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[ 20070619 ]
ISS and STS-117 Pass Tonight Over KC
Thanks to Scott Kranz of the ASKC for posting this info on the Yahoo! group ...
For tonight (Tuesday, June 19):
STS-117
rise in the NNW at 21:30:54
highest in the NNE at 21:33:06 at 20 degrees alt
set in the ENE at 21:35:18
ISS
rise in the NNW at 21:31:10
highest in the NNE at 21:33:23 at 20 degrees alt
set in the ENE at 21:35:36
STS-117
rise in the WNW at 23:05:27
highest in the W at 23:07:22 at 31 degrees alt
set in the W at 23:07:22
ISSrise in the WNW at 23:05:45
highest in the W at 23:07:39 at 31 degrees alt
set in the W at 23:07:39
Go get 'em!
Jay Manifold [3:16 PM]
[ 20070603 ]
Another Thing I Didn't Know Existed (A Continuing Series)
(Previous member of series here.)
Wingsuit flying/base jumping -- looks like some kind of human flying squirrel.
This sort of thing, like ice golf, would be much easier on Titan.
Jay Manifold [12:01 AM]
[ 20070602 ]
Graze on over to the SOHO MDI Continuum Latest Image page, then break out your (properly-filtered) equipment for a look. After a couple of very quiet years, the Sun will actually be something other than a blank disk for a while. (Hat tip to David Young of the ASKC, who notes that our PST is "just sitting here in storage" -- members can check it out for 2 weeks at a time. Another reason for locals to join.)
Jay Manifold [8:23 AM]
[ 20070529 ]
Any Old Blogger Can Donate Blood
UPDATE: Yikes! OK, the usual instructions are -- poke around a little while you're here; I particularly encourage reading the posts listed under "Important Stuff" in the left sidebar. Feedback is welcomed via the link above; first-time e-mailers will have to batter their way through Spam Arrest.
Like, you know, this guy. But I'm not just any old blogger; on Arcturus, you get to see the needle going in:
just a little pinprick
there is no pain, you are receding ...
the finished product, four minutes later
the rewards: colorful bandage, 10% cafeteria discount, pen, Sunny D, OreosFor more information, locals should graze on over to the Community Blood Center website; and also note this upcoming opportunity.
Jay Manifold [4:13 PM]
[ 20070527 ]
-- was the topic of the main presentation at last night's ASKC meeting. Here's presenter Fiske Miles demonstrating the finished product (click on images for full-size [640 × 480] versions):
putting the secondary assembly onto the trusses
adding the finderscope
... and the shroud
pointing out the battery box
a glimpse of the mirror assembly (at bottom)The materials weren't too expensive -- maybe $7000, of which $4500 was the mirror, which he bought ready to install -- but the tools were something else: a full wood shop of goodies on the order of $20k. Graze on over to FiskeMiles.com for the complete presentation.
- Limiting Visual Magnitude m ≈ 2.7 + 5 log D = +16.4
- Smallest Resolvable Angle α ≈ 116/D = 0.21"
- Useful Magnification Range ≈ 0.2D to 2D = 110x to 1,100x
These are somewhat idealized values, given the reality of atmospheric conditions even at good sites (or great ones).
Oh, yeah: shortly before the meeting, your humble blogger got arm-twisted into running for a seat on the ASKC board. Elections are at the next meeting, Sat 23 Jun. I'd like to buy about a million dollars' worth of TV ads, so feel free to contact me via the link at the top of the page and send bundles of unmarked twenty-dollar bills. My platform:
- clouds/rain in daytime only and clear high-pressure domes of air overhead every night
- paint near side of Moon flat black so full Moon won't interfere with observation
- install master dimmer switch for all outside lighting in KC metro area
- a giant Dobsonian in every garage, a comet within 0.05 AU every calendar quarter, and a supernova within 1,000 light-years every year
- tunnels to Arizona and Chile for quick weekend getaways to Kitt Peak and Cerro Tololo
Hey, those are at least as realistic as most campaign promises ...
