How cool is this? Enjoy a space vacation orbiting the Earth!
And at 1/20th the price that the original space tourists paid! 5 days
in orbit staying in a soyuz capsule with some ammenities that the ISS
crew doesn’t even have! This is one vacation you’ll never forget.
kf6hqc
Have some fun zooming in and out of our nite sky. Taken in some of
the darkest nite sky spots in the world, Nick Risinger stiched together
a beautiful 5000 MP image of our entire night sky. His efforts have
produced a beautiful photo that show things in the nite sky that some
people will never ever see with their naked eye in their lifetime.
Go ahead and check it out. Zoom into the Orien Nebula, then check
out the Andromeda Galaxy, then hop over to the Large Magellanic
cloud, then peer into the center of our galaxy. Enjoy.
kf6hqc
Today is THE DAY that doomed all of humanity because
according to “Terminator 2,” April 19, 2011, at 8:11 PM…
Skynet became self aware, starting a chain of events
that led to a war between man and machine.
via kg6dkw
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This weekend, a few friends and I are going to attend yet another
Messier Marathon at GMARS in Landers, CA. Goat Mountain
Astronomical Research Site belongs to the great folks at the Riverside
Astronomical Society. Admission is free and so is camping but there
are rules. If any of you plan to attend (which I seriously doubt) you
must read and adhere to the rules on the RAS website.
In the picture above is the 22 inch reflecting dobsonian telescope
called Capella. Capella used to be owned by the club I am a member
of called the Pomona Valley Amateur Astronomers, PVAA, but was
falling into disrepair and was sold to the RAS group. They fixed her
all up and have her living at GMARS now. The views this telescope
provide are breathtaking to put it mildly. It is usually available to
anyone throughout the evening to look through for FREE! You can
see the giant splooge on the concrete left by the last guy to
look through it.
Hope to see you there although it’s pretty damn dark. Be sure to
bring a red, not too bright flashlight. If you use any other color out
there some big dude from RAS will come over and kick the shit out
of you. Just giving you fair warning.
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Zero Hour, the movie that Airplane was based on. Awesome.
Enjoy a condensed 10 minute clip of the movie plot.
Click the link to open in a new window.
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“Skywatchers, grab your blankets. December’s night sky spectacular
will feature the best meteor shower of 2010”... Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve
heard that one before. Well, i guess we shall see. At least those who
are serious about watching meteor showers anyway. Seriously however,
if you check out at least one meteor shower a year, this should be the
one. It usually is the best of them all.
There will also be a total lunar eclipse on the 20th of December visible
in North America this year too so be ready for it. It’s just 10 days away.
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Hold onto your sunscreen, the sun is now owned by a woman
in the region of Galicia in Spain. She has just recently registered
the star as her own property. It gets better, She plans to charge
everyone who uses the sun too. Sun rates havent been made
public yet but she sure knows what she is going to do with the
money.
I can’t wait to hear about the lawsuits for skin cancer and
droughts and exposed film and flyballs lost in the sun. What other
lawsuits can be thought up? The skies the limit.
Read the article.
Book some time on a real scientific grade telescope through the
web and snap some pictures. It’s free! There is also a ridiculously
low price upgrade to access other options on this website. Check
it out. I think Firefox may be a better experience than IE on this one.
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Homemade Spacecraft from Luke Geissbuhler on Vimeo.
This looks like such a fun, great project to do. My hat is off to this
father/son team space mission. Thanks for the awsome HD footage
from the edge of space. I love this stuff. Too bad there wasn’t a little
low power amateur transmitter with APRS aboard. Maybe next time.
kf6hqc
If you liked the Whitney Music Box you may enjoy the Wheel of Stars.
It is loosly based on the WMB concept in that the stars slowly rotate
about the center of the starfield and as the stars cross the line they
produce a musical note. Very eerie strange sound. Check it out.
kf6hqc
Fourty one years ago, man took his first steps on the moon.
When you think of the incredible odds against that monumental
task and then think about leaving the moon and returning home
unharmed with a story to tell and a box of rocks to show for it
becomes a little mind numbing. To think that against all odds it
was done, and not once but six times in total. Now with the
exception of the launchpad fire that took the lives of astronauts
Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee during the attempted
launch of Apollo 1 and the near death of astronauts James A. Lovell,
John L. “Jack” Swigert, and Fred W. Haise in Apollo 13 due to an
oxygen tank rupture, you have to admit that we were pretty
lucky to pull them off at all. Now just think what it would have been
like if the first moon landing had failed and the mission only returned
with one astronaut instead of three. Take fifteen minutes to listen
to a fictional story made by Johnathan Mitchell and Hillary Frank
based on contingency speech written by William Safire for Richard
Nixon titled “In the Event of Moon Disaster” just in case Buzz Aldrin
and Neil Armstrong never made it back from the moon.
I think you’ll like it.
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One of the coolest videos I’ve seen in a while. I am amazed at just
how big the International Space Station is now. Soon the United
States space shuttles will no longer dock with this enormous
station because they are going to be retired leaving the task of
shuttling personnel up there to the Russians. Enjoy the tour of
the ISS. Let me know what you think.
vis kq6zz
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If you can, you should try to watch the famed Perseid Meteor
Shower. There finally won’t be any pesky moon to inhibit the viewing
this year. The showers peak will occur on August 12 at 9:00pm EST.
We here on the west coast will have to wait a few more hours but
will still have a nice showing. Estimates are around 60 meteors per
hour with as many as 100 possible which is well over one per minute.
Read the rest.
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I will be enjoying three days of LDRS and one day of RoCStock
this year out at Lucern Valley Dry Lake. Temps will be on the
warm side but it’s all about the rockets! If you can make it, do
try to attend for a day or two and camp out with me. You will
be amazed if you have never seen a high power rocketry event
before.
LDRS begins Thursday 6-10 and runs through Tuesday 6-15.
RoCStock runs concurrently on Friday 6-11 through Sunday
6-13. Both events are huge and together it’ll be rocket heaven.
I should be there Thursday through Saturday. Leave a comment
if you think you may attend and I’ll give you info on how to find
me.
By the way, LDRS stands for Large Dangerous Rocket Ships.
UPDATE
Here are four youtube links to some of the rocket launches including
the 4 stage comanche in the above photo. Enjoy
P.S. It was a great day and a half of rockets for me and KD6HDX.
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