Probability of Rain

My neighbor Greg Johnson at work put together a graph of the probability of rain for any given week in Portland.

Sombero Galaxy

I came across this picture on Yahoo today, and found the corresponding webpage from Nasa here. Have a look see at a larger image!

The hubble site says the galaxy resolves to 1/5th the diameter of a full moon. Too bad it's too faint to see with our eyes. That'd be pretty cool to see at night.

IQ Test

While I'm sitting here at work testing my server I came across an IQ test on the web. It was kinda fun. It doesn't tell you which ones you got wrong though.

Beaufort Scale

Ever wanted to know what the Beaufort scale was? The page where I check weather has pictures from storms that illustrate the Beaufort scale.

Physics

I came across this website[mkaku.org] while waiting for a compile at work. He has some interesting articles on the physics of time and interstellar travel.

Space

I came across the website of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board [www.caib.us] and started reading their report [pdf]. It's kinda large at 248 pages, but so far it's been an interesting read - going over the history of NASA and why the Shuttle was built.

A few years ago I read the book At the Edge of Space: The X-15 Flight Program, which covered the X-15 program. It was around before the Mercury missions at NASA and I thought it was very successful. They reached over 350,000' and speeds greater than Mach 6. It seemed like a logical way to reach orbit, but it was canned and money was diverted to NASA.

The X Prize project is underway with many teams trying to put a few people into low earth orbit. Quite a few are taking the same approach as the X-15 did. It seems like the logical way to get into orbit - you take a plane up and can fly it down (unlike the Orbiter which is a large glider).

Mars!

Since Mars is closer than it'll be in 60 thousand years, I figured I should try and take a few pictures of it. I took a roll of film with my Nikon. I used a few tele-converters to get my 210 mm lens to be effectively 1260mm long. I'm waiting to get the film developed and scanned in - hopefully they'll turn out well.

While I was standing outside in the cold waiting for exposures to finish, I figured I should try and take a few pictures with my digital camera. So here are a few of them:

Mars and stars (100 ISO)

Mars exposed at 200 ISO

Cyclone

How cool is this picture? It's located on the Nation Weather Services webpage.

meiofauna

I've heard that there are little monsters living in the sand with grappling hooks and big chomping teeth. Turns out they're actually good for cleaning things up, like ringworm.