Ned Gulley’s Blog. Resident buzzwords: synthetic biology, ambient displays, swarm robotics, wise crowds.
Posted in Astronomy on Apr 3rd, 2008
Yowza! Check out this panoramic landscape from Mars.
It’s from a place called Hebes Chasma. What you’re looking at is a plateau in the middle of a canyon 8000 meters deep. That is to say, this thing would make a dandy bathtub for Mount Everest (8848 m). Mind you, that mountain could use a good [...]
Posted in Astronomy on Nov 16th, 2007
The latest version of Google Earth now has a projection of the sky built into called, fittingly, Google Sky. It’s a natural extension. We’ve got lots of pictures of the starry sky, so why not stick them all together using the Google Earth glue that already exists. But when I tried it for the first [...]
Did you know that the Japanese have a space ship orbiting the Moon right now? Known variously as SELENE or Kaguya, it is, as we speak, floating around the Moon, taking gorgeous high definition video. So much of our mental imagery of the lunar landscape is based on Apollo video from the early 1970s, grainy [...]
Posted in Astronomy on Nov 5th, 2007
I had read that Comet Holmes had brightened dramatically, but I am suspicious of the word “dramatic” when used by astronomers. The events they describe are undoubtedly dramatic, but the images they describe are often tiny smudges even when observed through a big fancy-pants telescope. So I was pleased tonight when I finally had a [...]
“Japetus is unique in the Solar System—you know this already, of course, but like all the astronomers of the last three hundred years, you’ve probably given it little thought. So let me remind you that Cassini—who discovered Japetus in 1671—also observed that it was six times brighter on one side of its orbit than the [...]
Posted in Astronomy on Sep 10th, 2007
Many people don’t fully realize that the appeal of amateur astronomy is cerebral rather than a visual. An expensive telescope can afford you some breathtaking views of the moon as well as a nifty view of Jupiter and its satellites. Saturn is a minor thrill, and a few of the larger nebulae also make for [...]
Posted in Astronomy on Jan 4th, 2007
Happy New Year! Not only is it a new year… a quick look out the window or at the Sky Clock reveals that there is a full moon in the sky tonight. Of course, you might not know that if you were locked in a windowless room. Suppose, for example, you were trapped in a [...]
Posted in Astronomy on Dec 12th, 2006
My part of the world was gray, dreary, dark, cold, and wet today. But it had one thing going for it, one very big thing: the sun set this afternoon a few seconds later than it did the day before. Ordinarily I wouldn’t bother splitting hairs over astronomical minutiae, but it helps get me through [...]
Posted in Astronomy on Oct 5th, 2006
I’ve been on a good run with free software lately. As part of some recent work I’ve been doing with my Sky Clock, I wanted to check my accuracy against a web site that showed the current sky. Was Saturn where I said it should be? As part of my Google search for such a [...]
Posted in Astronomy on Jun 22nd, 2006
Happy solstice, that day on which the location of sunrise stops and reverses direction. I’m going to put another link to my Sky Clock here because I’ve added a few improvements to it. The yellow sun line can be seen crossing the blue line labeled “SS” (for summer solstice), thus signifiying the day. It must [...]
