Astrosphere for October 7, 2007

2007-1007saturn.thumbnail-2.jpg

Happy Thanksgiving to all my fellow Canadian readers. Mmmm, turkey.

Today's astrophoto is Saturn, captured by Paul F. Campbell. I like this image because it reminds me of what you see when you look through a nice telescope at Saturn. Although, this image has better clarity of the rings and bands on the planet than what you'd see in the eyepiece.

It was a crazy, yet awesome idea. Build a 200+ kg model of an X-Wing, affix 4 powerful rocket engines, and blast it off.

It started out well, and then things went wrong

.

Astroprof reviews a handheld planetarium

called Pocket Stars

.

Need some kind of currency when you head up into orbit?

Check out the Quid

.

SPACE.com has a

great article

profiling the upcoming X-Prize Cup.

Got a lot of time on your hands? Try making this scale model of the Sputnik rocket. Thanks to the

Rocketry Blog

for the tip.

Fraser Cain

Fraser Cain

Fraser Cain is the publisher of Universe Today, founding the website in March 1999. He's also the co-host of Astronomy Cast.