from Astronomy Picture of the Day, an amazing shot of Phoebe. Guess it’s time to pay some attention to the Cassini mission. (Cited on The Eternal Golden Braid)
Data from the Infrared Astronomy Satellite have been used to search for Dyson spheres; no luck. (pdf; cited at Sharp Blue)
Well what d’ya know. You make a casual post to alt.language.artificial about leap-seconds and before you know it someone sends links on the subject: The Future of Leap Seconds; Extrapolations of the difference ( TI – UT1 ); Time Scales. Thanks Steve!
Current asteroid impact risk. These tables interested me less for of the warning they carry than for the way they present data. I had wondered how astronomers reckon impact probabilities, and these tables present it neatly. (Explanations at the foot of each page.)
This entry originally linked to the data for asteroid 2003 QO104, whose threat has since been reduced to negligible by further measurements of its orbit.
Found in the archives, 1998 April 06:
JPL has now released a processed image of the Face on Mars. . . . It looks nothing like a face.
Is too! It’s a face whose left side shows the ravages of some disease, demonstrating that the Martians were/are more enlightened than us: not ashamed to look squarely at those who are less “perfect”, but able to see beyond the fleshly shell to the true beauty within. Truly we have much to learn from our Barsoomite brethren.
Paracelsus gives some links about something of concern to many of us at this time of year: the time of sunset. FAQ; Navy calculator
2006: the FAQ link is broken; I imagine it’s merely moved on the same site, but …