Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Astro-Blog Book


It's arrived!

My Astro-Blog Book!

Having put stuff on my blog now for a long time, I thought it would be nice to have a printed version. There only seems to be one company that will turn a blog into a professional looking book. Its called 'Shared Book', produced by 'blog2print' and the quality is superb. This is the second blog that I have had printed and I am most impressed!

Sunday, November 22, 2009

The Eagle has Landed!


Alright...so its made of plastic. I bought this as a 4D Puzzle from e bay. It took about an hour to assemble all the pieces and here it is. A great little model and I also built the Apollo Command Module which fits nicely with the Lunar Lander.

I'm now hoping to get an Airfix Saturn V model for Christmas. (Are you listening Father Christmas?)

Saturday, November 14, 2009

First 3D Image



Get your 3D glasses on and have a look at this! (enlarge it first!)

Superb 3D image of astronaut Pete Conrad on the Moon from the Apollo 12 mission. Today I bought a copy of Sky at Night Space 3D. Some fantasic 3D images of Space. My favourite images are that of Mars... superb!

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Apollo 11 landing site from the LRO!

As the Apollo 11 Lunar Module (LM) neared the surface, Neil Armstrong could see the designated landing area would have been in a rocky area near West Crater. He had to change the flight plan and fly the LM westward to find a safe landing spot. This image is 742 meters wide (about 0.46 miles). North is towards the top of the image.

This is amazing!! The Apollo 11 Landing Site from the LRO at it's lower orbit!
I have waited sooooo long to see an image like this!

"Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed."
With those eight words, astronaut Neil Armstrong let the world know that Apollo 11 had landed safely on the moon, beginning humankind's first exploration of another world. The landing certainly kept the mission operations crew in suspense as Armstrong maneuvered around the bouldery ejecta on the northeast flank of West Crater, finally settling down almost a kilometer to the west with only tens of seconds of fuel remaining.The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera team earlier released two pictures of the Apollo 11 landing site, each taken under different lighting conditions and at lower resolution than this image. This is LROC's first picture of Apollo 11 after LRO dropped into its 50 km mapping orbit. At this altitude, very small details of Tranquility Base can be discerned.
The footpads of the LM are clearly discernible. Components of the Early Apollo Science Experiments Package (EASEP) are easily seen, as well. Boulders from West Crater lying on the surface to the east stand out, and the many small craters that cover the moon are visible to the southeast.

Monday, November 02, 2009

Apollo 17 Landing Site





Latest images from the LRO, here is the Apollo 17 Landing Site!

What amazing images they are, you can even see the trails of the astronauts as they walked around on the Moon. This is a bit like Google Earth showing your back garden from space!

I wonder if we will have Google Moon with images mapped from the LRO showing all the Apollo landing sites...would be great!




The images above were taken from the mission showing the landscape and the Lunar Module Descent Stage left on the Moon taken from the Lunar Rover after lift off.
Fantastic!!