Spacers

Europe Gets An Eclipse

This New Years Eve, Thursday 31st December 2009, most of Europe will experience a partial eclipse of the Moon. Beginning at 17:17:08 UT, the Moon will enter the Penumbral shadow of the Earth and very subtly start to darken. At 18:52:43 UT the Moon will begin to enter the Umbral shadow of the Earth, the point at which the Moon will glow in the classic orange and red colors. Since this is a partial eclipse, the Moon will not completely enter the Umbral shadow. The greatest depth of shadow will occur at 19:22:39 UT.


So, doesn't it glow all orange, and stuff?
Yes, it does! One of the most fascinating aspects of a lunar eclipse is the deep orange and red colors that are seen as it enters deeper and deeper into the shadow. The colors are actually caused by the ring of permanent sunrises and sunsets that constantly encircle the Earth, as it is always sunrise or sunset somewhere. The Moon is far enough away to be able to see this ring as a bright orange and red circle once it is inside the full umbral shadow, bright enough in fact to illuminate the surface of the Moon. Imagine for a moment actually standing on the surface of the Moon when this happens, looking up to see planet Earth as a ring of fire in the sky, and looking down to see the once bright white surface flooded with deep reds and oranges. With the discovery of water on the Moon, and the subsequent increase in interest that event caused, it won't be long until we are back there on a permanent basis. The day when we witness such a spectacular event in person may not be that far away.


As can be seen in the image above, sunlight is refracted through the edge of the Earth's atmosphere giving rise to a spectacular lunar light show. If you are in Europe, and happen to be graced with clear skies, it is a sight well worth catching. Even though it is a partial eclipse, there will still be a long period of deep orange colors, making it possible to view even in partially cloudy conditions.

Happy Mooning, Spacers!

SpaceHead

A Year In Highlights

The events of 2009 at NASA have been summed up in a video just released by the agency.



Let's look forward to a 2010 that is just as full of Space!

SpaceHead

Watch For A Fireball Tonight

So, isn't there some kind of cosmic event tonight, then?
Well, yes there is. Tonight marks the beginning of a traditional holiday known as Christmas, where a white bearded overweight benevolent man named Santa Claus will be travelling through the atmosphere so blindingly fast that he will vaporize the air he flies through. Why would he do this? Well, to deliver gifts to every child on the planet, of course!


Old Saint Nick, or Father Christmas, or just plain old Santa, as he's known, will use a little studied propulsion technology known as Nuclear Reindeer, with a bizarre red nose based guidance system called Rudolph. The number of children actually covered under the service agreement varies dependant on several criteria, not least of all an index of goodness which is applied to each child and administered by a vision system Santa wears throughout the year that automatically logs naughty behaviour. Global Climate Change is often adversely affected by a high instance of naughty children, who are rewarded for their transgressions with lumps of coal. The bakery and dairy industries across the planet are taxed to their structural limits as Saint Nick uses a Mr. Fusion unit to convert cookies and milk collected from the houses he visits along the way into reindeer fuel.

NASA has yet to detect the fireball created by Santa's travels, although this is likely the result of a high instance of excited children throughout the homesteads of NASA personnel. This doesn't mean you shouldn't at least try to catch a glimpse of the flaming Santa Claus in the sky though, as apparently the wake he leaves behind is felt for months after - or at least until the decorations fairy comes along to switch off all those annoying twinkly lights!

Merry Christmas, Spacers!

SpaceHead

Spirits High For Rover Rescue

The Spirit rover on Mars has been stuck in soft ground since April and has endured two failed attempts to free it, but now hopes are high after data from a third attempt showed the stuck wheel turning once again and giving significantly more traction than before. The soft area has been dubbed "Troy", after the ancient city that mired the Greeks for 10 years.


Spirit has not been just sitting around during its stuck time, it has been performing scientific test of the area and recently discovered the soil had a crust, indicating variations in climate over millions of years. This discovery alone points to Mars having a more active past, and with so much data gathered from one spot, Troy will be analyzed for some time even after the rover leaves - if the next rescue attempt is successful of course.

Watch out for updates as the rescue continues.

