Galaxy Geeks Wanted

CJ David went on an online adventure at GalaxyZoo and found these interesting photographs of a barred spiral galaxy, an irregular spiral galaxy, and two merging spiral galaxies while classifying galaxies and looking at the galleries.

Look at the photo with two merging galaxies: What if our very own Milky Way galaxy start to merge or collide with the Andromeda galaxy? Well, the two are actually on a collision course but it won't happen in 3 billion years as estimated by astronomers.

Anyway, looking at these glorious galaxies that no-one has ever laid eyes on before and help out in their discovery is definitely interesting and fun. And getting a sense of the diversity of galaxies and the vastness of the universe is mind-boggling.

GalaxyZoo is a project composed of astronomers from the University of Oxford, the University of Portsmouth and Johns Hopkins University (USA), and Fingerprint Digital Media of Belfast, which harnesses the power of the Internet - and our brain - to classify a million galaxies.

This project was said to be inspired by the Stardust@home project which began August of 2006, in which NASA invited the public to sort through, using a virtual telescope, dust grains obtained by spacecraft mission to Comet Wild-2. This also reminds me of the Seti@home, a distributed computing project which was opened to Netizens in mid-1999 to help Search for Extra-Terrestial Intelligence by analysing radio telescope data using the processing powers of computers that are connected to the Internet.

GalaxyZoo needs human volunteers because the human brain is much better at recognizing patterns than a computer can. Especially patterns that are unusual, the weird and the wonderful. So join in!

Images for personal and educational use courtesy of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

Blog Action Day - Downloading Space-Based Solar Power

2007.10.15 Manila, Philippines

Looking back, CJ David thinks that the Internet's origin in ARPANET as a robust, decentralised, redundant communication network using packet switching technology to survive war attacks, which was also in response to the former USSR's launch of the first artificial satellite Sputnik during the Cold War, was indeed parallel to this Space-Based Solar Power proposal by the Pentagon's National Security Space Office working with the Space Frontier Foundation to provide cleaner, alternative power over war zones and to eliminate dependence on oil which has to be transported and guarded with difficulty and danger along the supply chain such as in Iraq.

Here we have another defense-driven technology which I see will evolve to provide clean, renewable, alternative power to the world. This is a good proposal as it addresses America's better military defense (or shall we say America's military offensive?) while using the sun as a source of power lessening C02 emmissions.

Some experts also foresee wars breaking out due to oil, water and many other shortages brought about by climate change. And that this proposal would supply the power needed to avert (or worsen?) such wars. Well, the use of renewable energy would lessen C02 emmissions and avert climate change and resulting foreseen wars in the first place.

Should a green energy proposal must have a militrary slant to it to merit commitment from the Bush administration?

I don't care, wars by maniacs will soon be obsolete. Our defense against global warming and climate change is the war we are fighting. Climate change is a clear and present danger. We don't need to see missiles flying to realise that. Make no mistake about it.

So beam it down Scotty. I wanna download some power. Read on.


Report Urges U.S. to Pursue Space-Based Solar Power
2007.10.12 Washington, US

A Pentagon-chartered report urges the United States to take the lead in developing space platforms capable of capturing sunlight and beaming electrical power to Earth.

Space-based solar power, according to the report, has the potential to help the United States stave off climate change and avoid future conflicts over oil by harnessing the Sun's power to provide an essentially inexhaustible supply of clean energy.


Space Based Solar Power Fuels Vision of Global Energy Security
2007.09.19 BRECKENRIDGE, Colorado

The deployment of space platforms that capture sunlight for beaming down electrical power to Earth is under review by the Pentagon, as a way to offer global energy and security benefits – including the prospect of short-circuiting future resource wars between increasingly energy-starved nations.
A proposal is being vetted by U.S. military space strategists that 10 percent of the U.S. baseload of energy by 2050, perhaps sooner, could be produced by space based solar power (SBSP). Furthermore, a demonstration of the concept is being eyed to occur within the next five to seven years.


Pentagon Looks to the Internet Community for Space Solar Power Study
2007.07.25 BOSTON

A Pentagon office is taking advantage of the collaborative nature of the Internet as it studies potential applications for space-based solar power, according to one of the officials leading the effort.

The effort marks the first time the National Security Space Office (NSSO) has conducted a study that relies heavily on Internet collaboration, according to Air Force Col. (select) M.V. "Coyote" Smith, chief of the NSSO's future concepts division. Smith is the director of the study, which began in late April.

I Shot the Orion Nebula

2003.02.01 Noveleta, Cavite, Philippines

Yes, this is the Orion Nebula (or the M42 or NGC 1976) in the constellation Orion.

This was CJ David's first deep-sky object photograph. I was surprised to see this photo when I claimed the pictures from the photolab. This was just a test shot. I even forgot about it. I wasn't really expecting anything good or anything visible to come out of it.

Telescope night-sky photography, especially when shooting deep-sky objects, normally requires: higher ISO to capture light better; a camera-to-telescope adapter/mount and an altitude-azimuth mount so that the telescope and the camera stay focused on the object during long time exposures as heavenly bodies move across the sky due to the Earth's rotation.

How did I do it? With my Minolta 35mm SLR camera, I peeped through the eyepiece of, most probably Engr. Milo Dacanay's new reflecting Newtonian-Dobsonian telescope. I held the camera steady for about 10 to 25 seconds, with its shutter speed set to B, then clicked it.

This shot was taken using only an ISO-400 Kodak S-Gold film with f/3.5 and a 10 to 25-second exposure. The speed of the film and the time exposure wasn't enough to show sharp details of the object but I was relatively astronomically pleased by the result.

This happened during one of the Out-Of-Town Observation Session (OOTOS) of the Philippine Astronomical SocietyHeld in Coastal Bay City, Noveleta, Cavite last February 1st 2003.