The Windkey and the Lamplighter

The Boston Globe’s Big Picture feature is neat. (Thanks to my favorite Bad Astronomer, Phil Plait, for the link to the volcano pictures, which got the RSS feed into my newsreader!)

But even better than volcanoes is volcanoes on Io:

The rest of the Jupiter pictures are also fantastic.

There’s been too much complaining on this blog recently, at least from me. But I have good news! Finally, I can indulge my desire to watch Martian weather.

The Mars Express Visual Monitoring Camera isn’t a scientific instrument—no pointing control, no focus adjustment, only “basic exposure controls”—but it was included on Mars Express to monitor the ejection of the Beagle 2 lander in December 2003. The camera performed well—the lander didn’t. In 2007, ESA turned the camera back on to capture low-resolution images of Mars, including some neat crescent shots and global images that the scientific instruments and other satellites aren’t positioned to capture. They did tests and focusing all throughout 2007, and the “Mars Webcam”, as it’s been nicknamed, went live today.

This is way cool. Also, it’s a live satellite that can be used to train ops engineers:
“VMC activites are unique in that the camera is operated by the Flight Control Team, and not a team of scientists. This gives operations engineers, particularly junior members, a chance to learn and practice command generation, planning, and other skills normally done at the Science Operations Centre.”

This is going right up with the VolcanoCam(1) on my list of things to go in my virtual windowframe(2).

(1) OMG, the VolcanoCam is now in HD! I love the USDA Forest Service.
(2)And thanks to Ryan Hoagland for putting up a website that I could link to when I wanted to explain what I meant by virtual window. Wherever and whomever you are, Ryan, you rock.

One of the things that most planetary spacecraft do, at some point, is swing their cameras around to take a look at home. Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society has collected these pictures here.

Wow. The iconic Apollo picture is here, of course, as are some from the Russian Zond missions of the same era. The Voyager “Pale Blue Dot” picture is here, and there’s even one from the surface of Mars, from Spirit. Take a look.

Emily at the Planetary Society has the news:
Water ice on Mars!

They’re pretty sure it’s ice, and they’re pretty sure it’s water—carbon dioxide ice would have melted more quickly at the temperatures they’ve been observing.

This is very cool. Ice on Mars!

Earthrise from Kaguya

This is apparently not as high-resolution as Kaguya actually records, but it’s all that is released so far.
Man, is it beautiful.

Thanks to Emily at the Planetary Society Blog!

Edit: Apparently I forgot to post this. Weird. Here you go!

Over at Starts with a Bang! they have a fun game:
Look at the pictures, and decide whether it is of Arizona or Mars.
Click here for the pictures, scroll down for the answers
I got all but three—this is hard!

Thanks to Carnival of Space #48

Google and Virgin Galactic had an awesome April Fool.
I decided to respond, but it took me a couple days to bend the movie-making programs to my will.
(Also, it still has no sound, even though I know exactly what song I wanted as the background track. Alas)

Everyone has been very hard on Michael Griffin, NASA’s director, about
his comments to NPR. (In case you’ve missed them,
Stephen Colbert mocked him mercilessly, as is his wont.)

But they’re all missing something. I think Michael Griffin knows a
secret. Remember [this story][], where former Astronaut Rusty
Schweickart criticized the NASA report on Near Earth Objects?
"Schweickart reported that by 2019 asteroid watchers will have on the
books upwards of 10,000 objects with a non-zero probability of
impacting Earth." I think Griffin’s found one, headed straight for
us, and we’re not ready. Why worry about global warming when an
[extinction event][] is right around the corner?
I think Griffin wants to ignore global warming and divert the money to
building a [giant escape ship][] in which the [DNA of all living
creatures][] is stored…

This chart shows all the objects in the solar system with a
diameter larger than 200 miles.

Note that the diameter of Mars, everyone’s favorite "next step in exploration" is
less than 1000 miles more than that of Ganymede and just over 1000 miles
more than that of Titan. Both Ganymede and Titan are bigger than
Mercury, and it’s not even a dwarf planet.
Titan even has an atmosphere, mostly nitrogen just like Earth.

I think if I can print this, I just found a new wall decoration for my office.

ed: fixed broken links

The Planetary Society has a great story about methane storms on Titan.
Apparently "severe methane convective storms accompanied by
intense precipitation may occur in Titan under the right environmental
conditions….Raindrops of 1-5 millimeters in radius produce
precipitation rainfalls on the surface as high as 110 kilograms per
square meter and are comparable to flash flood events on Earth."

Meanwhile, in Boston, we’re getting plain ole H2O flooding—not on
the Charles, but certainly street flooding. So why doesn’t the
Charles flood, even in this year of record rainfall? Universal Hub
says it may be because of land the Army Corps of Engineers bought up in the 1970s.