Carnival of Space #91

The Carnival of Space #91 is hosted this week by Brian Wang at the Next Big Future blog.


Nextbigfuture is the Lifeboat Foundation Technology Research News Website. The Lifeboat Foundation is a nonprofit nongovernmental organization dedicated to encouraging scientific advancements while helping humanity survive existential risks and possible misuse of increasingly powerful technologies, including genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics/AI, as we move towards a technological singularity.

Carnival of Space #93

The Carnival is back on track after the train wreck of last week.

Fortunately, this week's host, Emily Lakdawalla, at the Planetary Society Blog, was able to step up at the last minute and host the affair.

She's done a great job of organizing all the submissions into one cohesive page of entertaining and enlightening articles on space and astronomy.

So head on over to the Carnival of Space for this week, and be sure to come back next week when the Carnival will be hosted here on Simostronomy.

SimoCowboy Ready to Roll!

Next week is a conference I have been excited about attending for a long time. It's an entire week devoted to my specialty, cataclysmic variables. The list of attendees is a literal who's who of CV research.

The conference is called Wild Stars in the Old West II. This special get together doesn't come around that often. I wouldn't miss it for the world.


From the website:

"It has been ten years since the last North American Workshop on Cataclysmic Variables and nearly five years since the last international meeting on cataclysmic variables and their kin. Of particular interest since these last meetings are new results based on observational platforms such as GALEX, Spitzer, Chandra, XMM INTEGRAL and Swift/BAT, large surveys such as SDSS and planned Pan-STARRS and LSST, smaller but equally important surveys such as All Sky Automated Survey (ASAS), Catalina Sky Survey, �Pi of the Sky�, ROTSE, results from large aperture ground-based telescopes, theoretical advances, and evolutionary relationships of CVs to other binary stars."

I plan to blog about the proceedings and talks, and I'm taking a digital audio recorder to do some one on one interviews with some of the leaders in CV research. These will be turned into podcasts for Slacker Astronomy and Restless Universe.

Sunday is a travel day, and the welcome get together in Tucson. Monday, the real stuff begins. Check back for updates next week.

Yeehaw!

Carnival of Space #97

Carnival of Space #97 has been done on a shoestring budget over at the Cheap Astronomy blog site.

Cheap Astronomy is a site all about exploring the universe with your eyes, a pair of binoculars or one of those out-of-the box department store telescopes. Everything on the site is aimed at people who want to do real astronomy for $300 or less.


The contributions to this week's carnival feature Mars quite a bit. There are also some fascinating pieces on space telescopes, Titan, the space station and space shuttle. The Simostronomy contribution this week is the interview with Martin Ratcliffe.

Enjoy the ride. Admission is free. It doesn't get any cheaper than that!

It's the Gigantic Spectacular Carnival #96!

Ian O'Neill of Astroengine.com has put together a monster of a Carnival, Carnival of Space #96. This may be an all time record for number of posts in a single Carnival of Space.

He seems to be in good spirits in spite of the extra work he had to do to piece this large ensemble of blogs together for the Carnival this week. I give him credit for his creative approach to this week's collection. Each blog is introduced as a question. The answers you'll find if you dig a little deeper and read each piece.

As I hear it, he plans to feature this carnival and the excellent articles in it on his radio show Astroengine LIVE on Wednesday.

There is no Simostronomy article in the carnival this week. I've been busy with the Martin Ratcliffe Interview piece, blogs on Wild Stars in the Old West, launching a new Cataclysmic Variable Star section for the AAVSO and recording podcasts for Slacker Astronomy and 365 Days of Astronomy. So, no apologies here.

More on the Slacker Astronomy podcast later. For now, check out Carnival of Space #96.

Carnival of Space Milestone

The Carnival of Space, brought to you by Fraser Cain of Universe Today, has reached a milestone. Today's carnival is the 100th weekly collection of astronomy and space science blogs.

This week's host is the One Minute Astronomer. The philosophy behind One-Minute Astronomer is simple: to help you build your knowledge and appreciation of astronomy, one small step at a time. The One Minute Astronomer blog features short articles on all aspects of astronomy.

Simostronomy will be back on a regular basis soon. The storms that keep knocking us back into the Stone Age should stop any day now. We've got some interesting stars to talk about and will be blogging from the SAS/AAVSO joint meeting in Big Bear, CA in May.

