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

Another great visualisation which puts things into perspective, courtesy of Kal Krause (of Kai’s Power Tools fame, now there’s some personal nostalgia). Definitely an improvement on the previous version, although still likely to fire up the “continent vs country” debate… but it gets the point across!

On the one hand you have a wonderful self-help self-motivated attitude displayed by Kobla (Ghana), Derick (Kenya) and Doug (Democratic Republic of Congo):

Caitlin (University Programs, Google): Finally, I was hoping you could share a few words of wisdom from your home countries with our readers?

Derick: Sure!  Mtaka cha mvunguni sharti ainame.  In Swahili, this means ‘If you need something that’s on the floor, you’ll have to bend to pick it up.’  In other words: ‘there’s nothing free in life, you have to work for it!’

Kobla: Here’s one from Ghana in the Akan language: Nyansa nnyƐ sika na woakyikyir wodze esie.  This means ‘Wisdom is not like money to be tied up and hidden’ or, more simply: ‘wisdom is to be shared.’

Doug: I like this one, in Lingala: Nguba bakalingaka yango na soni te.  Literally: ‘Don’t pretend to toast a peanut if you don’t know how to do it.’  Basically, this means that you shouldn’t pretend you know how to do something when you really don’t.  If you’re stuck, ask for help!

(via the Google Africa blog)

Contrast that with the attitude of entitlement displayed by some strikers, and this unnamed nurse in particular who clearly has a low external locus of control:

“Why should we care when someone dies, because we are not at work while the government doesn’t care about our lives,” said one nurse, who refused to give her name.

We are coming here every day to stand vigil and see bodies being removed from the hospital.

This is what the government wants. If they didn’t, then we would not have been here in the first place. Patients’ lives have been put at risk by our government.”

I’m all for people’s freedom of expression and right to demand a fair wage, but in this case the demands seem totally unrealistic, and the methods barbaric.

from Ewan’s posterous

The RMS Queen Mary 2 is to date the largest ocean liner ever built (but no longer the world’s largest passenger ship, a record she held until 2006).She arrived in Durban harbour this morning around 07h30 SAT to much fanfare and local excitement, these photographs are from colleagues who watched the arrival from the harbour area (she was also easily visible from the Derivco building).

RMS Queen Mary II’s current status (added bonus – a webcam on the bridge, even if it’s low quality)
Twitter coverage from @MarcForrest and @tequiladiva

Also see Marc Forrest’s Flickr set.

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).

The latest Carnival of Africans – the Phoenix Edition – is well worth a read.

• 01 and the universe
• Acinonyx Scepticus
• Amanuensis
• Ambient Normality
• ASSAf Blog
• Botswana Skeptic
• Bomoko and other nonsense words
• Communicating Science, the African Way **new**
• Defollyant’s AntiBlog
• Effortless Incitement
• Ewan’s Corner
• Geekery
• Grumpy Old Man
• Hello Universe, This is Nessie
• Ionian Enchantment
• Limbic Nutrition
• Lenny Says
• McBrolloks **new**
  
• Nathan Bond’s TART Remarks
  
• Orion Spur
  
• Other Things Amanzi
• Pickled Bushman
• Psychohistorian
  
• Reason Check
• Retroid Raving
• Scorched
• Shadows Hide
  
• Stop Danie Krügel
• Subtle Shift in Emphasis
• Synapses
• Tauriq Moosa
  
• The Science Of Sport
• The Skeptic Black Sheep
• The Skeptic Detective
• Turn 2 Reason
• Word of the Blog

Posted via email from Ewan’s posterous

1. Our high interest rate – look what a too low rate did to the US world markets
2. Our constitution. We’re not the most tolerant people at times, but we seem to be more open-minded and tolerant than most
3. We are willing to stand up for what is right technically
4. Durban weather (an average of 320 days of sunshine a year *), our beaches and the Drakensberg
5. Summer in Capetown (February in particular)
6. We never lose our sense of humour :-)
7. There are always positive people out there, willing to share their viewpoints to try and dispel some of the unnecessary doom and gloom
8. Braai time – 24th September (next Wednesday) is braaiday, Like we need an excuse.
9. We have an industrious web2.0 group, and we have a habit of rapidly adopting new technology appropriately, despite our 3rd world limitations often getting in the way.
10. If there ever is a global nuclear war, we’re in an excellent global position to survive – or at least be the last to go

References: SA Rocks