The Beach House

Launch Alert - SpaceX taking Bigelow testbed to ISS

2016-04-09T06:37:00.000+10:00

Bigelow Expandable Activity Module

LAUNCH ALERT

Only a few minutes until #SpaceX launch their next Dragon 9 rocket to the International Space Station #ISS, with the launch scheduled for 1643 Miami time, or 2043 UTC, 0643 AEST.

Watch live on http://www.spacex.com/webcast.
Alternative: www.nasa.gov/ntv

This launch is particularly interesting for two reasons:

SpaceX robotic landing barge

1/ SpaceX will attempt another landing of the reusable first stage on their robotic landing barge. They've successfully landed a first stage on solid ground, back at the launch pad it took off from. But so far success has eluded them for barge landings. The barge is important because it doesn't require the first stage to essentially turn around and double back to the landing pad - something that requires a lot more fuel.

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What auroras really look like

2015-11-03T13:47:00.000+10:00

What the Aurora Really Looks Like from Phil Hart on Vimeo.

When you look through a telescope at a nebula, you could be disappointed for feeling a little disappointed. You're used to seeing those amazing Hubble pictures, or even ones by local astrophotographers. But instead what you are looking at could usually best be described as…well…a bit of fog or smoke. Maybe the barest hint of colour.

Yet a photo of the same subject, even one just a few seconds long, can have beautiful reds, greens, blues.

So what gives? Essentially your eyes are viewing in real time, while your camera can take in orders of magnitude more light. And then we photographers go and enhance the effect inside Photoshop. Not changing the shot, mind you—just enhancing what is already there.

Knowing this, I've often wondered what viewing auroras would be like 'in the flesh'. Timelapses of writing curtains of vivid greens, reds, purples and pinks look fantanstic, but what would I actually see if I saved some (many many) pennies to travel chasing auroras?
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The Moon/Venus/Jupiter conjunction as no-one on Earth saw it

2015-07-22T10:49:00.001+10:00

Recently there was a conjunction of the crescent Moon, Venus (also in crescent phase) and Jupiter.

It was captured by US Astronaut Scott Kelly, currently Commander of the International Space Station, with another planet added in—Earth!

Day 114. #Moon #Venus #Jupiter...#Earth Good night from @space_station! #YearInSpace pic.twitter.com/GsOxOKt34S
— Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) July 19, 2015

It's rare for photos from the ISS to also feature the starfield background. There is just so much ambient light from Earth that it drowns out the fainter stars for photos. Unless you take one photo exposed for the Earth and another exposed for the stars, and combine them in Photoshop. But even then it's very hard not to have the Earth blowing out the stars where they are very close to each other.

NASA has been know to add in the relevant starfield from a completely different shot. And there's nothing wrong with that—our eyes see a much broader range of light than a camera can capture in one shot. So it's just using tools available to more closely represent what the astronauts themselves are actually seeing.

Which all makes the timing on this shot all the more wonderful to have achieved. But then, he is orbiting Earth every 79 minutes, so he probably had a few chances to get it right!

Kelly is well worth following on Twitter—he posts some great material from his unique perspective. Such as:

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A great "maiden speech" that would ring just as true in the Australian Parliament right now

2015-07-17T12:53:00.002+10:00

Mhairi Black, at just 20 years of age, is the youngest person to enter the UK Parliament.

Her maiden speech is going viral and for good reason. She nails the Conservatives to the wall. And she calls out her own Labor Party. And it would be completely in place in our own Parliament...

For me, the hallmark of the speech was about the difference between weathervanes and signposts.

It's where Kevin Rudd fell down, most certainly where Julia Gillard fell, along with so many of her poll-obsessed colleagues, many of whom are still there, still behaving the same.

Tony Abbott is a signpost though, of that there is no doubt. I just hope that Australian voters are starting to realise that the Australia he is pointing to—pursuing—is a dire place, an insular, hateful, vindictive and self-obsessed society, surviving in an environment we will be mortified to admit we handed to our children.

SpaceX Falcon/Dragon launch explodes right before Stage 2 ignition

2015-06-29T03:35:00.001+10:00

It seemed like another perfect launch for SpaceX.

They had not had any launch failures since their development stage. 18 successful commercial launches.

(Failures to land the Falcon first stage back on their remotely-controlled landing barge of course don't count, as they are highly experimental phases, and the primary roles of the launches did not depend on them.)

But just moments before MECO—Main Engine Cut-Off—and firing of the second stage, the craft exploded. Exploded so comprehensively that there seemed virtually nothing left to fall into the Atlantic Ocean.