Carnival of Space #102

This week's Carnival of Space (the 102nd edition) is hosted by one of my favorite astronomy bloggers Carolyn Collins Petersen at The Spacewriter's Ramblings blog.



This edition has been divided into chapters, or acts. 1- Solar System, 2- Stellar Follies, 3- A Brief Galaxy Diversion, 4- Future Humans, Exploring the Universe, and Examining Cosmic Mysteries and 5- Education, Amateur outreach and Politics.

Check it out!

Carnival of Space #105

This week's carnival has several surprises, not the least of which is the switch in authors of Space Disco, which up until recently was Dave Mosher's gig. Now my friend Ian O'Neill from Astroengine.com has taken on the writing duties for Discovery Space. Whoa, time warp!

There are some really good entries in this weeks space fair, so head over right now. Click here to be transported to the 105th Carnival of Space!

Carnival of Space #106

The Carnival just keeps going and going and going...

This week's host Next Big Future has put together a fine collection of blogs.

Preferentially placing the pieces about futuristic technology, some of which is here now, towards the front end of the carnival is all well and good.

If you dig a little deeper, you'll find the rest of the entries in Carnival of Space #106 are worthy of investigation also.

Carnival of Space #129

The Carnival of Space is back with its 129th installment. This week it is hosted by Tiny Mantras.

Contributing bloggers this week include:
Chandra X-Ray Observatory blog
Dynamics of Cats
MSNBC's Cosmic Log
The Planetary Society Blog
Mang's Bat Page
One Astronomer's Noise
The Lunar and Planetary Institute
Next Big Future
Astroblog
collectSpace
Weird Warp
Simostronomy
AstroEngine
Centauri Dreams
Cheap Astronomy
Colony Worlds
Kentucky Space and Alice's Astro Info

Enjoy!

Carnival of Space 130

This week's Carnival of Space is hosted by the Chandra Blog. There are a lot of excellent pieces in this one, but the Simostronomy 'Carnival Ride of the Week' goes to Lounge of the Lab Lemming's post Stars Get Lonely Too. He discusses the mental health of stars in our sector of the galaxy, and that is all I'm going top tell you, so you'll have to read it. Trust me, it's a winner.

And if you are half as sick of hearing about water on the Moon as I am, you will love Alice's Astro Info Blog this week. She has created a table of news releases for news releasers. The Moon Has Water is not an original idea for cripes sake! (yawn) This should be mandatory reading for anyone planning on usng that as a headline...ever again! A Simo-'Tip-of-the-Hat' to Alice.

Don't miss Weirdwarp's blog about all the Space Debris in orbit around Earth.The statistics are pretty alarming. The potential solutions are interesting. This is a good read.

They all are. Check it out!

Carnival of Space #133

The 133rd Carnival of Space is hosted this week at Next Big Future. Next Big Future is a blog featuring articles about nanotechnology, nuclear and energy technology, quantum computers, life extension, space technology and AI. Proposing and tracking the best societal, business and technical choices to the next big things that will shape our future. Check out the passenger configuration video for current aircraft and future space flight. I would kill for a nice big seat with the option to lay down on those long trans-oceanic flights.

I guess I was in more of a look at the pretty pictures mood as I read through the Carnival this week. My favorites were:

The exploration of Eddington crater, from the authors own telescope to views retrieved and produced online gives you an idea of all the tools amateur astronomers and citizen scientists have at their disposal these days. Two big thumbs up from the Simostronomer.

Bad Astronmer, Phil Plait, actually did a blog about astronomy last week, covering the mosaic image of galaxies from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey Deep Field #1. I'll give him props for showing me the cool 'zoom in to freak out' tool from CFHT. Hubble has a zoom in tool online now too you can find here.
Check these and the other great pieces out at Carnival of Space 133.

A New Year of Carnival of Space Begins!

The first Carnival of Space for 2010 is now online. You can find it over at Steve's Astro Corner.

Blogger, Stephan Tilford, is an amateur astronomer from Cincinnati who is involved in outreach and works with Boy Scouts of America. He belongs to the Cincinnati Astronomical Society and the Cincinnati Observatory Center. Steve sums up his enthusiasm like this. "I love sharing my love of the night sky with people who might have never gotten a glimpse of Jupiter or the rings of Saturn or countless other grand eye candy. I love to hear that tell tale 'Wow!' I go to at least two Star parties a year. and sometimes more if wife and funds allow."

