Every once in a while I read a blog posting that really blows my mind. This is one that truely impressed me with not only good writing but explains just how big the universe is.
http://anotherj.blogspot.com/2010/02/space-and-numbers.html
Earle Rich

Even by blog standards, linking to another publication’s letters discussing an issue is a pretty lazy way to present a debate - but the five letters printed by the NY Times in this collection, titled “Goal for NASA?”, are too terrific to ignore. Replying to an earlier editorial about whether we should try to go [...]

No local angle, but if this NY Times report is true, it’s astonishing:
President Obama will end NASA’s return mission to the moon and turn to private companies to launch astronauts into space when he unveils his budget request to Congress next week, an administration official said Thursday. …
Obama’s request, which will be announced on Monday, [...]

Mars, as you may have heard, is relatively nearby - in opposition (that is, directly opposite us from the Sun as Earth passes it on the inside orbit and therefore as close to us as it gets. This makes it somewhat bigger in appearance, also means it rises as the sun sets and vice versa, so it’s visible all night long.

The astronomical community is taking advantage of this period, which officially happens Friday, to show folks the Red Planet. There’s an online organization called Beauty Without Borders sponsoring telescope viewings (that’s their logo above). I don’t seen any hereabouts - too cold, maybe - but it’s still on opportunity to take the binoculars outside and check out the ochre star-like object.

Great story (read it here) from the Portsmouth Herald about a “UFO” - a weird, floating pyramid - that was spotted in the background of a video of an early December accident in Portsmouth. With the thoughtful analysis that is the calling card of Internet discussion, much freaking out occurred online. Alas for those seeking [...]

If you’ve ever gone to the planetarium at the Boston Museum of Science - you’re reading GraniteGeek, so I assume you have - you’ve seen its Zeiss projector in action, displaying stars and pictures on the dome above you. The museum has just retired the device, which was installed in 1970, as part of a [...]

As Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait points out, the sun is at perihelion (closest point to Earth of the year). We’re 147,098,040 kilometers away, compared to 152,096,448 kilometers at apehelion (July 6). Coming on the heels of postings about the blue moon and new decade, at this this trivial** tidbit is based in astronomical reality.

A [...]

A “blue moon” - the second full moon in a calendar month - will arrive Jan. 31. Here’s the NASA press release. which explains that this meaning of blue moon is a pretty recent term.

This is of zero astronomical significance, but it allows me to hum “Blue Moon of Kentucky” until my co-workers go insane!

The annual Geminid meteor show peaks Sunday, and officials say that this could be a very good year, aided by the fact that it will be a new moon. (NASA news item here.) (Sunday update: It will be cloudy/sleety/rainy/snowy here tonight, so no meteor watching for me.)
From the NASA report:
Geminids [...]

Nothing local, so let’s all enjoy this delightful correction from the New York Times (if you follow the link, the correction is s appended to the bottom of the very good Times article):
Correction: December 4, 2009
An article on Nov. 13 about Sean Bedford, the Georgia Tech offensive lineman who is also an aerospace [...]

The site “InformationIsBeautiful.net” has created a lovely info-graphic listing and shredding various silly ideas associated with 2012, the Mayan calendar, galactic arrangements and whatnot. You can see it here, and certainly should. It lists lots of ridiculous ideas that I didn’t know existed, even beyond the obvious errors in astronomical calculations and ethnography (Mayans and [...]

Granite Geek readers, I think it’s fair to say, are interested in space travel and in quantifying stuff, such as the environmental impacts of various practices … so we should be interested in this Green Lantern post on Slate, which ponders whether space travel (shuttle, rocket launches, etc.) is worse for the environment than airplane [...]

There are lots of schools-build-robots-and-compete-with-them competitions (oh FIRST, what have thou wrought?), but I’ve never heard of one with a $500,000 prize. Worcester Polytechnic Institute says that’s how much a group of students, faculty and alumni won in a NASA contest to develop a robot to dig up moon dust. The Regolith (a.k.a. moondust) Excavation [...]

The Air & Space Museum in Washington D.C. is digitizing its old posters and other aviation pariphernalia. It is really, really cool. I did a quickie search for “Hampshire” and found, among other things, this poster for long-defunct aviation service, probably from the 1930s judging from what I think is a Ford Tri-Motor on the poster. Other stuff I found includes the old civil-aviation insignia for New Hampshire and a backup of the Explorer 12 satellite that UNH worked on.

As those wise, lucky folks who read my Telegraph column know, nobody has ever found a confirmed meteorite in New Hampshire. (They’re probably here, but finding them in our rocky soil is much harder than finding them on glaciers or sand dunes, which is why most of the world’s confirmed meteorites come from deserts or [...]