World Science Festival going on now

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, but a lot of work piled up the two weeks I was gone, but I just wanted to remind you that the World Science Festival is going on now in New York City. There are lots of interesting events planned. Hope you enjoy!

New World Science Festival Events

From an email release, events for which one now can buy tickets are:

* Music and the Brain (May 31, 6 PM, Abyssinian Baptist Church, $18, Students $12): The Abyssinian Baptist Church Choir will join neurologist/author Oliver Sacks in an exploration of the power of music to inspire and uplift, and as an effective tool in the therapeutic process.

* Dear Albert (June 1, 7 PM, Columbia University, $40, Students $20): Written by Alan Alda, directed by Daniel Sullivan and featuring Anthony LaPaglia, this play delves into the treasure trove of letters written by Albert Einstein, his wives and friends, tracing an intimate and unfamiliar line across his life and work.

* Illuminating Genius (May 29, 8 PM, NYU, $30, Students $12): Choreographer and dancer Bill T. Jones and actor Michael York join neuroscientists V.S. Ramachandran, Nancy C. Andreasen, and David Eagleman to explore cutting edge research into the brain’s creative impulses.

* Invisible Reality (May 30, 8 PM, NYU, $30, Students $12): Join Alan Alda as he accompanies Brian Greene, Nobel Laureate William Phillips and other leading thinkers at the vanguard of quantum research on an accessible multimedia exploration of the astounding weirdness of the quantum world.

* What it Means to Be Human (May 31, 8 PM, NYU, $30, Students $12): Drawing on a range of disciplines, this provocative program looks at how discoveries in areas like fundamental physics, anthropology, and genomics are influencing our understanding of uniquely human characteristics. Participants include philosopher Daniel Dennett, artist Jonathan Harris, anthropologist Ian Tattersall, geneticist Francis Collins, philosopher Patricia Churchland, sociologist Nikolas Rose, and Nobel Laureates Harold Varmus and Paul Nurse.

Go here for more information.

Want to be an European astronaut?

As of May 19th, the European Space Agency is taking applications for their next class of astronauts. Go here for more information.

Have a clever idea for Satellite Navigation?

Will the European Space Agency is very interested in hearing them. Go here to enter a contest, and submit your ideas. Good luck!

World Wide Telescope

Possibly as answer to Google Sky, Microsoft has released it's own Astronomical image gallery, called "Worldwide Telescope", available here. It looks pretty cool. Enjoy!

Good Luck to the Mars Phoenix Lander

Tonight, the Mars Pheonix Lander will hopefully be landing successfully on the surface of Mars. Significantly larger than other rovers on Mars, and will land (hopefully) on Mars by firing rockets to slow down, as opposed to landing inside essentially a giant balloon as did Spirit, Opportunity, and Sojourner. This method is risky, and previous attempts at landing objects on Mars have failed 1/3 of the time, so keep your fingers crossed. For the latest information on Phoenix's progress, go here. Also, a news briefing at JPL will be held tonight at 9 p.m., following landing and the first possible downlink of images. Briefing updates at JPL also are scheduled on Monday, May 26 at 11 a.m. and on Tuesday, May 27, at 11 a.m, and daily news briefings will continue at 11 a.m. for several days assuming a successful landing.

May 14th radio show online - "The Earth"

The May 14th radio show is now online and available here. In addition to the usual news and calendar (lots of NASA webcasts on the calendar this week), I discussed some recent results concerning our own Earth - the structure of the Earth's core, the role of meteorite collisions in shaping the Earth, and our understanding of its magnetic field. I'll post a more thorough synopsis later, but in the meantime, please email any questions or comments or leave them below.

No show next week, unfortunately, as I'll still be in Myanmar (Burma) visiting my wife's family and I didn't have time to pre-record this show before I left. Hope you have a good week, and see you in two weeks. In the meantime, please donate money. This organization sends aid directly to people in Myanmar who needs it, not through the government. Thank you very much.

Slew of upcoming NASA webcasts

NASA will be broadcast a lot of events over the web in the upcoming week, including educational programs, docking with the space station, and big press conference announcing some new, exciting Astronomical discovery - so exciting they won't say what it is beforehand to maintain the suspense. For more information on these events, check out the Astronomy calendar I maintain. It is under "Miscellaneous Astronomy Events." Enjoy!

