how now brownpau
Remember View-Masters? Well here are some “Animals in Viewer”:
44 Presidents of Ameirca!
Benign Girl is apparently a common thing, and I’m wondering exactly what it was meant to be translated as by whoever was naming this line of dolls:
Trans-Robot, a toy totally not intended to resemble a certain other transformable robot franchise:
We leave you now with an Aeroplane, Good sized:
My article queue has been space-heavy lately: lots of space history, and a few recent developments which highlight what an exciting time we are in for human spaceflight potential.
“For the Tenth Time”: the story of Soyuz 4 and 5 — Part 1, Part 2: The first Russian orbital docking and EVA transfer mission in 1969, after which Soyuz 5 had a module separation failure which caused a dramatically hard reentry and landing.
Disaster at Xichang: Astrotech safety specialist Bruce Campbell remembers the deadly 1996 launch failure of a Chinese Long March 3B rocket with Intelsat 708, captured on video here.
Timeline of tragedy: The Columbia disaster: Ten years since the Shuttle Columbia disintegrated in the atmosphere due to structural failure on reentry due to wing damage from tank foam. This 2004 article remains stark. Also see William Langewiesche’s “Columbia’s Last Flight” from the Atlantic, Nov 2003.
Secret Space Shuttles: Air and Space Magazine roundup of classified Space Shuttle missions for defense and reconnaisance purposes which remain secret.
The Last Shuttle Flight: Recap of STS-135, the last Space Shuttle mission on board Atlantis.
Elon Musk, SpaceX Founder, Battles Entrenched Rivals Over NASA Contracts: HuffPo piece on Elon Musk and SpaceX as “David” to Boeing and Lockheed Martin’s ULA “Goliath.” Musk is cocky and outspoken, but he has the drive and resources to get amazing results.
More than you probably wanted to know about Curiosity’s SAM instrument: Highly technical and detailed (but still lay-accessible) overview of the Sample Analysis instrument on Mars Rover Curiosity by Planetary Society’s Emily Lakdwalla.
Library of Congress had a Main Reading Room Open House event on President’s Day, so I dropped by to check it out.
I got these panoramas of the Main Reading Room and the Great Hall:
…while Human Understanding looked down from The Dome:
The Main Reading Room was crowded with people all interested in seeing this chamber normally closed off most of the year. TV screens fed information to the general area, while a Flickr Meetup easel offered a gathering point for photographers.
The old card stacks were open to the public, too, and I found the Philippines:
Always an amazing place; it never fails to give me massive visual information overload.
A small asteroid named 2012 DA14 flew close by Earth on Friday 13 Feb 2013, flying south to north, 17,200 miles from the surface at closest approach: much closer than the moon and even within the orbits of farther-out geostationary satellites. This was going to be the live space event of the month — until it was upstaged by the unrelated Russian meteorite earlier that day.
A meteor (or bolide, the term for a bright, exploding fireball) exploded in the sky over Russia, with a bright flash of light and multiple loud bangs seen and heard in Chelyabinsk in the Ural Mountains. The shockwave injured people and caused light damage to structures in the city. Since dashboard cameras are so prevalent in Russia, many drivers caught the early morning fireball:
This is one of my favorites, as the split screen lets you see both the meteor and the driver’s reaction:
Rumors are flying in the early hours after the incident, but there’s some comprehensive photo and video aggregation of the fireball and its aftermath on Say26, RMNB, Zyalt LJ (some funny images towards the end of that latter post). Take with grains of salt all around. The Russian hashtag челябинск is also interesting (and occasionally hilarious) to watch.
Phil Plait (aka Bad Astronomer) has some preliminary analysis, with more media, including these clips with the sound of the explosion, and the shattering glass that followed:
Multiple sources mention that this building was a zinc factory (?) in Chelyabinsk that was struck by meteorite fragments, but I’m skeptical, seeing as how the trail went over the city. I find it more likely that the building was damaged in a fire related to the shockwave:
Photos going around purporting to be the meteorite impact crater are actually a natural gas fire pit in Darvaza.
ESA satellite EUTEMSAT captured a view of the meteor’s vapor trail and thermal impact from orbit:
More on the fireball from Alan Boyle’s Cosmiclog on NBC News.
