25 August 2012

In scientific terms, the benefits of all the manned missions are negligable (though admittedly a Shuttle mission did fix a fault on the Hubble). Almost all the scientific knowledge we have gained in space is from unmanned probes. Brian Clegg Gravity

18 August 2012

Now all known substances are "transparent" to gravitation. You can use screens of various sorts to cut off the light or heat, or electrical influence of the sun, or the warmth of the earth from anything; you can screen things by sheets of metal from Marconi's rays, but nothing will cut off the gravitational attraction of the sun or the gravitational attraction of the earth. Yet why there should be nothing is hard to say. H.G. Wells The First Men in the Moon 1901

11 August 2011

Perseids Meteors

It is overcast here this morning but I think I saw a few Perseid meteors.

I was checking the weather and they are predicting heavy rain for today so I started up WeatherBug to see where it is supposed to be coming from (as of right now it looks like it will miss us). I started the image loop and caught a streak of blue on the edge of the image that I figured was an artifact. But then I saw another one a little bit lower and it didn't make sense that two radars would be showing artifacts on the same heading. On the next loop I noticed that the streaks were teardrop shaped, just like a meteor when it is streaking across the sky. When I panned down south there were more of them going in the same direction at roughly the same time. I suspect that the radars are picking up meteors as they enter the atmosphere.

WeatherBug graphics

I have submitted the screen captures to Space Weather and I am hoping they will confirm my speculation.

8 August 2012

Were it not for gravity one man might hurl another by a puff of his breath into the depths of space, beyond recall for all eternity. Roger Joseph Boscovich Philosophiae Naturalis Theoria 1758