Please Donate Aid to Myanmar (Burma)

As you might have heard in the news and can see here, Myanmar (Burma) was devastated by Cyclone (Hurricane) Nargis this Saturday. The damage is quite extensive - I know personally because my wife is Burmese, she in fact is in Yangon (Rangoon) now helping her parents with the clean-up and I will be joining her this weekend for two weeks. If you can, please done money here to the American Burmese Buddhist Association, an organization which runs Burmese Buddhist monasteries in the United States. The monks at these monasteries are sending the money directly to people in Burma who need the money - no worries about it being appropriated by the military government or going into the pockets of some fund administrator. Thank you.

PS. Myanmar is the name for Burma in Burmese, the language of the largest ethnic group in the country. (In fact, in Burmese the name of the country, people, and language is Myanmar.) Burma was the name given to the region by the British.

Interview with Marc Taylor (Andrus Planetarium) now online

My interview with Marc Taylor, Director of the Andrus Planetarium at the Hudson River Museum, is now available here. Go here for more information on Astronomy Day 2008, which is taking place this Sunday, and here for more information on the Andrus Planetarium. Enjoy!

May 7th Radio Show now online - Astronomy Day 2008

Yes, today's radio show is now online and available here. This program focused on Astronomy Day 2008, occurring this Sunday at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, NY. On this program, I discussed

• Calendar of upcoming Astronomy/Science events in the greater Poughkeepsie / New York City area
• Interview with Marc Taylor, Director of the Andrus Planetarium at the Hudson River Museum on running a Planetarium, and their upcoming Astronomy Day 2008 this Sunday, May 11th.
• News: NASA astronauts Dan Tani and Suni Williams discuss what it takes to be an astronaut on May 7th, available from NASA TV; congratulations to John Blaha, Loren Shriver, Bryan O'Connor, and Bob Cabana for being inducted into the US Astronaut Hall of Fame; Jet Propulsion Laboratory releases a new online Space Gallery of very pretty pictures; NASA releases real-time model of ionosphere for Google Earth (link); NASA media briefing next Tuesday on May 13 on the scheduled May 25th landing of the Phoenix Mars Lander, will be available on NASA TV; work begins on Urey: Mars Organic and Oxidant Detector on the future European Space Agency's ExoMars Rover Mission (link); GLAST launch postponed due to possible problems with the rocket; send your name to space on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (deadline: 2008 June 27) and/or the Kepler spacecraft (deadline: 2008 November 1); NASA announces plans to send a probe to the Sun to study and sample its corona (link); online Galaxy wiki-game called Galaxiki now available; International Space Station will be flying over Europe and North America quite often in May, go here; Princeton University Press releases a short animated movie based on "Flatlands", the novel by Edwin A. Abbott; John Wheeler, pre-eminent theoretical physicist/astronomer who worked on everything from the structure of the nucleus, the atomic bomb, and general relativity (he coined the phrase "black hole"), based away on 13 April 2008 at age 96.

Please email or leave below any questions, comments, or concerns you might have. Thank you very much for listening, and take care.

Fly through the Earth's Ionosphere

NASA has recently released a real-time model of the ionosphere, the upper-most layer of the Earth's atmosphere where atoms are ionized largely by ultra-violet light from the Sun, available for Google Earth here. For more information on this model, and the importance of the ionosphere, read this article. Enjoy!

April 30th Radio Show - Mercury and Venus

The April 30th radio show is now online, available here. Our tour of the Solar System continues with the two innermost planets, Mercury and Venus. I made a mistake on-air when I discussed why it is so hard to get a spacecraft from Earth to Mercury, and have added an errata to the mp3 available above, so even if you heard this show live I strongly encourage you to listen to the mp3 so you can hear the correct information. On this program, I also covered:

