Carnival of Space 133 with North Pole Mysteries, astronomy and Future space colonization


1. Above is a piece of the 370 megapixel image of 500,000 galaxies.

Phil Plait, the bad astronomer, discusses the huge image just released by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey Deep Field #1, a ginormous mosaic of the night sky.

It covers a solid square degree of sky — 5 times the area of the full Moon — and tips the scale at a whopping 370 megapixels! It took 5 years and several hundred hours of observing time with the 3.6 meter telescope on top of Mauna Kea to get this massive mosaic. The image itself may look cool and all, but the true power comes when you give in to the dark side you use the interactive zoom feature

2.

Cat Dynamics covers the Giant Green Spiral over the north pole and also covers the Case for Pluto as a planet.

3. Universe Today also talks about “What was the Norway Spiral?”

4. “A Solid Look at Sail Technologies” for Centauri Dreams:

This reviews an article that ran in a magazine produced by CUNY — the article covers Greg Matloff’s work on solar sails and also discusses Roman Kezerashvili’s interesting studies of how a sail moving close to the Sun would be affected by General Relativity.

5. Steve’s astrocorner discusses NASA Wise infrared space telescope.

If all goes like the simulations performed at Cal-Tech then dozens of brown dwarfs should be found within 25 light years of Earth. Other items to scan for will be dark asteroids. Dark asteroids present a hazard to Earth in the form of a run in.These asteroids do not reflect light very well and because of this, cannot be picked up in a telescope.There are estimated 100,000 of these Asteroids orbiting undetected. WISE will be able to see these Astro-boulders because they absorb the Sun’s heat and then reflect it in the infrared

6. Alan Boyle’s cosmic log at msnbc has firstly

Spaceship debut causes chills

Hundreds gather at a Mojave Desert airport for the unveiling of SpaceShipTwo, which is likely to be the world’s first commercial spaceship. Those hundreds flee soon after the unveiling, due to a windstorm that sweeps over the airport.

7. Alan Boyle’s cosmic log at msnbc has secondly
From the desert to space

SpaceShipTwo isn’t the only game in town: Mojave is also home to other ventures that are targeting the final frontier, and making money as they do it.

8. Alan Boyle’s cosmic log at msnbc has lastly
Light show sparks UFO buzz

A spectacular light show visible from northern Norway energizes the UFO crowd, but experts determine that the display was actually caused by a failed Russian ballistic missile.

9. A Really Cool Exoplanet from the astroblogger

Discusses the visual discovery of an almost solar system like gas giant around a near duplicate of our sun by the Subaru telescope.

10. Planetaria discusses the new evidence for past life on Mars

11. This week at One-Minute Astronomer… an exclusive interview with world-renowned astrophotographer Jerry Lodriguss. In this interview, you’ll learn the basics of taking a simple but quite lovely photo of the night sky with a digital camera. No telescope required.

12. NASA Chandra X-ray Observatory blog has “Galaxy Collision Switches on Black Hole”

13. Collectspace has design submissions from Astronauts, space workers for NASA’s end-of-shuttle patch contest

14. From “A Babe in the Universe” Direct from Johnson Space Center Building 31, where it all happened, we hear the latest on: “Life From Mars”

In 1996 colleagues discovered signs of life on Martian meteorite ALH84001. The latest paper demolishes competing explanations, making the case for life ever stronger.

15. Weirdwarp looks at various planets and moons and their potential for being terraformed.

16. Simostronomy gives some advice on operating an amateur telescope in cold weather

17. Alice’s Astroinfo has a gift guide

Looking for something for that little (or big) astronomer in your life? Well, if you need a little help, or feel a like the possibilities are too infinite, I’ve gathered together some of my suggestions here.

18. Cheap Astronomy delivers a podcast on the local stellar neighbourhood of our little corner of the Milky Way.

19. TheSpacewriter visits an online multiwavelength explorer.

I mention this a lot in my public talks in various venues: that the sky we see with our eyes isn’t the sum total of the universe that can be detected. I’ll say it again, another way. When you look at the night sky with your eyes, you’re only seeing the universe through a very small window of emissions.

20. Cumbrian Sky looks at Eddington Crater

I’m the Secretary of Kendal’s astronomical Society, the “Eddington Astronomical Society,” and that it is named after the famous astrophysicist Sir Arthur Eddington, who was born here in Kendal in 1882.

21. Cumbrian Sky discusses the Virgin Galactic Spaceship Two

22. Here at nextbigfuture:
Suborbital tourism is a stepping stone to two hour flights around the world which would then lead to large scale orbital and space travel.

23. Still here at nextbigfuture:

Historical colonization and details on the age of sail and how it helps understand how to make appropriately scaled plans to colonize space.

* In the age of sail cross ocean colonization, navies faced off with 150 ships on a side and send fleets of 1-11 ships carrying hundreds per ship to explore and colonize and trade with the newly discovered Americas.

* By the late 16th century American silver accounted for one-fifth of Spain’s total budget.

* In the 16th century “perhaps 240,000 Europeans” entered American ports.

* If (when) there is human settlement of space and if there were parallels to the scale of the settlement of the Americas, then there would be thousands of spaceships capable of carrying hundreds of people at a time for interplanetary and later interstellar travel. The interplanetary capability (out to the Oort comet cloud) would be something like the ships traveling and trading around the mediterranean.

24. And finally, at nextbigfuture this week

Current aircraft can be made comfortable while keeping passenger density up. This relates to future spaceships passenger seating configurations