It’s official! An IAU committee in Oslo has now determined that all “small, nearly spherical objects orbiting beyond Neptune” will officially be called plutoids. Since Pluto’s demotion in 2006, the IAU has been disputing the correct classification for planets beyond Neptune. With the potential discovery of more orbiting bodies by modern high powered equipment, the IAU implies that it is important to maintain only eight planets in our solar system. So far, only Pluto and Eris have been branded as “plutoids”. Ceres does not fall under this category due to its location between Mars and Jupiter. This new discussion, of course, has reopened psychological Pluto demoting wounds caused by the IAU two years ago.

Here’s something interesting that just came across my search window: http://www.aurora.aero

On April 23 this year, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) revealed a program called VULTURE aimed at developing unmanned aircraft that have the ability to stay aloft for at least five years. Three of the items showcased at the press conference were Read more …

How would you like to read stories about Earth as told by some being from a different world? Would you like to know how beings from elsewhere perceive us? If you studied early history of any country or continent, you have an idea of how the stories would read. The perceptions would probably be full of misconceptions, such as Percival Lowell’s drawing of the Martian Canals (left). But a different planet?

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   The interest in casual star (or Moon) gazing is usually piqued when members of the general public hear that an observing session is available to them. Many people have telescopes that they “…just can’t seem to make work,” and they would really appreciate someone showing them how to use it. Other people have interesting questions to ask. Why not wrap all of this up into one session and have fun doing it?
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Discovery STS-124 Astronauts are set and ready to go today at 5:02pm EDT. Watching NASA TV video stream, it was interesting to observe the astronauts as they were assisted into their harnesses and strapped into place. Next year we will have a six person crew on board the Space Station maintaining and operating the Station along with performing multiple scientific experiments.

STS124 will be carrying extra unplanned cargo - hand delivering parts for the nonworking toilet on the Space Station. Discovery will dock with the Space Station on Monday.

Update: Discovery launched on a beautiful day and there were no issues to delay another perfect launch. With everything on track, Discovery left the blue planet transporting seven highly trained individuals to the International Space Station right on time.

GLAST is an extremely powerful space observatory whose goal is to answer all those unknowns in reference to black hole systems, pulsars, the origin of cosmic rays … the list goes on. The mission is a NASA developed collaborative partnership involving the US Dept. of Energy with contributions from international academia in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the US. Read more …

My job before becoming a pr0fessional astronomer/educator was being an excavator on an archaeology crew in Kansas, U.S.A. Usually when I tell people that, they are puzzled at how I can go from looking “down” to looking “up”. My usual response is to say that the ancient people were keen astronomers, and archaeologists can discover much of just how the prehistoric people observed and documented what they observed.
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The Antennae Galaxies (NGC 4038/4039) are the closest major merging system to us. The distance to that system was previously thought to be 65 million light years away but now through new research is determined to be 45 million light years away. The red super giants in the system are the key components for redetermining the distances. “A New Red Giant-based Distance Molulus of 13.3 Mpc to the Antennae Galaxies and Its Concequences” explains the research.
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After a flawless landing, Phoenix relayed the first photos of the Marcian North Pole’s polygonal surface rocks. Upon first inspection of these newly received pics, no permafrost could be seen, but scientists hope to find it below the surface, a point which may be proven Tuesday upon Phoenix’s first substrate investigation with its 7.7 foot long robotic arm.

This will be the first workday of a three month mission to study the Marcian surface, to investigate whether the subsurface ice ever thaws (the existance of plentiful subsurface ice was discovered by NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter) and to search out the possibilities of key chemical ingredients in the existance of microbial life in the planet’s soil. The Phoenix was actually built from parts of a scrubbed 2001 mission to the red planet.

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This just in: Houston has just announced that the Mars Phoenix Lander made a successful landing on a flat area in the region of the Martian North Pole at about 6:54 p.m. More information is forthcoming later this evening.

According to ongoing news broadcast by N.A.S.A. TV, Phoenix sent back a signal after landing indicating that it is on the Martian Surface and everything seems to be proceeding smoothly and flawlessly. Applause filled the room upon receipt of this information.