SpaceHead

Soyuz Docks To Station

Spacers Update

NASA astronaut Timothy (T.J.) Creamer, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov, and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi docked their Soyuz capsule to the International Space Station at 5:48pm EDT. Hatches are scheduled to be opened at 7:35pm EDT, after comprehensive leak checks are performed to ensure a solid seal between the Soyuz and the ISS.

Their arrival marks the return to a five person crew aboard the station, which has been manned by a crew of two since the departure of the previous Soyuz at the start of December.

[update: 7:30pm EST] Hatches are open.

[update: 7:35pm EST] T. J. Creamer enters the station wearing an elf hat ears. Cosmonaut Oleg Kotov enters the station wearing a Santa hat carrying a wreath. Soichi Noguchi enters wearing a Santa hat and is carrying a bag of presents over his shoulder.

SpaceHead

E=MC² A Hoax - Einstein Hid The Decline!

Folks, did you ever think to yourself that something didn't smell right about E=MC²? Well you were right, it's all a big hoax! And I didn't even have to crack private emails to find this one, it was blatantly obvious, right there in Einstein's theory of general relativity... a fudge factor, an admission that it didn't all add up, an in your face attempt to "hide the decline". One would expect such a so called "great scientist" to cover up such blatant dishonesty, right? No, wrong. He laughed in our faces and even gave it an outright sciencey sounding name - the Cosmological Constant. Who do you think you're kidding, Albert!



So, you've got evidence for this, right?
Well, not as such, no. Aside from a few off the cuff mentions and quotations, there's no actual record of Einstein admitting it's all a big fraud in any correspondence, so I've had to make some stuff up that you betcha will be right if we were to travel back in time and be a fly on the wall. And anyway, just like you don't need evidence to prove Anthropogenic Global Warming is false because that's a negative and you can't prove a negative, you can't prove Einstein didn't say this because that's a negative too!

Here's a snippet from a letter he might have written about it: "I've just completed Edwin's telescope trick of adding in the real movement of the galaxies to hide the decline." - Albert Einstein (made up, but probably real).

Wow! I mean, WOW! He is obviously talking about the galaxies declining away from us as observed by Edwin Hubble, which totally exposes his fraudulent cosmological constant for the fakery and trickery that it is. Shame on you, Albert!


So, isn't gravity just a pile of crock too, then?
Yes, absolutely! I have always had my suspicions about this whole theory of gravity as being all warped space and twisty graphs with bowling balls falling in to bottomless pits. I mean it all sounds make up and fake and fraudulent and stuff, right! Gravity is the result of Magical Pressing®, a force that I have spent years researching and now that I have dispatched the one last obstacle to my theory, Mr. Einstein, I can now sell my special Grav-Oil® - an anti-gravity elixir that is actually able to make you fly, just so long as you really, really, really believe that it will. Available now at the special introductory price of $49.99 for a liter bottle, and it comes it three great flavors, Apple, Cinnamon, and Anthropogenilicious® - a blend of freshly picked cherries and modern banana.

There are no refunds offered for Grav-Oil®, but the more you drink it, the more likely you are to believe it actually works. Tests have shown that it can take up to ten bottles to truly believe, although skeptics may need to get colonic irrigation if prolonged failure persists. Spacers is not responsible for any injuries acquired in the unlikely event flying should occur.

Happy Flying, Spacers!

SpaceHead

ISS Replacement Crew Launches

Three new crewmembers for the International Space Station launched today on board a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Timothy J. Creamer, Oleg Kotov and Soichi Noguchi will join Jeff Williams and Maxim Suraev, the two crew already on board the station, who watched an uploaded video of the launch.


The three new crew will remain on the station until May and will play host to two Space Shuttle missions, one of them bringing a brand new module, Node 3, or Tranquility, a large connecting node which will come complete with a 7 window Cupola promising to give the crew on board incredible new panoramic views of the Earth and space.

When the new crew arrives on Tuesday they will complete the Expedition 22 roster, one of several interim 5 person crews that will occupy the station until the Soyuz launches sync up after the end of Shuttle crew transportation, which historically rotated a sixth crew member. When Williams and Suraev depart the station in March, Kotov will take over as commander and the crew will officially become Expedition 23.

Watch out for the docking on Tuesday, scheduled for 5:58pm EDT.

SpaceHead