Astronomy Night At The White House

Wow, that’s quite a star lineup! I wish I could’ve been there too. Maybe next year…
And the quote of the night from the President, who said this in response to a young girl who was 14 when she discovered a supernova, and a high school sophomore who found a rare type of pulsar:

NASA’s equipment is some pretty powerful stuff. But astronomy also depends on the curiosity and contribution of amateur astronomers. [...] If they can discover something great, so can any of you other students who are here tonight. All you need is a passion for science.

Damn straight. And awesome.

• Video of event on You Tube

Source:  Blog / Bad Astronomy
October 9th, 2009

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Watch Nasa bomb the moon

The LCROSS shepherding spacecraft attached to the Centaur upper stage. Credit: NASA

Seth Borenstein

Washington - Nasa will throw a one-two punch at the big old moon Friday and the whole world will have ringside seats for the lunar dust-up.

Nasa will send a used-up spacecraft slamming into the moon's south pole to kick up a massive plume of lunar dirt and then scour it to see if there's any water or ice spraying up.

The idea is to confirm the theory that water - a key resource if people are going to go back to the moon - is hidden below the barren moonscape.

The crashing spaceship was launched in June along with an orbiter that is now mapping the lunar surface.

LCROSS - short for Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite and pronounced L-Cross - is on a collision course with the moon, attached to an empty 2.2-ton rocket that helped get the probe off the ground.

Thursday evening, about 10 hours before smashing into the moon, LCROSS and its empty rocket will separate.

Read more...

Another read more...

• A live NASA TV Broadcast is planned for the LCROSS impacts starting at 6:15 a.m. EDT/3:15 a.m. PDT, Oct. 9, on NASA TV and www.nasa.gov/ntv. 
  
  
• Where and how to observe the LCROSS impacts
  (Only visible in the USA)
  
  
• Observations and Impact Timing

'n Nuwe ring vir 'n ou Bekende....!