Ya gotta love it. He put together a sweet Carnival. Check out Carnival of Space #135 at Steve's Astro Corner.

Carnival of Space #136: Simostronomy Edition

Ladies and Gentlemen, come on in and experience the fantastical, the sensational, dare I say cosmological and explorational, Carnival of Space, Number One Hundred Thirty-Six!

We'll take you to the Moon, we'll fly through the stars, we'll go visit a friend on the surface of Mars.
So scroll down the page, see what there is to see, the tickets are priced just right..they're FREE!

First we will take you to the Moon...

Out of the Cradle has an excellent interview with a Russian team scientists working on sending a rover to the Moon as part of the Lunar X Prize contest. The prize will award US$20 million to the first team to land a robot on the moon that successfully travels more than 500 meters and transmits back high definition images and video.

Collect Space has an interesting story of Moon rocks that have come to Earth from the Moon, traveled to the peak of Mt. Everest and will now end up in a plaque on the space station. Talk about a ride!

Venturing further out into the Solar System...

Cumbrian Sky takes us to the surface of Mars to visit the Spirit rover. The rover has been on Mars for six years, so this blog is nice retrospective on what has happened in that time.

Gish Bar Times introduces a series of articles over five days covering various topics related to the discovery of the Galilean moons.

The Angry Astronomer blogs about a new, refined age of the solar system. It's not polite to ask a solar system how old she is, but the Angry Astronomer knows.

Some of the most popular rides in the Carnival these days are rides to planets around other stars, known as extrasolar planets or exoplanets. Phil Plait (pictured here), at the Bad Astronomy blog writes about a potential way future scientists could detect water on planets by catching glints off the surfaces of lakes or oceans.

The Slacker Astronomy podcast interviews Steve Howell, one of the Kepler mission scientists about the potential to discover asteroids around white dwarfs. There is also some light-hearted discussion of Ophiuchus, the orphan astrological sign.

Next we venture out among the stars...

Some of the biggest stellar news came from the AAS meeting in Washington, DC. The recurrent nova T Pyxidis made headlines when astronomers claimed it may go supernova soon and endanger the planet Earth!

Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed and the blogosphere helped to clear up misinformation spread by the print and news media.

Next Big Future takes on the story published on Astronomy.com that states,"If a type Ia supernova explosion occurs within 1,000 parsecs (3,260 light-years) of Earth, then the gamma radiation emitted by the supernova would fry Earth, dumping as much gamma radiation (about 100,000 ergs per square centimeter) into our planet, which is equivalent to the gamma-ray input of 1,000 solar flares simultaneously. The production of nitrous oxides in Earth's atmosphere by the supernova's gamma rays would completely destroy the ozone layer if the supernova went off within 1,000 parsecs."

Ian O'Neill at Discovery News Space points out several more articles published on the web creating unnecessary panic about T Pyx and the likelihood of a disaster on Earth caused from a supernova 3,260 light-years from us.

Ian writes, "So, where's the panic? That's right, there isn't any...(snip)
Meetings like the AAS are key to the scientific process where theories are aired and results are open to academic scrutiny, sometimes it's better to wait until after the conference before reaching any conclusions."

The Simostronomy contribution for the week talks about astronomers riding the waves of stars through asteroseismology. Stellar surfing, now there's a carnival ride to try out.

Starry Critters takes us on a ride to the edges of time through the newest Hubble Space Telescope image of faint galaxies at the edge of the universe. The unique image viewer on this page is worth taking time to play with. This ride will have some of the longest lines at the carnival this week!

The carnival also features a time machine ride this week! If we can only see distant objects as they appeared in the past, how do we know how far away they are now? Cheap Astronomy explains time and distance on this episode of 365 Days of Astronomy.

Centauri Dreams, the blog about exploring the ways man will actually go to the stars, says one way we can go is to hitch a ride on a "cycler".  We might use 'orbital cyclers' to get us around the solar system, or 'interstellar cyclers' to help us reach the stars, if we can just figure out how to push that much mass up to speeds approaching that of light.

Speaking of the speed of light, Nancy Atkinson of Universe Today takes us on a ride through the carnival fun house with a faster than light pulsar phenomena that will bend your mind just a bit. Nancy assures us that no laws were broken in the process.

If there are to be laws in space, governed by some sort of moral code of behavior, Habitation Intention provides a place to start with the 10 Commandments of Space Habitation.

