It’s snowing and I’m tired and I have a pile of work to do, so here’s some stuff to gawk at on a Sunday afternoon.
1) Popular Mechanics has an article up about the Five Most Powerful Telescopes. I’m not big on the word “powerful”, since telescopes are passive. They are the biggest, or can see the faintest objects, or have the best resolution. What irritates me more is that I use the word myself sometimes.
2) From FlickFilosopher comes news of this very well-done mashup:
3) HiRISE posted this image of carbonate deposits in Nili Fossae, a region where methane gas being generated was recently detected. Pretty! It’s a fault fracture in the Martian surface, with blocks of crust that have dropped down between the fault lines, and it’s also been partially flooded with sediment from a nearby crater. The carbonates may have come from liquid water mixing with some minerals in the region. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona.
4) Back during the AAS meeting a couple of weeks ago, I was going to write all about my old satellites Swift and Fermi, but then Chris Lintott went and wrote up something that was pretty good. So I’ll just send you there.