Jay Manifold [8:01 AM]
[ 20070505 ]
"Meteorite Capital" Hit by Tornado
Greensburg, KS, previously mentioned on Arcturus in Road Trip Report, Stained Glass from the Sky, and When the Stars Fall on Kansas, has been heavily damaged by a tornado.
UPDATE: Greensburg is now being described as "destroyed," and FOX 4 Meteorologist Joe Lauria in KC is reporting that the 1000-pound meteorite formerly on display in Greensburg, the world's largest Pallasite, is missing.
Relief information here.
2ND UPDATE: They're not kidding. And see photos 11 and 12 for what's left of the facility that housed the meteorite.
3RD UPDATE: Roxana Hegeman of the AP reports that the meteorite has turned up.
"Amid the rubble, one of the town's most locally famous features was recovered Monday. A museum volunteer searching the site of the town's Big Well museum found a missing 1,000-pound meteorite, one of the largest of its kind. The meteorite, a type called a pallasite, is insured for $1 million."
Jay Manifold [10:08 AM]
[ 20070503 ]
-- is the subject of my latest offering over on Chicago Boyz. Enjoy!
Jay Manifold [8:46 PM]
[ 20070430 ]
Of Gliese 581 C, Politics, and Life
The latest exoplanet being touted as "Earthlike" is yet another hot Jupiter - though "hot Neptune" might be a better phrase - that has spiraled close enough to its star to have a "surface" temperature in the range that could support liquid water. But Gliese 581 C is dramatically un-Earthlike.
It has five times Earth's mass; it is undoubtedly tidally locked, such that one side always faces its star; and that star is only 1.3% as luminous as the Sun, is substantially less enriched in "metals" (in astrophysicists' parlance, any element heavier than helium), is younger than the Sun, and is variable - thus the designation HO Librae.
What we have here is a planet quite unlike any in the Solar System, orbiting a star equally unlike the Sun, being promoted as a steppingstone to the discovery of extraterrestrial (actually extrasolar) life, in the service of securing funding for, among other things, the Terrestrial Planet Finder. There's nothing wrong with building something like the TPF, though to my mind the funding mechanism is subject to drastic improvement. But the most astonishing discoveries are being forced into a very limited range of narratives to further a limited range of research.
Because what Gliese 581 C lacks is a history remotely resembling Earth's. To quote Timothy Ferris quoting American physicist Thomas Gold (page 338 in the paperback edition), things are as they are because they were as they were. Earth swarms with life, including life recently capable of investigating other solar systems, because it has maintained - with considerable assistance from Jupiter, the Moon, tectonic plate movement, and other influences - a very rough homeostasis for billions of years, punctuated with just enough change, including extinction events of sufficient (but not oversufficient) severity, to drive the development of immense biological variety.
Gliese 581 C has none of this - and equally important, and entirely lost in the employment of this discovery in the "are we alone?" narrative, is that it has its own history, one certainly as astonishing as our own, irrespective of whether it has led to intelligent aliens, or even bacteria.
The most wondrous environments in our Solar System are those least like the planet we live on. It is past time to extend that appreciation to extrasolar planets, and refrain from immediately pigeonholing them as "Earthlike," and therefore worthy of our attention, or "not Earthlike," and therefore to be ignored.
(Readers wishing to find Gliese 581/HO Librae should read the SolStation.com page linked above, then graze over here; it's about magnitude +8.4, so it should be a binocular object.)
Jay Manifold [7:51 PM]
[ 20070419 ]
The Dark-Sky Site, venue for the upcoming Heart of America Star Party, is seen from an unusual viewpoint in this 1-minute, 44-second video (warning: 4.4 MB) taken, somehow, by ASKCer Dave Fox, who notes "you might want to turn down your speakers for this (it's loud)" and insists that "no planes or anything at the DSS was hurt in the filming of this movie." Play spot-the-facility, and enjoy!
Jay Manifold [6:16 AM]
-- was an event whose anniversary we must never forget.
UPDATE: Heh.
Jay Manifold [6:16 AM]
[ 20070416 ]
Jay Manifold [8:49 PM]
[ 20070413 ]
Graze on over to Announcing the Carnival of Space for, er, the announcement of the Carnival of Space.
