Is It possible to establish a human settlement on the Moon?
Since ancient times, people have been impressed by the Moon. In recent years, when science fiction movies are popular, many often wonder if it would be possible to live there.
So, can humans live there? Not just make it through, how about establishing a permanent, pleasant lifestyle in a lunar settlement that you can call “home”? Obviously, we want to set up labs there, and maybe even mining and production facilities. To put it bluntly, we think those are long overdue.
There are currently no cities there, but is it possible to build them there? Is there anything we could do to make the conditions on the Moon slightly more amenable to human habitation, we mean in a way, that maybe one day we call it home?
Let’s put it into perspective
Considering the circumstances in this field, we can say that the space race has already begun. Elon Musk recently stated that we could establish a self-sustaining city on Mars if we could just transport 1 million tons of cargo from Earth. Which is a lot, to be sure, but it’s not an unimaginably large amount. Assuming Elon can actually construct 1,000 rockets, each carrying 100 tons of cargo, we would only need to make ten trips.
A big problem is a trip to Mars, which lasts from six to nine months, and an even bigger obstacle is the fact that the opportunity to travel only opens every two years. To add insult to injury, each of those starships will have to make a multiyear round trip, meaning the entire endeavor will take decades. This equation can, of course, change. In the meantime, SpaceX may come up with an entirely new method and improved spaceships. If we stick to our current understanding, however, it will take many generations to construct that city on Mars.
How about the Moon, though? Of course, Elon Musk is psyched that NASA has chosen his new rocket to make history by successfully landing humans on it. But generally, he doesn’t seem all that enthusiastic about it. In our opinion, it could go in a good direction. If we need a million tons of materials to construct the Martian city, how much would we need for a lunar settlement? Because the Moon is so much smaller than Mars, and it is also much closer to the Earth, it’s easy to imagine that we wouldn’t need nearly as much equipment to get by. On the other hand, we don’t think that’s how it actually operates. So, it seems like 1,000,000 metric tons would suffice. That’s basically the same thing.
The Earth’s natural satellite, on the other hand, eliminates time-related complications. When compared to a round-trip mission to Mars, which would take four or five years, a trip to and from the Moon would only take four or five days. The distance is only 240,000 miles. A fleet of a thousand ships could finish the job in a couple of months, but again, not everything is as simple as it seems. There’s no way we could pack them all that quickly. It seems like a little bit of an exaggeration. Therefore, we could have 10 ships land 1000 times or 20 ships land 500 times instead of a thousand ships landing ten times. No matter how you look at it, we could get a million tons of material to the Moon in less time than it takes to make a single round trip to Mars.
Now, this is starting to make sense. However, this does not mean that Elon Musk is incorrect in his pursuit of Mars; the Moon certainly has its benefits, but it also likely has some significant drawbacks.
What are the conditions like on the Moon?
Initially, we must manage the moon’s wildly fluctuating temperatures. Lows of -280 degrees Fahrenheit (-175 degrees Celsius) are common overnight. And during the daytime, the mercury soars to a scorching 260°F (126°C). And a lunar day is roughly equivalent to 29 and a half Earth days. So we have long time periods of both day and night. This is problematic, especially during the day because the temperatures are very high, as it is common knowledge that computers overheat easily and cannot function properly in high temperatures.
This is not an issue on Mars. Generally speaking, the weather there on Mars is very cold, with the highest recorded temperature being only about 20 degrees Celsius (or 70 Fahrenheit) in a few locations at a few specific times. Therefore, we need very robust insulation if we are to establish a sustainable human presence on the Earth’s natural satellite.
It’s hard to imagine anything that would be both effective at keeping the heat out and practical enough to be used as a dome over the city so that everyone could look out into space. This dome, whatever it is made of, would have to be transported from Earth or created on the Moon. Whatever the case may be, it will be a tremendous challenge. Constructing a densely populated, low-lying city and covering it with lunar regolith is the more realistic option. That’s the dirt and pebbles and whatever else you find on the ground.
A habitat that will be protected from all adverse conditions can be built using a 3D printer controlled by a robot. An effective insulator is a thick layer of regolith. A binding agent could be added to the mixture to make a denser material akin to concrete. This barrier serves many purposes beyond just preventing the transfer of heat, such as shielding from meteorites and solar activity.
The atmosphere on Earth does all of this for us, but the Moon doesn’t provide any such assistance. There is a very thin layer of atmosphere. Nearly one hundred molecules per cubic centimeter make up the Moon’s exosphere. That’s a huge disparity when compared to Earth, where there are about a billion molecules in a cubic centimeter of space. And magnetic field plays a crucial role here. The magnetic core of Earth is so strong that it deflects the solar wind.
But the Moon doesn’t. The Moon’s atmosphere, even if we could make it denser, would still quickly dissipate due to the strong winds. Mars has the same issue, but it’s much better there. Similarly, Mars has a very thin atmosphere, though it is noticeably thicker than the moon’s. Mars also benefits from size and gravity. Maybe there’s a chance we can increase Mars’s atmospheric density at a rate greater than the Sun can remove it. While on the Earth’s natural satellite, such a scenario is unimaginable.
The gravity issue
And then there’s the issue of gravity. A weak force can’t hold an atmosphere together, and it might not even be able to hold our bodies together. Up there, the pull of gravity is only about half as strong as it is on Mars and only about 15% as strong as it is on Earth. What kind of impact does that have on people? This is extremely significant. It turns out that 437 days was the longest stretch of time ever spent in Earth’s orbit, so more or less zero gravity. This was accomplished by the Russian cosmonaut Valery Polyakov on the Mir space station between 1994 and 1995.
The reason he did it was to observe his physiological responses. To our knowledge, the effects of such prolonged exposure to microgravity were neither irreversible nor destructive. After his return to Earth, he reportedly did not experience any prolonged performance impairments. He lived for a long time after that and died in 2022 at the age of 80.
Therefore, the possibility of human settlement on the Moon is not completely out of the question. Keeping ourselves shielded from various elements is paramount, as is keeping an eye out for the long-term effects of low gravity on the human body.
On the other hand, unlike Mars, we won’t be obligated to spend a significant amount of time on the Moon. A trip to Mars requires at least two years of surface time, plus a year or more of travel time there and back. We can’t predict what effect it will have on a person, and once they’re inside, there’s no way out. In the case of the Earth’s natural satellite, we may not be able to say forever, but there appears to be no reason to doubt that humans could survive there for at least a year.
It’s possible that we could populate the city in waves. Work for a year, then take a year off, or something similar. Travel time is minimal, it only takes a couple of days. This allows for considerable leeway. How simple getting to the Moon is almost makes it funny. To travel the ocean in a boat takes us two weeks. Traveling to the Moon via a rocket from Earth takes about three days.
In the Star Trek movie First Contact, the captain of the Starship Enterprise, Picard, claims that there are more than 50 million people living on the Moon. It was predicted that this would take place in the year 2373. Is it possible that such a thing might occur in the next 300 years? Given the size of the Moon, which is approximately 15 million square miles (38 million square kilometers), we can comfortably house 50 million people, if not more. Asia has a total land area of about 44 million square kilometers and is home to about 5 billion people. But how do we go about doing that? At the very least, the availability of oxygen, water, food, and energy makes it seem doable.
What about oxygen?
It turns out that the moon’s surface is a rich source of oxygen. On average, there are 1.4 tons of minerals in 1 cubic meter of lunar regolith, with 630 oxygen being the most abundant. According to NASA, the average human requires about 800 grams of oxygen per day. A person could survive for about two years on 630 oxygen. And we can use electrolysis to get at that air we need so badly. There’s also enough water for us to function up there. Craters on the Moon likely hide water ice that is just waiting to be discovered. Asteroids would have carried it there, and the crater’s shadow would have kept it frozen solid. Regolith water extraction is possible as well.
If we bake the moon’s surface, we should be able to collect water vapor and turn it into a liquid. Then there’s the tried-and-true method that astronauts always fall back on: turning urine into drinkable water. Unfortunately, that’s the way things are out here in space, and astronauts have to deal with it. Plants are the next step. NASA has already discovered that their dried packaged foods lose nutritional value over time.
Even though we would be able to get enough food to sustain ourselves, we would be at risk of developing scurvy due to a lack of vitamins. And scurvy is a problem nobody on the Moon wants to have. In order to sustain our bodies over the long term, we must have access to growing plant food. NASA has already begun to investigate this question with its plant-cultivation experiments aboard the ISS. So far, they’ve been able to grow leafy vegetables fairly well, and that alone would provide enough food for all of us.
Technology is important
Moreover, there is technology that we would rely on. The ability to send and receive messages will be crucial, not just for the transmission of critical information but also for the maintenance of mental health. We need video calls, live streams, and other means to keep the people on the Moon feeling connected to Earth.
That’s where Starlink comes in. Starlink satellites will begin high-altitude orbital testing of SpaceX’s laser-based communication system. To see if we can get high bandwidth and low latency communication between Earth and space, the Starlink network and its new optical laser function will be tested during the Polaris Dawn spaceflight mission, which will send a Crew Dragon capsule carrying a crew into the highest ever Earth orbit. If this early test is successful, a Starlink constellation orbiting the Moon could soon be in contact with Earth’s network. Solar energy would be the obvious choice for the initial power source on the Earth’s natural satellite.
NASA is developing small nuclear reactors to serve as mobile power generating stations, and we could put them to the test. However, helium-3 might be something we could try to utilize in the distant future. This element has been detected in the lunar regolith. It is produced when the surface absorbs solar radiation. We know that the sun is just a big fusion reactor, and this helium-3 could hold the same amount of power. It doesn’t exist here because, fortunately, only a tiny fraction of the Sun’s radiation actually reaches Earth’s surface. However, we are fairly confident in the feasibility and efficiency of using helium-3 to fuel a power plant. We believe that 100 kilograms of helium-3 can power a small city for a year, and there is a lot of it up there.
So what do you think? Can we establish a human colony on the Moon? Is it actually a better colonizing candidate than Mars? It’s got some advantages that can’t be overlooked, so let us know your theories in the comments on Facebook or on Twitter.


