MORE MATTERS LUNAR:

Tonight, the night of the 1st and 2nd is the Full Snow Moon, but once more the weather won't cooperate here in Winnipeg- as usual, as usual, as usual. As I speak it's snowing outside, and the Moon is pretty well obscured by the clouds. In addition the windchill is predicted to reach 37 below tonight. Today the windchill was a "balmy" 32 below. Goddamn if I didn't see at least one of the squirrels that we feed out today, and the rabbit who comes to the backyard for his feeding is out and on the prowl tonight. One nice thing is that I've seen very few crows(whom I hate) since the weather turned cold. The bluejays haven't been around for weeks either. I occasionally still see a few woodpeckers and other birds. But sensible creatures like fat, lazy cats named Molly stay inside as much as they can.

So my little lunar tour is interrupted once more this cycle. In lieu of a further episode on the leisurely vacation cruise through the seas of the Moon I offer the following lunar tidbits for those who crave factoids.

A. So ya wanna be a rocket scientist eh ? Or at least an astronomer. Astronomy is one of the fields of science where citizen/amateur participation is the strongest. Many amateur astronomers spend a goodly amount of time hunting for new comets, and they often scoop the professionals. SETI organizations ask that interested people donate their free computer downtime to analysing data from such searches. And so on. Now NASA is asking for the help of amateurs once more in terms of documenting the impact of meteorites on the lunar surface. NASA's 'Meteoroid Environment Office' has been monitoring the Moon for impacts since late 2005, and so far they have found 19 hits. This branch of NASA is actually using off-the-shelf equipment available to ordinary dedicated amateurs (35 cm telescopes and store bought CCD cameras), and, as any amateur knows many things can interfere with their observations, from weather to vacations. The Office has developed data software that can run on a home PC equipped with a digital video card to extract the significant events from the endless hours of stationary video. Look to the http://science.nasa.gov site for announcements about this soon.

B. Speaking of NASA that organization announced on January 8th that all future lunar operations will use metric units. Sorta like the USA catches up with the civilized world. The use of both metric and English units led to the loss of the 1999 Mars Climate Orbiter probe. A contractor on the probe provided thruster firing data in English units while NASA was using the metric system for its calculations. Oops !

C. Speaking of oops, there's an upcoming mission to the Moon, the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), planned for early 2009 in which the upper stage of the carrying rocket will be deliberately crashed into one of the polar areas of Luna. The resulting plume of ejecta, perhaps up to 30 miles high, will be analysed by the accompanying satellite and earth based telescopes to test further the possibility that the lunar poles contain stores of ice that may be useful for future Moon bases. To date the data has been quite contradictory, with the Clementine and Lunar Prospector missions and the Arecibo radio telescope coming up with different conclusions. Now, the idea of lunar water in the form of ice is quite attractive in terms of the possibility of a lunar base, and it would be a terrible thing if this bugger didn't crash. Hence the desire to make sure everyone is speaking the same numerical language.

D. Anyone interested in the features of the moon would be happy to visit the Virtual Moon Atlas, with its various downloadable guides to lunar geography. for those of us closer to the Molly level of amateur ie nowhere near as knowledgeable the best source I can recommend is ordering the National Geographic Moon wallmap from their online store. it's the one I use the most.

Keep on shinin'

Yeah keep on shinin'

Molly