I attached the “sky shack” to the observatory. Now I can once again have a heated place to keep the computer. Oh I still have to cut some trim as you can see in the thumbnail to the right (click for larger), might even splurge a little more and get a new piece of Plexiglas. What’s there is scratched up some but is fine for now.

Last night I had wonderful skies albeit kind of cool (5^o C), so I go out when it got dark enough to see my “index star du jour” otherwise known as Altair, and realized I never provided a way to get computer cabling and the Autostar controller into the sky shack — d’oh!. So today I made a slot large enough to pass the Autostar between the two rooms. I’ll make some sort of little sliding door affair to keep the cold at bay as much as possible.

I am considering purchasing the wireless Autostar controller, the one I have has issues and it would make my observing experience better. Too bad in a way, I don’t really use it all that much because once I get the thing aligned (about 5 minutes) I switch to computer control using The Sky. Problem is I do need it for a few minutes, something to think about.

Probably won’t get to go out tonight the sky doesn’t look too hot at the moment.

A nice shot of Launch Pad 39A.  The canister carrying the Harmony module is being lifted into position.  The Harmony module will be taken to the ISS during the October 23rd mission.

The Shuttle Discovery was scheduled to move from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the pad today.  Once at the pad the Harmony module will be stowed in Discovery’s payload bay.

Credit: NASA

Scientific American has a slew of good stories this month.  In this one, they prioritize five goals for exploring the solar system.  They also have an excellent interactive site to showcase the 5 priorities.

Interactive site
Text Only site

I think I agree with the goals, however I think I’d prioritize them differently.

My order would be 2, 5, 1, 3, 4

See what you think.

SOHO has discovered a new comet, to go along with the 1,350 it has to its credit, this one is different. It’s a periodic comet which means it orbits in less than 200 years and follow the (pretty much) same orbits more than twice. The new comet has a name too: P/2007 R5.

A famous periodic comet is Halleys with a orbital period of 76 years in round numbers. The orbital period for P/2007 R5 is about 4 years and it’s a little strange for a comet. The thing that makes this comet different is it doesn’t really have a tail or fuzzy head (coma) we are accustomed to seeing, leading some to wonder if this is actually an asteroid or a comet that has had all of it’s comet goodness blown off by the repeated journeys around the Sun. I vote for the loss of comet goodness

Check out the NASA article – it’s short. Oh, and the thinking is there has been other periodic comets discovered by SOHO but this is the first confirmed one.

Image Credit: ESA/NASA

##NOLIGHTBOX##

After a short delay to get a ship out of the way of possible falling rocket motors, the Dawn spacecraft is on it’s way to Ceres and Vesta!

The launch was beautiful!

Later in the day:

Made it home from work and it sounds like the Mission is still going quite well. NASA has a nice image of the launch up on the Dawn website.

I added to the image some (you can see where but it still looks good to me) as you can see above and made some wallpaper out of it. You can grab it below if you want.

Image Credit: NASA/ Kim Shiflett

Current Status: Go
Launch Date: Thursday September 27, 2007
Launch Window: 7:20 am to 7:49 am E.D.T
Odds of Weather Delay: 40 % (as of 08:00 am September 25, 2007)

Webcam Image courtesy: NASA/Kennedy Space Center

You can refresh the image by hitting ‘F5′ or reloading the page.

NOAA’s Forecast:
Tomorrow: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms after
noon. Partly cloudy, with a high near 87. North northwest wind between 5 and 10 mph.

Good luck to the mission!
Since I have to work, I will have to watch the launch itself on
NASA-TV.

Image Credits: NASA / NOAA