And his legacy continues. His TV show "Cosmos" continues to inspire people, and the generation of astronomers who took up the cause due to Sagan’s exhortations are still looking up, looking out, and seeking what’s around the next corner. Because of Carl Sagan, we have many more scientists who not only love the field itself, but strive to express it to others. I include myself among the latter.

That’s why we celebrated Carl Sagan Day on Saturday, to honor the man and, in my opinion just as if not more importantly, to continue his work. James Randi knew Sagan personally; they were friends for many years, and so at the celebration Randi was the keynote speaker, relating stories about the man whom Randi knew as simply Carl. Below is video of Randi’s talk. It’s an hour long, but it’s more than worth your time. This was recorded off a live stream, so go ahead and click forward to about the 9:00 minute mark to get started.

This first Carl Sagan Day was a great success. We had a great audience at every talk, kids playing outside in the inflatable rocket ship bounce room, pictures from Hubble adorning the windows and walls of Broward College, and an overall sense that there is great work that has been done, with still a vast amount yet to do.

But that’s where the fun is. Sagan knew that, and I hope that you do too. And if you don’t — if you think science is stodgy, uninteresting, and doesn’t affect your life — then hopefully you have an amazing moment lying in wait for you. Maybe it’ll be a Cassini image of Saturn, or a tiny cell undergoing mitosis under your scrutiny through a microscope, or the sudden understanding from a news article about the Large Hadron Collider. There’s no way to know what precisely that trigger will be. But at some point there will come something that will jolt you, will shake you out of your complacence, and the scales will fall from your eyes.

At that moment you’ll experience what Carl Sagan did every moment of his life, that same sense of wonder and pure, undiluted joy about the Universe. I feel it too. It’s the blood in my veins, the calcium in my bones, the electricity of my eyes and ears as they relay what they detect to my brain. It’s the sense of connectedness with everything, and it’s real.

That’s what Carl Sagan taught us.

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

The Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference will be held right here in Boulder on February 18 – 20, 2010. The speakers lining up are pretty good: my friend (and Apollo expert) Andy Chaikin will talk about passenger flight, former Shuttle commander Rick Searfoss, Pluto probe New Horizons chief guy Alan Stern, and people from NASA and the FAA will be there too.

If you want to participate (I suspect some space gurus read this blog…) then there is a November 12 deadline. Hurry!

I’m very interested in the use of space and near-space, so I’ll probably wind up going too. I don’t know what the future of space exploration will hold any more than the next space enthusiast does, but I’m pretty sure this will be playing a big role in it.

Mars.

What else do you need to know? Go click.

Cooool. By triangulating the meteor, astronomers were able to track the rock all the way to the ground, where the meteorite was found only 100 meters from the predicted location. Not only that, the track of the meteor on the sky allowed astronomers to backtrack its trajectory, and calculate the orbit of the meteoroid. They found it came from a family of asteroids in the inner asteroid belt, just outside the orbit of Mars. over millions of years the orbit migrated inward toward the Sun, and eventually intersected ours, resulting in, well, the collision.

This is really nice because not too many meteorites are recovered from known falls, and fewer still where the orbit of the incoming rock can be determined. When this happens, we get for free what otherwise would take a fairly expensive rocket trip to accomplish.

I’ve been saying for some time that with the advent of digital cameras everywhere, we’ll be seeing this more often. In this case the cameras were designed and implemented specifically to do this, but just you wait. Some ATM or junkyard or home security camera will do the same thing. The age of public involvement in astronomy is just beginning.

Tip o’ the Whipple Shield to MeteoriteMen on Twitter.

The event starts at noon Eastern time (17:00 GMT) , so those of you not here in person in Florida can still watch, and even virtually participate in this inaugural festival to celebrate Carl Sagan!

Also, there will be a reception that night at 8:00 p.m. as well. Requested donation is $10. I hope to see some BABloggees there!