Links, 03/31/10

Firstly, a new fascinating finding from Cassini spacecraft. Not only does Mimas look like a Death Star, in the infrared, it also looks like Pac Man eating a pellet. that just raises the coolness factor of the moon by a magnitude or two:

See why I love astronomy? There are always cool things like these being discovered. Of course, there are always cool things being discovered in science, but I find these personally to be much more exciting than all the other ones.

Secondly, a very surprising look to what would have happened to Apollo 13 astronauts if they would have failed in their reentry to Earth after the oxygen tank explosion:

(both stories a courtesy from Universe Today)

Finally, a very cool math video. There is no need for me to describe this one. Trust me, just watch and be amazed:

(from grrlscientist)

Astronomy Club: March 2010 Meeting

Woops, this was supposed to be released two weeks ago. I guess I don’t pay a lot of attention to my blogging. XD

Yay, another astronomy club meeting! And free doughnuts! Always worth the meeting, so to any Delawarian who reads this, come to Delaware Astronomical Society at Mount Cuba. Even if you hate astronomy with all your might, and just think that astronomy are for losers, there is dddoouuugghhnnuut.

This month’s presentation was on errors in telescopes. While I would have liked it to be more science oriented, I still found it quiet interesting. Apparently, there is a gazillion ways for telescopes to be blurry. So yeah, what it says on the pic above.

Slide above: Going over concepts in optical problems.

What happens when the lens is slightly mis-shaped so that the wavefront arriving the eye is slightly off by 1/2 or 1/4 wavelenght of the light.

Oh, and I learned that Hubble Space telescope had the spherical abberation problem. But I am not all that into telescopes, so some parts I couldn’t understand with some of the jargon. The talk was good, but it was not an area of interest of mine, so I don’t remember much about it.

For me, the best part was observing Mars and the Orion Nebula. While the nebula is not as bright as the pictures, and Mars was quiet small, since it is going to the other side of the Solar System, it was still very cool. I wish I could have photographs of them. At least I can give you an approximation from google how it looked like, although it was smaller, and had less color:

Winter Wonderland

Well, looks like it is spring equinox. Daylight=nightlight. Wait, darkness is not a light. Whatev…

For most, spring signifies the beginning of new life and escape from miserable cold and darkness. For me, it signifies no more of these:

And this:

And the end of lots of fun:

And destructions:

And 1 foot of snow:

And the thrills of driving in dangerously slippery road:

And above all, the end of school cancellation.

Anyways, happy equinox!

Physics Joke…

…from my physics teacher: Einstein, Pascal, and Newton were playing hide and seek, and it was Einstein’s turn to seek, while the others were hiding. While Pascal went to hide, Newton just sat out there in the open, drawing a square around him. So Einstein found Newton first. “Found you,” he said. But he was confused as to what Newton was doing out there in the open. So he asked, “We are playng hide and seek, you are supposed to hide. Why are you sitting out here in the open?” But instead Newton replied, “You didn’t find Newton, I drew a meter squared around me, so you found Pascal!”

A HAHAHA HAHA HAHA HaHaHa hahaha ha……….

You get bonus geek point if you understood this joke.