Carnival of Space Episode 305

Hi folks, Welcome to the Carnival of Space this week in a very busy week. As its a public holiday in Australia today, for the Queens Birthday, I was able to clear the decks and participate in Fraser Cain's Virtual Star Party and host the Carnival today, before craming 5 days work into 4 days. Next weekend I'll be doing a live Citizen Science session in one of the Famous Melbourne Laneways, and we'll be doing a live cross to Dr Pamela Gay's CosmoQuest-Hangout-a-Thon.

So its on with the Carnival! (UPDATED: I just realized I got the dates confused and The Urban Astronomer was supposed to host the carnival this week - deepest apologies for jumping the gun)

A short discussion of galaxy IC3418, which is moving at fast speed through the Virgo Cluster of galaxies. The hot gas in the cluster is stripping out the gas from the little galaxy, leaving it barren of the material needed to form new generations of stars. The stripped out gas is being observed as a tail behind the galaxy, visible in ultraviolet light. Checkout Andrew's blog for more details about this amazing photo.

Thanks to app developers, touch screen devices such as the iPhone and iPad have become wonderful tools for those interested in astronomy and space exploration. This post discusses two especially beautiful iPad apps, Luminos and Cosmographia.

A few days ago, Everyday Spacer's first alliance for Project #1 was born. Everyday Spacer, and the good folks at Photos to Space, have agreed to bring you a ‘badge’ as a reward for certain accomplishments in the upcoming membership site.

Mars Express celebrates ten years at Mars with new global maps. I can't wait till we can go there and use GPS and the above apps to find our way around.

Image Credit: ESA

The Chandra Blog brings us a great article about Transforming Science Into Sound.

Brian sees through the slight of hand of a magicians trick with mirrors that can make orbiting satellites invisible across broad optical spectrum.

Brian also stumps the pending announcement of a 7 blade razor with a report on the ultimate upsizing!

The technology exists to develop a ground based telescope with a 77 meter (250 foot) mirror at lower cost if it is used for narrow field study. It could do a survey of earth sized planets out to 60 light years The Colossus Telescope, a high-resolution, 77-meter multiple-mirror giant instrument, will have the ability to directly image the heat generated by other civilizations on planets orbiting stars near us. Innovative Optics, Ltd. offers proprietary solutions that will reduce the production cost of large optics by 10 to 20 times – and the production time by a significantly greater factor – compared with current techniques. Production cost per square meter of a Live Mirror drops to less than $20,000, letting IO undercut competitors while still realizing a significant profit margin in a market that currently pays more than $400,000 per square meter for a traditional mirror.

Ian Musgrave from Astroblogger has been following the progress of the incredibly unique Comet Panstarrs and its passage over three days.

Image Credit: Innovative Optics

Finally from this blog AARTScope.blogspot.com I leave you with a great image of the passing Asteroid (285263) 1998 QE2, from a live Google Plus hangout this week.

Image Credit: Peter Lake, AARTScope Blog

So that's it from this week's Carnival of Space.

The Carnival of Space is a community of interest blog carnival bringing together the best and brightest Astronomy & Space Blogs at a single point in space and time (commonly referred to as a web address) each week. Previous episodes can be found here. If you run an astronomy or space science blog you can contact carnivalofspace @ gmail.com to be added to the editorial circulation list.