This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by Stefan Lamoureux at the Links Through Space website, the site of an astronomy club in Kustavi, Finland.
And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to carnivalofspace@gmail.com, and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out, sign up to be a host. Send an email to the above address.
A view of Endeavour and SCA over California from one of NASA’s F/A-18 chase planes (NASA/DFRC)
We’ve shared several videos from Endeavour’s trip to Los Angeles last week, taken by excited spectators along various portions of the flight path, but what was it like for the crews of the two NASA F/A-18 chase planes that accompanied the orbiter and SCA every step of the way?
Watch the video below, and put yourself in the pilot’s seat…
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Plato Crater – Credit: Damian Peach
“Shine on, shine on Harvest Moon… Up in the sky…” Oh! Howdy, fellow SkyWatchers! The seasons are most surely showing their changes in both hemispheres and this week marks the famous “Harvest Moon”. The Moon will very much be in the eyepiece this week, so enjoy some great studies. However, don’t put away your telescopes just yet! Bright skies are a great time to catch up on double star studies and variables. Whenever you’re ready, just meet me in the back yard… [click to continue…]
Plaque on the exterior of Mars Science Laboratory, aka “Curiosity” (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
Curiosity drops a few rather big names in recent images taken with its MAHLI (Mars Hand Lens Imager) camera: here we see a plaque affixed to its surface bearing the names and signatures of U.S. President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Office of Science and Technology Director John Holdren, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and other key figures responsible for making the Mars Exploration Program possible.
You never know… even on another planet it can’t hurt to have friends in high places!
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We’ve written about Uwingu previously, and this creative new concept for creating funding for space exploration and astronomy is now in their final push to reach their Indigogo goal of raising an initial $75,000 through their Indiegogo page (similar to Kickstarter) to get the company going. After that, they hope to be self-sufficient and build enough resources to be a source of grants and funding for space and astronomy research. Indigogo provided the group a rare extension in their funding-raising drive, which now goes through Monday night, September 24 at 11:59PM Pacific Time.
Why Uwingu?
“It seems like every single year there is a funding problem for space researchers and educators, and every year it is something different,” said one the people behind Uwingu, Alan Stern, speaking on Colorado Public Radio. “It’s the economy or Congress or budget overruns, or cuts from the presidential administration, but every year there is a budget battle. … We started to think, what could we do that could make a difference?”
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Photo credit: NASA.
This Saturday September 22, 2012 marks the 3rd annual International Observe the Moon Night (InOMN), when people all over the world will gather to observe the Moon. But what do you do the rest of the year? Luckily, in today’s internet age, there is a great deal of lunar data, from a range of missions, available on-line for you to look at. Also, some great tools have been developed that make data easy to access, put into context, and interpret, giving everyone the power to explore the Moon like a scientist. All you need to do it click on the URL and you’re off…
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Twitter is all abuzz with sightings of a huge fireball meteor that streaked across the skies Friday night at approximately 22:00 UTC. There are reports from Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Central England.
I’m going to link a bunch of videos so you can check out the event from multiple angles, but I want to make a completely unscientific judgement: it kind of looks like a re-entering spacecraft. Take a look at what the Jules Verne spacecraft looked like when it came back into the Earth’s atmosphere. See how it broke up into all those pieces?And don’t let anyone fool you with this picture. It was taken about 3 years ago in the Netherlands.
Phil made a similar observation, but he’s still on the fence. We’ll have to wait for someone official to tell us what it was.
Did you see it? Did you get a video?
I’ll give you an update as soon as I know anything else.
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California was invaded by an unusual flying duo today: the Space Shuttle Endeavour sitting atop a 747 airplane, the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. Above, you can watch it they flew over the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and below are more images and video of the flybys from various locations, including a video by GamerChick5567, who said, “IT FLEW OVER MY HOUSE!!!! 
” Endeavour made its final landing at LAX in Los Angeles, and will be transported to its permanent home at the California Science Center next month.
” Endeavour made its final landing at LAX in Los Angeles, and will be transported to its permanent home at the California Science Center next month.
The rock chosen for the first contact science investigations for the Curiosity rover. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The Mars Science Laboratory team has identified their target for the first full-up contact science investigations using all the instruments attached to the Curiosity rover’s robotic arm. And ‘target’ is the operative word here, as this rock will be shot with Curiosity’s laser to help determine it chemical makeup. Interestingly, it has an unusual pyramid shape, and it was described as a “cool-looking rock sitting out on the plains of Mars,” by MSL project scientist John Grotzinger. But the rock now has a name, and while we don’t know everything about it yet, like its namesake, this rock likely has a very interesting back story.
An impact on Jupiter captured about 6:35 am on Sept. 10, 2012 from Dallas, Texas USA. Credit: George Hall.
A bright flash was spotted on Jupiter early on the morning of September 10, 2012, and astronomers were hoping to later see an impact “scar” which would provide more information about the object that slammed into the giant gas planet. Was it a comet, asteroid or a smaller meteor? But alas, no impact scar or debris field showed up on Jupiter’s face and the nature of this explosion may remain a mystery.
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Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/#ixzz27Olv5S1j
