Mark your event calendar for May 31 as the tentative launch date of STS-124. The mission encompasses 14 days and includes two spacewalks. This the second of three missions transporting components to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Kibo lab. The Discovery crew consists of Commander Mark E. Kelly, Pilot Kenneth T. Ham, Mission Specialists Gregory E. Chamitoff (who will stay aboard the Space Station), Michael E. Fossum, Karen L. Nyberg, Ronald J. Garan and Akihiko Hoshide (JAXA). Discovery will return with Flight Engineer Garrett Reisman.

   Discussing sky events and other astronomy-related things is what keeps me in touch with my astronomer friends. One day Mark Cunningham and I were talking about the up-and-coming multiple ISS passages, when we disagreed on some details. I was going off the information from Spaceweather’s satellite tracker, and he from  NASA’s human space flight.  After investigating the details, I found discrepancies between the two sites in the number of dates when ISS could be seen. The NASA site had more times, but there may be an explanation for the difference between the two sites that I have not found yet.

   Both sites are credible, but if you cannot access reports for your particular location on one, try the other.

The Sun has given us a few suprizes lately. We have see flares, large prominences, and coronal holes. Sunspots are the precursor for major activity, and we have seen several over the past few weeks. The major solar activity creates excitement for my associate aurora watchers. We watch the indices as they rise and fall, keep track of the sunspots as they grow and shrink, and we keep track of the alerts.
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…To Help Search for the Mars Polar Lander.Remember the Mars Polar Lander which crashed on descent, December 3, 1999?NASA needs help locating it.If you think you have what it takes to search through eighteen images, each made up of 1.6 billion pixels, and your computer monitor has the capacity required, AND you believe you can successfully peruse each image containing more than 1,200 screens of monotonous Martian terrain without exactly knowing where to look for possible wreckage, you just MAY be the one to successfully locate a smudge representing parts of the outer shell and/or something resembling a parachute.Sign up now at Mars Polar Lander .

Our Favorite Red Planet will pass slightly north of and close to 5^th magnitude Eta Cancri around 0:00 -1:30 UT on May 19, 2008.

On May 22, astronomers will be tracking Mars as it travels less than one degree south of 6 magnitude 39 Cancri … Read more …

(Well, temporarily, that is.)
From 3:50 to 4:08 UT on May 22, 2008, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto will be occulted. Observers in Europe, Africa, and on the east coast of the Americas (Boston and Miami, mainly) will be able to view this much awaited event for roughly eighteen minutes … Read more …

Our Southern Hemisphere observers have an opportunity to view tailless Comet Boattini (C/2007 W1), discovered last November, located low in the western sky in the constellation of Hydra. However, next week will provide a better view in a moonless sky … Read more …

I’m not into politics. Now that I’ve said that, I thought that I would make a political comment.

I once thought that science advisors to the president were only used in movies, but it turns out that they are real… sometimes. Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed the first science advisor, James Killian, in the late 1950s when the space race began. Some presidents saw no need for science advisors and did not use them. George W. Bush’s advisor is John. H. Marburger III, pictured to the left.
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While sitting at my favorite coffee shop, using the high speed WiFi, I noticed that the barista had the movie ET on the big screen TV. Of all of the historic events, like the first space flight, landing on the Moon, and living in orbit that have been accomplished, humans continue to dream of future possibilities. Movies are entertaining, but they also provide us with a little foresight.
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Super-high-energy solar flares have been documented since 1859, when Richard Carrington, solar observer, saw a super-bright effect on the Sun. Carrington was documenting sunspots when he witnessed a super bright white light flare; a supercharged energy outburst that is naked-eye visible. We now call these outbursts as the Carrington Effect.
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