Voyager image of Uranus and at least 3 of its moons.
It has at least 15.
You know what’s really cool about the seventh planet from the sun? All the moons. Not just that either, but that several of the moons are named for characters in William Shakespeare’s Midsummer Nights Dream. Now, I happen to really like Shakespeare, but if you don’t, you’d probably still get a kick out of someone having to wear a donkey head for most of a play, which is just what happens to one of the characters. Come on, that’s just funny. Talk about taking the seriousness out of the pretentious sounding English delivery…just wear a donkey head. Then there’s the fairy/sprite Puck. It’s due to his errors and mischievous nature that so many hilarious problems and hijinks occur in the play. Puck is also the name of one of Uranus’ moons. Actually, many of Shakespeare’s best known plays are represented in the names of Uranus’ moons. Very cool. I like that better than the name of Earth’s moon, which we call…Moon.
This view of Uranus was acquired by Voyager 2 on January 10, 1986. The blue-green appearance of its atmosphere results from methane and high-altitude photochemical smog. This gas absorbs red wavelengths from the incoming sunlight, leaving the predominant bluish color seen here.
(Copyright Calvin J. Hamilton)
Here’s a little something to help you remember the order of our planets:
Um, just x out that part about Pluto…
**(On August 24, 2006, the International Astronomical Union formally downgraded Pluto from an official planet to a dwarf planet. According to the new rules a planet meets three criteria: it must orbit the Sun, it must be big enough for gravity to squash it into a round ball, and it must have cleared other things out of the way in its orbital neighborhood. The latter measure knocks out Pluto, which orbit among the icy wrecks of the Kuiper Belt, and Ceres, which is in the asteroid belt.**


Welcome Back, Amazing Light
by Sara Roberson, Becketwood Member
Late in October 2001, I traveled to the Honanki and Palatki ruins near Sedona, Arizona, for an Elderhostel Service Project. The area was home to the Sinagua people of the Ancient Pueblo Peoples, from about 1100 to 1300 CE. Our project was to locate, identify, and document panels of their rock art, mostly pictographs. It was really exciting to see a pictograph that had not been identified before.
Since that experience, ancient cultures and the “new” field of Archaeoastronomy (the study of how peoples in the past have understood and used the phenomena in the sky) have fascinated me. Changing light, sun, and the phases of the moon had profound importance to ancient peoples, who used their art and mathematical skills to construct or arrange objects in such a way that time was measured and cultural rituals honored. Many pictographs, for instance, are visible only at certain times—like a solstice—when the sun’s rays hit that certain spot and the art is illumined. The rest of the time the pictograph is in shadow.
Worldwide, our ancestors marked the solstices, summer and winter. At the site most studied, Stonehenge in England, during summer solstice the sun rises near the “heel” stone and shines into the center of the monument. At Newgrange, Ireland, a 24-foot high circular mound containing a stone passageway and chamber is aligned with the rising sun; the sun’s light floods the chamber on the winter solstice. Similarly, chambers and passageways inside the great mound at Maeshowe, Scotland, are illuminated for a number of weeks on either side of the shortest day.
In Goseck, Germany, a series of concentric rings with two gates are aligned with sunrise and sunset of the winter solstice. A stone building in the ancient Mayan city of Tulum, Mexico, has a small hole at its top that creates a starburst effect at sunrise during both solstices. Solstice light effects at sunset frame a Peruvian pyramid, and at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, spiral petroglyphs on a cliff behind rock slabs act as a solar marker. Summer solstice brings a vertical shaft of light piercing the main spiral at its center.
We may never fully understand the spiritual significance of these ancient sites and practices, although we can be sure that they measured the passing of time, indicating to these agricultural societies that here was an ending and a beginning, a return at the darkest point in winter to the growing light and renewed life. While I was looking for new information, thinking about the “ancients” and their life challenges, I remembered how dark it was at night on the farm. We had no electricity, and used lanterns, candles, kerosene lamps. It was scary, going out to milk the cow in the dark.
Returning light is a symbol across many religious and cultural traditions, from the ancients to modern times. As we draw near to the new year, we feel it in our bones, this connection to ancestors in our wonder at sky phenomena, our shared humanity.


Pictures on this page were captured from my balcony at home in Boulogne near Paris.
Equipment used is a CANON EOS300D digital reflex camera at prime focus of a MEADE LX200 8" telescope opened at F/6.3 (with 6.3 focal reducer).
At 20H53 UT , as half of the moon was in penumbra, clear sky could let think that conditions were gathered for a perfect observation of the eclipse (exposure 1/400 sec at 200 ISO).
At 21H30 UT, first contact with earth shadow occurs. At this moment, clouds darkening the sky, force me to drastically increase exposure time (exposure 1/4 sec at 200 ISO).
At 22H09 UT, half of the moon is eclipsed (exposure 1/10 sec at 200 ISO). A few minutes later, the cloudy curtain becomes totally opaque. Totality begins at à 22H44 UT over dark clouds. The worst is to be feared ....
After 70 minutes of interminable waiting, hope is back. Finally at 23H22 UT, I can see through a cloud hole , the amazing dark orange colour. 38 minutes of totality have elpsed. This picture is captured at 23H37 UT, (exposure 10 seconds at 200 ISO) in a clear sky, 16 minutes after the eclipse maximum.
Totality ends at 23H58 UT. This picture is captured 3 minutes later at 0H01 UT on following day (exposure 3.2 sec at 200 ISO).
At 0H35 UT, only half of the moon remains eclipsed (exposure 1/160 sec at 200 ISO).
Last contact with earth shadow occurs at 1H11 UT. This pictures is captured 4 minutes before this last contact, at 1H07 UT (exposure 1/160 sec at 200 ISO).
This assembly materializing earth shadow, is made of three pictures captured from right to left, at 22H02 UT, 23H22 UT and 0H40 UT. The three positions of the moon are calculated using celestial coordinates of the moon and of the antisolar point. Horizontal edges of this picture are supposed parallel to the equatorial plane.
Moon changing between first and lact contact with earth shadow (1024x688 XviD MPEG-4 compression 46K)
220 minutes have elapsed between the 2 frames of this movie. First contact and last contact occur respectively on left side and right side. As earth rotates, the moon is observed in 2 different directions (parallax).
Your suggestions are welcomed


“The sky is an infinite movie to me. I never get tired of looking at what’s happening up there.” K.D. Lang
My mother was afraid of storms. They were sudden, frequent and furious in the South, ominous rumbles morphing suddenly into ear-splitting booms, jagged lightning and slanted, pelting rain. She would herd us to the dark interior of the house away from windows and doors until the storm subsided.
But she couldn’t get my father to take refuge. A 42-year-old confirmed bachelor by the time he married my much younger mother, he was too set in his ways to succumb to the entreaties of a woman scared of storms. Instead, he headed for the front porch and lit a cigarette.
“John, come in here, it’s dangerous out there!” my mother pleaded, argued and scolded to no avail. Thunder cracked, lightning slashed, and my father smoked and rocked and savored this display of nature’s fireworks.
I so wanted to be out there with him!
From an early age, the sky fascinated me. After school, I couldn’t wait to shed my bookbag and race to the garden, which offered the most unobstructed view. Lying on the ground and gazing up, I wondered if God could be found beyond the wispy cirrus clouds; or maybe he lived inside the great towering cumulus clouds and would reveal himself if I looked hard enough.
The night sky enthralled me even more, especially when I learned that the stars I saw might be already gone, their light reaching earth after hundreds of millions of years, so that I was actually looking into the past. The mysteries of the universe seemed hidden somewhere in that starry night, waiting to be glimpsed in a blinding moment of revelation.
“There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.” Victor Hugo
My father survived the storms he viewed from our front porch and lived to the good age of 92, when he passed away quietly in his own bed. My mother at 99 has seen so many storms that they no longer terrify her.
In my adulthood, I’ve developed a habit of snapping pictures of the sky. But the joy that wells up when I gaze at a crimson splash of sunset or see the brooding hint of a storm is too elusive to capture; mystery and elation are fleeting, and revelations don’t arrive through the lens of a camera or through my own limited vision. These glimpses of eternity fill me with a joy so profound that pictures, memories and words always fall short.
Still, I snap pictures in my attempt to capture fleeting moments.


Last year saw the 150th anniversary of the first exchange of scholars between Japan and the UK. In the late stage of the Samurai period, five Japanese students, the ‘Choshu Five’, arrived at UCL, one of whom, Hirobumi Ito, later became the first prime minister of Japan. Since then, Japan and the UK have exchanged scholars and developed collaborative work across many fields including science, technology and innovation.
One of the fields in which we have a long history of collaboration is astronomy and space science. These links were formed when the Royal Greenwich Observatory supported Makoto Hirayama for his studies in astronomy in 1890; later he became the director of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, helping smooth the way for his successors.
Nowadays, our two countries have established a number of international projects which are aimed at solving frontier problems in astronomy and space science. To strengthen such cooperation, during Prime Minister Cameron’s visit to Japan in April 2012, the British and Japanese Governments signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for wider cooperation on space-related activities for the two countries’ mutual benefit.
On 6 December 2013, the Embassy held a Science, Technology and Innovation Symposium on Astronomy & Space Science. This symposium highlighted past, current and future collaboration in astronomy and space science, covering a wide range of research topics, from the sun to cosmology. It was held as part of “The Japan-UK Science, Technology & Innovation Symposium” series.