Riding bravely into the future, Next Big Future discusses the possibility of ultra-dense deuterium. If it is shown to be stable long enough, it could be as important as the discovery of nuclear fission.

My thanks to Fraser Cain at Universe Today for organizing the carnival and many thanks to the bloggers who gave us a ride through the solar system, stars, time and the cosmos. I hope you enjoyed the Carnival of Space this week, thank you for stopping in.

Carnival of Space #137

This week's Carnival of Space is live over at One Astronomer's Noise.
The Noisy Astronomer, Nicole, is a 4th year graduate student in astronomy, specializing in radio instrumentation.  She believes that an important part of being a scientist is learning how to communicate science to the public, so she gets involved in outreach when she can.

This week's carnival features posts from Astroblog, Martian Chronicles, Kentucky Space, collectSpace, Astropixie, Next Big Future, Habitation Intention, Steve's Astro Corner, Bad Astronomy, Gish Bar Times, We Are All In the Gutter, Spacewriter's Ramblings, Weirdwarp, Road to Endeavor, ChandraBlog, WillGator.com, Cheap Astronomy and the Angry Astronomer. Check it out, go there now.

Carnival of Space: Nancy Style

This week is a special treat as one of my Internet blogosphere friends is hosting the Carnival of Space #138 on her brand spanking new blog Nancy Atkinson. For those of you who have not had the pleasure of knowing Nancy, she is a class act and a classic over-achiever.

She already has three jobs as Senior Editor for Universe Today, producer for Astronomy Cast, and project manager for the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast. In her spare time she manages to also be a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, as well as dog-catcher, police chief and mayor of her town. She is pretty much everywhere. Rumor has it she has been cloned and is planning to take over the world before 2012. This new blog is just the first step in her mad plan.

Nancy has done a great job of organizing and presenting the material for this week's Carnival. Check it out and stop back later to see what infamous activity this astrono-holic is up to at the new blog 'Nancy Atkinson'.

Mama Joules Hosts the Carnival of Space

One of the really cool things about the Carnival of Space is taking the time to learn about some of the excellent, creative, unique blogs out there in the blogosphere. This week finds Carnival of Space #139 parked on the doorstep of Mama Joules.

Mama Joules is "a family-friendly place for kids of all ages to share fun ideas & interesting ways to learn about science." If you read some of her material you'll find Mama has some fun, interesting ideas alright! Here's an example-

One of my favorite memories is when my mom and I would look at rocks. But I wonder if I would have liked it so much if she had started lecturing me by saying, "Now, this is granite. Granite is an igneous rock ..."

Mom never said that. My mom would say things like, "Look at this cool rock! I think it's a fossilized dinosaur turd." You can imagine how many rocks I brought to my mom! I loved hearing her make up stories about my rocks.

By all means, check out the Carnival and all its fine offerings this week. But take a minute to get to know Mama Joules.

Da Carnival of Space is Weapons Grade, Dude

Strue, Bob. This week's Carnival ain't no Taco Stand. Another Grom science blog gets a chance to host the Carnival of Space today, and does a tasty job.

The Starry Critters blog combines imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer Space Telescope and other great observatories with the imagination of children, and invites you to explore and share the patterns you see in the nebula, galaxies and star clusters.

Don't be swishy; surf on over to Carnival of Space #141 and the Starry Critters blog and grab yourself some epic science from some gnarly writers, Brah.

Carnival of Space #143

This week's Carnival of Space is hosted by Next Big Future.

 Image credit: Dorella Rosi

Nextbigfuture is the Lifeboat Foundation Technology Research News Website. The Lifeboat Foundation is a nonprofit non-governmental organization dedicated to encouraging scientific advancements while helping humanity survive existential risks and possible misuse of increasingly powerful technologies, including genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics/AI, as we move towards a technological singularity. Technology is an important factor in solving and creating many of the Lifeboat relevant issues.

Yea, they take themselves pretty seriously, but the Carnival is a fun ride.

Carnival of Space #144

My friend Ian O'Neill is hosting this weeks Carnival of Space #144 over at his blog on Discovery News Space. He has turned it into an Oscar spin off in honor of the fact this is the first year he was able to watch the whole thing without falling asleep.

It turned out quite nice. Take a spin through the space blogosphere and sample some of the better writers of astronomy and space news and opinion. At least that's my opinion, and that's all the news for today.