Planet Earth, coming at you!

^{Memoryhouse :: To The Lighthouse}

I haven’t been sleeping very well.

^{Easy Going :: Do It Again}

So two Italian sailors walk into the local discotech, upon which the first sailor says to the second, “¡Ay, caramba!” — Ten White Russians later, this song is written and performed by “Boogie Man” and the seamen.

²³⁶⁷

So far, faraway; spaceman.

^{Darwin Deez :: Constellations}

Featuring Darwin Smith dressed as Carl Sagan? I think so.

Step one: Go to AstroViewer for the current location of ISS. Step two: Go outside when it is near.

The Moon and Venus, hanging in the daytime sky.

Here’s a cool picture of Venice from space. The colors are amazing. Check out the NASA website for the high resolution version.

Sixteen years before the launch of any man-made satellite, Petr Ginz, a teenage victim of the Holocaust, drew this picture of what he thought the Earth may look like from the moon. His story.

During the 1980s, the Russians took a shot at building their own reusable space vehicle. They basically copied the US Space Shuttle and came up with the Buran. It only flew once before being destroyed in a hanger collapse. Next time, Spuntnik 2.

From the Cassini Orbiter, just like looking over Saturn’s shoulder.

Saturn’s moon Tethys casts a shadow on the planet’s A ring alongside the larger shadow cast by the planet itself in this image taken as Saturn approached its August 2009 equinox.

The night side of the planet is dimly lit here by ringshine. Tethys, located off to the left of this image, is not seen. The moon Janus can be seen orbiting outside the thin F ring at the top of the image. Other bright specks are background stars.

Thanks Saturn.

From Project Gutenberg, a completely free (and legal) eBook, The Outline of Science, features some 1920s awesome. The book is basically an overview of the natural science, but has some neat retro illustrations of the solar system, biology and molecules and such. And now, from the 1910s, The Planets.

No, that is not a diagram of what it would look like if a Nuclear bomb was detonated in Lansing, Michigan. Rather, at Scale of the Solar System, some clever person or persons at Michigan State University put together this nice to-scale mapping of the solar system. The scale is set by the size of an Earth globe in some planetarium lobby. A perfect example of the mind-boggling distances in outer space. Truly beyond basic human comprehension.

Mars is just too small. It’s basically half the diameter of Earth, features about one third the gravity and has 28% the surface area. That’s a little less than just the land part of Earth, and Earth is covered 71 percent by water. Mars is so small that its tiny 0.376g gravitation field and vastly inferior magnetic field couldn’t even keep the sun’s solar winds from gently blowing the Martian atmosphere right off into space. If we really want to find a planet to go crazy about, maybe terraform and colonize, why would we downgrade? No wonder the original Martians ditched their planet for ours.

Second problem: Mars is starting to look a little too much like Star Wars desert planet, Tatooine. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to share anything with any Tusken Raiders.