Carnival of Space #479
Well it’s been an amazing week for amateur astronomers here in South Africa. After weeks of frantic last-minute preparations, the annual ScopeX telescope and astronomy expo ran without a hitch on Saturday, and I think it was a huge success. We had a good turnout from the Amateur Telescope Making community, the astrophotography competition was well supported, and our special guests were a real hit with their talks in the auditorium. Francis O’Reilly of the famous Stellafane telescope building club, flew in from the USA especially to see how we build ‘scopes here on the southern tip of Africa, and gave a talk about Stellafane. Our other special guest, Thierry Legault, was flown in by the French Embassy and spoke on the photography of artificial satellites. He should need no introduction, of course, but his images of the ISS occulting the Sun are world-renowned. It was a real privilege to spend several hours in conversation with both men, and I hope to see them again in the future.
The Carnival of Space
But enough of this. You’re here for the weekly Carnival of Space, a roving collection of the best writing on space science and astronomy, hosted by a new website every week. Today it’s Urban Astronomer’s turn, and the fun starts here:
Let’s start things rolling with a collection of ten NASA press release images as selected and captioned by ASU to the Lunar and Planetary Institute’s Flickr page. Images of Mars, Ceres, Pluto, Titan and Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko
Then, move along to regular host Universe Today:
- SpaceX’s Space Coast Launch Facilities Escape Hurricane Matthew’s Wrath, May Resume Launches this Year
- President Obama Puts US All In For Mars
- A New Dwarf Planet Joins The Solar System Family
From Planetaria:
From the official Chandra X-ray Telescope blog:
A bumper pack of articles by Next Big Future:
- Possible extraterrestrial signals in 234 out of 2.5 million stars detected light emissions could be laser beacons
- Breakthrough listen will check the possible laser beacon signals using Automated Planet finder telescope
- Observable universe has ten times more galaxies than prior estimate, new estimate 2 trillion galaxies
- Universe has about 2 trillion trillion (2 Septillion) stars based on estimate of galaxies and stars in galaxies and stars outside of galaxies
- Virgin galactic Branson aims for point to point hypersonic suborbital travel
And finally, Links Through Space:
And there you have it! If you enjoyed this week’s carnival, please tell a friend – our various authors would love you to share their work. Until next week then, clear skies and look up!