More images from Phoenix, showing one of the solar arrays and a foot pad.

See them here on the CE blog or on the Phoenix site:

http://ceastronomy.org/blog/

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/main/index.html

Phoenix is healthy, solar arrays are deployed, batteries charging!   This is one of the first images from the north polar region of Mars.

Get the latest news about Phoenix here:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/main/index.html

And the first images just came in………  (Larry you have a new competiter)

Theo

Congratulations to JPL!  The Phoenix is safely on the surface, and only tilted 1/4th of a degree.   Wow!  What a show!

Larry

Hi everybody,

Just in case you don’t get NASA TV on cable, here are a couple of links to watch the Phoenix landing over the internet.

This is a high quality link to NASA TV over Yahoo (1200bps)

http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?id=1368163

Here’s the NASA TV website for a lower bandwidth stream:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

Don’t forget to watch Sunday night.  The landing will occur at 7:53 EDT (4:53 PDT).  I’d start watching around 7:00.

Dark skies,

Larry

 Hello Larry Owens,

Hello current and new Saturn Observation Campaign members! Welcome all! This is a very exciting week at JPL, as we prepare for Phoenixs touchdown on Mars Sunday, May 25. For those of you who want to follow this mission, we have a Phoenix toolkit up on the http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm JPL website. You will find links to NASA TV, which you can watch on the internet, the landing and press schedule and much more. Touchdown, 4:53:52 p.m. Sunday May 25, 2008 PDT, plus or minus about 46 seconds.

Phoenix on Facebook and Twitter too. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=1700

Watch Mars buzz past a swarm of stars. If you get a chance to look at Mars over the next few nights, you can watch it pass in front of M44, the Beehive Star cluster. Heres a short feature I wrote yesterday about this nice viewing opportunity, plus my latest May Whats Up podcast. http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/scitech/astronomy.cfm

Now on to CHARM

The Cassini-Huygens Analysis and Results of the Mission (CHARM) telecon for May 27, 2008 11:00 am to 1:00 pm Pacific Time (888) 677-6566 and the passcode is 3832523 (a permanent number for US callers only)

Topic: History of Saturns Rings

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/products/CHARM.cfm

The PDF version of the presentation should be on this public Cassini website page on Monday, May 26.

We will be joined by: Prof. Larry Esposito (Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, U. Colorado)

EASY REFERENCE:

CHARM telecons are the last Tuesday of the month at 11:00 am to 1:00 pm Pacific Time

The phone number is (888) 677-6566 and the passcode is 3832523

The CHARM pdfs are located at:

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/products/CHARM.cfm.

The CHARM ppts are located at:

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/doclib/.

This is a password protected site, here are the details (they are case sensitive): Username: cassini Password: Doc$85 If you have any questions please feel free to contact charm_leads_01@cdsa.jpl.nasa.gov Lets all wish Phoenix a safe landing on Sunday!

Jane – who will be here at JPL supporting the Phoenix landing activities this weekend.

Jane Houston Jones
Senior Outreach Specialist, Cassini Program
JPL – 4800 Oak Grove Drive, MS 230-205
Pasadena, CA 91109
Phone – 818-393-6435
Fax – 818-393-4495
jane.h.jones@jpl.nasa.gov
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov

Hey Sun Dog,     Remember those properly filtered solar glasses ???  I draped the lens of one in front of my camera lens and got this composite result: http://ceastronomy.org/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=2588  I know it isn’t H-Alpha, but it was an interesting experiment.

Since  your instrument is bigger than mine (i.e. C-14 vs Panasonic DMC-FZ18 , does that qualify me as a Sun Pup?

Clevis

The forecast was not that good, but I setup last night and was surprised.  The transparency was good and stability also, with the exceptional airplanes crossing just around where Satrun was.

Here is the link to the Saturn image from yesterday evening:

http://www.ceastronomy.org/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=2444

 Clear Skies!

This is my first time to try out this new blogging thingy. Not sure what to say except I had a great time at the meeting with my extended “family”.

Still trying to figure out how best to post the Watch LIst files and the previous web links from the last 2.5 years.

Stay tuned.

‘Skies,

Steve

P.S.  When Bloggin’, don’;t forget to populate the TITLE to eliminate that NO SUBJECT (see above and below