• News: Solar flare on Sun observed to trigger a "tsunami"-like shock wave through Sun's atmosphere as well as launch a coronal mass ejection on April 26; congratulation to Dr. Adam Riess (JHU/STScI) for being elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, to the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) team for successfully maintaining this UV telescope in space for 5 years; happy birthday to the Hubble Space Telescope, which celebrated 18 years from launch on April 27th - to celebrate, pretty pictures of 59 colliding galaxies were made public (link); assembly of the Herschel telescope, an European space-based infrared telescope, has been completed; DAMA/LIBRA experiment in Italy has claimed to directly detect "dark matter" on Earth again, other groups skeptical; shoulder motor on Mars rover Opportunity experiencing technical difficulties (link); Austria declares intention to join European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO); astronauts interviewed live by students on April 30 (link); NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to have an open house May 3-4
• Wednesday Morning Astronomer, a response to the astronomy content in Gregg Easterbrook's column "Tuesday Morning Quarterback" (available here) - yes, Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) are absolutely amazing but, no, I don't think a flurry of them were timed to mark the death of Arthur C. Clarke. I know it was a joke, but...
• Calendar of upcoming events in the greater Poughkeepsie/New York City area
• Mercury: Small rocky planets very close to the Sun, very poorly understood relative to many of the other planets in the Solar System since it is hard to observe and hard to send spacecraft to. NASA's recently launched a spacecraft to Mercury called MESSENGER, which has already flown by Mercury once. During this flyby, it imaged several craters which have dark rims, a crater with a shiny bottom, a crater wit radial spokes coming out of its center, and a very weak magnetic field emanating from its surface. The origins of these features are not known, and hopefully with more data obtained by MESSENGER after it enters Mercury's orbit in the March 2011 people will be able to figure it out. Also, scalloped-edge cliffs (called "lobate scarps") on Mercury's surface possible result of very thin mantle underneath Mercury's crust (link)
• Venus: Has, by far, the thickest atmosphere of any of the Rocky Planets in the Solar System. Recent results include the discovery of a variable bright haze layer, likely composed of sulfuric acid, at the top of its atmosphere whose origin is unknown; possible evidence for active volcanos on Venus's surface detected by the European Space Agency's Venus Explorer (link); Carbon Monoxide plays a more important role in atmosphere of Venus and Mars than previously thought (link); eye of a hurricane observed at the south pole of Venus observed to flicker and change shape within a matter of days (link); it is possible that Venus was created from the collision between two very large objects in early Solar System, could explain why - despite similar mass and distance from the Sun - Earth and Venus or so different (link); another possibility for these difference is lake of plate tectonics on Venus (link).

Hope you enjoyed, and thank you very much for listening. As always, please leave below or email any questions, comments, or concerns you might have.

2008 World Science Festival in New York City

The first ever (but hopefully annual) World Science Festival will be held all around New York City between May 28 and June 1. There are a lot of really interesting events, for a complete listing, go here.

Mercury visible

Since Mercury is so close to the Sun, it is often hidden in the Sun's glare and therefore very difficult to see from the Earth. However, this Tuesday evening, (May 6th), just after sunset the crescent Moon glides by Mercury in the darkening western sky. A sky map and photos are available at http://spaceweather.com, which was the sources of much of this information.

eta Aquarid Meteor Shower

Courtesy of spaceweather.com:

"ETA AQUARID METEOR SHOWER: If you see a meteor flit across the sky tonight, it could be a piece of Halley's Comet. Earth is crossing a stream of dusty debris from Halley and this is causing the annual eta Aquarid meteor shower. Sky watchers in the tropics and southern hemisphere (where the shower is most intense) could see as many as 70 meteors per hour during the dark hours before dawn on Monday, May 5th, and Tuesday, May 6th. The show is diminished at northern latitudes where rates may be 15 meteors per hour or less. Check http://spaceweather.com for sky maps and more information."

Happy meteor shower watching!

Want to learn what it takes to be an astronaut?

Well, on May 7th NASA astronauts Dan Tani of Illinois and Suni Williams of Massachusetts, will be answering questions on what it takes. Tani will be available from 5 to 8 a.m. CDT and Williams will be available from 4 to 6 p.m, as part of NASA's recruitment for its 2009 astronaut class (the deadline for applications is July 1.). NASA's media channel will be used to conduct the interviews. The channel is located on satellite AMC 6, transponder 5C, which is located at 72 degrees west, downlink frequency 3785.5 Mhz, vertical polarity, FEC of 3/4th, symbol rate 4.3404 Mbaud. For more information on astronaut recruitment, go here, and for NASA TV, go here. Enjoy!

2008 U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame Induction

I didn't realize there is a US Astronaut Hall of Fame but there is one, and it's induction ceremony will be broadcast live, this Saturday, beginning at 3 PM EDT on NASA TV. Enjoy!