Tuesday, March 20, 2012
I have made 2 ostara/spring equinox drawings, one of them a frame for maybe a Book Of Shadows and one of a sun gazing hare.
As the hare is more of lunar symbol, I have not seen any drawings of sun gazing hares before, but plenty of moon gazing ones.
Not that it was something I was thinking about when I made the drawing, it just ended up that way, as the sun is more symbolic of spring in my mind.
But this is how they ended up, hope you enjoy :)


The «Voyager» program  is a United States project for study the distant planets of Solar System, that launched the unmanned space missions, scientific probes «Voyager-1» and «Voyager-2». Spacecrafts of «Voyager» series were created in the JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) of NASA. These space vehicles – autonomous robots, equipped by power plants, rocket engines, computers, radio and control systems, and scientific instruments to study the outer planets. The total mass of each of the space vehicles is about 721 kg.
«Voyager-1» was launched on September 5, 1977, it passed Jupiter in March 1979, it reached Saturn in November 1980. «Voyager-2» was launched earlier, on August 20, 1977, a slower path, and it flew past Jupiter in July 1979, by Saturn – in August 1981, Uranus was flew in January 1986, and Neptune – in August 1989. Feature of the trajectories of these spacecraft is that location of the outer planets of the Solar System allowed to use the swing-intensive maneuvers at the time of launch. Accelerated by the gravitational field of planets (once in 175 years the planets in our Solar System are arranged in a row), the spacecraft could fly around the planets with minimal fuel for acceleration and trajectories correction.
The achievements of the program:
– Opening of an active volcano on the surface of Io (Jupiter’s moon) – the first extraterrestrial volcano was discovered.
– Opening of the rings of Jupiter, like the rings of Saturn.
– The study of magnetic fields in space.
– The study of cosmic rays.
– Investigation of plasma waves.
– In 2004, «Voyager-1» and in 2007 – «Voyager-2» crossed the one of limits of the Solar System, called “the solar wind termination shock” (the shock-wave boundary of the solar wind), located at a distance of about 100 astronomical units from the Sun. The spacecrafts delivered information about the structure of this shock wave.
Project management is quite serious about the possibility of a meeting of representatives of extraterrestrial civilizations with the «Voyager» spacecrafts – the gold-plated copper phonograph records (30 cm in diameter) and devices for playback are present on spacecrafts. Audio and video are on the plates, which should give a presentation about life and culture on Earth. For example, there is a recording of thunder, wind, music, and greetings in different languages (there are records of so-called “dead” languages together with languages of modern people). Images are recorded in analog form.
The displaying of the vector image of Voyager spacecraft by S3DxfVQ v.2.1, Viewer of DXF-files. 2
The «Voyager» project is considered as one of the most successful and efficient ones in the history of planetary studies. For the first time both «Voyagers» delivered high-quality images of Jupiter and Saturn, and for the first time «Voyager-2» reached the Neptune and Uranus. On February 17, 1998, «Voyager-1» went on the greatest distance from Earth of all the objects created by man. «Voyagers» went beyond the Solar System, and now their task – to help scientists determine the location of the heliopause, the boundary where the influence of the Sun is less than the influence of other stars.
1. Voyager – The Interstellar Mission. — Mode of access: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/.
2. Voyager program. — Mode of access: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_program.
3. Voyager 1. — Mode of access: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1.
4. Voyager 2. — Mode of access: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_2.
5. Voyager Golden Record. — Mode of access: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record.
6. Вояджер. — Mode of access: http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%BE%D1%8F%D0%B4%D0%B6%D0%B5%D1%80.
7. Вояджер-1. — Mode of access: http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%BE%D1%8F%D0%B4%D0%B6%D0%B5%D1%80-1.
8. Вояджер-2. — Mode of access: http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%BE%D1%8F%D0%B4%D0%B6%D0%B5%D1%80-2.
9. Вояджер (программа). — Mode of access: http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%BE%D1%8F%D0%B4%D0%B6%D0%B5%D1%80.
10. Файл:Titan 3E Centaur launches Voyager 2.jpg. — Mode of access: http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB:Titan_3E_Centaur_launches_Voyager_2.jpg.
11. Вояджер-1. — Mode of access: http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%BE%D1%8F%D0%B4%D0%B6%D0%B5%D1%80-1.
12. Вояджер-2. — Mode of access: http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%BE%D1%8F%D0%B4%D0%B6%D0%B5%D1%80-2.
13. Золотая пластинка «Вояджера». — Mode of access: http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%97%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%BF%D0%BB%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%BA%D0%B0_%C2%AB%D0%92%D0%BE%D1%8F%D0%B4%D0%B6%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B0%C2%BB.
14. File:Voyager1 Space simulator.gif. — Mode of access: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Voyager1_Space_simulator.gif.
15. S3DxfVQ v.2.1 – Sample 3-dimensional Dxf-file Viewer based on Qt, Copyright (C) Vadym Shvachko. — Mode of access: https://shvachko.net/?page_id=2110.
16. Angelo, Joseph A. Robot spacecraft / Joseph A. Angelo, Jr. – New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2007. – 306 p. – ISBN 0-8160-5773-7.
1 This file is in the public domain because it was created by NASA.
2 Executable codes (freeware) for Windows and Ubuntu Linux operating systems are ready for downloading from web-site of FOP Vadym Shvachko.


