Thoughts from a Bafta nominated Podcaster, Blogger, Writer and Commentator.
Just look at Pluto. We built a camera, we threw it into space, and this is what it sent back. Atmosphere, lakes of ‘stuff’, ice mountains, valleys… Zoom in and think what a wonderful world we live in to be able to find another wonderful world.
An interesting week for me, with Apple featuring heavily on the professional side of things, and rather a lot more space/sci-fi/fantasy coming up in my links than normal. You can read about all of that here, unless you’ve already had them sent to you because you signed up to the mailing list! What Have I Been Up To As a tech writer I look on a big Apple event with a mix of christmas morning glee and Kasparov style planning. Pretty much every writer on the planet has the same raw materials (the streamed presentation) and the challenge is to
Using the available data and images, with a bit of computer wizardry and filling in the blanks, Bjorn Jonsson has put together a video interpretation of the Pluto flyby by the ‘New Horizons’ probe. Just stunning. Pluto’s atmosphere is included and should be fairly realistic from about 10 seconds into the animation and to the end. Earlier it is largely just guesswork that can be improved in the future once all data has been downlinked from the spacecraft. Light from Pluto’s satellite Charon illuminates Pluto’s night side but is exaggerated here, in reality it would be only barely visible or
New Horizons wakes up from its slumber. Six weeks until operations against Pluto commence.Warm up the cameras, fire up the spectrograph,on the bounce little trooper. Let’s do some sciencing.
Right then, let’s try a little something here.Since I had my ‘what is this blog for’ discussion a year or two ago, it’s been a place for links, thoughts, and fun things that Iwant to keep track of personally… and there seems to be an audience for it. But it’s been a bit haphazard of late. So in a vain way to try andput some structure in place, and to experiment withemail newsletters and regular digests, here’s the first day of’Trivial Posts’. (Personally I blame James Whatley). Nine Flawed Christmas Baubles OfThe Solar System Just because Plutopretended to be a
Though it was the only one of the Greek/Roman names not directly associated with the mythology regarding the underworld, “Vulcan” won by a landslide in the Pluto Rocks poll to name the two new moons discovered orbiting Pluto… the official final naming selections still need to be made and it might be 1-2 months before moons P4 and p5 become forever known as Vulcan and Cerberus. I await the debate between Star Trek fans and Doctor Who fans about which Vulcan this Vulcan has been named after.