Jay Manifold [11:26 AM]
[ 20070411 ]
Signs of water seen on planet outside solar system was the lead news headline on Yahoo! this morning. Like most exoplanets, HD 209458b is a "hot Jupiter," making it entirely unsuitable for life, which inconvenient fact doesn't keep the lede from calling this development "a tantalizing find for scientists eager to know whether life exists beyond Earth." Actually, it would have been much bigger news if it didn't have H2O in its atmosphere, but mentioning that would really screw up the we're-about-to-find-alien-life narrative.Roger Highfield's slightly breathless Analysis: The Holy Grail of astronomy, nonetheless usefully concludes: "What astronomers now need is a Goldilocks planet that passes behind its parent star."
How likely is this? Assuming the planes of exoplanetary orbits to be oriented randomly with respect to the Solar System, we can get a rough idea by dividing the size of the Sun (since we're looking for planets around Sunlike stars) by the radius of Earth's orbit (since we're looking for planets that are at least Earthlike enough to be at a similar distance).
That would be 1.5 × 108 km / 1.4 × 106 km, which suggests that for every 110 Goldilocks planets out there, we will be able to observe one by the transit method. As of now, this list has five planets in the habitable zone that are not in unduly eccentric orbits. All are Jovian. We are some years away from the first reliable observation of a terrestrial planet -- in the sense of being even as much like Earth as is Venus or Mars -- transiting its star's disk.
(For comparison, a planet the size of Jupiter orbiting a star the size of the Sun at 0.05 AU would transit, as seen from our vantage point, in nearly one-fifth of cases, and would cause the star's light output to vary by a full 1% every four days. For this and other reasons, hot Jupiters are much easier to find than even vaguely Earthlike planets.)
As with many other endeavors involving leading-edge technology combined with long project timelines, the question arises whether efforts like the Terrestrial Planet Finder, which is funded but has no target date for launch, will be outstripped by nanotechnology in another decade or two.
If you want to observe HD 209458, also known as V376 Pegasi, start here. It will be a binocular object, located west of the Square of Pegasus, and is best seen in the (Northern Hemisphere) late summer or early autumn.
Jay Manifold [6:52 AM]
[ 20070408 ]
Future ≠ Utopia (A Continuing Series)
Read Steven A. Shaw's NYTimes op-ed, Take a Rat to Dinner, for insightful commentary on actual vs perceived risk in food safety. His final sentence ends with "... officials should be prioritizing and educating, rather than making decisions based on which YouTube videos upset people the most." I have deliberately elided it thus by way of pointing out that there's an idea with a few thousand other applications besides inspections of fast-food joints.
As noted in my much earlier installment on this topic, torrents of horrific images will be viewed unedited in the near future by vast numbers of ordinary people, thanks to ubiquitous, commoditized bandwidth. Those images will produce, for perfectly good reasons of evolutionary psychology, visceral responses; and if visceral responses are transmuted directly into political intervention, we'll have a whole different layer of risk to manage. Not only officials, but opinion leaders -- and there will still be opinion leaders, even in the decentralized polity of the blogosphere -- would serve us well by growing up a little bit.
Over to you, Dr Cline.
UPDATE: See also Jack Woodall's Disease Control by Decree for a remarkable, and deadly, mixture of official over- and underreaction taking place in various countries, most but not all of which are, whaddaya know, dictatorships. This is supposedly going to be fixed by the WHO IHR; we shall see.
Jay Manifold [5:35 PM]
[ 20070331 ]
Why Rosie O'Donnell is Like Henry Morris III
-- is explained by me over at ChicagoBoyz. Enjoy!
Jay Manifold [9:14 AM]
R.A. 14:15:39.7, Dec. +19°10'57"
A typical reader enjoying Arcturus.
