Just a link to a fascinating analysis of why finding other human-habitable planets is Very Difficult Indeed.

Charlie’s Diary: How habitable is the Earth?.

And a neat picture of the History of the Earth, thanks to Wikipedia.

This video is completely awesome.
Thanks to Bad Astronomy for the pointer!

Gallery - Where’s the remotest place on Earth? - Image 1 - New Scientist.

This is fantastically cool. You can get to almost anywhere 24 hours.

It, unsurprisingly, bears some resemblance to the picture of the Earth at night: Thanks, Astronomy Picture of the Day!

                                    <p><a href='http://www.theonion.com/content/news/nasa_embarks_on_epic_delay'>NASA Embarks On Epic Delay | The Onion - America's Finest News Source</a>.</p>

Poor NASA—spaceflight is hard, and bureaucracy makes it harder. But, in more fun news, there are two shuttles out right now! Endeavor is standing by to rescue Atlantis if it is damaged on its mission to repair Hubble. They were both briefly visible (with their service structures pulled back) this weekend.

So, this is a really cool idea, that somehow is lacking in execution. Why aren’t all the sans-serifs on one side and the serifs on the other? What does Swift have to do with Memphis? I do like that there’s a bunch of scripts in place of the Lanthanides, but the rest isn’t making sense to me…

Compare:

Thanks to typophile for the typeface link, and google for the periodic table.

Astronomy Picture of the Day has a four-minute movie today. It’s an incredibly beautiful sequence of time-lapse pictures of the sky, the sun, clouds, the moon, stars, planets, and satellites.

túrána hott kurdís by hasta la otra méxico! from Till Credner on Vimeo.

In honor of the 400th anniversary of the invention of the telescope, and the 40th anniversary of our first landing on an alien world, 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy. Start your celebration inside by watching the video, and then go out and look at the sky!

Before: [caption id=”” align=”alignnone” width=”640” caption=”Gilchrist, Texas before Hurricane Ike, from Google Maps via WunderBlog”][/caption] After: [caption id=”” align=”alignnone” width=”640” caption=”Gilchrist, Texas after Hurricane Ike, National Geodetic Survey via WunderBlog.”][/caption]

[caption id=”” align=”alignnone” width=”640” caption=”Google Map of Gilchrist, Texas”][/caption]

This is Gilchrist, Texas. (hat tip to Wunder Blog for the pictures) Or, at least, it was. Now, it’s completely gone. No structures, no wreckage, no anything. Swept into the sea.

Putting aside the completely wrecked bridge, look at the places that used to be beachfront walkways. Where those houses were is underwater. I guess this is the risk you take when you build on a sandbar, but I can’t imagine losing my home in that way. I hope most of those people evacuated, and that they were summer homes with relatively little property left in them, but I bet some of them didn’t and some of them weren’t. I like the Jeff Masters’ idea of buying that land (where there is land, anyway) from the homeowners and making it a park (a la the Fire Island National Seashore). I think that’s a much safer way to help these people who’ve lost their property—without setting up the bad incentives which will cause it to be repeated in the next hurricane.

I wonder how much it would cost to buy all of NOLA and turn it into a park…

This is where I’d fall. Very wet. (Click on the image to find out where you’d go.)

Thanks to BadAstronomy for the pointer!

The Boston Globe’s Big Picture feature is neat. (Thanks to my favorite Bad Astronomer, Phil Plait, for the link to the volcano pictures, which got the RSS feed into my newsreader!)

But even better than volcanoes is volcanoes on Io:

The rest of the Jupiter pictures are also fantastic.

There’s been too much complaining on this blog recently, at least from me. But I have good news! Finally, I can indulge my desire to watch Martian weather.

The Mars Express Visual Monitoring Camera isn’t a scientific instrument—no pointing control, no focus adjustment, only “basic exposure controls”—but it was included on Mars Express to monitor the ejection of the Beagle 2 lander in December 2003. The camera performed well—the lander didn’t. In 2007, ESA turned the camera back on to capture low-resolution images of Mars, including some neat crescent shots and global images that the scientific instruments and other satellites aren’t positioned to capture. They did tests and focusing all throughout 2007, and the “Mars Webcam”, as it’s been nicknamed, went live today.

This is way cool. Also, it’s a live satellite that can be used to train ops engineers: “VMC activites are unique in that the camera is operated by the Flight Control Team, and not a team of scientists. This gives operations engineers, particularly junior members, a chance to learn and practice command generation, planning, and other skills normally done at the Science Operations Centre.”

This is going right up with the VolcanoCam(1) on my list of things to go in my virtual windowframe(2).

(1) OMG, the VolcanoCam is now in HD! I love the USDA Forest Service. (2)And thanks to Ryan Hoagland for putting up a website that I could link to when I wanted to explain what I meant by virtual window. Wherever and whomever you are, Ryan, you rock.