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Strictly informational posts or posts relating to the site that do not pertain to specific site focuses.

Total Lunar Eclipse – December 21st, 2010

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We have a great treat coming up tonight marking the winter solstice, December 21st starting at very close to 11:30 PM CST (05:29:17 UT to be exact) the Moon will begin its journey through the Earth’s shadow culminating in a spectacular total lunar eclipse.  Visibility will span all of North America and a sizable portion of the Pacific.  Totality begins at 1:40 AM CST (07:40:47 UT) on December 22nd and lasting for a whopping 1 hour, 12 minutes and 21 seconds!

Get out your cameras or even just take some time to walk outside if you’re up in the wee hours of the morning to catch this last great astronomical event of 2010!

If you would like more information on this, please visit NASA’s website for eclipses here: NASA Eclipse Web Site

If you need to find out the corresponding times for viewing the eclipse please visit the following site: Time Zone Conversion

Godspeed Shuttle Discovery & Crew!

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One final leap into the great blue yonder. May your ride be as free from bumps and thumps as much as possible (tall order to fill riding on top of some rockets) and may you safely depart and arrive after your mission is complete. I would love to be on the ground to see this one go up, but unfortunately it isn’t something that’s just not in the realm of possibility.

The crew has made it to Kennedy Space Center and if all goes well should launch into space for one final mission aboard the orbiter Discovery on November 1st around 4:40 PM EDT. Be sure to watch on NASATV

Discovery is the most flown orbiter in the fleet and among a massive repertoire of amazing accomplishments includes the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope and the missions to correct the optics and being the orbiter that returned us to space after the Challenger and Columbia disasters.

Space.com has posted a wonderful clip which summarizes Discovery’s career and historic accomplishments (in 3 parts). Give it a watch, the clips are only around 5 minutes each and very informative.

Shuttle Discovery Part 1

Shuttle Discovery Part 2

Shuttle Discovery Part 3

Site Update – October 2010

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As you can see the site has undergone a lot of significant work and changes.  Most of this is in attempt to make the site both easier to use while promoting community involvement.  I was torn between the best ways to go about forum-like systems so I though that I’d give the current setup a try for now even though it is a little different.

I’ve installed buddypress which makes the site operate much more similarly to Facebook.  The site has been re-themed and several other back-end modifications have taken place.  Please register on the site and feel free to ask questions, post answers or use the chat rooms available to discuss things in real-time.

If you find something out of place, please let me know so I can resolve it as quickly as possible.  Thanks!

xkcd is My Hero

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Pluto Demotion Comic

Pluto Demotion Comic

Although I don’t get much time to look at comics I certainly find a few of them funny as ever.  XKCD, I love you.  You guys come up with some of the funniest stuff.  Serves her right for throwing him out!  Poor Pluto, after so many years in it’s glorious classification it gets re-classified… of all the things.  Of course, it probably doesn’t help that my studies and activities at KU had involved the Clyde W. Tombaugh observatory on campus.  For those of you who may not know, he discovered Pluto.

Although he did not discover it in his time at KU, he did spend quite a bit of time there and thus, the observatory was named after him.  The telescope in my profile picture is the 6″ refractor that KU has on campus on the top of Lindley Hall, built in 1885 he actually used that very same telescope for some of his observations while at KU.