Misc. – Page 36 – astroengine.com

Carnival of Space Week 54 @Altair VI

This week’s Carnival of Space was held over at Altair VI, David S. F. Portree’s space blog. It is a superb read at the best of times and he’s done a wonderful job with the 54th edition. I entered a small article about the recent observations of the STEREO solar observatory with a nice little video of evolving coronal loops (how I miss studying those things). The scope and quality of all the stories from the space blogosphere are top drawer (as it is every week), from Fermi’s Paradox to the Phoenix Mars mission, we have it all, so be sure to check it out!

Astroengine is Back and Refreshed After a Week’s Break

After a week on the Lizard in Cornwall, I’m back from an inspiring trip. It was great to spend some quality time with Mum and Colette and a great opportunity to take in the stunning sights of this wonderful part of the world. Naturally I spent some time finding any chance to research some stories for astroengine and managed to wander around the Goonhilly Earth Station. There is a great article to be written about this historic location, so I’ll be getting onto that soon. Also, as we’d never been, we spent today at the Eden Project near St. Austall. There are some parallels with my work with the Mars Foundation, so expect an article about this superb project too (with some interesting applications to Mars colonization)…

For now, sleep!

Daily Roundup: From Pancake Stars to Suspended Animation for Astronauts

As I’m going to be away for a week, Astroengine is going to be quiet for seven days. I’m heading down to Cornwall, UK where I hope to go to Goonhilly Earth Station (on the Lizard) to try to get some more information on its shutdown. Last year I was shocked to hear that the station and its operations were being moved to the South East, so the majority of the satellite dishes will be dismantled. This is such a shame; those dishes are synonymous with the Cornish countryside. When they’re gone it will be like a good old English cream tea, but without the scone… but hey, everything changes, but I want some answers, so I intend to get some!

So, to keep you occupied, I’ll give a rundown of my picks of the stories I’ve done for the Universe Today in the past few days…
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Carnival of Space Week 53 @Space Cynics

It’s that time of the week again, when all the space enthusiasts get together for one big party. This week, the Carnival is being held over at the Space Cynics. They may be a cynical bunch, but they’ve put on one great, enthusiastic gathering. Like a huge art gallery, they’ve looked at the artistic merit of each entry and turned it into something beautiful…

My entry (filed under “Audio Gallery”), was the great interview I had with Dr Adrian Brown, CRISM scientist and SETI Institute member. It was aimed toward the Mars Foundation, so there were lots of fun Mars settlement ideas. Have a look at the Mars Foundation for the full interview, or here for a summary…

Interview: Dr Adrian Brown, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Scientist

In my capacity as Mars Foundation Communications Officer, I was asked to approach one of the mission scientists working with The Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) instrument on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The Foundation has an acute interest in CRISM as its main task is to look for water (past and present) and certain minerals on the Martian surface. We are currently investigating Mars settlement designs, so any indication about the location of these quantities will be of huge interest to us (especially as our “Hillside Settlement” will require colonists to use local materials when and where possible). In an enlightening interview, SETI Institute principal investigator Dr Adrian Brown detailed some of the important discoveries to come out of CRISM and how it may be of use to future colonists…
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For One Night Only… Astroengine Fell into a Singularity

In a combination of site development, domain name changes and database editing, I thought I had it all sorted out. But obviously I’d overlooked something…
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Carnival of Space Week 52 – The Anniversary Edition @ Why Homeschool

One year on, the Carnival of Space has gone from strength to strength. After astroengine hosted the Carnival last week, I realized just how many diverse space blogs there were out there. I counted 30+ entries; trying to organize that huge number of blogs, whilst doing them all justice, is a hard task. This week it seems everyone has been typing hard and finding their best stories for the Anniversary Edition hosted where the Carnival was born one year ago. Week 52 has a science fiction theme, which has given me the perfect opportunity to display a picture of my favourite sci-fi program of all time: Babylon 5. Check out the Why Homeschool blog with Henry Cate for this weeks massive collection of space news from around the web.

I entered Solar Flare, CME and Tsunami Generated by a “Blank Sun” to the Carnival, documenting the recent strange goings on with our Sun…

Enjoy!

Carnival of Space Week 51

Hello and welcome to the 51st edition of the Carnival of Space! My name is Ian O’Neill, UK solar physicist and writer for the Universe Today. I am honoured to be hosting the Carnival, so thank you Fraser for letting me loose on seven days-worth of excellent space related news from the growing blogosphere. Astroengine is my online home, delving into the inner workings of the cosmos, so it’s good to freshen the site up with news from a superb cross-section of space blogs.

There is a huge breadth of topics this week with no particular trend, but as Earth Day was on April 22nd, I’ll kick off with the some of the stories a little closer to home (and then end up somewhere in the proximity of the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago). As said by the great Yuri Gagarin, “I see Earth! It is so beautiful!” I begin with our Blue Planet…
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Carnival of Space #50 @KySat

This week’s 50th edition of the Carnival of Space is hosted by Wayne Hall over at KySat in Kentucky. The Kentucky space science movement seems to be in full swing, culminating in the excellent KySat website. This week, we have stories ranging from rocket racing, monkeys in space (my personal favourite!), Saturn’s moon Titan and my contribution: “LHC Worries are Based on Fear of the Unknown, not Science“.

Superb space science reading from the entire space-science blogosphere, so go and check it out…

Carnival of Space #49 @WillGator.com

It’s that time of the week again, when all the space blogs get together for one almighty shindig, discussing the news, views and opinions on the blogosphere. It’s the Carnival of Space!

This week’s edition is hosted by fellow Englishman Will Gator, science writer for the BBC Sky at Night magazine. The stories are wide-ranging and diverse, and my contributions includes how Wolf-Raynet stars may be gamma ray bursts precursors (with a little help from their neutron star buddies) and I discuss some of the implications behind setting up a distributed Internet on future Mars colonies.

Thanks Will!