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very nice new images from Earth at night

A team of Russians crowdfunding a satellite to annoy astronomers ;) A satellite that will become the brightest star in the night sky

team? only one person, correct?

according to the website they have a whole team of people working on various aspects of the mission.

proposal for one of the next ACT movie nights? anybody seen it?

oh, haven't seen that one, but it looks cool! We need to get our hands on it...

And some interactive versions: http://skysurvey.org/

this is very very nice! thanks for sharing

you all probably prefer Juri's Night (http://yurisnight.net/) to the World Space Week .... but still: any suggestions what we could do during that week as an "event"?

Saturday night fever.

online game developed by Thales as part of improving their recruitment!! who want's to give it a try (in your spare time in the nights of course ....) reminds me of the idea that we have been bouncing around since some time on the use of games for engaging students in our scientific research ...

The International Space Apps Challenge is now over, it is interesting to have a look at the solutions ...

what sort of "app" is this e.g. http://spaceappschallenge.org/challenge/brightest-night/solution/132 "We started of by trying to set our camera in raw mode, howsoever this can't be done for current logitech modules and without a high risk of permanently destroying the camera (reflashing the EEPROM). we use a logitech c920 and captured a raw image from it using guvcview on ArchLinux we then wrote some python code to calculate the average BGR value of our Image. We are currently workin on automiztion, but this will take much longer as there will be a lot of reverse engineering of the USB-Protocol needed."

c'mon really! To name a few: - Tour of the Solar System ... that is one of the numerous specialities of the ACT. - Satellite data correlation tool ... solution is flawed, but I really like the idea. Lot of added value. I definitely think are interestung stuffs to do there for cheap. - Aurora project: Model & Data ... space weather not interesting?! - Kepler ... a classic Do not expect the solutions to be tremendous just after 3 days of work, but the proposed list of challenges are "seeds" for innovation to me.

so happy that the times of ACT magic are over ... or are they?

of course not !!!! :) The ACT Magic nights are alive and well, and getting crazier all the time. And I'm happy to say, no blood has been spilled yet... though at times we've come close :).

That's it.. next trip is going to be Lapland (or Svalbard, Annalisa?)

I can recommend spending a winter in North-norway. Was able to see those almost every night.

Going to Lapland in 2 weeks :-D Can't wait!

:-D Tom and me had just exchanged emails about this last night. Fascinating how adaptive organisms can be!

Funny rant about being a system guy. A lot of truth hidden in between the lines.

With its exceeding small perihelion (passing the 28th of nov), there is an off chance that it will be visible by the naked eye in the nights sky around the 10th of november http://www.universetoday.com/102976/will-comet-ison-dazzle-our-skies-an-expert-weighs-in/

tesla announcing home batteries at 350$/kW

Let's do some simple maths... Here in UK, example "economy 7" tarif yields night kWh approx. 12 pence cheaper than during day. Let's say the goal is to store energy equivalent to running a 2kW storage heater for 6 hours during the day. We need 12 kWh, so 12 times $350 this means need to spend approx. 1920 pounds for batteries. Time to break even at ROI: 1920 / 0.12 ~ 7.3 years... And this is assuming using the heater 365 days a year, and quite an expensive tariff (prepaid). SIWB :-)

Also need to take into account that battery capacity tends to go down with time and usage

Recharge in seconds and efficiently store power for weeks between charges. Added bonus is the cheap and abundant components needed. One of the applications they foresee is to attach such a super-capacitor to the back of solar panels to store the power and discharge this during the night

very nice indeed - is this already at a stage where we should have a closer look at it? what you think? With experience in growing carbon nanostructures, Pint's group decided to try to coat the porous silicon surface with carbon. "We had no idea what would happen," said Pint. "Typically, researchers grow graphene from silicon-carbide materials at temperatures in excess of 1400 degrees Celsius. But at lower temperatures - 600 to 700 degrees Celsius - we certainly didn't expect graphene-like material growth." When the researchers pulled the porous silicon out of the furnace, they found that it had turned from orange to purple or black. When they inspected it under a powerful scanning electron microscope they found that it looked nearly identical to the original material but it was coated by a layer of graphene a few nanometers thick. When the researchers tested the coated material they found that it had chemically stabilized the silicon surface. When they used it to make supercapacitors, they found that the graphene coating improved energy densities by over two orders of magnitude compared to those made from uncoated porous silicon and significantly better than commercial supercapacitors. Transmission electron microscope image of the surface of porous silicon coated with graphene. The coating consists of a thin layer of 5-10 layers of graphene which filled pores with diameters less than 2-3 nanometers and so did not alter the nanoscale architecture of the underlying silicon. (Cary Pint / Vanderbilt) The graphene layer acts as an atomically thin protective coating. Pint and his group argue that this approach isn't limited to graphene. "The ability to engineer surfaces with atomically thin layers of materials combined with the control achieved in designing porous materials opens opportunities for a number of different applications beyond energy storage," he said.

Seems a little speculative but pretty interesting thoughts. In regards to terraforming Mars this might be of interest: "During the daytime, plant-like microorganisms on a Martian-like surface could photosynthesize hydrogen peroxide. At night, when the atmosphere is relatively humid, they could use their stored hydrogen peroxide to scavenge water from the atmosphere, similar to how microbial communities in the Atacama use the moisture that salt brine extracts from the air to stay alive."

Is there life on Mars? - We should try to compress those images!

"Is there life on Mars?" Yes, mostly on Saturday night...

what does this tell about male behaviour ?? :-)