Click here to view the embedded video.

It just wouldn’t be right not to put up a video of the last ascent of the shuttle Discovery.  It was a great launch, although I did see something hit the underside of the shuttle.  Apparently NASA is saying it was foam and probably not an issue because the impact occurred at a altitude where the atmosphere isn’t very dense.  No matter, today the thermal tile inspection begins and if there is a problem we will know soon enough.

Be back later. . .  Ok it was much later BUT, I’ve just been watching the video inspection and it seems everything is looking normal so that is great news.  That to the untrained eye, official results will come perhaps today.

Next big event is Docking and Hatch opening this afternoon.

Oh NASA TV is showing off and on the newly arrived Kepler ATV-2 (Automated Transfer Vehicle – 2), wow, I didn’t have an appreciation of how large that really was.

While we’re waiting for Discovery to launch it’s a good time to consider what’s next for the shuttle.

Every now and then we talk about the Russian shuttle Buran.  Oh yes for those of you who don’t know Russia did have a shuttle, they had a few different mock-ups actually.  One thing about the Russians, they had an amazing space program, they didn’t play second fiddle to anybody.  It’s no wonder they still have one of the best programs going although maybe not quite so diverse as it once was.

So what happens when they discontinue a program and might our shuttle fleet meet the same fate?  Have a look at this.

My friend Kostas sent me a Google Earth KML file of the Baikonur region, I couldn’t quite figure out how to link to it here, but if you open Google Earth and put “Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakstan” in the search box you can look around.  If you have Google Earth check it out, it’s pretty interesting.

Discovery Update:  Fueling is underway and so far there are no issues.

Mission/Orbiter:STS-133 / Discovery

Crew: Commander Steven Lindsey, Pilot Eric Boe and Mission Specialists Alvin Drew, Michael Barratt, Steve Bowen and Nicole Stott. Bowen replaced astronaut Tim Kopra, who was injured in a bicycle accident in January. Crew bios here.

Note: This is the last flight of Discovery.

Primary Payload: 35th station flight (ULF5), EXPRESS Logistics Carrier 4 (ELC4), Permanent Multi-Purpose Module (PMM)

Current Status: Go

Launch Date: Thursday February 24, 2011 at 16:50 EST (4:50 pm) – 10 minute window

Mission Duration: 11 Days

Odds of Launch: 80 percent.

Possible Issues?: No impact to the countdown or launch is expected from a leak that developed in a regulator in the reaction control system due to numerous redundancies and the leak is very small.

Launch Pad 39A — Webcam Image courtesy: NASA/Kennedy Space Center

NOAA’s Forecast:

Thursday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 76. East wind between 5 and 15 mph.

To keep current with the news about the launch, I recommend you go to NASA’s Launch Blog which should be live by noon or before, just be sure to refresh your browser to get the latest from that site.

You can catch the launch at NASA-TV

Image Credits: NASA / NOAA

Another year already!  The time is here for the 6th GLOBE at Night campaign.  This is a FREE program where you can go out and observe your night sky and make an contribution to science.  Don’t worry IT’S EASY and a great activity for everybody in the family and I like to think an excellent opportunity for schools.  What?  You don’t know the night sky so well?  Like I said this campaign is done right and EVERYTHING you need to know you can find below, give it a try!

Last year I posted  the GAN 2010 results over in the side bar to the right, so you can compare this year to last.  Again, all the information you need is included below complements of GAN:

Less of Our Light for More Star Light

Join the 6th worldwide GLOBE at Night 2011 campaign: Feb. 21 – March 6

What: The Globe at Night Campaign

When: 8pm to 10pm local time, February 21 – March 6, 2011

Where: Everywhere

Who: Everyone

How: See http://www.globeatnight.org

GLOBE at Night encourages citizen-scientists worldwide to record the brightness of the night sky. During 2 winter/spring weeks of moonless evenings, children and adults match the appearance of a constellation (Orion in February/March and Leo and Crux in March/April) with 7 star charts of progressively fainter stars found at http://www.globeatnight.org. They then submit their choice of star chart on-line with their date, time and location to help create a light pollution map worldwide.

The GLOBE at Night 2011 campaign dates are February 21 – March 6 (worldwide) and March 22 – April 4 (for the Northern Hemisphere) and March 24 – April 6 (for the Southern Hemisphere). 52,000 measurements have been contributed from more than 100 countries over the last 5 years of two-week campaigns, thanks to everyone who participated!

This year children and adults can submit their measurements in real time if they have a smart phone or tablet. To do this, you can use the web application at http://www.globeatnight.org/webapp/. With smart phones and tablets, the location, date and time are put in automatically. And if you do not have a smart phone or tablet, there are user-friendly tools on the GLOBE at Night report page to find latitude and longitude.

Through GLOBE at Night, students, teachers, parents and community members are amassing a data set from which they can explore the nature of light pollution locally and across the globe. Please make a difference and join our efforts in 2011. For activity packets, one-page flyers and postcards advertising the campaign, visit http://www.globeatnight.org/pdf/.

Come back!

Did that title scare you?  Precession (no, I’m not misspelling it) is a concept which looks confusing at first glance, but really isn’t.  It’s a bit bulky, but hang in there.

