space

Accidental Space Tourist - SocialSpaceWA

Posted by cafuego on Saturday 20 February 2016. In categories &SocialSpaceWA  &deep space  &space  &adventure  &ESA
Thumbs up from the #SocialSpacers

Like many people, I love the beautiful images we receive from space telescopes and spacecraft that orbit other worlds in the solar system. Also like many other people, I expect, I never really stop to think how we get those images, just assuming they get sent to earth via some magic space internet.

However, there is no internet (magic or otherwise, yet) in space and getting the data to create these pretty images (and to do science) is rather involved.

Quite by accident I got a chance to learn a lot more about that process.

Exploring the solar system

Posted by cafuego on Sunday 16 August 2015. In categories &astronomy  &melbourne  &space
Start of the walk

At last week's telescope driver training I found out that Melbourne contains a 1 to 1 billion scale model of the solar system. It's an artwork by Cameron Robbins and Christopher Lansell.

The Sun is located at St Kilda marina and the planets are spaced out along the beach and foreshore back towards the city.

Since the weather was lovely today, I thought ... why not? The guide says you can walk from the Sun to Pluto in about an hour and a half, which would make your speed approximately three times the speed of light, or warp 1.44, if you like.

2014 DrupalCon Austin Road Trip

Posted by cafuego on Wednesday 11 June 2014. In categories &drupalcon  &road trip  &rocks  &space
Large trip map

It's been nearly two years since I blogged a DrupalCon road trip, so it's high time for another one. Not that there weren't other DrupalCons in between, but the trip to Sydney was rather short. And although we did drive a fair bit before Portland, we ended up where we started, so it was not really a road trip. To get to Prague we took a train, so that was out too. Thus, DrupalCon Austin.