Watch the launch, and at 3:15 the failure:

Another angle, with the "anomaly" occurring at 2:45:

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SpaceX to have another go at landing Falcon rocket today

2015-06-28T09:17:00.001+10:00

SpaceX is launching another Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station later today.

And they will be having another go at landing the first stage Falcon rocket booster on their remotely-controlled floating platform barge. (Check SpaceX owner Elon Musk's little 'in joke' written under the platform target.)

Launch times:

My time, AEST
12:21AM 12, May Tue 2015

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Must read: the truth on Zaky Mallah

2015-06-24T16:03:00.003+10:00

Even if you wouldn't dare send one cent in Rupert Murdoch's direction for the tripe that his company calls news, you'd be hard pressed to have missed these obscene covers from his stable of tabloid second-hand toilet papers.

And the behaviour of numerous Australian Government Members and Ministers, led by Tony Abbott himself, has been nothing short of the old Aussie schoolboy tradition of 'stacks on'.

You could be excusing for thinking perhaps there is something to their concerns, and that the speed with which ABC's Managing Director Mark Scott went into damage control was warranted.

If so, then you need to read this analysis by Jonathan Holmes, in the Fairfax press.

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Significant chance of auroras tonight through mid-latitudes

2015-06-22T18:06:00.000+10:00

Spaceweather.tv aurora projection

The wonderful Dr Tamitha Skov of Spaceweather.tv is reporting that we have good chances of visible auroras in the mid latitudes from tonight and through the next couple of nights.

For Australia, this means as far north as Sydney.

Click on this picture to click through to Dr Skow's full video report:

Of course you will want to try to capture such a rare event on camera. You'll need to get away from city light pollution, somewhere high with an unobstructed view to the south.

Set your camera on a fixed tripod. Put the camera in Live View mode and zoom right in on a bright object. At the moment, Venus, Jupiter and the crescent moon are all very bright in the early evening to the north-west. Set your camera focus to manual and get these targets as sharp as you possibly can. Then zoom right back out, being very careful not to touch the camera focus ring.

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New Star Wars game looks like Battlefield 4 goes to space. Can't wait!

2015-06-18T17:19:00.000+10:00

A scene from Star Wars Battlefront amid the battle for Hoth

Years ago (like back in 1994), I used to be pretty good at a PC game called X-Wing. It was about the only computer game I ever played then, and I haven't played anything else since. (Except for Ingress, but that's a completely different kettle of fish. Make sure you join the green team!)

X-Wing: cutting edge gameplay circa 1994

Last Christmas, that changed with a gift of the PC game Battlefield 4. Crikey, computer games sure have come a long way! I've sunk almost 400 hours into that game since, and progressed to Level 58 so far. But the reality is I'm not that fast anymore and my kill/death ratio is still pretty sad.

I'm better at the reconnaissance strategy and long long distance sniping than the frantic running around everywhere mode that seems to be the MO of most good players.

When a friend posted a link for a teaser video of the upcoming Star Wars Battlefront game, I could tell immediately it was by EA and DICE—the makers of Battlefield. It looked so much like BF4, but with different uniforms. And ray guns. And jet packs. And space. See for yourself:
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Take a tour of dwarf planet Ceres

2015-06-12T13:10:00.001+10:00

Enigmatic bright spots within a crater on Ceres. Photo by NASA JPL on 6 June 2015 at 4400 kilometres altitude,
Resolution 410 metres per pixel.

NASA's Dawn robot entered orbit around dwarf planet Ceres on 6 March 2015.

It's the first spacecraft to visit two distinct interplanetary bodies, after first spending 14 months studying the smaller dwarf planet Vesta in 2011 and 2012.

The Dawn mission team are currently performing mapping orbits at around 13,600 kilometres out and navigational imaging about 5100 kilometres out. Once complete, Dawn will start edging into closer orbits.

NASA has combined images from these orbits to date into this wonderful flyover video released on 8 June:

At 15 seconds in, you'll see the mysterious bright spots (see photo above) in the base of a medium-sized crater that have so intrigued people the world over since they were first imaged months ago as Dawn approached Ceres. Nasa scientists are wondering if it could be a volcano, a geyser or cryo-volcano, shiny rock (as in glassy like molten from an impact), ice or salt.

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Crikey. My Bookmarks in Chrome now look like my Pocket page...

2015-06-01T14:29:00.000+10:00

An extract from my new Chrome Bookmarks page

You have to hand it to Google, they don't sit still long (except the sleepy Blogger team who are MIA).

