Hubble in 3D

Hubble goes 3D:

This 3D animation was made of pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Find out more here.

One Giant Leap

Or was it a just a small step? Anyway, it was 40 years ago. What? The Moon landing, of course! Born in 1971 I just missed it. Thanks to the JFK Library I can experience it just as it happened in 1969 at the site We choose the Moon! Nasa is celebrating too, check out this site: Apollo 11. Two cool sites you can’t miss!

Nokia GPS and Google Earth

I was actually looking for something else but found a fun addition to my phone. It’s a Nokia N95 with built-in GPS and free maps. I haven’t really thought about connecting the GPS in the phone to my Macbook but now it’s set up. The only down side to it is that I have only Google Earth installed on the Mac so to use it I need 3G running as well to load all map data. Never mind, here is the tool to make it happen: ExtGPS from Symarctic. It’s free for personal use. You install it on your Nokia smart phone and then you set up an extra COM port on the Bluetooth connection on you Mac. It’s all described here.

The Milky Way

This beautiful video clip comes from the Texas Star party: Galactic center of the Milky Way.

Lunar Maps

I don’t know how I have missed this one. The Lunar and Planetary Institute provides hight resolution lunar maps over the moon. Check out the Lunar Map Catalog! It’s a great site where you find a lot of material about the moon. Most of the stuff in the online store is for free. I’ve been paying most attention to the maps but the whole site is great resource for teachers.

Universe of data

NASA is working together with Microsoft to make high-resolution images and astronomical data more accessible to the public, according to Space Daily. This will be done with Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope. WorldWide Telescope only works with Microsoft’s own Windows but there is a web version using Silverlight. Silverlight is supposed to work on Mac and Firefox, but at this moment I haven’t tried it.

Yuri’s Night 2009

You’re invited! Mark your calendar sometime between April 4 and 12 for Yuri’s Night. This is a event that has been going on for some years and it’s to celebrate humanity’s achievements in space at the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s first flight into space (in 1961). Other than that it’s not related to science at all. This is purely a party. It’s not isolated to the east, this is world wide! As earlier, Sweden is not represented

Astronomy Freeware

Really free? Yes! I have used both Starry Night and Red Shift and they are good products. But right now I’m doing fine with free alternatives. Here’s some great free astronomy software:

1. Stellarium – Your desktop planetarium. It will show you the sky in 3D. It’s a great first planetarium, well made, very easy to use and good looking. To be fair, it’s not the best and it doesn’t have all the features you might need later on. Still, it’s a software you’ll keep installed on your computer. This software works on Mac & Windows.

2. Google Earth – Very useful in itself, but from version 4.2 it also has Google Sky included. Maybe you already have it? There’s probably no limit to what information you can add and display in Google Earth. Among all that information I think NASA’s Earth at Night layer is the most useful for the night sky observer.

You’ll find the layer in the Gallery. Look under “Featured content. This is a great tool to help you find a dark place for observing the stars.

A very fun addition in version 5 is Google Mars. While on Mars, fire up the built in flight simulator and take a tour through Valles Marineris. This software works on Mac & Windows.

3. DarkAdapted – When you’re out there at your dark place with you binocular or telescope you may want to bring your laptop. The problem is that your screen is to bright, it will ruin your night vision. One solution is to cover the screen with red transparent film since red light is better for your ability to see in the dark. Or you use software to change the light from you screen. DarkAdapted is such software. Some software, like Stellarium, also have functions like this. This software works on Mac & Windows.

4. BOINC – Help SETI@Home to find E.T. What most people consider is just for fun could be the biggest discovery in the history of mankind. And with this software it can be you who identifies the signal. You can use BOINC in other areas too, like medicine and mathematics. All work is done with processor power you don’t use. And yes, it works on both Mac & Windows.

There are of course other freeware you can run on your computer. All the above are easy to use, works on both Mac and Windows and are of course free. There is one more I’d like to add to the list, but there is no Mac version for it It’s called Virtual Moon Atlas and it’s the only software I miss after I left the Windows world. Very useful when observing the Moon!

When it comes to desktop planetariums, I must mention Sky Charts and C2A. Sky Charts, aka Cartes du Ciel, is probably the most used astronomy freeware in the world. There are versions for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Like C2A I’m not using it so to be fair I’ll not try to review it here.

For mobile users there is a java application, Mobile StarChart, for java enabled phones. It doesn’t work on all java phones but tested OK on my Nokia N95.

International Year of Astronomy 2009

If you are the slightest interested in astronomy, you already know this. U.N. have made 2009 a year devoted to astronomy. Here are the sites you want to visit to learn more:

IYA 2009 – Main site

365 Days of Astronomy – something new everyday

100 Hours of Astronomy – Events around the world

Portal to the Universe – New portal

She is an astronomer – New site

Updates will follow.

The name

What is a Cosmodrome? It’s the Russian name for space port. Russian space flight have always been interesting but during the cold war there were very little known about what was going on behind the iron curtain. Now we know more.  So I picked the name for this site not only to reflect my interest in Russian space flight but it’s also where I take off from when blasting away into cyber space. Here are two sites dedicated to the subject:

Kosmonavtka – Suzy from Australia keeps this superb site!

Russian Space Web – What you won’t find at Kosmonavtka you will find at the Russian Space Web.