A swiss road safety campaign on speed
I was too afraid to listen... The beard... the wings... the white suits...
And via the same report I was forwarded the above link through, the winner of the unfortunate acronym of the year award:
The recent Swiss road safety report “SINUS” indicates that, in 2008, 147 people died and another 1,109 were ( Read more... )

For those interested in Astronomy on the Radio:

Our Changing World, Tonight 9.00 pm, Radio New Zealand National

Alison Ballance and Veronika Meduna presenting
In the first episode in a series celebrating the International Year of Astronomy, Mt John Observatory’s Alan Gilmore, Grant Christie and other astronomers review the history of optical ( Read more... )

Why I didn't go for a job with Carter Observatory (having possibly seen a certain report earlier). Hopefully the Wellington City Council will be able to continue it as an educational facility, but it has been less than successful wrt research and research funding for a while now.

The random DVD assortment of movies for the week was ( Read more... )

I am occasionally quite terrible at following up on emails and replying to people - some of you may have noticed ( Read more... )

Or, a post not about tents, Festival or anything medieval.
Your manuscript entitled "Abundances in intermediate-mass AGB stars undergoing third dredge-up and hot-bottom burning", *snip*, has now been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Main Journal ( Read more... )

A very good documentary on ABC: A sidewalk astronomer, about John Dobson: inventor of the Dobsonian Telescope, cofounder of Sidewalk Astronomy and all around character. I don't agree with his cosmological theories but his delight and patience in going out and showing people the sun, the moon and the universe, and explaining is just glorious. I want ( Read more... )

Heavens Above for checking out visable comets, satelites etc.
vonstassburg, if it is Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 you were wondering about (don't know if that is the one breaking up), unfortunately it appears to be northern hemisphere and fairly faint (currently 8th magnitude with 6th magnitude being the nominal naked eyeball cut off ( Read more... )

Planet discovery opens up worlds
( NZ Herald 14.03.06 )

For later reference:
Heavens-Above Main page (lat/long for Canberra) - try http://www.heavens-above.com/ for the generic site, where you can search for your specific location.
Yay to comets and satellites, though unfortunately the new bright one Astronomy Picture of the Day: Comet Pojmanski is only currently at mag 6.4, is an early morning object, ( Read more... )