Coincidentally, this comes the night before Asteroid 2012 DA14 swings close by Earth, just 17,200 miles from the surface — closer than the moon and geosynchronous satellites. There’s a temptation to think of a certain asteroid movie, but this meteorite is probably an unrelated coincidence. 2012 DA14 is approaching from a complete other direction: south, and this meteor was in the northern hemisphere.
Updates:
NASA JPL analysis of the meteorite showed this was unrelated to the 2012 DA14 asteroid flyby. (Simply explained with this graphic from Alice’s Astro Info) The meteorite had an estimated size of 17 meters, mass of 7,000 to 10,000 tons, and its primary explosion in the atmosphere had an equivalent yield of about 500 kilotons.
(I was skeptical about the 500 kt energy release estimate, seeing as how the Ivy King air-detonated nuclear test was of similar yield, but Chip Legett set me right with a reminder that the explosion was much higher in the atmosphere than the Ivy King blast, and exploding meteors release energy in a different way from nuclear devices.)
@brownpau @vnangia @ageekmom 500kt is very reasonable. Remember inverse square law. I.king was near surface, not 30kft @ burst (cont.)
— Chip Legett (@ouemt) February 17, 2013
@brownpau @brownpau @ageekmom peer review ref for impact effects: impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/ Also not as hot as a nuke energy released different
— Chip Legett (@ouemt) February 17, 2013
On Meteors and Megatons — more from Nuclear Secrecy on the problems with measuring meteorite impact events in terms of nuclear weapons yield equivalents.
The object may be called “The Chebarkul Meteorite,” after the lake where meteorite fragments were found. Based on the composition of the fragments, the meteorite was most likely an ordinary chondrite, stony with low iron content.
After the meteor, some in Chelyabinsk prepare to clean up — Washington Post story on the aftermath and recovery.
From two weeks later, Additional Details on the Large Fireball Event over Russia on Feb. 15, 2013. The word “superbolide” is used. Approximate total impact energy was estimated at 440 kt, with qualifications about the difference between that and radiated energy. Based on composition and orbit the fireball was definitely not associated with 2012 DA14.
Video shows a trampoline rolling by a window in high winds. Recorded as Hurricane Bawbag hit Scotland in December of 2011. A true classic of internet.
Subcompact Publishing. Predictions and proposals for the fresh new field of internet-distributed portable-device publications, of which Marco Arment’s The Magazine is a prime example.
Google’s Lost Social Network. I am not on board with the term “sharebros,” but I still use Google Reader, and have found Google Plus to be mostly bitter disappointment.
America’s Real Criminal Element: Lead. Kevin Drum on the interesting correlations between criminal activity and environmental lead from gasoline emissions and paint in the 20th Century.
6 questions journalists should be able to answer before pitching a story. On how a journalist can “pre-report” a story idea to show its worthiness to editors.
It might not get weirder than this. Sophie Schmidt, daughter of Google Exec Eric Schmidt, on their recent trip to North Korea. (Odd layout, best experienced in a more readable format.)
What About Penn? Somewhat ironic look at New York Penn Station, in light of the Grand Central Centennial.
Rob Liefeld’s Sharper Image. His comic art has been roundly mocked for anatomical weirdness, but Rob Liefeld has made a successful business out of licensing his creations to independent artists, resulting in diverse — and sellable — superhero titles and storylines.
Amazing First Person Account from the Green Line Meltdown. Story from a major track failure in which people actually exited the train into the tunnels, from Unsuck DC Metro,
I took these three photos within five days of each other, from Jan 25 to Jan 30, 2013, at the outlet of Rock Creek and the C&O Canal to the Potomac River. (The outlet, a “gate to the water,” so to speak, gave rise to the name of those famous buildings in the background.)
We went from snow, to slush, to muddy thunderstorm runoff all within a week. And tonight looks like snow again. Interesting metereological diversity in a short interval.
The Potomac River was a sight to behold as well, muddy brown and rolling with whitecaps. This is the upper end of a great tidal estuary, and today its “sea” character was making itself felt in wind and waves.
Also some video here if you want the full experience.
NASA Wallops launched two sounding rockets last night, each releasing a cloud of red lithium vapor into the upper atmosphere to test ground-based observation techniques for space phenomena.
First real accumulating snow came late this winter, starting deep into January of 2013. We got about a half inch. The cats were quite enthralled to watch from the bedroom window.
Parts of the Georgetown waterfront were picturesque early in the day, though all the snow would melt and turn to muddied, slushy footprints later.
