Pretty good video.

Click for the latest GOES image of Gustav

I hope not, but it’s not looking good. Please get out of the way!

Click the image for the latest GOES Satellite image.

Visit the National Hurricane Center for the latest.

From the National Hurricane Center (200 PM EDT SUN AUG 31 2008):

GUSTAV IS MOVING TOWARD THE NORTHWEST NEAR 17 MPH…28 KM/HR.  THIS
GENERAL MOTION IS EXPECTED TO CONTINUE WITH A DECREASE IN FORWARD
SPEED DURING THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS.  ON FORECAST TRACK…GUSTAV
SHOULD MAKE LANDFALL ON THE NORTHERN GULF COAST ON MONDAY.

REPORTS FROM AN AIR FORCE RESERVE HURRICANE HUNTER AIRCRAFT INDICATE
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS HAVE TO DECREASED TO NEAR 115 MPH…185
KM/HR…WITH HIGHER GUSTS.  GUSTAV IS A CATEGORY THREE HURRICANE ON
THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON SCALE.  SOME RE-INTENSIFICATION IS FORECAST
DURING THE NEXT 12 TO 24 HOURS…AND GUSTAV COULD REGAIN CATEGORY
FOUR STRENGTH LATER TODAY OR TONIGHT. FLUCTUATIONS IN STRENGTH ARE
LIKELY THEREAFTER…BUT GUSTAV IS FORECAST TO REMAIN A MAJOR
HURRICANE UNTIL LANDFALL.

Images and source: NOAA

The Martian "Cape Verde". Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell

The rover Opportunity is climbing out of Victoria crater.  It’s been nearly a year but I seem to remember there was some concern it could be in the crater for keeps.  The fear was a spike in electric current would cause one of the wheels to stop turning as it did with Spirit, but in it went.

Looks like getting out isn’t too much of a worry and that’s a good thing.  Still, I don’t know if the rover is actually yet out or not so my fingers are still crossed.  UPDATE: Aug 30, the rover is on level ground YAY!

The rover’s panoramic camera got this interesting image of the cliff face of the promontory called “Cape Verde”; click it for a larger version.

Here is the MER press release:

PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s Mars Exploration rover Opportunity is heading back out to the Red Planet’s surrounding plains nearly a year after descending into a large Martian crater to examine exposed ancient rock layers.

“We’ve done everything we entered Victoria Crater to do and more,” said Bruce Banerdt, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Banerdt is project scientist for Opportunity and its rover twin, Spirit.

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Credit: NASA, ESA, CXC, M. Bradac (University of California, Santa Barbara), and S. Allen (Stanford University)

Here’s the latest from Hubble and Chandra, it’s a colloboration.  It’s an amazingly deep image, even beyond showing another example showing dark and ordinary matter can be separated by a collision.  Click the image and have a look and see how many galaxies you can see.

The Hubblesite press release:
A powerful collision of galaxy clusters has been captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory. The observations of the cluster known as MACS J0025.4-1222 indicate that a titanic collision has separated the dark from ordinary matter and provide an independent confirmation of a similar effect detected previously in a target dubbed the Bullet Cluster. These new results show that the Bullet Cluster is not an anomalous case.

The picture aside, the data show two distinct peaks in the total mass distribution and both are offset from the main baryonic component among other things.  If you would like to read the Draft paper by Bradac et al., click here to get the pdf from Hubblesite.

Credit: NASA, ESA, CXC, M. Bradac (University of California, Santa Barbara), and S. Allen (Stanford University)

First light from FERMI. Credit: NASA / FERMI

The Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope has been renamed in honor of Enrico Fermi.  Paul Hertz, chief scientist for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters: “Enrico Fermi was the first person to suggest how cosmic particles could be accelerated to high speeds, his theory provides the foundation of understanding the new phenomena his namesake telescope will discover.”

FERMI has now collected some 95 hours of first light images as shown above (click it for a much larger annotated version ~66k).

From the NASA press release:

The LAT team today unveiled an all-sky image showing the glowing gas of the Milky Way, blinking pulsars, and a flaring galaxy billions of light-years away. The map combines 95 hours of the instrument’s “first light” observations. A similar image, produced by NASA’s now-defunct Compton Gamma-ray Observatory, took years of observations to produce.

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Little Janus. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Here’s one of the latest Cassini image releases.  This is the north pole of the little moon of Janus.  I would imagine north is so called, because of the right-hand-rule.

The Right Hand Rule:  take your right hand and point the thumb up.  Curl your fingers around like they are around a ball.  The thumb points north and the fingers point the rotation of a planet or moon, it also points the normal orbits of moons around planets and planets around the Sun.

When you hear of a retrograde motion like in Venus, it means that this rotation would put the north pole pointing to a “southerly” direction compared to the “normal” and the rotation is to the west.

I have really milky skies and it’s breezy.  I am banking on the wind dying and the sky clearing because I am opening up the observatory one way or the other!  BTW:  At least it is dry, hopefully things for my friends in the south are drying out too.

Here’s the press release that came with the image:

On a high-inclination orbit of Saturn, the Cassini spacecraft gazes down at the north polar region of Janus.

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