Created by Tedshots.

Population will mightily increase, and the earth will be a garden.
Governments will be conducted with the quietude and regularity of
club committees. The interest which is now felt in politics will
be transferred to science; the latest news from the laboratory of
the chemist, or the observatory of the astronomer, or the
experimenting room of the biologist will be eagerly discussed.
…
Men will look upon this star as their fatherland; its progress
will be their ambition; the gratitude of others their reward.
…
Disease will be extirpated; the causes of decay will be removed;
immortality will be invented. And then, the earth being small,
mankind will migrate into space, and will cross the airless Saharas
which separate planet from planet, and sun from sun. The earth will
become a Holy Land which will be visited by pilgrims from all
the quarters of the universe. Finally, men will master the
forces of Nature; they will become themselves architects of
systems, manufacturers of worlds.

–The Martyrdom of Man, Winwood Reade, 1872

Our connected world meant I could simultaneously follow the eclipse from multiple viewpoints around the world in real time, including getting photos from friends and strangers with far better photographic equipment than mine. Events like this make Twitter truly come alive for me – watching the constant stream of excited tweets (and photos) with the #eclipse hashtag made me appreciate how wonderfully connected our little world is.

My little blog also went ballistic, setting a new all-time record of 1,240 views yesterday for my humble eclipse post, people were clearly searching for information.

My favourite eclipse media as I find it:

• Yannick’s first Eclipse shot as the moon was slowly devoured – http://yfrog.com/khudryaj
• I expect some more amazing shots from him once the post-processing is done and he has some spare time. No pressure.
• Top twitter images for #eclipse – https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23eclipse/grid/photos
• The always amazing Flickr Astrophotography pool (also see Moon Shots)
• Longest Total Lunar Eclipse in 11 Years Thrills Skywatchers (space.com)
• Also Total Lunar Eclipse of June 2011: First Photos (space.com)

A total lunar eclipse is visible from South Africa (actually most of Africa and Central Asia) tomorrow night, Wednesday 15th June – starting at 20h22, with the full eclipse lasting from 21h22 to 23h02 SAT, and the show over around midnight. This is a fairly rare event – the last one visible from SA was in 2008, and the next will only be in September 2015.

Visible across South Africa (weather permitting, but looks good) the full moon will be due East and about 55 degrees above the horizon (see the image to the right – courtesy of the brilliant Stellarium).

Thursday is a public holiday, so encourage your family to get outdoors and look upwards, it will be quite a sight!

• Total lunar eclipse for SA (News24)
• Watch the Flickr Astrophotography group for photos from people with some serious equipment
• Twitter, of course (although you’ll have to ignore the astrologers who will likely jump at the opportunity to spout their own brand of crazy)
• Johannesburg Planetarium

EPOXI (the current mission for the already successful spacecraft Deep Impact) flew past comet Hartley 2 (103P/Hartley) at 4pm SA time today, and shortly afterwards began returning image data.

Deep Impact zoomed past the comet at over 43,000 km/h – and was around 700 km from the comet at closest approach.

Hartley 2 is a fascinating comet, approximately 2km long and 400m wide at the most narrow section, and streaming out jets of gas (it also jetted out huge amounts of cyanide gas in September).

• http://epoxi.umd.edu/
• http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/epoxi/
• Comet Hartley 2 Fires Out Poison Gas as NASA Probe Nears (space.com)
• Collage of the 5 images during the closest part of the flyby (closest approach of 700km).

More data will be released over the next few days and weeks by the teams involved.

This is indeed a great time to be alive and witness to space exploration.

“100 idiots make idiotic plans, and carry them out. All but one justly fail. The hundredth idiot whose plans succeeded through pure luck, is immediately convinced he’s a genius.”

~~Iain M Banks, Matter

Launched on 17th September 2009 from Kazakhstan on a Russian Soyuz rocket, Sumbandila is a small 81kg low orbit (500 km) solar-powered satellite with a Butane propulsion system successfully fired in January. It carries a 6 spectral band imager (6,25 m × 6,25 m resolution) for ground photography and video (agriculture, mapping of infrastructure and land use, population measurement and the monitoring of dam levels etc), as well as an amateur radio transponder (SA-AMSAT) among other experiments.

See the Sumbandila mission blog for details, as well as the Wikipedia article – there is also a Facebook group.

A video taken of Earth from orbit (13th October 2009, moving over Namibia).

Path details and animations for almost every city are available at the excellent UK Eclipses Online site (doubly useful since the NASA eclipse page seems to be down, probably buckling under the extra traffic – google cached version is available though). Wikipedia as usual has excellent info.

• Some great photos from Nairobi, thanks @paulakahumbu

Update:

• * MailOnline’s report – some great photos and a great video.
• * NASA’s MODIS satellite caught an image of the Moon’s shadow over India and the Bay of Bengal (a roughly 300km wide shadow).
• * SpaceWeather.com has a great gallery of eclipse photos (and commentary for most of them) – well worth seeing
• ESA has a beautiful animated image of the eclipse as seen by their Sun-watching Proba-2.

Posted via email from Ewan’s posterous