What's this "Bookmarks" link on my Chrome Browser bookmarks bar I just thought. Click—short intro, then bam. There it is, looking for all the world like a page out of my "must read" collection in Pocket (which I really really must get to...). Mt Doom research prior to my hike to the summit, Hobbiton, astronomy goodness, Temasek's great custom ROM for the Samsung Note 3, more.

Mt Doom (Mt Ngauruhoe) summit selfie

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Explosion makes space junk problem worse

2015-05-14T10:27:00.001+10:00

US Air Force artist’s concept of DMSP

A US Air Force meteorological satellite exploded in February—possibly due to a NiCad battery exploding—adding some 100 trackable bits of debris to the growing space junk problem.

Although they spread out a lot due to the satellite's polar orbit, the orbital altitude of about 800 kilometres is more than double that of the International Space Station. The ISS moves between about 330 and 430 kilometres, as it is subjected to atmospheric drag and requires periodic boosting by the attached Soyuz capsule. The Chinese space station Tiangong-1 is at a similar altitude and the Hubble Space Telescope is around 560 kilometres (unlike how it is depicted in the movie Gravity). Geosynchronous satellites are way out at about 36,000 kilometres.
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Geek out with these space and science events in Canberra

2015-02-06T17:36:00.000+10:00

There are plenty of events coming up for Canberra space and science fans, with an inevitable clash unfortunately:

European Space Agency mission experts on the Rosetta Mission
Nobel Laureate Professor Brian Schmidt on the future of science
Peter Garrett on ecology and climate science
Anna Frebel (MIT) on the search for our galaxy's oldest stars
Badri Younes (NASA) on the interplanetary communications and navigation network.

All of these events are free. Descriptions and details below are as published by the various event organisers.

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ESA's Rosetta about to launch Comet 67P lander - watch live

2014-11-12T18:41:00.000+10:00

Philae Lander as it will look as it departs Rosetta for the landing. Picture: European Space Agency

The European Space Agency's Rosetta mission to the Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is about to launch its lander known as Philae on its long slow approach to 'land' on the surface of the comet.

You can watch the separation coverage from the ESA mission control room here:

If you would like to follow the technical details more closely, there is a very good forum on NASA Spaceflight.

Rosetta was launched in March 2004, and journeyed for 10 years to rendezvous with Comet 67P in August this year. It then proceeded to photograph and map the comet in the search for a good landing site.

There's much more your can read about the mission on ESA's Rosetta website.

As I am about to post this, the Philae lander should have separated from Rosetta. We have to wait about 28 minutes before we will receive the corresponding transmission.

"I'm not a scientist" said the politician…

2014-11-04T22:27:00.001+10:00

Indeed.

If one is going to be making decisions on matters scientific—particularly decisions that may change the course of a nation or indeed the world—perhaps one should make a point of listening in on experts in those fields?

Break out of the 'echo chamber effect' that poisons so many people's social networks and make sure you surround yourself with genuine experts in the fields you'll be steering.

Via +CosmoQuest

(Oh my, has it really been that long since I've done a blog entry? Ingress—aka Niantic/Google, you have a lot to answer for.)

Transit of the Sun by the International Space Station caught on camera

2013-12-24T16:42:00.001+10:00

That might not look like much, but I've wanted to try to catch the International Space Station in flight for a looong time.

This was my very first attempt, with the added complexity of it being a transit across the face of the Sun.

The alert said the viewing opportunity was centred 130 kms away from my location. I recorded for several minutes but thought I'd missed it. Until I looked at the recording the next day!

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A kangaroo with a knot in its tail!

2013-11-12T20:19:00.000+10:00

I was camping out at the Orroral Valley for a night of stargazing and photography. The next morning I ran into this young lady near the old historical homestead. It didn't seem to be holding her back too much. She could hop reasonably and perch - in a rather different manner from everyone else though!

Can't afford a boat trip to the Antarctic? Try this instead!

2013-10-31T11:59:00.000+10:00

This is the view today from the bow webcam on the Aurora Australis, the resupply vessel that services Australia's Antarctic bases.

Not your average cruise ship view! Not your average webcam view either…

The ship left Australia on 15 October, and was slated to return on 16 November. The latest sitrep has them here (and it is so worth your time to zoom in and look around the shoreline on this map!):

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Space Shuttle Endeavour's final journey—a wonderful timelapse

2013-10-16T08:28:00.000+10:00

Long-time manned spacelaunch photographer Scott Andrews has assembled this wonderful timelapse of that famous final trip made by the Space Shuttle Endeavour through the streets of Lops Angeles, after its last flight atop NASA's 747 Shuttle transporter from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.

