carnival of space 12 galactic extra

Carnival of Space #12: Galactic Extra!

Welcome to the dozenth edition of the Carnival of Space. As usual the

space and astronomy blogging community is all over the cosmos, but

some of us have been thinking even Bigger Thoughts than usual, looking

at and thinking about galaxies. And as Carl Sagan didn't exactly say,

there are billions and billions of them out there - galaxies, not blog

posts, though there are plenty of those this week too.

Much of the galactic excitement is coming from the Galaxy Zoo, a

marvelous use of the distributed intelligence of people on the web.

This newly launched online science project is asking internet users to

help classify a million galaxies imaged in the Sloan Digital Sky

Survey (SDSS). This might seem at first glance an esoteric activity,

but the Galaxy Zoo project has quickly become a worldwide phenomena.

As one of its organizers at Oxford, Chris Lintott has written several

posts about the project, including a nice summary of a week inside the

Galactic Zoo (Chris also suggested the image of the mysterious "green

galaxy" above, though it's actually a supernova remnant). That's just

the first week, mind you, and I read elsewhere that some 30,000

visitors classified some 650,000 galaxies in that whirlwind first

week. Wow!

But is the Galaxy Zoo too much of a good thing? Stuart Atkinson, who

signed up on the Zoo's opening day, takes a look at why the site is so

addictive, and describes what it's like to become trapped in the

Galaxy Zoo. And as he has often done when inspired by things

astronomical, he has also added a new poem to The 'Verse.

Astropixie resorts to astronomical jargon to describe the Galaxy Zoo

as "so super cool" and recalls her earlier experience with SDSS, when

she had undergraduate summer jobs working with thousands of spectra

collected by the survey. Other bloggers commenting on the Galaxy Zoo

include the Bad Astronomy Blog and many, many more (10,221 hits on a

Google Blog search for "galaxy zoo").

While you could sign up for the Zoo and look at hundreds of galaxies

on your coffee break, you could easily dwell for quite some time on a

single one of those distant jewels. Annas Rahman has done this with

M51, and he concludes that it's the subject of the Best Space Image

Out There. Of course the Galaxy Zoo contains maybe 999,999 other

contenders.

My own galactic connection this week is also a historic connection - a

pilgrimage (of sorts) to the 100 inch telescope at Mount Wilson,

California, where Edwin Hubble figured out that galaxies are galaxies,

that the Universe is really, really big, and that it's expanding.

Telescopes in 1917 were built to last, and the Hooker Telescope looks

like it's part of a battleship.

Closer to Home

Not all the wonders in the universe are galaxies, of course. Astroprof

has been writing a cool series of posts about the Seven Wonders of

Space Exploration, which he argues are at least as wondrous as the

original or new ground-based "seven wonders." Robot Guy points us to

some historic video from one of those wonderful space wonders.

Brian Wang of Advanced Nanotechnology is thinking about future wonders

of space exploration, namely nuclear rockets. He says they can have 2

to 200 times the performance of chemical rockets, that the science is

solid and straightforward, and that we just have to have the courage

to become a truly interplanetary civilization. I say go for it!

Centauri Dreams goes farther out on the wonder scale, writing that

nanotechnology may one day allow us to build huge structures in space

- vast colony worlds of the sort envisioned by Gerard O'Neill may even

become practical. Will one or more of these eventually become

"worldships," leaving the Solar System behind to travel to the stars?

And if there are worldships, could there perhaps be pirates? Surfin'

English looks into the possibilities in the latest entry in his

obstacles to space exploration series.

The solar system was not neglected this week. A Babe in the Universe

writes of the Icy River Styx, reporting that astronomers using the

Gemini North Telescope atop Mauna Kea have announced evidence of

liquid water on Pluto's moon Charon! Liquid water on a world so

distant from the Sun indicates an internal source of heat. It could

also make Charon and many other Kuiper Belt objects potential homes

for extraterrestrial life. And closer to home, Astroblog writes about

the phases of Venus and presents a rather nifty animation of the

phases, made with simple amateur equipment. Space Watch Michigan

writes about Venus and Jupiter and how the brightness of astronomical

objects can affect your eyes' perception of their size. And if you

can't get to space, why not bring space here, with a space simulator?

Spacefiles has some cool pictures (these are gigantic space

environment simulators, not to be confused with space flight

simulators like Orbiter). Even closer to home (over at MIT), Brian

Dunbar at Space For Commerce turns to spacesuits for a little comic

relief in pass on the dessert, but thanks (L. Riofrio provides a bit

of background here).

But wait, there's more! Mars is my favorite planet (after Earth,

usually), and I'm happy to say that two Mars related posts arrived

just as I was about to click "publish post." The Planetary Society

Weblog raises the rap-worthy question, will Phoenix' thrust raise too

much dust? Emily Lakdawalla notes that when Phoenix lands near Mars'

north pole with Viking-style retrorockets, it will be blasting the

ground with nitrogen-rich hydrazine. The Phoenix team is still trying

to figure out what that will do to their landing site, which they plan

to sample so carefully. And after that near-term Mars environment

question, Colony Worlds asks the more provocative long-term question,

Mars: Future Slum World, Or An Industrial Paradise? There is great

promise but also financial peril lurking in those red sands (and

whatever else might be there).

Finally, how about a little romance? Kevin of From Inner Mind to Outer

Space (cool blog name) writes about some great feedback he received

from a friend who is "in love with our night sky," in part as a result

of his outreach efforts. That's the kind of thing we space and

astronomy enthusiasts really like to hear.

Whew! That certainly was a galactic-scale carnival, but I hope you

enjoyed the tour. Next week the carnival will be hosted by LiftPort

Blog. Here's how to participate.