into a comet so that we could see what materials were below the surface. After the impact, the spacecraft kept going (with the mission renamed EPOXI), and it’s being used to do all sorts of interesting observations.

In late May, 2008, it turned its cameras back to Earth and observed us over the course of a several hours. During this time, from EPOXI’s point of view, the Moon passed directly in front of the Earth! The images were put together (by my old boss, Don Lindler!) into, well, one of the most astonishing animations I have ever watched. Ever.

Fucking awesome, right? Here is the second one, with the dude himself narrating. I love his enthusiasm!



Just thought I'd share.

UPDATE: Am I being misogynistic by using the word "bitchin'" because I sure don't want to be misogynistic, or un-PC, or sound stoopid?!