Back in March I'd been trying to spot Comet C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS) (Wikipedia).
As a guide, I got the orbital numbers from the Minor Planet Center and entered them into my old Starry Night program.
Here it is on March 12th for Atlanta, 8 PM ET, just after sunset in the west (Not that it would ever look this good; binoculars needed, at least in the light-pollution of Atlanta and surrounding areas).


I never did manage to spot it (Stupid trees!), but a friend nearby did (with binoculars). But I've continued to experiment with it and other comets in Starry Night.
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Google Maps did this thing for April Fools' Day where it makes the whole Earth look like a pirate treasure map. There's a 2-minute YouTube video with some backstory.

There seems to be multiple things hidden in the map.

One is a hunt where you start at certain places and follow coordinates.

1. 51.48,0.74 Southend-On-Sea, UK -SKULL: 55.09,-5.15
2. (Ballantrae, Scotland) boat: 40.71,-74.00
3. (Lower Manhattan) Meaty Bone -21.53,46.05
4. (Madagascar) Sword 9.81,124.14
5. (Batuan, Phillipines) Key 26.90, 144.4
6. (SE of Japan) Giant Squid 34.61, 135.7
7. (Osaka, Japan) Scroll (M) 24.37, 124.15
8. (Ishigaki, Japan) ??? 29.14,129.19
9. (Japanese island, East China Sea): COMPASS (RED): LETTER A

9 more trails like this spells out:
APRIL FOOLS

I've seen a lot of posts about this on the web, but nobody seems to have found what the source is for finding the original 10 starting points.
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Then there seems to be a few treasure chests hidden around that, as far as I can tell, are just stand-alone. There's one in Puerto Rico. 18.13,-65.98 Also on Reunion Island -21.293275,55.574589

Then there's just unusual landmarks in some places. Marietta, Georgia has the Big Chicken. If you go to Seoul, South Korea, there's an icon for the "Gangnam style" guy.

Then, if you go to certain spots (Treasure Island, San Francisco Bay, or USF San Jose campus) there's dotted lines to an X marks the spot like on a treasure map.
If you zoom in, you get Google Street View in sepia black and white like you're looking at it through a pirate's telescope.

Then there's an overlay that puts in moving pirate ships.

I think there's a bigger game to all this that hasn't really been solved yet. More detail on the Google+ Google Maps page. And this reddit post has some good finds.

I'd been trying to see that recent Comet C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS) but was unsuccessful - too faint even with binoculars with the light pollution where I live, and too close to the treeline. But a friend nearby managed it. Hopefully better luck in November with Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON). But as a result, I got the orbital numbers for a bunch of comets from the Minor Planet Center and plugged them into my old Starry Night program to see how close I could make 'em graze the Sun.

Then I started making planets. I was trying to simulate some of these exoplanets that are found in other star systems, very close to their star, much closer than Mercury to the Sun.


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For some reason, I'm fascinated by asteroids. It doesn't have much to do with the possibility of them hitting Earth, in fact I'm more interested in the non-Earth-crossing asteroids. It's more the idea of these little worldlets out there that you could walk around on like the Little Prince. Also, it probably has something to do with those old TWILIGHT ZONE episodes where astronauts would land on asteroids that somehow had a breathable atmosphere and looked very much like Death Valley, California, since that's where they filmed the episodes.

At 2:25pm ET/19:25 UT today, the asteroid 2012 DA14 (Wikipedia, 50 meters across, 190 metric tons) is coming within 27,700 kilometers of Earth, closer than geosynchronous satellites, practically within spitting distance. This is the closest known approach of an asteroid until the much larger 99942 Apophis comes by April 13th, 2029.

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Since October, I've been watching the 1989-1996 HBO series TALES FROM THE CRYPT on my cable's free On-Demand, via FEARnet. I'm midway through Season 5 of 7 now.

On a Season 5 (1993) episode "People Who Live in Brass Hearses" (Bill Paxton, Brad Dourif, directed by Russell Mulcahy [HIGHLANDER], written by Scott Nimerfro) there's a point where a character is reading a JESSE JAMES VS. PREDATOR comic book.



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Around 1969, at age 3, I got this Billy Blastoff toy.


From robotnut's Billy Blastoff webpage.

He was kind of a chubbier, baby-faced, Major Matt Mason.

This was an awesome toy, and probably has a lot to do with my interest in space exploration.

He had two AA batteries in his backpack (like air tanks), and they caused plastic pistons that extruded from the bottom of his feet to oscillate, causing him to walk forward (More like a shuffle). They also caused a crankshaft and cog strategically located in his anus to rotate, which, when he was seated in his various space buggies, would cause them to move. It was really pretty ingenious.

And this thing was durable. I had him til I graduated from high school, and every few years I'd take the corroded batteries out and put in some fresh ones, and the darn thing still worked fine. By that time, his helmet-visor was smashed, probably from an Alien facehugger.

