Really Rocket Science

Via EarthSky, a 1.5 billion pixel image of Andromeda galaxy, interpreted as a “fly-through.” The image is huge (69,536 x 22,230).

We like upcycling. When it includes old satellite dishes, we love it!

Using a couple of old C-band mesh antennas to make an alien spacecraft in your backyard is brilliant and worth sharing.

The idea for this project had been milling around in my brain for awhile… I had visualized taking two satellite dishes, preferably 2 of the fiberglass type and slap them together like 2 pie plates to form a traditional saucer shape. The first task I had was to find suitable dishes to salvage for the project. I drove around whenever I had time to watch out for candidates, and I watched Craigslist and other sources of ads on the Internet. I live just outside the city limits, and had plenty of countryside to travel around. I also kept my mind open to the possibility of using the metal mesh dishes as well, thereby doubling my chances of finding what I needed.

Eventually, I placed an ad on Craigslist asking for a dish, and voila! I got a bite! It turned out to be a mesh dish in the city but just a few minutes away. I went over on a Sunday afternoon and it took an hour and some elbow grease to dismantle the dish and load it into the back of my pickup. I should mention that even if I couldn’t use the mesh dish, I could always take it to the recycling center and get some cash out of it! Ironically, I found a fiberglass dish about a mile from home, and after a couple of tries, I finally met the home owner, who said his wife had been asking and asking and asking him to remove the dish. Sounded like I arrived just in time! This one took about TWO hours to take off the mount and take it down to 2 halves and strap them down to my utility trailer. Note: It helps if you have some assistance to dismantle these things, they are HEAVY as all get out! After bringing them home and laying them out in the back yard, I pondered what to do about the situation, as time was marching on and I was tired of looking for dishes.

Get out there and make your own!

Via Blue Dog Films on Vimeo…

Geminids meteor shower December 2014…. a slightly different perspective!
I filmed some time lapse images over 2 nights around the 14th of December 2014. Intrigued by the Geminid meteor shower, I decided to make a short film/ animation to explain (very simply) how it comes about.
You have to watch the time lapse sequences a few times and more of the meteor streaks will reveal themselves. They are very subtle bright streaks.

Time lapses shot on a Canon 5d, compositing in After Effects and 3d work in Modo.

Fee-fi-fo-fum,
I smell the blood of an Englishman,
Be he live, or be he dead
I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.

That’s your new mantra at home — after you buy one of Florian Pucher’s Landcarpets. The carpets are based on actual satellite images. They’re not cheap, but they are unique.

So what do you do with ceilings? A Big Bang Print is probably a good idea. Costs less, too.

There’s a guy from New Jersey with Lithuanian roots selling Putin t-shirts on East 20th Street in New York City, who came up with the idea and financing himself.

So how does an office manager for Goetz Firzpatrick LLP come up with the financing to pay rent, print shirts and still have enough left over to pay for two bodyguards?

Retail space in that neighborhood goes for $400 per square foot. You can buy plain shirts for $6 each, then print them yourself. Selling them at $25 each, he probably needs to sell 2,000 shirts per month for any hope of breaking even.

Besides one piece in The Atlantic, the only media reporting this bullshit is RT, RIA Novosti and ITAR-TASS. All direct outlets for Putin and chief liar Kisilev.

However, the best Putin T-shirt ever seen in New York was ФАК ПУТІН (transliterated cyrillic for “fuck putin”), at a demonstration at the Russian Consulate in September, which was notably commented upon by the diplomatic guards (Russian FSB).

“One can only guess about the condition representatives of the so-called American Meteor Society were in when they identified a luminescent phenomenon high up in the sky as a Russian military satellite,” said the spokesman, Igor Konashenkov.

NBC News reported a fireball over Colorado was actually a Russian spy satellite (Kosmos 2495, a Kobalt-M spacecraft) used for reconnaissance.

Russian propaganda is speculating it was actually a threatening “flying Nazi wing” or something and the Kosmos 2495 did some counter-measures and shot the bitch down with a laser beam.

The technology is astounding: it weighs 6,700 kg, uses film to record images, then sends canisters back by dropping them somewhere over Russian territory. This particular one was launch in May, so it coincides with its end-of-life. However, instead of burning up upon re-entry over Orenburg, Russia, parts or all of it burned up over Colorado. Just another case of “Russian precision?” Yeah, right.

