AS SEEN FROM SPACE

Not many people get to hang out on Bouganville Island in Papau, New Guinea. Bagana, the volcano, is active.

And apparently spewing, according to NASA. This new satellite photo shows it happening.

PAGING BONNIE TYLER

The partial solar eclipse is Sunday. We lucky few in the Ozarks get clouds and a peak that happens after sunset, so ... meh.

Console yourself with some Bonnie Tyler and those weird kids with glowing eyes. Further proof that the 1980s spawned some fucked-up ideas. Turn around, bright eyes.

BABY SUPERNOVA

An explosion just discovered, and it's the most recent in the Milky Way -- about 140 years old.

According to news from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory:

Previously, the last known supernova in our galaxy occurred around 1680, an estimate based on the expansion of remnant Cassiopeia A. ...

The tracking of this object began in 1985, when astronomers ... used the [National Radio Astronomy Observatory's] Very Large Array to identify the remnant of a supernova explosion near the center of our galaxy. Based on its small size, it was thought to have resulted from a supernova that exploded about 400 to 1000 years ago.

Twenty-two years later, Chandra observations revealed the remnant had expanded by a surprisingly large amount, about 16 percent, since 1985. This indicates the supernova remnant is much younger than previously thought.

That young age was confirmed in recent weeks when the Very Large Array made new radio observations. This comparison of data pinpoints the age of the remnant at 140 years - possibly less if it has been slowing down - making it the youngest on record in the Milky Way.

The photo -- a blending of data from Chandra and the Very Large Array -- is money.

SPY SATELLITE SHOOTDOWN THURSDAY

So claims a report on CNN's blog:

The U.S. Navy will likely attempt to shoot down a faulty spy satellite on Thursday, the day after the space shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to land, two officials familiar with the planning told CNN Monday.

The officials — who spoke on condition of anonymity because much of the planning remains classified — said the idea is to leave as much time as possible so that a second attempt could be made in the event of a failure.

Does anyone believe the government's cover story that this whole shootdown is because of worries over rocket fuel, and its risk to humans on the ground?

MARS ROVER STUCK

Spirit and Opportunity were supposed to last about 90 days.

Forty-seven months and thousands of incredible images later, one of the Mars rovers may be on its last treads. New Scientist reports:

Spirit is stuck in what appears to be loose soil, but engineers hope to free it quickly so it can reach a safe spot to ride out the approaching winter.

For the past two weeks, Spirit has been heading to the northern end of a 90-metre-wide raised plateau called Home Plate. The region boasts relatively steep, northern-tilting slopes that would maximise the sunlight falling on the rover's solar panels during winter in the planet's southern hemisphere.

Mission scientists had hoped it would arrive on a safe slope by 1 January – a deadline made all the more critical because the rover's power is already depleted due to dust on its solar panels. "There's more dust on Spirit now because of the dust storms a few months ago," says rover team member Ken Herkenhoff of the US Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Arizona, US. "That's making this [journey north] more urgent."

But within the past few days, the rover has become stuck. "Now, winter is getting closer and closer, Spirit has been bogged down in loose soil and we're trying to move out of that area," Herkenhoff told New Scientist.

If you've not gone there, check out NASA's raw images gallery from the rovers. Sometimes government does work, and well.

CALVERA, AGE UNKNOWN

The blogger known as Granny Geek gets the point for this obit:

Astronomers have spotted a space oddity in Earth's neighbourhood - a dead star with some unusual characteristics.

The object, known as a neutron star, was studied using space telescopes and ground-based observatories.

But this one, located in the constellation Ursa Minor, seems to lack some key characteristics found in other neutron stars.

Details of the study, by a team of American and Canadian researchers, will appear in the Astrophysical Journal.

If confirmed, it would be only the eighth known "isolated neutron star" - meaning a neutron star that does not have an associated supernova remnant, binary companion, or radio pulsations.

The object has been nicknamed Calvera, after the villain in the 1960s western film The Magnificent Seven.

Neutron stars happen when stars with great masses go the supernova route. The inner gooey goodness collapses, protons and electrons merge, neutrons are formed. Voila -- a neutron star.

Calvera is 250 to 1,000 light-years away.

WATER FOUND ON MARS?

Could be. The rover known as Opportunity took pictures of an area on Mars; further analysis seems to show ponds of water on the red planet.

New Scientist reports:

The report identifies specific spots that appear to have contained liquid water two years ago, when Opportunity was exploring a crater called Endurance. It is a highly controversial claim, as many scientists believe that liquid water cannot exist on the surface of Mars today because of the planet’s thin atmosphere.

If confirmed, the existence of such ponds would significantly boost the odds that living organisms could survive on or near the surface of Mars, says physicist Ron Levin, the report's lead author, who works in advanced image processing at the aerospace company Lockheed Martin in Arizona.

Along with fellow Lockheed engineer Daniel Lyddy, Levin used images from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's website. The resulting stereoscopic reconstructions, made from paired images from the Opportunity rover's twin cameras, show bluish features that look perfectly flat. The surfaces are so smooth that the computer could not find any surface details within those areas to match up between the two images.

The imaging shows that the areas occupy the lowest parts of the terrain. They also appear transparent: some features, which Levin says may be submerged rocks or pebbles, can be seen below the plane of the smooth surface.

Sure looks like water to us.

ANCIENT CITY FOUND BY SATELLITE

A cool photo awaits you at Live Science, where you'll also find the report on a 1,600-year-old metropolis found by satellite imagery.

From Live Science:

Images captured from space pinpoint telltale signs of previous habitation in the swatch of land 200 miles south of Cairo, which digging recently confirmed as an ancient settlement dating from about 400 A.D.

The find is part of a larger project aiming to map as much of ancient Egypt's archaeological sites, or "tells," as possible before they are destroyed or covered by modern development.

"It is the biggest site discovered so far," said project leader Sarah Parcak of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. "Based on the coins and pottery we found, it appears to be a massive regional center that traded with Greece, Turkey and Libya."

Parcak has found about 400 sites by satellite. The oldest one is more than 5,000 years old.

STILL NO MARTIANS

They were supposed to work for a few months following their landing on Mars in 2004. But two NASA rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, continue to grind their way across the Martian landscape, more than three years after they were supposed to go kaput.

Every now and then we like to peek at the raw images gallery and see what the rovers are seeing. No proof of life, past or present -- not yet, at least. But the images are great.

WALLY SCHIRRA, 84

One of the heroes of America's 20th century. An original Mercury Seven astronaut. The only man to fly on all three of NASA's early space missions -- Mercury, Gemini and Apollo.

The Associated Press notes that Schirra in 1962 became the third American to orbit the Earth. He did six orbits. His flight lasted more than nine hours.

MIT gets the point, beating Brother Richard by mere minutes.

THE ULTIMATE FLIGHT RISK

NASA astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak is now charged with attempted murder; she allegedly tried to bump off Colleen Shipman, who was reportedly too close (for Nowak's comfort) to space shuttle pilot Bill Oefelein.

Nowak was the first Italian-American to go into space. From her official biography:

Lisa enjoys bicycling, running, skeet, sailing, gourmet cooking, rubber stamps, crossword puzzles, piano, and African violets. As an undergraduate she competed on the track team. Her parents, Alfredo and Jane Caputo, reside in Rockville, Maryland.

Godspeed, Lisa Marie Nowak.