outer space

This is a pretty spiffy day.

• The Phoenix landed safely and is already sending back amazing photos.
• Clayton Kershaw had his major league debut for the Dodgers, and while he didn’t get the win, he acquitted himself quite well, and the Dodgers wound up winning in the 10th inning off of Andre Ethier’s first career walkoff hit. Luis Maza also hit his first career homerun.
• This is Towel Day, honoring Douglas Adams, the hoopiest frood ever.
• It is the one-year anniversary of my epic Star Wars Day marathon.
• It also marks the beginning of a one-year countdown to the even-more-epic Alien vs Predator Saga movie marathon in 2009.

It looks like the Phoenix lander has touched down on Mars!

Radio signals received at 4:53 p.m. Pacific Time confirmed that the Phoenix Mars Lander had survived its difficult final descent and touchdown 15 minutes earlier. In the intervening time, those signals crossed the distance from Mars to Earth at the speed of light.

Congratulations to NASA and the Phoenix team!

(As I appropriately post this from MarsEdit ;)

Did you know there’s a California Nebula? I found out myself today thanks to the ever-awesome Astronomy Picture of the Day and its March 7th entry, “Comet over California” showing Comet Holmes gracing the edge of the image:

Today’s entry linked back to a March 2005 APoD entry: “NGC 1499: California Nebula” which shows it off to better effect:

More info on NGC 1499 is available at the Atlas of the Universe and also at SEDS. Wikipedia’s page on the nebula says:

It is almost 2.5° long on the sky and, because of its very low surface brightness, it is extremely difficult to observe visually. It can be observed with a H-Beta filter (isolates the H-Beta line at 486 nm) in a rich-field telescope under dark skies. It lies at a distance of about 1,000 light years from Earth.*

* Other sources place it at about 1,500 light years.

(Via Serious Eats)