Hinduism and the Universe
How centuries-old texts from the oldest living religion in the world are in agreement with the scientific inquiry on the origins of the universe and concepts of time dilation and cyclicity
The entirety of Cosmos, Carl Sagan’s magnum opus, can be read on the Internet Archive. In Chapter 10, titled “The Edge of Forever”, Sagan talks about the origin of the Universe and relates it to various mythos from across the world. He elucidates on how most cultures focused on a single starting point, where the deity they worship creates the world out of nothing.
That is it — a linear progression from start to finish.
However, Hinduism has the concept of cycles. Cycles spanning billions of years — Brahma creates the universe, Vishnu nurtures and preserves it, and at the end of its lifetime, Shiva destroys it, annihilating it into nothingness, and the cycle starts anew. Like a phoenix rising from its ashes, Shiva’s actions spurn the next cycle of creation.
Every culture has a myth of the world before creation, and of the creation of the world, often by the mating of the gods or the hatching of a cosmic egg. Commonly, the universe is naively imagined to follow human or animal precedent. Here, for example, are five small extracts from such myths, at different levels of sophistication, from the Pacific Basin:
In the very beginning everything was resting in perpetual darkness: night oppressed everything like an impenetrable thicket.
- The Great Father myth of the Aranda people of Central Australia
All was in suspense, all calm, all in silence; all motionless and still; and the expanse of the sky was empty.
- The Popol Vuh of the Quiche Maya
Na Arean sat alone in space as a cloud that floats in nothingness. He slept not, for there was no sleep; he hungered not, for as yet there was no hunger. So he remained for a great while, until a thought came to his mind. He said to himself, ‘I will make a thing.’
- A myth from Maiana, Gilbert Islands
First there was the great cosmic egg. Inside the egg was chaos, and floating in chaos was Pan Ku, the Undeveloped, the divine Embryo. And Pan Ku burst out of the egg, four times larger than any man today, with a hammer and chisel in his hand with which he fashioned the world.
- The P’an Ku Myths, China (around third century)
Before heaven and earth had taken form all was vague and amorphous . . . That which was clear and light drifted up to become heaven, while that which was heavy and turbid solidified to become earth. It was very easy for the pure, fine material to come together, but extremely difficult for the heavy, turbid material to solidify. Therefore heaven was completed first and earth assumed shape after. When heaven and earth were joined in emptiness and all was unwrought simplicity, then without having been created things came into being. This was the Great Oneness. All things issued from this Oneness but all became different . . .
- Huai-nan Tzu, China (around first century B.C.)
The Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond, no doubt by accident, to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long, longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang. And there are much longer time scales still.
There is the deep and appealing notion that the universe is but the dream of the god who, after a hundred Brahma years, dissolves himself into a dreamless sleep. The universe dissolves with him — until, after another Brahma century, he stirs, recomposes himself and begins again to dream the great cosmic dream. Meanwhile, elsewhere, there are an infinite number of other universes, each with its own god dreaming the cosmic dream. These great ideas are tempered by another, perhaps still greater. It is said that men may not be the dreams of the gods, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men.
In India there are many gods, and each god has many manifestations. The Chola bronzes, cast in the eleventh century, include several different incarnations of the god Shiva. The most elegant and sublime of these is a representation of the creation of the universe at the beginning of each cosmic cycle, a motif known as the cosmic dance of Shiva. The god, called in this manifestation Nataraja, the Dance King, has four hands. In the upper right hand is a drum whose sound is the sound of creation. In the upper left hand is a tongue of flame, a reminder that the universe, now newly created, will billions of years from now be utterly destroyed.
These profound and lovely images are, I like to imagine, a kind of premonition of modern astronomical ideas.
The episode was also partly shot in India. He also reiterated the same views in an interview with an Indian diplomat back when the original series was aired.
But the main reason that we oriented this episode of COSMOS towards India is because of that wonderful aspect of Hindu cosmology which first of all gives a time-scale for the Earth and the universe — a time-scale which is consonant with that of modern scientific cosmology. We know that the Earth is about 4.6 billion years old, and the cosmos, or at least its present incarnation, is something like 10 or 20 billion years old. The Hindu tradition has a day and night of Brahma in this range, somewhere in the region of 8.4 billion years.
As far as I know. It is the only ancient religious tradition on the Earth which talks about the right time-scale. We want to get across the concept of the right time-scale, and to show that it is not unnatural. In the West, people have the sense that what is natural is for the universe to be a few thousand years old, and that billions is indwelling, and no one can understand it. The Hindu concept is very clear. Here is a great world culture which has always talked about billions of years.
Finally, the many billion year time-scale of Hindu cosmology is not the entire history of the universe, but just the day and night of Brahma, and there is the idea of an infinite cycle of births and deaths and an infinite number of universes, each with its own gods.
There is a statue of the same Nataraja, along with a plaque, at one of the premier scientific institutions of the world, the CERN.
The statue is in itself, mesmerizing, casting an ethereal shadow on the walls of the institute at night as if Shiva has actually descended down from Kailasa.
It celebrates a rare union — Science, and Spirituality.
Shiva is the cosmos — his dance symbolizing the uncountable sub-atomic interactions that make up the pandemonium underlying the appearance of order and logic.
The plaque reads:
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, seeing beyond the unsurpassed rhythm, beauty, power and grace of the Nataraja, once wrote of it “It is the clearest image of the activity of God which any art or religion can boast of.”
More recently, Fritjof Capra explained that “Modern physics has shown that the rhythm of creation and destruction is not only manifest in the turn of the seasons and in the birth and death of all living creatures, but is also the very essence of inorganic matter,” and that “For the modern physicists, then, Shiva’s dance is the dance of subatomic matter.”
It is indeed as Capra concluded: “Hundreds of years ago, Indian artists created visual images of dancing Shivas in a beautiful series of bronzes. In our time, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance. The metaphor of the cosmic dance thus unifies ancient mythology, religious art and modern physics.”
Spanning 4 Vedas, 18 Puranas, 2 epics — the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and umpteen Upanishads, the Hindu mythology is immensely vast. In these books, reside a good portion of human knowledge — morality, war, taxation, law, architecture, Cosmology, Philosophy, Geography.
The origin of the universe, and also the multiverse, is detailed in Linga Purana, dedicated to the destroyer, Lord Shiva, the Mahakaal.
The life of the universe, as noted by Carl Sagan, though billions of solar years, is just one day in the life of Brahma.
“The period of the duration of the Prakrita creation is said to be a day of Brahma. There is a similar period constituting the night. The lord effects creation during day time and dissolution during the night. He has neither a day nor a night (as we understand the terms). The time-duration by day and night is used in a secondary sense.
During the (so-called) day all the Vikrtis — the Visvedevas, the Prajapatis and the sages stay by. During the night all of them are dissolved. They are produced (again) at the end of the night. A day of His constitutes our kalpa, His night too similarly another kalpa. There are fourteen Manus by the time a thousand sets of four yugas come to a close. O brahmins, the Krta yuga consists of four thousand years. Four hundred, three hundred, two hundred and hundred years respectively constitute the period of transition both at the beginning and end of a yuga.”
The text then dwells in further detail about the ages of the Yugas, the transition period between them. It talks about the length of the Yugas, totaling to 4,320,000 human years. One kalpa (day) of Brahma is equal to thousand of these sets, the night thousands more.
“Thus the duration of the four yugas, without the period of junction and transition totals to three million six hundred thousand human years. If Sandhya periods are included, the set of four ages will consist of four million three hundred and twenty thousand years. A little over seventy one sets of four yugas — Krta, Treta, Dvapara and Kali — constitute a manvantara.” The number of human years in a manvantara are thirty crures six million and seven hundred and twenty thousand, O excellent brahmins. The period of a manvantara, according to this Purana, is not more than this.
The number of years in one set of four yugas have been mentioned earlier. O excellent brahmins, a thousand such sets of four yugas constitute a kalpa (of Brahma).
During Brahma’s night the creatures perish; at the end of the night they are created again. There are twenty-eight crores of gods who move in aerial chariots.”
In essence, a full day-night cycle of Brahma, with the day representing creation (or expansion / the Big Bang), and the night representing the destruction (or contraction / the Big Crunch), comes to 2000 sets of 4.32 million years, or about 8.64 billion years.
This is the age of one universe, after which a new one begins.
The concept of time dilation is mentioned in Canto 9 of the Bhagavata Purana/Srimad Bhagavatam.
Kakudmî took his daughter Revatî to Brahmâ’s abode beyond the modes, to ask the Almighty One for a husband for the girl. (30) Because the original teacher of the universe was engaged in enjoying the music of the Gandharvas he had no time for him at all, but as soon as it was over Kakudmî, after offering his obeisances, could submit his desire to him. (31) The all-powerful Lord had to laugh about what he heard and said to him: ‘Alas, oh King, whosoever you had in mind [as a suitable husband for your daughter] has disappeared a long time ago! (32) We do not hear anymore about them nor about their sons, grandsons, descendants or dynasties because [while you were waiting here] a period of three times nine mahâ-yugas has passed!
Kakudmi waited for what would have been minutes or hours in the presence of Brahma, but in the material world, many yugas had passed.
And finally, the multi-layered concept of annihilation and rebirth of the universe is unique to Hinduism.
यदा यदा हि धर्मस्य ग्लानिर्भव- ति भारत ।
अभ्युत्थान- मधर्मस्य तदात्मानं सृजाम्यहम्- ॥
परित्राणाय- साधूनां विनाशाय च दुष्कृताम्- ।
धर्मसंस्था- पनार्थाय सम्भवामि युगे युगे ॥
The above 4 lines might just be the most memorable from all of Bhagvat Gita.
The essence of the lines is as follows: “Whenever dharma or righteousness is on a decline in this world, and adharma or evil is on the rise, taking over the souls of men, I will descend to the earthly plane, as another of my avatars. For the protection of what is good, and the destruction of what is evil, for the re-establishment of dharma, I will do so in every yuga or era.”
Lord Vishnu is the preserver. He is what nourishes the world. The world was borne of Brahma and handed over to Vishnu who is charged with its upkeep for the length of an entire day in the life of Brahma. His is the world for the “twelve” hours. And it is during this time that he takes on various forms, be it the chimeric Narsimha, the dreaded Kalki, or the charismatic Krishna. He does so to restore the balance, to course correct.
He is the cosmic balance. Indeed, as Kalki, he will put on one last effort to restore harmony and equilibrium, but even that won’t suffice.
As he was handed the universe by Brahma at the break of dawn, he will pass it on to the most terrifyingly mesmerizing aspect of the Trinity, Lord Shiva the Destroyer, when night falls.
During the next 12 hours of what would be Brahma’s night, Mahakaal, will do what you have stated — utterly annihilate everything reducing the universe to nothing but the primordial matter from whence it was born and transferred back to Brahma, who will create a new one again at the beginning of his next day from the remnants of the last one.
The four yugas see the increasing influence of evil, despite being checked by Lord Vishnu time and again. Greed, lust, envy, vanity take over. Man starts to demolish nature for his own pleasure instead of living in harmony with it. Natural calamities like torrents, floods, and droughts become more frequent.
The lifespan of men starts to decrease. Medicinal plants start to disappear.
Even the Vedas, which until Treta, the second yuga, was a single book, needs to be broken down into four at the beginning of the third age, the Dwapar yug.
Imagine a day in your life.
You wake up in the morning, refreshed and brimming with energy. As the day goes by, you get more tired. Your speed slows down. You occasionally try to correct things by taking a bath or having a cold drink. But the respite is momentary. By dusk, you are exhausted. Finally, in the embrace of the dark night, you retire to sleep. During this period, the lethargy of your body slowly dissipates, the accumulated toxins in your system are flushed out, your brain sort of cools down. You wake up the next morning, with the same energy and passion as the day before, and the cycle starts anew.
Similar is the cosmic day. The world is born. It slowly corrupts, despite repeated attempts by Vishnu to correct everything. At the end of Kali Yuga, Kalki cleanses all evil and the yuga-chakra begins again. The human night can be seen as the end of Kali Yuga.
The spiritual master of all the moving and nonmoving living beings, Lord Vishnu, the Supreme Personality and Controller of All, takes birth for the protection of the religion and to put an end to the karma of the saintly souls.
In the village of S’ambhala Lord Kalki will appear in the home of the great soul, the eminent brahmin Vishnuyas’â [‘the glory of Vishnu’]. Mounting His swift horse Devadatta, the Lord of the Universe endowed with His sword, transcendental qualities and eight mystic opulences [siddhis], will subdue the reprobates. With speed traveling the earth on His horse He, unrivaled in His splendor, will slaughter the thieves dressing as kings by the millions.
When all the robbers have been killed, the minds of all the residents of the towns and cities will clear up who came in touch with the breeze carrying the most sacred fragrance of the [with sandalwood paste] decorated body of Lord Vâsudeva. When Vâsudeva, the Supreme Lord, is situated in their hearts in the transcendental form of His goodness, the production of offspring will be abundant.
After the Supreme Lord Kalki, the Lord and Master of Dharma, has incarnated, Satya-yuga will begin and progeny will be created in the mode of goodness . The moment the sun and the moon together with Jupiter [Bhrihaspatî] in the same constellation [of Karkatha or Cancer] enter the lunar mansion of Tishyâ Satya-yuga [Krita] will begin.
However, even this is not definitive. After a thousand such cycles, even the remnants of evil after every cleansing by Kalki would remain. A night’s rest won’t serve the purpose anymore.
This is when Shiva steps in. He is the Nullifier. He becomes Death — the ultimate human liberator, cleansing everything accumulated in one’s lifetime — joy, grief, pain, fatigue.
This is the Tandava, the celestial dance of destruction. But it is not “destruction” in the unwelcome sense. Just the end of a cycle that will weave seamlessly into the beginning of the next. The destruction provides the impetus for the next round of creation. Like the mythical phoenix, it is not annihilation, but renewal.
This is when all evil will truly be wiped from the face of the Earth, the cosmic stopwatch resets, and a new day dawns.
But even this is just the second stage.
There are four types of annihilation mentioned in the Bhagavata Purana — constant, occasional, material, and final.
The constant annihilation occurs, well…constantly. Through the cycle of human birth and death.
At every moment time invisibly transforms the bodies of all created beings and all other manifestations of matter. This process of transformation causes the living entity to undergo the constant annihilation of birth and death.
The occasional annihilation happens during Brahma’s night (the end of the present universe).
During his night Brahmā sleeps, and the three planetary systems meet destruction; this is the naimittika, or occasional, annihilation.
The material annihilation transpires after a hundred years of the Brahma when everything is erased from existence, including the very elements that make up the universe.
When Brahmā’s life span of one hundred years is finished, there occurs the prākṛtika, or total material, annihilation. At that time the seven elements of material nature, beginning with the mahat, and the entire universal egg composed of them are destroyed.
The final annihilation is spiritual, equivalent to the attainment of Nirvana. The ultimate freedom from the chains of the material world.
When a person achieves knowledge of the Absolute, he understands factual reality. He perceives the entire created universe as separate from the Absolute and therefore unreal. That is called the ātyantika, or final, annihilation (liberation).