Important Stuff:
(as determined by me)
Baby Boomer Apocalypse
Because It Can Become Good
I Was A Pessimist
Asteroid Warning System - 1
Asteroid Warning System - 2
The Joy of Sets
Situational Citizenship
Boniface in Blogdom
Advice for Libertarians:
1. Libertarianism and War
2. Diagnosis
3. A Modest Proposal
I Love Feedback!
e-mail me here
What the Name Means:
where it comes from
why I picked it
Shameless Plug:
SCoPE-L
[ Archives ]
Info Sites:
abcNEWS.com Sci/Tech
Asteroid/Comet Connection
CBSNews.com SciTech
CNN.com Science & Space
David Harris' Science & Literature
EurekAlert!
Google News Sci/Tech
Junk Science
MarsToday.com
MSNBC Technology & Science
Redshift Productions
Reuters Science News
Tim Osborn: Sun clock
Yahoo! News - Science
WebCams:
Jacksonville Beach
KC Weather Cam
McDonald Observatory
Earth (from Moon; animation)
Horsepersons of the Arcturcalypse:
Alan K. Henderson's Weblog
AtlanticBlog
Beth Zone, The
Daily Ablution, The
Fine And Peculiar Place, A
Vinteuil
Blogs I wish were permalinked to Arcturus:
Dave Barry
Tim Blair
Truth Laid Bear, The
Request a permalink from Arcturus:
(response time may be lengthy)
Request for Permalink
Science and/or Space Bloggers:
A.E.Brain
Air is Just Thinner Up Here, The
ArchaeoBlog
Astroblog
Astronomy Files, The
Avian Flu
Blinne Blog, The
Carnaby Fudge
California Capital Futurists
cerdipity
Citizen Scientist
Climate Science
Cosmic Log
Cosmotron Express, The
Covington
Cramer, Kathryn
Dienekes' Anthropology Blog
Dr. Flounder's World
EchoJournal
Eternal Golden Braid, The
Freedom, Peace and Chaos
FuturePundit.com
Galaxy Girl
Gene Expression
GRojas Online
Howard Lovy's Nanobot
Human Spaceflight
Hypotheses Non Fingo
Impact Analysis
Impearls
Inside Straight Solidarity International
Juan de Mairena
Kevin Parkin's Weblog
Laughing Wolf, The
Loom, The
Lunar News Network
Lunar Soil
MainlyMartian
Malice Aforethought
Martian Sermon
Martian Soil
My Silly Life
News From Mars, The
Observant Astronomer, The
Ortholog
Panda's Thumb, The
ParaPundit.com
Pharyngula
Pipeline, In the
Project Constellation
Project Nothing!
Quark Soup
Respectful Insolence
Rondam Ramblings
SatBlog
Shadow & Substance
Signal + Noise
Spacecraft
SpaceWriter's Ramblings, The
Speculist, The
Star Spangled Cosmos, The
TeledyN
Tenser, said the Tensor
TexasBestGrok
Transterrestrial Musings
Willson, Sean
WolverineTom
Fellow Members of the
Jay Alliance:
Daily Rant, The
Jay Currie
Jay Reding
Jay Solo's Verbosity
One Fine Jay
Alphabetic Blogroll:
3 Bruces
A House at Pooh Corner
Aaron's Rantblog
Agenda Bender
Alphecca
Amygdala
Anticipatory Retaliation
Arbitrary Aardvark
Around Here Somewhere
Assume the Position
Barking Lunatics
Belligerent Bunny Blog
Belly-Flop
Belmont Club
bird on the moon
Blaster's Blog
Blog o'RAM
blogs4God
Bo Cowgill.com
borges2003
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Byzantium's Shores
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Chicago Boyz
ChipTaylor.org
Classical Values
Country Store
Coyote at the Dog Show, A
Cyber :: Ecology
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Daimnation!
De Doc's Institute for Memetic Engineering And Polymaths' Pursuits
Declarer, The
democracyforcalifornia.com
devclue
Dispatches from Outland
Dog's Life, A
Drake's Drum
Dreaded Purple Master
Dr. Weevil
Due Diligence
Dynamist Blog
Edge of England's Sword, The
Exclamation Mark
Eye of the Beholder, The
Faith Matters (Bill Tammeus)
Fat Guy, The
Fevered Rants
Fink File, The
Fossil Freak's News and Views
Fresh Bilge
Functional Journal of Nels Lindahl
Future is Retail, The
GlennFrazier.com
Goebel, Jimmy
Gospel According to Mark, The
Great Lettuce Head, The
Half-Bakered
Happy Furry Puppy Story Time
Hud's Blog-O-Rama
I Don't Know, But ...
