The Mathematica Journal

The Mathematica Journal
has a new article showing how to simulate the gaps that appear in the asteroid belt at certain resonance frequencies.

Our house guest for this week

 Some friends of ours are enjoying a trip to the West coast this week, and we are keeping their dog for them. Lucy is a cute little miniature poodle. We've never had a dog, always have had cats. This is turning out to be fun and is requring me to get out of bed earlier, which I needed to do anyway! Here are a couple of pictures:

 

Satellite Flys Over

Here's a picture of the track made by a satellite as it flew over Fallen Leaf Lake near Lake Tahoe a couple of nights ago. It's very dark there and easy to take star field pictures. This was made with a Canon Rebel XSi, 30 second exposure, f/4.0, and then post-processed in The GIMP.

I later identified this satellite as SEASAT 1, using the very nice freeware program "Orbitron." SEASAT was launched in 1978 to do ocean research, and failed about 100 days later.

Physics - Can we test inflationary expansion of the early universe?

Here's an interesting article about a paper in Phys Rev Letters outlining a plan for testing the inflationary scenario. Have a look:


Physics - Can we test inflationary expansion of the early universe?

A picture of Mars

Mars is near opposition now, which means that it's fairly close. So I tried taking some pictures, using my 8" Celestron ttelescope and ToUCam 840 Webcam. Here's my first result - not too great, but shows the polar cap:

The Hardwoods with Furniture!

Movers came today and put the furniture back upstairs - it looks great on the new floor. Here are a few shots:

And here is a great movie showing an auroral display:

Aurora

Snow in Houston + New Hardwoods

First item:

We just got our carpet on the third floor, plus on the stairs leading to the third floor, replaced by hardwoods. They look great to me - here are some pictures (click on any picture to see a larger version):

Second item: SNOW IN HOUSTON !!!

This is the earliest it has ever snowed here...

Look carefully for the snow (click to get larger image):

This is Mt. Everest with a starry background (the Astronomy Picture of the Day):

And here is the view from my car showing a police car blocking the road while a crew shovels sand onto the road. (What a joke!)

Finally, Christmas is coming -