This month’s Guide to the Night Sky is up over at the Times. I found myself getting increasingly interested in the topic of noctilucent (’night shining’ clouds), so here’s the image of one made by the exhaust of the rocket that carried Phoenix to Mars.
The 56th Carnival of Space is up, over at the Lifeboat foundation blog.
My post of the week is this explanation of the infamous polygons Phoenix has travelled so far to find.
It seems macabre to be thinking about the end of Phoenix’s mission when it’s only just landed, but the odds are that the lander will fail to survive the Martian winter. In the Martian Arctic circle, Phoenix will not see the sun set until it’s September here on Earth, but the nights will get longer and longer until the lander eventually endures a hundred or so sols (Martian days) of consecutive darkness. It’s not expected to come out of the other end of this ordeal, but if it does it’s been programmed with a ‘Lazarus’ mode, calling home to Earth to let us know it’s back from the dead.
I was reminded of this when reviewing the UK newspaper coverage of the landing today. Top marks go to the Independent which splashed images from Phoenix across its front page and included a supportive leading article, but I was amused by a slip in the coverage by the Mail, the only other paper to include the news of Phoenix’s safe landing on the cover.
They include a quote from Carl Sagan on the Planetary Society’s program to send a DVD with names to the surface. The Scotsman goes further, including Sagan referring to the landing taking place in 2008. As Sagan sadly died in 1996, this seems a bit of a stretch unless the Lazarus mode can bring more than Phoenix back from the dead.
Someone whose political prospects probably need resurrecting, the prime minister Gordon Brown, is probably already sick of Phoenix. The cartoonist in every paper I opened had had the same idea, depicting Phoenix discovering no trace of life in Brown’s prospects; here’s the Times’ variation on the theme.
I hope those of you who joined us on the < ahref="http://www.marslive.co.uk">Mars Live broadcasts enjoyed yourselves; we certainly appreciated your comments and chatter and celebrations. I will be trying to produce edited highlights over the next few days, and then eventually higher quality recordings. For now, here’s our discussion of the first images - I’m proud to say we got most of it right.
Part 2
If the technology holds up, then you should see below the ustream feed, or try Mars Live
Our first show is ‘Red planet blues’, just after 1900 BST (1400 EDT)
Webcast powered by Ustream.TV P.S. You can go and chat at our ustream channel.
Just a reminder to join us this evening from
7pm British Summer Time
(That’s 6pm GMT/UTC and 2pm Eastern Time).
We’ll have streaming video on this website, and will be blogging and hopefully vodcasting in between. I’ll try and update this website too, but keep an eye on Mars Live for all the updates.
Crosspost from Mars Live where we’ll be providing live coverage of Phoenix’s descent on Sunday night.
While planning for our coverage of Phoenix’s landing, I took the chance to talk to Mars expert and host of Unmanned Spaceflight about results published in Science today from Spirit.
(Listen in browser or download by right clicking here).
This week’s Carnival of Space is up over here. Post of the week is Stuart’s at Cumbrian Sky. Go and read him - and everyone else.
Chris
I’ve already written a bit about Phoenix and mentioned that it’s heading for a site near Mars’ north pole, but where exactly are we heading? Doug Ellison has the details over at our Mars Live site.
Essentially, we’re heading for Northen Canada, but without the trees. Emily has the latest maps of the region, and gives the coordinates as 68.151N, 233.975E. Just out of interest, then, here’s Mars :
Credit : NASA / JPL / U. Arizona / Tim Parker
And here’s Google Maps’ highest resolution effort of the same coordinates on Earth
Please do bookmark Mars Live and come and join us on Sunday night.
Update : Due to not paying enough attention, I put the target on the wrong side of the border between the Yukon and the Northwest territories. I’ve corrected it now; thanks for pointing it out in the comments.
The next few nights are perfect for viewing the International Space Station, as it’s in almost permanent sunlight. You can read my short note about it in the Times, or just go to the excellent Heavens Above for personalized predictions.
