Carnival of Space #62 - The Image Extravaganza!

Welcome to the Carnival of Space, the little miracle that helps the space blogging community stick together! I'm proud to host the 62nd installment, and I've got a special treat for y'all.

I'm doing this week's carnival as a sideshow extravaganza of images, which I think is the first beast of its kind (aside from the Space Cynic's #53 carnival).

Oh, before I forget: Welcome to Space Disco, one of the seven new blogs you'll find here at Discovery Space. There are many super-cool projects in the works for this site, so check back often as this baby evolves!

NOTE 1: There are 21 submissions for this week -- the gallery doesn't end at 15, as it might lead you to believe.
NOTE 2: If you can't see the gallery I made, I put together a list alphabetized by blog name below.

• Altair VI: This week David Portree of Altair VI showcases a piece about a 1983 Titan exploration study. Blimps and balloons on Titan? Yes, please!
• Astroblog: A new webcam, a dusty telescope, and the opposition of Jupiter -- what could go wrong? Ian Musgrave details his saga of clouds, windows Vista and screaming frustration. There are some nice pictures at the end, too.
• astroENGINE.com: Thanks to the Phoenix, Ian O'Neill at astroENGINE explains, we can now call dusty Martian regolith "soil." Maybe.
• A Babe In The Universe: Louise Riofrio of A Babe In The Universe looks into the future with her post. From new spacesuits to spaceships, she fills us in on the spacey happenings at the International Conference of Environmental Systems in San Francisco.
• Bad Astronomy: Has the scientific term "black hole" become a racial slur? The Bad Astronomer Phil Plait throws us into the poppeycockery that went down in a Dallas meeting this week.
• Catholic Sensibility: Neptune is big, blue and beautiful, but it took suspicious astronomers decades to find. Todd Flowerday writes about the struggle over at Catholic Sensibility.
• CCSSC Blog: On July 4, the Earth was the farthest away from the sun that it can get – so why was it still so darned hot? Rosa Williams at the CCSSC blog explains, and notes how Mars or Pluto do feel the chill of distance.
• Centauri Dreams: At Centauri Dreams, Paul Gilster hosts an essay by Marc Millis laying out the current status of the Tau Zero Foundation. The non-profit organization, Paul says, is focused on furthering research that could lead people to the stars.
• collectSPACE.com: CollectSPACE founder Robert Pearlman reviews the Science Channel's latest spacey series called "Moon Machines," part of their second annual Space Week.
• Free Space: Irene Klotz of Free Space describes how Speedo's space-age swimsuits got some help from NASA.
• Music of the Spheres: Bruce Irving bleeds ink, er, electrons as he blogs about the pain in his heart at NASA's announcing the last space shuttle launches.
• Next Big Future: Brian Wang of Next Big Future gives us the nitty-gritty on a small, 1.5-meter "garage shop" fusion reactor built by a Dr. Richard Nebel.
• Orbiting Frog: Robert Simpson of Orbiting Frog posts about the "New Kids on the Blog" – a review of some new space blogs that have cropped up, well, on this site.
• The Planetary Society Weblog: Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Weblog had a nice chat about Phoenix with Mark Lemmon, head of the spacecraft's imaging team, and she gives us the 411 on its progress the past week. Go Phoenix!
• Simostronomy: Who was the first American woman astronomer? Quite a lady, Mike Simonsen at Simostronomy says. He paints a nice portrait of Maria Mitchell's super-accomplished life in this post.
• Space Feeds: At Space Feeds, Ed Minchu posts a video of a lecture by private astronaut Charles Simonyi.
• Starts With A Bang!: Some stars really are shooting stars, and one is called Mira. Ethan Siegel over at Starts With A Bang! gets in touch with his childhood and explains.
• Tomorrow Is Here: Tim Neale describes the recent finding that Mars is host to the largest impact crater in the solar system at his new Tomorrow Is Here site.
• 21st Century Waves: Bruce Cordell of 21st Century Waves gives us the scoop on the presidential hopefuls and an outlook on human spaceflight.
• Twisted Physics: Speaking of those new blogs Robert Simpson mentioned, he points out a neat post about Tesla and tachyons Jennifer Ouellette at Twisted Physics.
• WillGater.com: If you're hankering for a particularly dirty post, Will Gater supplies one at his blog. His short essay details the trouble of cleaning spacecraft that go to Mars.

For an archive of all previous Carnivals of Space, hop over to Fraser Cain's Universe Today site. Did your blog post miss the deadline? No problem! Post it below in the comments section.

UPDATE 2:30 p.m. ET: I slipped in a late entry, so be sure to refresh this page!

Comments

[D.Gamey]

Space blimps, Tesla Coils, and Mira :)

Linked from http://mangsbatpage.433rd.com/2008/07/carnival-of-space-62-image-extravaganza.html

[Lori Cuthbert]

Wo - this is so cool. It's my first carnival too, and I'm way impressed with the breadth and depth of spacey stuff out there. Niiice!

[Ian O'Neill]

Hi Dave! Awesome Carnival! I'm loving the slideshow idea, really makes for easy reading. Thank you so much for adding my Phoenix/soil/regolith/rambling, I really appreciate it. See you around!

Cheers, Ian

[Robert Simpson]

Great gallery - love it.

[Dave Mosher]

Thanks for the compliments everyone! Took some blood, sweat, and coffee, but it all worked out well I think :)

[Bruce]

Nice carnival - "Music of the Spheres" missed the deadline last night with my post "Twilight of the Shuttles," triggered by NASA's announcement of dates for the final shuttle launches in 2009-2010. It even has a picture (my own photo of the STS-118 launch last summer, an amazing experience).

[Bruce]

The URL for the "Music of the Spheres" shuttle post is http://flyingsinger.blogspot.com/2008/07/twilight-of-shuttles.html and the photo is here:
http://flickr.com/photos/flyingsinger/1056431559/in/set-72157601082626178/

[Dave Mosher]

Thanks Bruce - I'll slip your post into the carnival in a little bit!

[Matthias]

One glitch though - in the slide show, I couldn't open the links in a new tabs. In NetNewsWire (WebKit based) it would just force open it within the same window, and when I come back I have to go through the slideshow again.

In Firefox 3 it tries to open a popup, which is almost as bad.

[Dave Mosher]

Weird, Matthias.

I designed the slideshow links in the caption to open in a new window (you can set Firefox 2 or 3 to auto-open popups in a new tab - a nice option). What I can't control is the behavior of those "BLOG: Blog Title" links, which is what I think you're talking about. I'll see if I can engineer a quick fix, though...

[Bruce]

Thanks for the post-deadline slip-in, Dave!

[Mang]

No script users need to permit mstories.vo.llnwd.net to get the gallery.