Hodgepodge

No this isn't a post about Star Trek. NASA is about to launch GLAST - Gamma-ray Large Area Telescope and it promises to find out more about some of the key phenomena in deep space such as dark matter, black holes and spinning pulsars.

After all the hoowah over letting Hubble die, it is good to see this go up. Hopefully NASA can continue to eke out enough money from its budget to keep sending up science missions like this. After all, they sure don't get enough money to actually do any kind f manned flight beyond the shuttle (snarky moment over).

This story is way cool! Between the recent lunar eclipse and this, I am pumped up about space lately. Now if SETI could just tune in an alien top 40 station...

I know this is a little late but I wanted to post the picture that Janice took while we were driving down to the farm last week. I think this eclipse is the most awesome celestial event I have personally witnessed.

I was struck by how much the moon looked like a giant eyeball looked at sideways. Once the eclipse reached totality the moon looked more like Mars than the moon. If you look close at the photo you can see Saturn at 7 o'clock and Regulus at 12 o'clock.

Now I just have to wait until August 21, 2017 for a total eclipse over Missouri.