Scottish Nous

Success!

At around 11:52 PM MST (on July 3rd) comet Tempel 1 took a 23,000 mph hit from a 360 lb. camera.  What that means is that an object roughly the size of your coffee table was flown into a 4.5 billion year old rock about eight light-minutes away (the same as the distance between us and the sun).  Granted, the rock was half the size of Manhattan, but it's still damn impressive.  Thanks to CU's amazing Fiske Planetarium, I caught the live broadcast from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at CIT for free by sneaking in the back door under the pretense of being with Bell Aerospace.  Sadly, the friends I was supposed to meet arrived a few minutes later and got stuck behind several hundred people waiting in line at the front door. (It pays to be devious.)  For you poor souls who missed the live broadcast (which wasn't all that thrilling, actually), here's an image of the collision taken by Flyby, the aptly named vessel that released the impactor into the comet's path.  Go here or here for more information on the mission.  By the way, Newton sufficed just fine for this.

Otherworldly Touchdown

The Huygen's probe succesfully touched down on Saturn's largest moon, Titan, at about 7:30 this morning, Mountain Standard Time (13:34 GMT+1 or CET)!  Not knowing what lay beneath Titan's atmosphere, scientists had no clue whether the probe would sink into viscous, acidic goo or not, but Fortuna, bitch goddess of chance, permitted the probe a landing on solid ground.  Via APOD.  See pictures here, and read the story here.