Good Morning All,

News and Comments....
 

Let's continue our travels in Space with these two items from Rhonda
Tesch:

"First up, the World Wide Telescope:

http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2008/may08/05-12WWTPR.mspx

WorldWide Telescope Brings Space Exploration to Earth

A service free of charge from Microsoft lets students and lifelong
learners tour the night sky using high-resolution images from the
world's best land- and space-based telescopes.
REDMOND, Wash. - May 12, 2008 - The final frontier got a bit closer
today as Microsoft Corp. officially launched the public beta of its
WorldWide Telescope, which is now available at
http://www.worldwidetelescope.org. WorldWide Telescope is a rich Web
application that brings together imagery from the best ground- and
space-based observatories across the world to allow people to easily
explore the night sky through their computers. WorldWide Telescope has
been eagerly anticipated by the astronomical and educational communities
as a compelling astronomical resource for students and lifelong
learners, and as a way to make science fun for children. 

"The WorldWide Telescope is a powerful tool for science and education
that makes it possible for everyone to explore the universe," said Bill
Gates, chairman of Microsoft. "By combining terabytes of incredible
imagery and data with easy-to-use software for viewing and moving
through all that information, the WorldWide Telescope opens the door to
new ways to see and experience the wonders of space. Our hope is that it
will inspire young people to explore astronomy and science, and help
researchers in their quest to better understand the universe."
 
The application itself is a blend of software and Web 2.0 services
created with the Microsoft high-performance Visual Experience Engine,
which allows seamless panning and zooming around the heavens with rich
image environments. WorldWide Telescope stitches together terabytes of
high-resolution images of celestial bodies and displays them in a way
that relates to their actual position in the sky. People can freely
browse through the solar system, galaxy and beyond, or take advantage of
a growing number of guided tours of the sky hosted by astronomers and
educators at major universities and planetariums.
 
"WorldWide Telescope brings to life a dream that many of us in Microsoft
Research have pursued for years, and we are proud to release this as a
free service to anyone who wants to explore the universe," said Curtis
Wong, manager of Microsoft's Next Media Research Group. "Where is Saturn
in the sky, in relation to the moon? Does the Milky Way really have a
supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy? With the universe
at your fingertips, you can discover the answers for yourself."
 
The service goes well beyond the simple browsing of images. Users can
choose which telescope they want to look through, including the Hubble
Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center, the Spitzer Space
Telescope or others. They can view the locations of planets in the night
sky - in the past, present or future. They can view the universe through
different wavelengths of light to reveal hidden structures in other
parts of the galaxy. Taken as a whole, the application provides a
top-to-bottom view of the science of astronomy. 
 
"Users can see the X-ray view of the sky, zoom into bright radiation
clouds, and then cross-fade into the visible light view and discover the
cloud remnants of a supernova explosion from a thousand years ago," said
Roy Gould, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics. "I believe this new creation from Microsoft will have a
profound impact on the way we view the universe."
 
Microsoft Research has formed close ties with members of the academic,
education and scientific communities to make WorldWide Telescope a
reality. NASA along with other organizations coordinated with Microsoft
Research to provide the imagery, provide feedback on the application
from a scientific point of view, and help turn WorldWide Telescope into
a rich learning application.
 
Microsoft's mission to make the universe accessible to everyone was
begun years ago by renowned Microsoft Senior Researcher Jim Gray.
WorldWide Telescope is built on top of Gray's pioneering development of
large-scale, high-performance online databases including SkyServer and
his contributions to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a project to map a
large part of the Northern sky outside of the galaxy. Microsoft Research
is releasing WorldWide Telescope as a service free of charge to the
astronomy and education communities as a tribute to Gray with the hope
that it will inspire and empower kids of all ages to explore and
understand the universe in an unprecedented way. 
 

Second, NASA would like volunteers to search thru hi-res photos looking
for evidence/wreckage of the Mars Polar Lander:

http://space.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn13884&print=true

Volunteers asked to help find dead spacecraft on Mars
20:09 12 May 2008 
NewScientist.com news service 
Hazel Muir 
 
The HiRISE instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has already
spotted spacecraft on the surface of Mars. These images show the rover
Opportunity close to Mars's Victoria Crater in 2006 (Image:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona) Scientists have invited the
public to trawl high-resolution images for signs of NASA's Mars Polar
Lander, which went silent on arrival at Mars in 1999. Finding the
wreckage might explain why the mission failed.
 
"If we can find the Mars Polar Lander and be convinced we understand
what we're looking at, it might provide some clues as to what went
wrong," says Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona in Tucson, US.
"There could be lessons there that are applicable to future landers."
 
The Mars Polar Lander was supposed to study the Martian climate as well
as soil and ice close to the planet's south pole. But mission
controllers lost contact with the probe when it landed. An investigation
suggested it probably smashed onto the surface at high speed because the
engines that should have slowed the craft's descent shut down too
quickly.
 
Scientists thought they saw the dead lander in images taken by the Mars
Global Surveyor satellite in 2000, but these turned out to be a mirage.
Now images taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are offering another
chance for the probe to be found.
Southern summer

In mid-2007, an instrument called the High Resolution Imaging Science
Experiment (HiRISE) on the orbiter snapped sharp images of about half of
the likely area where the failed lander touched down. "This was also the
southern summer on Mars, so the site was well illuminated," says McEwen,
who leads the HiRISE team.
 
Now, HiRISE software developer Guy McArthur, also at the University of
Arizona, has invited the public to scan these images for signs of the
Mars Polar Lander. It's a huge challenge because although there are only
18 images, each of them is enormous - typically 1.6 billion pixels.
 
"If your computer screen is 1000 by 1000, that means you need 1600
screenshots to view one image," says McEwen. "On the HiRISE team, we
haven't put much effort into looking for this - we're too busy with
other things."
 
The lander certainly won't be easy to spot. "We just don't know exactly
what it will look like," says McEwen. He estimates that any spacecraft
features that might be visible - the lander, its heat shield or the
backshell with a parachute attached, if the parachute actually opened -
will only be a few pixels across.
 
Years gone by and the local landscape is troublesomely speckled with
bright and dark features roughly the same size as the spacecraft
components. "It's a terrible place to look for things like this," says
McEwen. "And years have gone by, so some dust will have settled - it may
not stand out now."
 
However, keen volunteers can take some tips on what to look for from Tim
Parker at
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who has analyzed HiRISE images of
other spacecraft components on Mars.
 
NASA is hoping for a better outcome on 25 May, when its Phoenix Mars
Lander is due to touch down on Mars. The lander uses similar
technologies to the Mars Polar Lander, but its design has been
thoroughly tested for any flaws."
 

The Light Thought of The Day...

No man has ever been shot while doing the dishes. 
 

Closing Thoughts...

Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity. 
 

That's it for today, remember tomorrow is the start toward the weekend,
and be careful out there,

Roger

Copyright 2008 by Roger M. Tener, with individual rights reverting back
to contributors after this one time use.  All opinions and versions of
events expressed by contributors are their own.