Aristocratic Astronomy

ESA Spins Titan Landing Show Into Sludge. I’m glad to see I’m not the only one annoyed at how ESA is dragging its feet on revealing Huygens landing images to the public. When the Mars rovers landed, I was all over their raw image galleries, obsessively poring over every hazcam and navcam and pancam image in sheer amazement. When the Huygens data was received, ESA announced they had 350 photos, showed just one, then promptly switched over to long, fawning speeches by various European politicians. A couple more photos were put out, followed by a notice that no more would be shown tonight, press conference tomorrow, that’s it. What was up with that?

(Fortunately, the DISR data page briefly carried all the raw images from the lander’s DISR package, which I was able to mirror before the 404s attacked. So did Lyle.org. Ha.)

Update: Hey, ESA wised up and published the raw images. Yay!

Huygens Lands on Titan

The Huygens lander has safely touched down on the surface of Titan. Nothing else has been received as of yet other than carrier signals, but data relayed through Cassini will begin arriving in about two hours. If all went well, they should be getting pictures, spectral data on the chemical composition of the air and surface, and maybe even sound from the alien environment of the Fuzzy Moon. SpaceflightNow has a comprehensive pre-landing article.

For those of you not of an astronomical bent, Titan is Saturn’s largest moon, and the second largest moon in the Solar System. It is unique as the only moon with its own significant atmosphere: a cold, dense fog of nitrogen, methane, and other organic compounds. I call Titan the “Fuzzy Moon” because photos of the moon taken by various space probes in visible light always come out vague and fuzzy, owing to the thick, diffuse atmosphere. Photos taken by Cassini on other wavelengths show a relatively flat, mottled, nonreflective surface, indicating some kind of dynamic action at work. While some scientists theorize that Titan may harbor oceans — or at least puddles — of liquid hydrocarbons, I’m more with the theory that the flat, nonreflective surface could be an oily hydrocarbon slush. We’ll soon know!

There’s an enthusiastic Metafilter thread going on the topic.

Update, 1245 (EST): The probe is well, the downlink established, the data being transferred, but it’ll be a few more hours before we get to see any pictures from Titan. The guys at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, who made the DISR Package which took the photos, say they’ll immediately post the first raw image data received to this page. Don’t all go there and start refreshing your browsers all at once.

Air Florida Flight 90

“Larry, we’re going down, Larry,” “I know it.” This day in 1982, Air Florida Flight 90 took off from DC National Airport, in heavy snow, with insufficiently de-iced wings. A minute after takeoff, the plane crashed into the packed 14th Street Bridge, crushing several cars before falling into the Potomac River and sinking into the icy water.

(Crossposted to Metafilter.)

PBS on Street Sense

I’m told that I came out briefly on PBS: Brief one sentence quote here. This was from an on-the-street interview with someone from Jim Lehrer’s Newshour during the Help the Homeless Walkathon.

(What I did not mention in the TV interview was that I ended up voting for Kerry despite the Street Sense “presidential platforms on homelessness” comparison page, which — inadvertently? — came out in favor of Bush’s more clearly expounded stand on addressing homelessness issues. Heh heh.)

Space Roundup: Fuzzy Moon, Anniroversaries, and Comets

For an astronomy enthusiast, I’ve certainly been lax in keeping track of all the excitement going on in the Solar System the past couple of months. Here’s a quick roundup:

More coverage tomorrow: Huygens will finally land on Titan, the Fuzzy Moon.

Sweeeet.

I tried the new “Chantico” at Starbucks yesterday. It comes in a tiny, textured 6 oz cup, but there’s enough thick, gooey, concentrated, chocolatey goodness in there for a Venti (or at least a Grande). Exceedingly delicious, but I think I’ve topped up my chocolate quota for the rest of the week. More on the Chantico from Starbucks Gossip. DO NOT GUZZLE OR CHUG THE CHANTICO. You will regret it.

Afternoon with Antifaust

Doc Mic at Antifaust was thankfully able to get a break just after Christmas while I was visiting last week, and he has photos from our day out at Greenhills and Makati. Fantasy, sci-fi, and comic book collectibles, Powerbooks, and gadgets: yes, we’re geeks.

(Note Mic’s layout. I made it for him, with a new 3-column CSS template I’m working on. More on that soon.)

Tsunami Woowoos

Conspiracy theorists out in force: So it didn’t take long for the nutjobs to come out of the woodwork after the tsunami hit. (I’m especially partial to that specific news story because the guy debunking the woowoos is a Filipino scientist from PHIVOLCS.) Best crackpot sightings yet are from Portland Indymedia: “Was the tsunami caused by a bomb?” and NAZI BUSH REGIME’s ENVIRO/HAARP-REICHSTAG FIRE: seize Aceh oil militarily as ‘rescue.'”

(HAARP is an especially fun culprit for the woowoos, since the auroral research program’s methodology of beaming HF radio waves into the ionosphere — scientists, correct me if I’m wrong on that — fits in so well with their conspiracy theories of an Evil Overlord’s Super Death Ray.)