I think, therefore I croak
i took the red pill
ibidem
Ideas, etc.
Insolvent Republic of Blogistan
InstaPundit
INBB
Jennings, Michael
Jim Miller on Politics
Jonas Cord Journal, The
JunkYardBlog
Kaedrin Weblog
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Kolkata Libertarian, The
Koo, Simone
Lapsus Calami
Lay Lines
Lefty Directory, The
Lex Communis
Liberty's Blog
lines in the sand
Long View, The
Lucas, Rachel
(Glenn) Mac Frazier's Place
Mark Fox's Weblog
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Memento Mori
Metamorphosis ...
MooreThoughts
More Than Zero
Mr_Cranky
My Wide Blue Seas
Nagid Ben Chesed
neopro/neocon
NewsPundit.net
No Watermelons Allowed
Normative Game, The
Norwegian Blogger
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Old Blind Dog
On the Third Hand
OnlineWorldNews
Open Source Thinking
Order From Chaos
Pathetic Earthlings
Pejmanesque
Philippine Commentary
Pirate Blog
Pittman, Tanner
Pookie Monster
Post-Atomic
PrestoPundit.com
Princess Analogous
Protein Wisdom
Proveritate
Purple Tricycle, The
Quidnunc
Rambler, The
Random Jottings
Randy McDonald's Livejournal
Ranting and Roaring
Red Letter Day
Redwood Dragon
Regnum Crucis
Rhetorica: Press-Politics Journal
Right Wing News
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Roland Tanglao's Weblog
Rush Limbaughtomy
Safety Valve, The
Sardonic Subversive, The
Savage Road Summary
Seamole's Log
Secular Blasphemy
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sheri's photo gallery
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Signifying Nothing
Silflay Hraka
So Flighty
Somewhere over the Rainbough
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Spatula City BBS
Spiced Sass
stpeter
S-Train Canvass, The
stuff i think
Stuff N Things
Swamp Musings
Talanoa
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Temporal Globe, The
TFS Reluctant
That's Just the Way I See It
that's Rich!
TJIC
Tman in Tennessee
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Wake Me When It's Over
Where's the Pope?
Whine & Jeez
WindsOfChange.NET
woccam.com
Wormtalk and Slugspeak
XtremeBlog
Zero Base Thinking
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-- Kris Murray
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-- Iain Murray
... one of the least sophomoric bloggers out there.
-- M. Duffy
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Jay Manifold knows everything ...
-- J Bowen, No Watermelons Allowed
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-- One Fine Jay
Jay Manifold at A Voyage To Arcturus continues to show why he is the new "Isaac Asimov" of the science-writing set. Why he isn't doing this for real money in one of the science journals is beyond me but I thank him.
-- Jeff Soyer
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That's more like it.
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Jay Manifold... sound[s] like a great name for a transdimensional warp drive physicist in a science fiction novel ...
-- PZ Myers
Jay Manifold ... has the coolest engineer name ever ...
-- Christopher Luebcke
Jay Manifold['s] name sounds, in my ears, exactly like the name of one of those "super-competent everyman" types you used to find as protagonists in Heinlein and Asimov stories ...
-- Byzantium's Shores
"Jay Manifold" sounds like a name that the square-jawed weapons officer should have on an interstellar warship in a vaguely militaristic 1950s science fiction novel, possibly one written by A.E. Van Vogt.
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The right to buy weapons
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-- Robert Heinlein
The problem is not prediction,
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... que trata distintos temas cientificos, desde guerra bacteriologica hasta astrofisica, y con mucho contenido politico, pero sin miedo a meter en medio de sus posts las cuentas y formulas que justifican sus opiniones.
-- Juan de Mairena
Huh?
-- me
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