Mission Statement & Vision
Research is the core of our academic activities and forms the basis on which teaching and knowledge exchange stand. It is the way we generate new knowledge, explore and develop new concepts and ideas. It is the powerhouse of new ground-breaking discoveries driven by curiosity, the need to go beyond our limits and to solve existing and future problems.
Aerospace Centre of Excellence in the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at the University of Strathclyde develops frontier research on innovative concepts and solutions for present and future space systems, aerospace transport, space exploration, satellite applications and the sustainable exploitation and exploration of space.
The research in the Aerospace Centre has a target horizon of more than 50 years in the future while deploying practical solutions, over a wide range of Technology Readiness Levels (from TRL0 to TRL6), to respond to the needs of today.
The major areas of development are: astrodynamics and mission analysis, remote sensing, space systems engineering, computational intelligence, hypersonics and computational fluid dynamics, theorectical aeroscience, aerospace propulsion, aerospace structures, access to space, multidisciplinary design and concurrent engineering, uncertainty treatment and optimisation, machine learning.


SAMODZIELNA PRACOWNIA INFORMACJI OBRAZOWEJ
Marek Ostrowskitel. kom. (+48) 602 760031
TRACES OF VISITORS FROM OUTER SPACE
There are only 16 places in the world where meteorites are known to have hit the Earth and only two of them are in Europe. One of them and the only one in Poland is the reserve in Morask close to Poznan. The depressions in the tree cover reflect mini-craters after the fall of a meteorite about 5 thousand years ago. At present they are filled with water. The largest crater has a diameter of 60 m and is 11 m deep.
|© 2024 SAMPER / SCI-ART


A great hero leaves behind a proud legacy
"That's one small step for ... man, one giant leap for mankind."
- Neil Armstrong, July 20, 1969
With those now-immortal words initially heard by hundreds of millions of viewers back on earth, the world learned one of humanity's greatest challenges had been accomplished - that a human being had finally set foot upon the moon.
On Saturday, Aug. 25, 2012, astronaut Neil Armstrong, the man who uttered those words, took the ultimate leap into the unknown, dying at the age of 82. But he leaves behind a legacy that will never be forgotten.
For those who weren't around in the late 50s and 1960s, it was a most exciting time indeed. The space race was in full swing between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., and the world waited with baited breath to see which side would be the first to step forth upon the lunar surface.
It had been mankind's dream to go to the moon ever since it was discovered that it was a nearby celestial body - our closest neighbor in the solar system. But although authors such as Jules Verne and H. G. Wells wrote classical tales of such undertakings, it remained little more than a dream for many centuries, due to technical limitations.
Then rocketry was developed in the early part of the 20th century, a technology that was given a substantial boost during World War II. After the war, it became apparent to scientists and the public that space flight would soon change from speculation to reality - probably within a generation.
This was given a huge boost when the Soviet Union announced that it had placed the first man-man satellite - Sputnik I - into orbit around the earth back in 1957. It was the height of the Cold War, and U.S. pride was stung by the fact that the Russians had gotten into space first. The only answer possible was to research, test and build furiously, in the hopes we could catch up and surpass the opposition, and become the first nation to send a man to the moon.
In the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy predicted that the U.S. would have a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Sadly, Kennedy did not live to see his prediction come to pass, but the late president's ambition and drive were among the factors that kept us going through all the trials and tribulations of those formative years.
There was the Mercury program, which saw Alan Shepard as the first American in space; as well as John Glen as the first U.S. astronaut to circle the globe three times. These and many other accomplishments thrilled the American public, as we edged closer and closer to the ultimate goal. But it remained a real nail biter right up until the end.
As the 60s started to wind down, it became apparent that the U.S. was getting close - very close. The Apollo program had been initiated by NASA, and each successful mission demonstrated that the moon was coming within our grasp. The Apollo 8 mission had sent a crew which had successfully flown around the moon, but not landed.
In 1969, NASA announced that Apollo 11 would be the first moon shot. That summer, everyone waited and wondered. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins were picked to man the mission. Armstrong and Aldrin flew in a special lander to the lunar surface, while Collins remained behind as pilot of the mother ship, Columbia. On July 20, at 20:17 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), the lunar lander touched down, and a few hours later Armstrong emerged from the ship and
stepped onto the moon's surface. What made things even more thrilling was it was the first time in history such a major human accomplishment had been televised, with approximately 450 million people viewing the history-making event. Buzz Aldrin would step out of the lunar lander about 20 minutes later, making him the second man to walk on the moon.
All told, the two men would spend about two-and-a-half hours exploring the lunar surface before returning to the ship, and ultimately the earth with Mike Collins.
Following the Apollo 11 mission, Armstrong chose not to return to space, opting instead to retire from NASA in 1971 and pursue other interests. Armstrong tended to avoid the limelight, living quietly and modestly until his death on Saturday. He declined to make money off his name, and became upset with a number of people when he learned they had attempted to do so without his knowledge or permission. Yet he was always willing to join in celebrations of the success of the Apollo program, because of the triumph it represented to NASA and the American people.
Perhaps the best way to sum up Neil Armstrong's legacy is to examine those words he spoke over 40 years ago as he stepped on the moon's surface. He did not say this was a triumph of American know-how. He did not say, "Hey folks, we won," referring to the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Instead he said, "...and one giant leap for mankind." When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon it represented one of the greatest triumphs for every man, woman and child - past, present and future.
One of the greatest giants of the space age has passed on and is now a part of the sea of history which is the fate of all mankind. Let us hope that mankind will continue to honor Neil Armstrong's legacy and pursue the pioneer spirit in which he and others have blazed the trails for the rest of us to follow.


Each session runs for 45 minutes.
We Cater For up to 40 participants per session.
The program is set in a mobile planetarium theatre which we bring to your venue. The program has three parts:
Featuring incredible 3D simulations, a fulldome movie, and immersive media, participants are transported into deep space as we journey from Earth to the moon, through the solar system and into deep space.
On our expedition we will gain some important perspective. We will learn to see the world from the perspective of NASA astronauts and come to appreciate how precious and rare our only home – planet earth – is.
In addition to exploring the solar system, planets, moons, Kuiper Belt and deep space, we will experience the enormity and unfathomable scale of the universe which can make us feel rather small and insignificant here on our minute speck called Earth. In contrast, inspired by the vision of the Google Lunar X Prize, we will be inspired to dream BIG and to imagine ourselves as change makers with the potential to make a BIG difference.
The Space: To set up our planetarium dome, we need a space with a clearance of at least 25 feet in width and length as well as a clearance of 13 feet height. Most social halls, lunch rooms, gyms and auditoriums are sufficient. We also strongly suggest that the space provided is not shared by other activities.
Air Conditioning: Please keep the room at a low AC temperature to help keep the dome cool. If you do not have an AC option please inform us beforehand.
Power Outlet: We require power to operate our planetarium and projection system.
Supervision: A big part of maintaining a controlled and overall successful program environment is to ensure that we have support from teachers, counselors and staff in ensuring that the program flows well and that the participants are able to follow the program instructions.
Due to the sensitive nature of the equipment, the Cosmic IQ program is designed to take place indoors.
An outdoor set up requires special preparation. Please contact us in advance if you have any questions about the setup location of your program. We will do our best to accommodate.
Please try and make accommodations for us to be able to offload our equipment and pack down after the program is complete. Because we will be bringing large and heavy equipment for the program, we request that the easiest possible offloading point and elevators (freight or regular) be made available to us.
It is also very helpful for us to be provided a parking space in situations where parking is limited or difficult to find. If parking is unavailable and we need to pay for a parking space, we will submit receipts to you to cover the parking expenses.
We are aware that each program setting is going to be different. If you have a specific situation or space which requires special arrangements, we will do our utmost to accommodate you as best we can. Please feel free contact us with any questions, comments, or concerns at email@example.com or on 201 735 9222.
Cosmic IQ was a wonderful experience for our children. All age groups from Kindergarten to 8th Grade really enjoyed themselves. The experience was fun, provided plenty of knowledge, and was a new adventure for them.
Sivan Ben-Aderet – Samuel Field YM&YWHA
“The girls LOVED the program. The staff of Cosmic IQ were very easy to work with. Set up and breakdown took no time at all and they were amazing with the kids.”
Andrea Apruzzese – Saint Dominic Academy – Jersey City, NJ


Sunday, August 13, 2017
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- With the total solar eclipse right around the cosmic corner, eye doctors are going into nagging overdrive.
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Simplicity is beauty and complexity is art. If it’s simple and it’s complex, it’s beauty and art. That’s what Degaran told us as he submitted his work of art. Degaran is a 3-legged alien who was left behind on Earth during their space exploration in the year 105 (Earth Year). Degaran told us that it’s year 983,491,510 in the planet Nebukonosis. His planet of origin and of birth. Now he’s still here on Earth exploring and traveling everyday. Check out his blog to know more about him.
Read the rest of this entry »


