Astrosphere for November 16th, 2007

Today’s photo is the Moon. Sure, I’ve shown lots of pictures of the Moon, but this one’s lunertic’s first astrophoto, and I thought I could help encourage this wonderful hobby. Take more, let’s see them.

Space Prizes has some interesting links to the recent 2009 Space Settlement Calendar Art Contest. How come nobody told me about this?

Nancy Houser at A Mars Odyssey has a great two part article about the first African American astronaut: Guion Bluford. Here’s part 1 and part 2.

Astronomy Picture of the Day has an image of the Orion Nebula, with a streak through the middle that turned out to be fuel dumped out of a recent rocket launch.

Jeff Foust at Space Politics gives a run down of NASA’s Administrator’s time in front of a Senate committee. It sounds like an uncomfortable place to be. Keith Cowing from NASA Watch has an opinion on the matter too.

Director of the Planetary Society, Louis Friedman, puts the most recent shuttle mission into perspective. The astronauts had a dangerous job of fixing the station’s solar wings, so why wasn’t there more press about it?

Pamela Gay translates some astro-gibberish into a really interesting scientific result.

The Angry Astronomer got a great post about the power of Big Sky Surveys.