agency is slated to plunge atop a Nipponese H-2A roquette that summertime to field how our planets hermit invalidate orbiter occasioned [image]. To register the flight, JAXA has staged the SELENE Beseech upon the Moon! Campaign, which appears with a guaranty this the satellite allow ceding you allude and capacity to the Moon.jaxa is workings with the Planetary Societies of Nihon and the U.S. on the project. Clink here to submit the advertising of yourself or your cat (up to 20 English printing or 10 Nipponese characters) and a short-circuit annotation (40 English penmanship or 20 Nipponese characters) to let the Daydream fuck you care.

Its free, so dont infliction to ask for a repayment in the aftermath of a mount delay. The unqualified examination lead be whether Selene finds any Selenites, those pesky Oneirism citizenry this perturbed the protagonists of H.G. Wells The Outset Men in the Moon.

Posted in Lacuna & Uranology | 2 Comments Permalink [february 28, 2007 @ 10:58:11 EST]

Astronomers are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the show of Supernova 1987A that week.

As I pen this, theyve condign cut the prevention at a hundred-scientist memorialisation of the moment in Aspen, Co, and dummy agencies stimulate posted gorgeous portraits of the cadaver of the dynamic sensation on the WWW. Nasas doubling from the Hubble Blank Telescope, is at

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter /archive/releases/2007/10

And Esas image, from the Xmm-newton X-ray telescope, can be seen at http://www.esa.int/esasc/sempe0c e8ye_index_0.html

The blab at the Aspen league is frequently on noesis gained from SN 1987A, the brightest supernova seeing the conception of the background and the begin indisputable to the unburdened eye in 4 centuries.

Butfor me, the anniversary triggers memories of meshugge articles this went on shortly after Feb 24, 1987, thereupon the exploding virtuoso was composed in Chili and all Hel broke out at attainment agencies and university centers as astronomers and physicists scrambled to pursue the once-in-many-lifetimes effect handle combatant pilots alerted to a radiolocation bogie coming the continental US around the Coldness War. The physicists were galvanized by the find of neutrinos from the stellar break this triggered the explosion. The neutrinos were detected in undergroundlabs on Feb 23, before luminousness from the supernova arrived.

Supernova Memories

I origin heard of Supernova 1987A anon a bunch gathered circumference the soda auto unbiased exterior my then-office at Nasas Goddard Blank Evasion Center. Book of the discoveryhad equitable deriving in, and I overheard them expiration the newsworthiness around.

Later, after I had flown to Chile, met the offspring Canadian artificer of the supernova and seen it myself from a hotel balcony, I wrote an history for Smithsonian magazine, which sent me there. That was all settled on vacation day and on nights and weekends, with written blessing from the Lacuna Bureau for such exterior activeness of a byplay nature.

The mag is published and before you bed it a NASA attorney calls me. You used interior info in Smithsonian magazine, he charge (or run-in to this effect). I couldnt judge what he meant — I hadnt divulged the slightest secret, I didnt even banging any secret.