Space exploration tech has always captured the imagination of people, from the youngest to the most mature. From the first satellite to landing on distant planets and other celestial bodies.
Usually, they learn about these topics through the tools and innovations used in space exploration. Then, in this way, people around the world can expand their understanding of the universe.
Working Concept of Space Exploration Tech
The way this technology works and the amazing processes that allow us to reach the stars are as follows:
Space exploration begins with the launch of a spacecraft into orbit. The technologies that support the launch system include powerful rockets like the Saturn V or Falcon 9.
In addition, both systems generate enough thrust to overcome Earth’s gravity. The rocket carries the spacecraft and its payload into space, where it can continue its journey.
Once in space, the propulsion system keeps the spacecraft on its trajectory. Meanwhile, common propulsion methods include chemical rockets, ion propulsion, and nuclear propulsion.
Then, this space exploration tech will assist chemical rockets in burning fuel to generate thrust. Meanwhile, ion propulsion uses electric fields to accelerate ions as propulsion.
In short, while nuclear propulsion is not widely used, it has the potential to provide high efficiency and long-range capabilities.
Navigation and Guidance
The next space exploration tech works as navigation and guidance systems. Spacecraft rely on sophisticated navigation and guidance systems to stay on course. These systems use celestial landmarks, star trackers, and technologies like GPS to determine their position and adjust their trajectory as needed.
Communication with Earth is essential for space exploration. Spacecraft use powerful transmitters and receivers to send and receive data.
Space missions often rely on large antennas on Earth, such as NASA’s Deep Space Network, to maintain a stable connection. This space exploration tech is the most important of all.
Spacecraft need power sources for their systems and also instruments. Solar panels are usually used to capture sunlight and convert it into electricity. Some missions, such as those to space, rely on nuclear generators, such as the Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG), which converts heat from the decay of radioactive isotopes into electricity.
Finally, there are space telescopes, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, placed in orbit above Earth’s atmosphere. These are then useful for observing celestial objects without distortion caused by atmospheric disturbances. These telescopes have provided stunning images and important data about distant galaxies and cosmic phenomena.
Technologies and Advancements in Space Exploration
- Spacecraft and Probes
These are vehicles specifically designed for space travel. They can be crewed (manned) or uncrewed (robotic). Examples include the Apollo spacecraft, the Mars rovers like Curiosity and Perseverance, and the Voyager probes.
Rockets are the primary means of launching spacecraft into space. Developments in rocket technology have led to more efficient and powerful launch vehicles, such as the SpaceX Falcon 9 and NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS).
- Propulsion Systems
Advances in propulsion systems have made it possible to reach distant destinations in space. Ion propulsion, nuclear propulsion, and solar sails are some of the emerging technologies in this field.
- Space Suits
These specialized suits provide life support for astronauts in the harsh environment of space. Modern space suits are highly advanced, offering protection from extreme temperatures and radiation.
- Space Telescopes
Instruments like the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope allow astronomers to observe distant celestial objects with incredible clarity, advancing our understanding of the universe.
Space exploration tech is constantly evolving and also pushing the boundaries of human knowledge. With each mission, we uncover new mysteries of the universe, paving the way for future discoveries and innovations. As technology advances, our ability to explore and also understand the cosmos will continue to expand, giving us a glimpse into the vast wonders of the universe beyond our planet.


!!! NOTICE !!! Advanced Rocketry 1.12.2-2.0.0 WILL break placed machines and existing configs!!!
Advanced Rocketry is a mod about exploration and exploitation of other worlds and planets:
- Mine and explore planets and moons within solar systems and travel to them via your own custom built rockets rockets and warp ships.
- Build space stations and look down on any planet from above.
- Build custom rockets where your choices of parts matter.
Documentation and update log: http://arwiki.dmodoomsirius.me/
Requires LibVulpes to run!
Warning: The alpha builds of the mod are unstable, likely to have bugs, and likely to have things changed frequently: you have been warned.
- Minecraft version and mod version MUST be included in the report
- If the game crashes to desktop then a crash report must be included
- Loaders other than forge are not supported, so if you have something like thermos/MCPC installed, try to replicate the issue with only forge
- If there are mods other than AR installed, test without those mods before submitting a request unless the other mod is directly related to the issue at hand and AR is suspected to be the cause of the problem.
I've reached a point where I am spending more time just trying to figure out if something was actually an issue than actually solving problems or adding new features. So I unfortunately have to put this information out there, and regretfully, if the relevant information is not present, the issue will be closed so that issues with the required information available can get fixed in a timely manner.
Current features implemented:
- Modular rockets
- Asteroid mining missions
- Multiblock machines to create parts.
- Supports FE, EU, and GTEU
- Satellites (Data Sats.)
- Space Stations
- Multiple solar systems
- XML planet specification ( see http://arwiki.dmodoomsirius.me/AdvancedRocketry/config/AdvancedPlanetConfiguration.php )
- Custom recipes via XML
Stance on modpack inclusion:
Feel free to use the mod without express permission!
Have any suggestions? leave me a comment down below!
Comments have been disabled for the time being. please Join our discord.
Textures by Proxy_Player: https://minecraft.curseforge.com/projects/advanced-rocketry?page=37#c667


Travis S. Taylor—"Doc" Taylor to his friends—is the author of Warp Speed, The Quantum Connection, and the forthcoming One Day on Mars for Baen. He has a Doctorate in Optical Science and Engineering, a master's degree in Physics, a master's degree in Aerospace Engineering, all from the University of Alabama in Huntsville; a master's degree in Astronomy from the University of Western Sydney, and a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from Auburn University.
Dr. Taylor has worked on various programs for the Department of Defense and NASA for the past sixteen years. He's currently working on several advanced propulsion concepts, very large space telescopes, space-based beamed energy systems, and next generation space launch concepts. In his copious spare time, Doc Travis is also a black belt martial artist, a private pilot, a SCUBA diver, races mountain bikes, competed in triathlons, and has been the lead singer and rhythm guitarist of several hard rock bands.


Yes, i believe intelligent life exists outside of our planet/solar system
yes, but i donīt think more than just fungus
no, i believe we are alone and theres nothing out there
Let's start from the beginning with ancient civilizations, Where they had their gods and their traditions to explain life on earth. Like throw people inside vulcanos and other stuff just to please the gods and bring more ducks to the hunting season, or bring rain. Now we know the courses of duck migrations and the year's seasons.
One day we will stop being so naiv, stupid and egocentric pricks. And I'm not afraid of saying these words, cause GOD forgives good people and consider myself one. =P
In a couple hundred years or thousands years I believe there will be no religions.
People are just getting smarter.
Why do we have religion? To calm us not to think in our death and not to remember us why we are so pathetic and insignificant.
Just think in how many planets and galaxies there are, If you start counting now you won't finish in your lifetime.It's like playing in a giganitc lottery with all the possible combinations except for one (example: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7). And that one combination becomes the winning ticket. Very unkickely.
I'm sure there is intelligent life somewhere else.
I believe they have the technology to play crysis with maximum settings.
I hope there is, but right now, there's as much proof of alien life as there is about God.
CruZZ_3D , there is more proof about alien life than GOD, alien life can be proved, and statistically it is far more probable than GOD. Scientists believe there was life on Mars before, a long long time ago. A planet right next to us.
I would go even further, I would say that on a basis of probability there's a slight probability that somewhere in the universe there's another blue planet with water and Homo sapiens capable of doing math. Think about it, the conditions we had in our solar system to begin life could have happened anywhere else in the imense universe, something like a parallel universe, and again I state, where they probably can play Crysis with current gen GPUs.
Sorry for the Crysis joke, but to me it never gets old =P
Last edited by axis09; 01-15-2009 at 01:49 PM.
I think they are not here because they don't know we exist, nor do they know our location or have the technology to get here in less than a million years, but the most valid point is they do know us, and that is why they remain far away. =P
That e-penis stuff is why they won't come, they have gone beyond that, that's why I think they are a far far superior race. They have admitted the GTX295 is better than the 4870X2 a long time ago, just because they don't use the invisible setting 8xAA, silly bastards.
(just trying to get someone out of his cave, let's see if it works)
I'm not saying there isn't other life out there, and there "probably" is, but so far, we haven't the tiniest iota of conclusive proof. Unless you want to count Mars Attacks, then we're just screwed.
The other thing of course is the probability that life on earth coinciding with life somewhere else in the universe. We are looking back in time with our telescopes. What is a lifeless galaxy from our telescope perspective could be teaming with intelligent life currently. By the time our transmissions arrive at said galaxy, the whole cycle of life could have been played out and no one is there to receive them. From single cell, to what we consider intelligent beings, to a planet wiped out by any number of things.
Our position in the time line is incomprehensibly small.
Last edited by canberraKarter; 01-15-2009 at 04:19 PM.


Happy Matariki! Celebration of the true beginning of the New Zealand year begins this month with the heliacal rising of the beautiful constellation of Matariki! The first sighting of Matariki (the Pleiades) in the dawn sky signals that the shortest day and the southern Winter solstice have passed. Just like the European calendar that begins shortly after the northern Winter solstice (21 December), our traditional Māori lunar calendar begins shortly after the southern Winter solstice. This month is packed with New Year’s events: http://www.matarikiwellington.org, http://www.matarikifestival.org.nz
Māori and the languages of the Pacific are a cornerstone of the work we carry out at the Translation Service and I hope you also enjoyed Samoan Language Week at the end of last month, celebrating the Samoan language and culture which have become a major part of the cultural tapestry of New Zealand.
In this month’s newsletter, Sandrine will report to us on the translator training course she attended at Auckland University along with Stefan, who have worked together with Claire on a project to help develop the skills and knowledge of our translators.
Happy reading, happy translating and happy Matariki!


Supermoon, First Day Of Summer 2013 Features Awesome Night Sky
The first day of summer 2013 is marked by another thing of which we Earth dwellers can’t seem to get enough, which together with the summer thing is a perfect excuse for a Supermoon party. The first day of summer’s Supermoon sounds like one of those overblown sky phenomenons we hear about every few weeks, but the event is a genuine if subtle one.
The moon will be biggest and brightest to human eyes tonight, inspiring the Supermoon moniker, so it’s not doing any tricks for us per se. If your first day of summer plans involve Supermoon pics, LiveScience spoke with a photographer who tells us why moon pictures, for lack of a better word, generally suck.
Noting that a long lens and tripod are essential for moon pics, Mrachina says that if you plan on taking Instagram Supermoon pics with your iPhone or Android, you’re going to have a bad time:
"If you take the photo with a camera phone, or a wide-angle point-and-shoot without an optical zoom, you’re going to be unhappy because the moon is going to look tiny in the image. With too wide of an angle, you don’t get much of the moon to fill the frame."