First, think of a spinning top that has a bit of a wobble on top… like this:

Precession of a gyroscope (spinning top)

Now, substitute in everyone’s favorite astronomical spinning top that has a bit of a wobble on top:

Precession of another gyroscope, image found at perceptions.couk.com

As the Earth wobbles around, making that cone shape, it changes its orientation to the stars; you can see how Magnetic North wobbles between Vega and Polaris during the cycle.  That’s precession; it’s the changing orientation of the Earth to the stars as it makes that wobble.  The Earth goes through a complete cycle about every 26,000 years (or 25,771.5, if you’re picky).  This is why there’s a difference in the tropical year and the sidereal year.  The tropical year is about 20 minutes shorter than the sidereal year.  Confused?  Don’t be.  A tropical year is one year measured from solstice to solstice (or equinox to equinox), and a sidereal year is one year measured from the Sun’s apparent position relative to a specific star, and back again.

Very nice image from Calgary.rasc.ca - posted to public domain - copyright, all rights reserved

This westward movement of the equinoxes along the ecliptic was historically called “Precession of the Equinoxes”.  Its discovery is credited to Hipparchos around 147-127 BCE.  He was a Greek astronomer and mathematician.   You can blame him for trigonometry.  Anyway, Hipparchos took very specific measurements of the lengths of the tropical year and the sidereal year, and because of the discrepancy (that 20 minute difference) he concluded that the equinoxes were moving (“precessing”) through the Zodiac.

Ptolemy, another astronomer and mathematician, compared his own work to that of Hipparchos (a 265-year difference), and confirmed precession of the equinoxes.  In his time, Ptolemy’s work was viewed with derision by many because he opined that a person’s environment and upbringing had more influence on their personality than the position of the stars and planets at the moment of their birth.  I think the word I’m searching for here is “heresy”.

Very nice image showing the cycle of the North Pole - image from my.execpc.com - all rights reserved

Some researchers believe the Babylonian astronomers were kicking around the idea of precession as early as 330 BCE.  The Babylonians were studying the position of the stars and constellations for their astronomical catalogs by the First Dynasty, ca. 1830 BCE.  I’m sure they noticed something was going on.

It’s not known for sure when the Ancient Egyptians became aware of precession, but it was probably fairly early on.  Likewise the Indian and Chinese astrologers.  The belief that the Mayan Long Count is calibrated against the precession is not backed up by most professional Mayan scholars.

In astronomy the word “precession” itself refers to several types of continuous, gravity-induced changes in a celestial body. The woods are full of precessions.  There is nodal precession, lunar precession, de Sitter precession, apsidal precession… well, you get the idea.  It’s bulky, but you’ve had the concept down cold since you were a child playing with a spinning top.

Isn’t it amazing how much you already know?

I’ve only become aware of “content farms” in any significant way over the past few days. Yes, I’m aware of Associated Content and eHow. I use Google! But I’ve always ignored them. But with Google’s turn against these websites I’ve become curious. This Wired piece from October 2009 is a gem. Here’s the part that caught my attention:

Plenty of other companies — About.com, Mahalo, Answers.com — have tried to corner the market in arcane online advice. But none has gone about it as aggressively, scientifically, and single-mindedly as Demand. Pieces are not dreamed up by trained editors nor commissioned based on submitted questions. Instead they are assigned by an algorithm, which mines nearly a terabyte of search data, Internet traffic patterns, and keyword rates to determine what users want to know and how much advertisers will pay to appear next to the answers.

In some ways “mainstream” websites also do this a bit, Nick Denton relies on fine-grained metrics for his Gawker Media properties. But obviously the sort of thing that content farms do, responding so specifically to the interests of the audience, take it to the next level. I started browsing some of the ...

Assessing Male Condom Failure and Incorrect Use.

“BACKGROUND: It has not been well established whether common indices of male condom failure are valid predictors of biologically meaningful exposure during condom use. METHODS: To address this gap, the authors compared self-reported condom malfunctions (i.e., breakage and slippage) and incorrect condom practices to 2 following objective measures of failure: prostate-specific antigen (PSA) detected in vaginal swabs collected after condom use and structural integrity of used condoms. The study, conducted in 2000-2001, evaluated 635 male condoms used by 77 women attending an outpatient, reproductive-health clinic in Birmingham, AL. Women reported breakage or slippage for 7.9% of condoms; 3.5% of postcoital swabs had moderate or high levels of PSA; and laboratory testing of used condoms revealed breaks (1.1%) and leaks (2.0%). Self-reported breakage and slippage was associated with moderate/high PSA concentrations in postcoital swabs only when the malfunctions were not accompanied by reports of corrective actions to reduce exposure (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 6.9; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.8-26.2). Defects observed in postcoital laboratory testing were related to PSA detection (aOR, 8.0; 95% CI, 1.5-42.6). Incorrect practices defined on the condom label were frequent, but not ...

Long time reader Dragon Horse has been generating and collecting (top row images are from Dienekes) composite image of various classes of individuals for a while now. It’s really fun to just skim through and make your own assessments (the “global face” resembles darker skinned versions of Amerasians, whose fathers were white Americans and mothers Southeast Asian, to me).

The most well known composites are of nationalities, but he’s also generated and reposted composites of other classes. For example, the average Bollywood actress is Aishwarya Rai. Not literally, but the resemblance is jaw-dropping (compare to the average Indian woman). But most interesting to me were the comparisons of American film actors, male and female, then and now (“Golden Age” vs. contemporary). I’m pretty sure you can pick out which one is which if you’re American. There seem to be two correlated trends here: 1) more feminine features for both males and females, and 2) more youthful features for both males and females. Correlated, because neoteny and masculinization seemed to generally push in opposite directions of trait value. Projecting in the future I assume that the Global Human Celebrity ...