Artist's conception: Billy Blastoff vs. Alien

The top photo isn't a complete set; he also had a little orange sled that could be hooked as a trailer to two of those vehicles, and a yellow TV camera the same color as the ray-gun, and a rod with a scoop (for moonrock collection), also molded from yellow plastic. He may have had a couple of light-up devices that plugged into his suit as well, but if so, I lost those pretty early on. Here's a 30-second YouTube of a TV commercial for this set.

Even as a kid, I'd long since forgotten that this guy was called Billy Blastoff. Now, it took me awhile to find him on the web, through various google searches that were variants of "What was that chubbier, baby-faced toy that was kind of like Major Matt Mason?"

Major Matt Mason toys were really before my time, but I had a friend in the neighborhood who had some. They might have been hand-me-downs from an older sibling, or maybe his parents got 'em at a garage sale.

The figure that stood out was Callisto, an alien who had a gun that fired elastic string, sort of like toys I've seen to annoy or amuse your cat.

There's also a good Major Matt Mason webpage here.

So there's this Japanese hobbyist satellite, FITSAT-1, launched from the space station,
that was going to flash Morse code on Christmas Eve.
Only problem is, Christmas Eve is a full moon, so they're doing it early.
Tonight, actually. Wednesday December 12, at 6:14:30 UTC
Which will be 1:14 AM ET. Tuesday night/Wednesday morning.
Details on their webpage here.

heavens-above.com shows it here in Atlanta starting 10 degrees up NNW at 1:12am,
peaking 25 degrees up NE at 1:14AM, and descending to 10 degrees up E at 1:17am.
Not that I read Morse code. If I see a blinky satellite, I'll count it as a victory.
The weather doesn't look favorable here, but but you never know.

With the announcement of the Hostess company's bankruptcy today, the Internet is afire with mourning the demise of the Twinkie, etc. Apparently Woody Harrelson won't have to wait for the zombie apocalypse for a Twinkie shortage.

When I was a kid, comic books would have these strange Hostess ads where the character from the comic book would have these one-page adventures where Hostess products (Fruit pies, etc.) would come in handy in stopping somebody's plot for world domination or whatever.

When the WATCHMEN movie came out in 2009, there were a slew of web-parodies; what if Hostess had ads in the WATCHMEN universe?

But back in 4th grade, 1976 or so, a friend and I drew our own parody of THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, which we called THE SMELLY GARBAGE-MAN. We would alternate issues. We parodied the whole comic book; ads, letters to the editor, etc.

Mine weren't badly written, but my illustration style was just above stick figures. Meanwhile, the other guy, Frank Schurter, actually had a pretty good comic book artistic style. I still have a couple of issues of it around, and this was his Hostess Twinkie ad parody.

Frank, if you find this on the Internet, hi!

So, timely for Veterans Day: The other day I was talking to this 87-year-old gentleman, David Pirkle, Senior. He resides in the same Assisted Living Facility as my mother, in Alpharetta, Georgia. Born 1925, and, as it turns out, during World War II, he was in the 735th Railway Operating Battalion, Company B, and at the Battle of the Bulge, December 1944-January 1945. I told him I'd look on the web for info about his Company.

On a website, militaryrailwayservice.blogspot.com, I found info about the Railway Operating Battalions, and specifically, there was a Carl Vernoy, who was also in the 735th Railway Operating Battalion, Company B, died 1989. Carl's daughter had posted some pictures from her dad's wartime experiences, and one of them had Carl standing next to a David. There'd be like 144 guys in a Company, so there could be a number of Davids, but what if it was the same guy? So the next day I showed him the picture, without any captions or explanation, and asked if any of the guys looked familiar, and right away he pointed to the 2nd guy from the right, and said, "That's me." As it happened, his son arrived a few minutes later, and he too confirmed the identification.

In this web-post, David Pirkle is in the picture of the 4 guys standing outdoors in front of a window in Brussels, February 1945. His buddy Carl Vernoy is next to him on the far right. The guy on the far left may be a Harry Radka, but that's unconfirmed. The man next to him (second from the left) is unidentified, except that the photo listed him as being later killed in Belgium.

From Left to Right: (Possibly) Harry Radka, Unknown (Killed in Belgium 1945), David Pirkle Senior, and Carl Vernoy. Picture courtesy of Mary Vernoy, Carl's daughter.

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On Sunday, November 11th, 100 Wheels is having a Veterans Day Benefit at the Roswell Georgia VFW. Band play all day, 11 AM to 1 AM. Proceeds go to buy wheelchairs for disabled American Veterans.

The Roswell VFW is at 140 Dobbs Drive. More details on the 100 Wheels website, www.100wheels.org.

Also an Event on Facebook here, and the 100 Wheels Facebook page here.