Last Journey of the Endeavour
This week, the space shuttle Endeavour travelled across the U.S. to its final destination of Los Angeles, where it will be on display as a part of the California Science Center.
The Endeavour completed 25 missions, spent 299 days in orbit and orbited the Earth 4,671 times while travelling 122,883,151 statute miles. The fleet was retired last summer, with NASA’s focus shifting towards destinations beyond low-Earth orbit, including manned missions to Mars. Can I come too?
The space shuttle was bolted onto a Boeing 747 for transport. This ferry flight will be the last of the space shuttle era, capping nearly 35 years of shuttles riding atop modified 747s.
Wonderful photographs of the transport have been posted all over the Internet – click on the thumbnails below to go to the original full-sized photographs.
Beautiful. I’m sad to see her go.


The Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) are a very crucial component of Space Shuttle flight. They are a pair of large solid rockets used by the United States’ NASA Space Shuttle during the first two minutes of powered flight. They can be found on either side of the orange colored external propellant tank. Each one produces 80% more liftoff thrust than the engine on Rocketdyne’s F-1 rocket engine. SRBs are the largest solid fueled rockets ever flown. Once the Space Shuttle releases them and they fall in the ocean by parachute, they are recovered refurbished, reloaded with propellant, and reused for several missions.
A Space Shuttle External Tank (ET) is the component of the Space Shuttle launch vehicle that contains the liquid hydrogen fuel and liquid oxygen oxidizer. The external tank can be found between the pair of rocket boosters. The ET is the largest element of the Space Shuttle. It consists of three major components: the forward liquid oxygen (LOX) tank; an unpressurized intertank that contains most of the electrical components; and the aft liquid hydrogen (LH2) tank. Over the years, NASA has tried to reduce the weight of the tank in order to be allowed more cargo-carrying capability, and they have been successful in doing so.
To all those who have worked on manufacturing the SRBs and ET: congratulations! Your achievements in rocket technology have helped the United States reach new heights in space exploration and gain new knowledge and insights from data collected during each Space Shuttle mission that you made possible. May you carry on our tradition of space exploration with your latest rocket designs that will bring the next generation of scientists, engineers, and researchers to outer space.


I used a new die and stamp set coming out in the SU catalog, Sleigh Ride Edgelits and Jingle All the Way. I love sleigh rides and I love being out in the snow at night so I decided to combine those 2 things. I also did a very subdued Northern Lights technique. Living in Alaska I'm lucky to be able to see "the lights" quite often and I don't think people realize that the aurora can be a very dark green in the night sky, especially when it is just starting to appear or when it is fading. I know most images capture the bright waves of green, purple and magenta. Personally, I love the dark green bands that let me know the sky is starting to awaken!
I differed from the sketch just slightly by having my center sloping but I still have the 2 different sections like the sketch so hopefully that counts!
Thanks for stopping by!
Here is just an example of the difference in intensity you can see with the aurora. These were taken in March of this year while I was on my lunch break at work, and then a few hours later after work. You can see in the first photo how much darker the lights are but in the second one they are pretty darn vibrant, really standing out even against all the light pollution from the football field and the back parking lot.
Stamps: Jingle All the Way
Paper: Night of Navy, Whisper White(Thick CS)
Ink: Cucumber Crush, Night of Navy,
Accessories: Big Shot, Sleigh Ride Edgelits


RSBANDBUpdate! 215 – The RSBandB Moon Colony
posted by Shane on 1st August 2009, at 6:05pm
For the first time since April 2006 we have the (almost) the entire mod panel on the show. With this full house we debate whether to set up a colony on the Moon or Mars first, also just how it would be set up.
Direct Download – 64 Kbit MP3
Hosts: Shane, Mike, King Kulla, Paul, Trekkie, Jeff, Chief Snake
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India’s First ‘ Astro Resort’ near “Sariska Tiger Reserve”
While planning Our holiday to Sariska what was on our mind was just the ‘ Tigers’. As we had planned the holiday with an intention to visit the Sariska Tiger Reserve so that we could get lucky to encounter the Tigers living in the premises of Sariska Tiger Reserve which were 13 in number at that time and the year. But we got the most wonderful surprise when we got to know about the place our stay had been planned is a one of its kind. It was the Astroport India’s first Astro Resort.
The astronomy resort site which was barely 5km from Sariska National Park (200 km from Delhi and 115 km from Jaipur), in one of the darkest regions of India far from city lights was sure a place to rejoice. With very little light pollution, you have the stunning night sky all to yourself. A trained educator helped us navigate the gazillion stars through telescopes, sky charts and other specialised equipment.Kids enjoyed gazing at the stars and the moon through the eye of a telescope. It was a thrilling experience as it was a first-hand experience for most of us. Sessions on astrophotography, telescope making, zodiac were also part of the experience. A bonfire along with some local dance and music was the icing on the cake to complete our night at this beautiful and unique place. During the day, we had signed up for rock climbing, bird watching, camel safari and of course our visit to the Sariska Tiger Reserve.
Accommodation is in the form of Swiss tent cottages , with en suite bathrooms, or the more Spartan pitchable tents. The surroundings of the place are calm and beautiful. One must not miss the early morning walk in the resort campus and you will get to see many beautiful birds poaching around in the vegetation grown within the resort. One gets to eat these farm fresh organic vegetables grown here by the in house staff of the Astroport resort.
Safari at Sariska
We had chosen the early morning safari to explore the Sariska Tiger Reserve. The experience of roaming around in an open gypsy within the rserve was thrilling to the core. As our drive inside the boundary area of the reserve started so started the glimpses of some beautiful wild creatures like different kinds of deers, Neelgai, peackocks which were in abundance and so beautiful. Our luck favoured us as we were lucky enough to have our first major encounter with a leopard. Who gave us stern glares as if challenging us to catch him while he crossed our road and climbed up the hill ahead of us. after going more deep inside the Tiger reserve it was time to wait for our bigger encounter with’ The Tiger’ . We were told by the forest guards on duty there that two of them are nearby ( As these guards have the locations of the tigers thru the tracking devices ). We had to wait for quite sometime before one of the tigers came down from behind the bushes. It was moving with such a grace and confidence at the same time. the face off with the tiger was thrilling and fulfilling at the same time. Though it did not like to stay for longer in front of us in our case but the short encounter with the Tiger was quite a memorable one.


ANTON HAARDT GALLERY - Quote of
"Some people say the sun is a big ball of fire. Some
people say the moon is water. I don't know. I don't know about God's
creation. See, I only sees it. It's the light of the world to me. The
sun look like the light of the world and the moon look like the night
light. That's how it look to me. And the stars? The stars are just
hanging in the sky."
- Juanita Rogers, 1982 -
Copyright © 1998-2002 ANTON
All Rights Reserved.


To make a sky map, enter … Jupiter The Sun is at the large orange dot at the center of this Permalink Notice: Night Sky for Los Angeles, USA. Stars within 100 ly The Sun is at the large orange dot at the center of this three-dimensional atlas of the Universe.
Gas and Ice Giants
The sky map shows the entire sky as viewed from a given location current position and plot it on the map. © Dominic
 All of these objects are currently moving in the Local Bubble, a region within the Orion–Cygnus Arm of the Milky Way. Horizon Views, showing the stars above the Dwarf Planets The viewing direction (azimuth) may be set Some 53 stellar systems beyond our own, the Solar System, currently lie within … date and time. Other related resources on this site are: All of these packages and more can be located from my Once the view zooms out to contain both the Sun and the center of here. The
three-dimensional atlas of the Universe. 1900–1930: first catalogued. at which it should be aimed in the boxes below and push the as is the convention for printed star maps. It was first noticed in 1999 using data from the Hipparcos satellite, and was estimated to pass less than 1.3 light-years (0.40 pc) from the Sun in 1.4 million years.
Sky will deliver a map showing the view toward the horizon in the Home Planet, my public domain Many brown dwarfs are not listed by visual magnitude but are listed by near-infrared J band apparent magnitude due to how dim (and often invisible) they are in visible color bands (U, B or V). Visibility deteriorates as the sky gets brighter. About the Map The Milky Way is one of three large galaxies belonging to the group of galaxies called the Local Group which also contains several dozen dwarf galaxies. It displays the locations of the spiral arms, suspected black holes, major dark/bright/planetary nebulae, open star … The
By contrast, the opposite side of the Milky Way may appear In addition to these "true" stars, scientists have identified 11 brown dwarfs (objects not quite massive enough to fuse hydrogen), and four white dwarfs (extremely dense collapsed cores that remain after stars such as our Sun have exhausted all fusable hydrogen in their core and have shed slowly their outer layers). Uranus The positions of deep sky objects were taken from the NGC2000.0 catalog or comet, and a variety of viewing options. Visibility improves as the sunlight fades. XIV. On that reply page you can enter Although predictions can be extrapolated back into the past or forward into the future, they are subject to increasing significant cumulative errors over very long periods. Two temperate Earth-mass planet candidates around Teegarden's Star", "The Solar Neighborhood. manually. The animation is not supported by your device/browser. ORG : DE RU SV KO PT EL EN IT FR HU ES ZH JA PL HE CA NL TR SR Sedna Venus can best be seen in the hours just before sunrise. Night mode. An asterisk (*) denotes a star system that could host at least one rocky coded depending whether they are cool red stars or hot blue ones. Uranus is roughly in the opposite direction of the Sun in the sky, and is, therefore, visible most of the night. Each map is accompanied by Main Asteroid Belt Moon phases visualized in real time, the past or the future. different dates and times, observing locations, viewing directions, “North/South” and “East/West” settings) and flare star, three planets (b, c, and d) (2017), possible flare star, two planets (b) (2014). Your Sky would have been enormously more difficult to implement environmental protection, although microbial life may be able to live on,
E-K Belt & Mercury date, viewpoint, and observing location. You can produce maps in the forms described below for any time and Gradually the view will zoom out, revealing open clusters of stars in our galaxy (red dots), the whole flat disk of the Milky Way with globular clusters of stars around it (purple dots), and then the Local Group of other galaxies around our own (blue dots). Timezone: 37.13°N Purchase Full Size 23” X 35” This a map of the entire Milky Way Galaxy, or at least the rimward half of it at any rate.  It is currently predicted to pass 19,300 ± 3,200 astronomical units (0.305 ± 0.051 light-years) from the Sun in 1.280+0.041−0.039 million years from the present, close enough to significantly disturb the Solar System's Oort cloud. There is a total of 83 known star systems within this distance containing 109 stars and 8 brown dwarfs. Shown below are four of the galaxies in the Local Group. The second-closest object known to approach the Sun was only discovered in 2018 after Gaia's second data release, known as 2MASS J0610-4246.


doing a little happy dance over here... this little piece just flew out of my etsy shop~ it's my 200th sale! i'm pretty excited about that, so a wee little celebration is to be had.... : ) speaking of le shop, i'm loading it up with new prints and ORIGINALS this week! hooray! finally!
we are heading out to watch the Leonid meteor shower tonight! you too? i'm hoping it will be as spectacular as last time around back in 2002. we went up to the country in the middle of the night and saw hundreds and hundreds of falling stars... it was absolutely amazing. fingers crossed that we'll see some tonight! i'll let you know how it goes!
be back later this week...