Anatoly Zak presented a balanced account of what may have happened:

According to a space flight historian Jonathan McDowell, Kosmos-2495 was deorbited on Sept. 2, 2014, and its descent module landed around 18:18 GMT after a 119-day mission. The reentry was confirmed by a likely sighting of the spacecraft over Kazakhstan, not far from the border with the Russian region of Orenburg, where Russian military satellites would normally land. However a yet another reentry was observed by multiple witnesses the following evening over the western United States. According to McDowell, the ground track of the mysterious object over the US closely matched that of Kosmos-2495, if only the satellite or its fragment was able to make additional six revolutions around the Earth after its projected landing in Russia and then reenter over the US state of Colorado around 04:33 GMT on September 3.

The sightings over the US could be explained by an aborted firing of the braking engine onboard the spacecraft that caused one of its parts, such as the descent module, to reenter over Russia, while another part, such as the service module to stay in orbit for several hours and then make an uncontrolled plunge into the atmosphere over the US due to air friction, McDowell said.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise the Russian military is using space technology first used in the early 1980’s, with alleged 0.3m resolution, however.

Putin’s Russia is run by criminals, drunks and KGB-bred barbarians who have no regard for human life or for telling the truth.

Here’s a more-recent follow-up from the Daily Camera in Boulder:

Witnesses across the Front Range and in several neighboring states reported the object streaking across the sky and breaking into several pieces around 10:30 p.m. on Sept. 2.

While some initially speculated it was a meteor, a meteor would have burned too quickly to be seen over such a vast area, said Mike Hankey, the American Meteor Society’s operations manager.

He added that fragments from the object were even big enough to show up as a weather event on radar just east of Cheyenne, Wyo.

The object probably was a piece of Russia’s Cosmos 2495 reconnaissance satellite, launched in May, said Charles Vick, an aerospace analyst with military information website Globalsecurity.org.

Cosmos 2495 was designed to shoot reconnaissance photos and send the film back to Earth in capsules.

It delivered film to Russia as intended, but some pieces of the craft remained in orbit until falling over the Rockies, Vick said.

The U.S. Strategic Command, responsible for American nuclear warfighting forces, confirmed that Cosmos 2495 re-entered the atmosphere and was removed from the U.S. satellite catalog Sept. 3.

Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, estimates that there are 98 operating spy satellites in orbit, launched by at least six nations.

Of those, 37 are from the United States, 30 from China and just three from Russia, he said. Many of those satellites are old, and probably half are in full operation, McDowell said.

A Russian Defense Ministry spokesman told the ITAR-TASS news agency Sept. 9 their military satellites were operating normally,

The winning image by James Woodend was of a green aurora pictured in Iceland’s Vatnajokull National Park. The light reflected almost symetrically in Jokulsrlon Glacier lagoon. A complete lack of wind and currrent combine in this sheltered lagoon scene to create an arresting mirror effect giving the image a sensation of utter stillness. © James Woodend

As reported by The Daily Mail…

From clouds dancing across the Milky Way to a stunning solar eclipse over Kenya, the annual competition showcasing the mysterious depths of our universe has revealed some incredible images.

West Midlands-based photographer James Woodend beat over a thousand amateur and professional photographers from around the world to win the title of Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2014.

As well as securing the £1,500 ($2,440) top prize, his image takes pride of place in the exhibition of winning photographs opening today at the Royal Observatory Greenwich.
The judges were mesmerised by Woodend’s shot portraying a vivid green aurora dancing across the Icelandic night sky and reflected symmetrically in the glacial Jökulsarlon lagoon of Vatnajökull National Park.

Competition judge and Royal Observatory Public Astronomer, Dr Marek Kukula said: ‘I love the combination of whites and blue in the glacier with the chilly green of the aurora in this wonderfully icy picture.

‘We’ve had some amazing aurora pictures in the competition over the last six years, but this is the first time a photo of the Northern Lights has actually won the Astronomy Photographer of the Year prize.

‘We were all completely in awe of the colours and symmetry of James’ shot.’

That really is a stunning image! Some of the others receiving commendation include the Horsehead Nebula, IC 1340 (part of the Veil Nebula), Helix Nebula, NGC 1999 and the surface of the Sun.

They’re on display now at the Royal Observatory’s Astronomy Centre in Greenwich (18 September 2014 to 22 February 2015).

Scotland’s vote for independence on 18 September 2014 is an interesting proposition. Although Sir Paul is in favor of “staying together, it is an immensely complicated proposition (defense, currency/banking, oil rights, etc.). Contrary to what you may remember from Trainspotting, Scotland was not “colonized by wankers.”

Let’s move on to the other spectacle in Scotland recently: the aurora borealis! You’ve got to see Maciej Winiarczyk’s beautiful photos!

Aurora Panorama from Noss Head

Loch Killimster, Caithness, Scotland

Nice vine from Reid Wiseman. Here’s the full version…