If You Can't See Venus -- It's Cloudy

I was driving home about an hour ago and I saw a bright star in the western sky. There is one problem with that...we can't see stars in Alexandria, there is too much light pollution. This is weird to adjust to, but once you are used to a blank sky (except for the moon), it's really weird to actually see something.

Anyway, tonight I saw an incredibly bright object, and it turns out it's Venus! Venus is much brighter than anything else in the night sky (except the moon) by a wide margin. As Space.com's NightSky report for February said:

If you go out as it gets dark and look to the west any early evening this month, and do not see Venus -- it's cloudy!

So grab your telescope and check it out! Saturn is also visible in the night sky but I haven't been able to pick it out yet...if I can, with all of the light pollution.

Getting Spaced on Twitter

As some of you may know, there's a "micro-blogging" website called Twitter that has been building momentum for the last few years. It's called micro-blogging because posts can only contain 140 characters or fewer.

Once dominated by geeks, like Leo Laporte (@LeoLaporte), it has grown with the adoption of "tweeting" by celebrities and news organizations, and in the recent election cycle when both the Obama and McCain campaigns posted updates to Twitter. It's worth noting that both have largely gone dormant since the election (@BarackObama has just 2 tweets leading up to the inauguration, @JohnMcCain has not posted since Oct 24).

Anyway, I mention this because Twitter not only gives you the opportunity to follow people, but also news organizations, radio shows (@GrandyandAndy is my favorite), and as it pertains to Kal in Space, select NASA/JPL programs.

NASA and the Jet Propulsion Lab have 4 main twitter characters: The Mars Phoenix Lander (@MarsPhoenix), Cassini Spacecraft (@CassiniSaturn), Spirit and Oppy (@MarsRovers), and the new Mars Science Lab rover (@MarsScienceLab). I call them characters because the JPL did something unique with Mars Phoenix, in that it the person who provided the updates did them in first person. It was like Mars Phoenix had a personality that you could interact with. In fact, in June 2008 when it was first confirmed that there was in fact H2O ice on Mars, it was announced first on Twitter with this:

Are you ready to celebrate? Well, get ready: We have ICE!!!!! Yes, ICE, *WATER ICE* on Mars! w00t!!! Best day ever!!

We who follow MarsPhoenix on twitter watched as the rover's mission got an extension when the rover miraculously regained enough power to continue a few months beyond the original projection.

The other twitter characters aren't written in the first person, but they do provide great updates on what is going on around Saturn and on Mars, and they frequently answer questions that are sent via twitter.

Check them out!

-Kal
(@KalMiller)

Love Affair with Toaster Ovens

I love toaster ovens. My senior year in college, my roommate Jason had a big, old toaster oven that he brought to our apartment. I was skeptical at first: We already had a toaster, and an oven. Why do we need a frankenstein of the two?

However, I quickly learned to love this peculiar device. You can make anything in one. I frequently would make batches of cornbread muffins or cornbread loaves (those didn't work out so well). Worked great for things like Pizza Rolls and other tasty snacks. But one of the best uses is reheating pizza.

Microwaves make reheating pizza a mushy affair. Use a toaster oven, though, and it's crispy and almost as tasty as if it were just made fresh. However, why not just make fresh pizza in your toaster oven? That's right, it heats up faster than a conventional oven and will cook a personal size pizza in no time!

Today, I contemplated that very thing. I brought some homemade pizza for lunch today. Pizzeria Miller Pizzas don't reheat well in the microwave, at least not as well as the pizza-chain delivery kind. Problem: No Toaster Oven at work. Heck, we don't even have a toaster. (Makes enjoying pop tarts a bit difficult...) Impolitic Solution: Buy toaster oven, and put it on my desk. Reheat Pizza.

However, I then asked myself: Why reheat pizza when I could just make my own FRESH in the toaster oven? BRILLIANT! I'm sure this would make even more people jealous than reheating homemade at my desk. But making people jealous isn't the goal. Tasty pizza is. So what do I do? Do I continue to suffer through mushy microwave pizza, or do I infuriate our facilities department by making delicious, fresh pizza at my desk?

I report, you decide. (Oh, wait...that's Fox News...never mind.)

Kal