Picture of the Week #17

Comet Holmes, October 2007, from the 16-inch telescope at RLM on the University of Texas campus.

The first anniversary of the rapid brightening of Comet Holmes was last week, so I chose it for this week's picture. More about the comet is in this post from last year.

Ahhhh... an extra hour of sleep

I have a love/hate relationship with time changes. I love the extra hour of sleep this time of year, but I hate losing an hour in the spring. :)

Yeah, nothing profound in this update, but I have some sinus pressure tonight and I think I'm going to take an antihistamine and enjoy my extra hour of sleep!

Picture of the Week #16

Hubble Space Telescope test model, National Air and Space Museum, Washington DC. September 2006.

In honor of the recovery of the primary camera on the Hubble Space Telescope, I chose this photo from the NASM for this week's picture. While I was following the news on Hubble's "safe mode" issues, I was pleasantly surprised to see that an old colleague of mine is the Lead Mission Systems Engineer for HST!

Picture of the Week #15

Academy of Natural Sciences - Natural History Museum in Philadelphia, summer 2006

With Halloween approaching, I decided to choose this giant walk-through skull as this week's photo.

Picture of the Week #14

This week's picture is a little different, in the fact that it is a photo that I didn't take or compile myself. This photo is from the TRACE spacecraft and is one of 21 spectacular images of the Sun featured at Boston.com's The Big Picture website.

Sunset from Hurricane Ike

This photo is from the evening before Hurricane Ike made landfall on Galveston, so the outer cloud bands had already started passing over central Texas. I think there was also some volcanic dust in the atmosphere then, which is what added some of the purple tint-- we got a stretch of really colorful sunsets (even when there were no clouds) courtesy of an Alaskan volcano around that time.

Click on the photo able to go to the Flickr set (only 7 photos since there were a lot that were very similar to one another)

Picture of the Week #13

Mars Pathfinder Lander and Sojourner Rover at the National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. September 2006.

The lander and airbags are actual engineering prototypes and the rover is a full-scale non-functional model built by JPL for the museum.

Picture of the Week #12

M 110 (NGC 205), satellite galaxy of the Andromeda Galaxy, taken with the Prime Focus Camera on the 30-inch telescope at McDonald Observatory in 1997 (AASTRA participants took the images and then I combined them into the final color image you see here.)

Picture of the Week #11

The Star of India, a star sapphire. American Museum of Natural History, New York. August 2006.

Another rock this week, but instead of a piece of Mars we have what is probably the largest star sapphire in the world. I loved the Gems and Minerals Hall at the AMNH and I never get tired of looking at similar exhibits in other museums. Lots of SHINY!

Picture of the Week #10

Moonrise after an evening storm, August 2005

Since tonight is the Harvest Moon for 2008 (at least according to the tradition of "full moon closest to the autumnal equinox"), I thought it was time for another moon photo.