UPDATE: NASA TV is reporting there are 5 areas of damage underneath Endeavour.

I am hearing about a three inch gash in the heat shield on Shuttle Endeavour. Phil from Bad Astronomy has a good post on it, with a picture. We should be hearing more from NASA about it shortly.

In the mean time. I had pretty good skies last night, looked for possibly some early Perseids, didn’t happen to see any, better chance tonight. I think I killed the DSI last night. Didn’t have much luck with it and finally it stopped working all together. It’s one night away from retirement, I’d might buy another though, it was a fun camera.

Later on: All of a sudden it is overcast, what happened to the clear sky perfect forecast? That seems to happen a whole lot around these parts, maybe it will pass. The balloon shown here was one I saw this morning on the way to town. I said to myself “hey that’s balloon is almost as high as the taxes in this state, too bad I don’t have a camera”. Hold on a second, I do have a camera, not a fancy one but it got the job done. I imagine the balloon came from the local fairgrounds.

I’ll be outside hoping for some meteors tonight, If I see any I might blog from the observatory, turns out my wireless connection works pretty well out there. EDIT: Oh yeah, blogging from the observatory. Just set up the filter wheel on the SBIG camera. It’s pretty comfy out here, I do need a better chair.