Spectre’s Sayings

Violent Collision of Stellar Winds Detected at Eta Carinae.

Is China’s Great Wall Visible from Space? from Scientific American.

Ten things you don’t know about the Milky Way Galaxy from the Bad Astronomy Blog.

Cassini takes a shower thanks to Enceladus’ icy geysers.

This is an exciting time to be alive for the insatiably curious (like me). Of course, I’m anxiously awaiting more information from Cassini about Titan.

Courtesy of NASA, a picture of the Earth and Moon as Seen from Mars:

Here’s the false-color picture that shows avalanches happen on Mars:

NASA plans to crash two spacecraft into the moon - on purpose.

Space.com has a slideshow of lunar eclipse pictures here.

Jason Bellows speculates on Life Without the Moon in an article at Damn Interesting. It’s a good read, so RTWT.

A slideshow of photographs of the lunar eclipse can be found here.

At a Pentagon news conference, officials said that they believe their missile hit the satellite’s hydrazine fuel tank. There was a fireball and a vapor cloud. According to Marine Gen. James Cartwright, the debris from the satellite appears to contain no pieces larger than a football.

Video footage from the news conference here.

9:17pm CST

The moon’s disc is slowly getting darker, and the moon, while still in the east, is very definitely swinging across the southern sky to the west. It’s a beautiful night, but very, very cold. I’m ready to get myself comfortable for the night, so that was the last time I’m going to go outside to look at it. I would love to be a space tourist, though.

9:11pm CST

I’d estimate that only about 40% of the moon’s disk is in the earth’s penumbra, while the remaining 60% is much darker. It’s quite clear where the division between the umbra and penumbra is.

9:01pm CST

The moon is out of the direct sunlight now. The lower left area of the moon is in a darker part of the shadow than the upper right area. In between is where the reddish color is very noticeable.

In other areas of the sky, the constellation of Orion is as lovely as I’ve ever seen it, and because it’s so cold and clear, I can seem more points of light in the Pleiades than I’ve ever seen before.

It’s really cold outside. I don’t know how much more often I’m going to go out to view the eclipse.