As Time magazine explains, Andrews and a team took over 350,000 shots over 500 hours of the loading, transfer and road trip. The final video uses 9500 of those frames. My only regret is that it doesn't cover the aerial transfer itself. The flight looping over Los Angeles was pretty remarkable in its own right.

The video runs for six minutes 21 seconds and is well worth your download:

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It's coming right at you!

2013-10-13T06:18:00.001+10:00

Elon Musk has just posted this hexacopter video of a Grasshopper test to 744m, hover, divert and return to the pad. The highest flight yet for Grasshopper.

It's an incredibly stable hexacopter, with a panning camera, and at one stage it really looked like it was going to be toast!

Sometimes the daily cycle commute becomes a near-death experience.

2013-09-30T21:51:00.001+10:00

I hate on-road cycle lanes, and this is part of the reason why.

The ACT Government has been fixated on them for years—obviously because they're cheaper to build. But they aren't worth this sort of risk:

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Pakistan earthquake: 80+ dead and a whole new giant island

2013-09-25T14:26:00.000+10:00

Yesterday I tweeted:

This'll be bad MT @NewEarthquake: 7.4 earthquake, 69km NNE of Awaran, Pakistan. Sep 24 16:29 at epicenter 19m ago http://j.mp/16WAcc9

And it was. The severity of the earthquake was quickly upgraded to 7.8 (remembering that the Richter Scale is logarithmic, so small increases in the number equate to very big increases in severity).

Reports from Pakistan today are that at least 80 people were killed and another 80 people injured. Dozens of mud-based houses collapsed. [UPDATE: later reports have 515 people killed.]

On the flip side is an awesome testament to the power of this earthquake. A quite large island erupted from the sea about 600 metres off the Gwadar coast:

Earthquake creates a new island. Photo: https://twitter.com/NewsweekPak

NBC reports that seismologists suspect it to be a mud volcano island, but no-one's been out to inspect it as yet.

If you are interested in following earthquakes that happen around the world, you can follow on Twitter @NewEarthquake.

UPDATE 30/09/2013: Here's a good article looking specifically at the new island, with before and after photos:

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"All kinds of impressive" – about sums up this very cool creation

2013-09-25T13:00:00.002+10:00

Two robots, two big screens, and a whole lot of projection mapping.

Friend Ed Brown described this: "Whoa. That's all kinds of impressive."

I have to agree.

The producers of this work describe it thus:

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The genesis of a new science-based political party?

2013-09-13T22:09:00.000+10:00

Where it began. Read the full thread below

An idea that has been tossing around for some time with a friend on Twitter Paul Salanitri was resurrected amid the spectre of Sophie Mirabella as Australia's Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science.

The idea is to form a political party based on building support for Education and STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths. Not a single-issue party, but a party that is unashamedly and solidly grounded on improving education, and on educating our elected representatives as to the importance and benefits that flow from an educated population.

For far too long, the major political parties in this country have targeted everything they do towards society's "lowest common denominator".

Meanwhile, so many of our nation's scientists, educators and health experts are left seething as their funding is raided yet again to pay for nonsense like marriage bonuses, and their reputations as objective researchers is disparaged in the pursuit of cheap political points.

And along the way, we've managed to make senators of a gun nut because 318,000 people didn't know the difference between Liberal Democrats and Liberal Party, an unheard-of motoring enthusiast on the back of just 3% of a quota or less than 13,000 votes, and a sports party person who got just 2070 votes! These people will hold the balance of power in the Senate from July 2014, and determine what Abbott promises make it into law...

Some people think we should just throw our support behind the Greens. But the stark reality is that many voters will not vote for the Greens no matter how much they try to portray themselves as mainstream. The recent election has clearly demonstrated that an unprecedented proportion of the voting population were casting about desperately looking for an alternative they could vote for. A full 32% of first preference votes went to parties other than the ALP, Liberals and Nationals. That's almost 3.4 million people. For Pete's sake, more than half a million people voted first for Clive Palmer's party!

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Amazing landslide escape—just a whisker from a right squishing!

2013-09-01T14:45:00.000+10:00

This guy is about as lucky as you could possibly imagine. Watch this massive boulder almost kiss the side of his car.

Go full screen in HD resolution, and at the very beginning watch the hanging rock right at the very peak of the hillside as it comes loose.

According to the ABC, this happened yesterday near Keelung City in Taiwan.