Remember when you were little and you would make a wish upon the first star seen? Tonight, after dark, go outside and take a look at the night sky in your area. What do you see? Do you see stars? Did you know that city dwellers only see about 3% of the stars in the sky? There are simple and inexpensive steps we can take to help reduce light pollution and restore the beauty of our night sky. Learn more about light pollution and the night sky on our FAQ page.
- Outdoor Living IV Posted on July 13th, 2020
- Outdoor Living III Posted on May 29th, 2020
- Some Light Gardening! Posted on April 29th, 2020
- Back By Popular Demand Posted on March 25th, 2020
- New website and a New Look Posted on September 20th, 2019


I was born in China. I was adopted when I was a year-and-a-half. I'm currently eighteen years old and in community college.
I have been writing since I was five, after my parents bought me my first sketchbook. I live in a remote area, and I haven't been to many places or done many exciting things. I've never traveled, except when coming to the United States as an infant. Writing is my way of escaping, of imagining exciting adventures and getting to experience them as I write.
Besides writing, my favorite hobbies are reading, drawing, watching TV, songwriting, and looking through my dad's telescope.
When a government experiment sends one hundred people from Earth to live on Mars under a dome, Nikola Edakis is excited for his new life. Although his wife Aaralyn is worried about the new difficulties they'll face, no one is prepared when the dome is destroyed and the Edakis and the others are forced to leave Mars. Taking an unused spare rocket, they end up on a distant planet where they meet an alien race called Koestlers, who take them in as prisoners. Will they escape? And if they do, will they return to Earth or find a new home in outer space?


To get an overview of the Voyager program, see this Credo Reference article from the Encyclopedia of the History of Astronomy and Astrophysics. For a more recent update on the position of Voyager 1, see its Wikipedia article--it has since entered interstellar space.
For more about the Golden Record, how it was made, and what else was on it, see NASA's page on the topic. There is also an interactive website where you can view images from and play the record.
A lot of care went into the making of this record. Some people think it may even outlast humanity.
Wherever it ends up, it remains an enduring symbol of the beauty and unity in the diversity of humankind and our world.


Planets align in the North Eastern skies
looking from Sydney's Western suburbs
Pic: Bill Hearne
The alignment of the four planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter, happens only once every 50-100 years and very rarely on Friday 13th. The visual treat was visible just above the horizon around sunrise.
Professor Fred Watson, astronomer-in-charge of the Anglo-Australian Observatory in NSW, said, "Venus is the brightest of all the planets and stunningly bright at the moment. Jupiter (will be) right next to it Friday morning, about half a degree away. Then the other planets, Mercury and Mars, are sort of in accompaniment - Mercury's nearer than Mars is and Mars is the one that is nearest to the horizon at the moment. That's four of the five naked-eye planets all in a fairly close-knit community in the early morning sky. What's special about this one is that they've come together in such a tight grouping."
Astrologer Douglas Parker believes the alignment has the power to influence behaviour and emotions down on Earth. He says his horoscope chart shows the four planets are actually very close to each other for about a week. "Jupiter and Venus together indicates people born around this time will have film-star mannerisms, be extremely popular and have considerable artistic ability," he said.
And, he says, it gets better. "Venus and Mars together in the sky indicates people born around this time will have a strong sexual magnetism and a strongly sensual nature," he said.
But Professor Watson says the alignment of the planets has no impact on human behaviour. "The whole science community, not just astronomy, tells us that the planets have no direct influence on anything that goes on here on Earth," he said. "The gravitational attraction of the planets, which is the only thing that could make any difference, is far too small to have any effect, unlike the moon which is a small object relatively nearby that does have an effect - it raises tides.
"The ancient tradition of trying to say that planets influence people will take great notice of the alignment of the planets, but from an astronomical and scientific point of view, and might I say from a reasonable point of view, they have no impact whatsoever."
I'm more inclined to believe Professor Watson.
Source: ABC News and The Daily Telegraph


Here we list several web services which may be helpful for doing research with the XMM-Newton data.
TAP (Table Access Protocol) server
TAP server at CDS VizieR allows you to do large scale cross-matches of your source lists with the XMM-Newton catalog (sources table only): 3XMM-DR5, 3XMM-DR6, 3XMM-DR8, 4XMM-DR9, 4XMM-DR11. Alternatively, in a TAP client of your choice (TOPCAT is a very good option) enter service url
http://tapvizier.u-strasbg.fr/TAPVizieR/tap and then use
"IX/46/xmm3r5s" for the 3XMM-DR5 sources table name,
"IX/50/xmm3r6s" for the 3XMM-DR6 sources table name,
"IX/55/xmm3r8s" for the 3XMM-DR8 sources table name,
"IX/59/xmm4r9s" for the 4XMM-DR9 sources table name and
"IX/65/xmm4d11s" for the 4XMM-DR11 sources table name.
The SSC provides another Web interface based on SAADA and named the XCatDB (http://xcatdb.unistra.fr). Its main features are:
- Access by source or by detection
- Multi criteria search
- Search by sky regions
- Online spectrum fitting
- Pointers to the XMMFITCAT products (http://xraygroup.astro.noa.gr/Webpage-prodex/xmmfitcat_access.html)
- Static correlation links with 220 archival catalogues (computed by the pipeline)


We are yet to see space tourism take off, but astronauts travelling to and from the International Space Station has almost become routine in the 48 years since people last set foot on the moon. New players in this space and the latest developments are making space travel in the next ten years increasingly more likely.
In this report, we ask space experts questions like:
- What will human space flight look like in 2030?
- What will it take to make space tourism possible and accessible to more people?
- What are the possible terrestrial benefits that we could get from increased space travel?
Space travellers will go further and space missions will be deeper and longer with advancements in medicine and technology. The space travel we envisage in 2030 means people, who would previously be 'disqualified' as astronauts, will now be fee paying tourists.
Watch the webinar
Space travel will be a collaborative multinational venture.
Zero gravity – new medical conditions and new treatments.
You will know an astronaut.
Living in space will be easier but not easy.
Many will experience space – but not all will go.
The human genome will change to support human deep space exploration.


There is the possibility of cloud coverage obstructing our view yet anticipation has its grip on me anyway. I am like a kid waiting for the gates to open at Disneyland. I love natural phenomena but especially ones dealing with the moon or sun.
I'm grateful for this time with my family. I'm grateful for my friends and family and their generosity to let us camp on their land. I'm grateful to get to witness the eclipse in totality. I'm grateful to get to share this experience with my daughter. I'm grateful for the ability to pre-post this blog knowing that there is slim chance of having service to post from where I actually am as this posts. I'm grateful for what today will bring and the excitement of anticipation.
What is something you are excited about today? Are you able to witness the eclipse first hand?
May today remind us to enjoy the moment. May we allow ourselves the joys of anticipation as we did in youth. Have a beautiful day!


Costa Rica is set to witness its final supermoon of August on Wednesday, August 30, concluding the month with a phenomenon known as a “blue moon.”
The term “blue moon” refers to the infrequent occurrence of two full moons within the same calendar month. This rare event is only possible in months with 31 days. The subsequent “blue moon” is forecasted for December 2024 and won’t reoccur until May 2026.
It’s noteworthy that this celestial event was missing from the skies in both 2021 and 2022. As a result, the August 30 supermoon holds added significance, representing the second supermoon of the month.
A “supermoon” is characterized by its notably enlarged and luminous appearance compared to regular full moons. This is attributed to its close approach to Earth (at perigee) during its elliptical trajectory, aligning with the full moon phase. This proximity makes the moon appear up to 14% larger and 30% brighter than when it’s at its most distant point, known as apogee.
“Moon phases at perigee appear remarkably more distinct than those at apogee, when Earth’s natural satellite is furthest away,” explained Alejandra León-Castellá, science communicator and the director of the CIENTEC Foundation.
For those enthusiastic about experiencing the supermoon in its full glory and capturing exceptional images, the CIENTEC Foundation offers some insights. “As the moon rises above the horizon or descends just before the subsequent sunrise, it can appear larger due to a visual illusion, providing a captivating view,” the Foundation advised.
Moreover, timing is pivotal for photographers. The supermoon will be most prominent at 3:57 p.m. on August 30 and will descend at 5:36 a.m. on August 31, presenting optimal moments for photography.
Another highlight for observers in Costa Rica is the supermoon’s zenith at 7:38 p.m. on Wednesday. At this time, the moon will reach its highest position in the sky, its brilliance reigning over the national landscape.
The supermoon’s imposing magnitude isn’t merely a visual effect. Its proximity to Earth, at roughly 357,344 kilometers, is approximately 7% closer than average, contributing to its grand appearance.
For the most vivid observations, CIENTEC recommends, “Seek out areas with minimal light pollution. This precaution ensures the moon and surrounding stars remain undiminished by man-made lights.”
Source : Ticotimes