Halfway up the mountain in the astronomer’s residence, waiting to go up to the summit to film the first of the four pieces about various telescopes.
We did go up yesterday to have a look around – photos on flickr. It’s great to be back up here although I have to say I’m feeling very envious of the scientists actually using these telescopes. More tomorrow.
A nice result from NASA’s Chandra telescope, showing Earth’s aurorae in low energy x-rays for the first time. A nice picture for the next time I lecture on a flight to see the Northern Lights, and a nice contrast to the Jovian aurora Chandra observed a while back.
Off to one of my favourite places in the world tomorrow – next post from Hawai’i (barring airport delays).
Starting with a bang?
Saved from the usual pretenious first post explaining how this blog will change the world by an interesting news story claiming a detection of the impact of a Taurid meteroid on the surface of the Moon. While this looks interesting, a comment Patrick made a few years back (when there were similar claims about the Leonids) springs to mind: would the typical particle size in a meteor stream be big enough to cause this large an explosion?
Meteor streams are essentially made up of material expelled from comets. As Deep Impact showed, comets are icy – there’s not much rock around and lumps don’t get thrown off. So where would whatever hit the Moon – presumably substantial – have come from?
