Program Making Maps

I made a program to make azimuthal equidistant projection maps.


I made this image with it.



The program actually transforms equirectangular projection to azimuthal equidistant projection.

I'll explain how to code on my site.

Famous Charactor in Space

You can play a video game in space.
Pac-man showed up on a satellite.　Although today is April 1, this image is not fake!

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-103

This is Mimas, one of the satellites orbiting around Saturn. The colored image shows temperature of the surface. Yellow area is hotter than blue area. But, the surface is totally cold.

The size of Mimas is smaller than that of the Moon.
So, Don't worry. He cannot eat Earth.

European Space Exploration

I found a video about space exploration in Europe.



Their plan is cool.

Planck's first image

Planck is a mission of ESA in which a spacecraft take pictures of the universe.
The spacecraft gives a preview of the all-sky images.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/planck/firstlight20090917.html

The horizontal light line is the milky way. Red and blue color areas show the strength of the light. That is, the light from red areas is stronger than that from blue areas.

H-IIB Successfully Launched!

As might have been expected, JAXA had succeeded!
H-IIB is developed by JAXA and Mitsubishi Heavy Industry as the next rocket. It is based on H-IIA. It is the biggest rocket among Japanese rockets.







HTV(H-II Transfer Vehicle) is set in the rocket. HTV transfers various resources to the international space station.



This is the introduction video of HTV.


If you want to know that more in detail, please go to JAXA's English page.

New Martian Images

I found a lot of new images of the red planet.

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/releases/sept_09.php

They are taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
You can enjoy strange views.


For example, there is an image of craters on the land.
This is too long to put it on the blog.



When I saw this image, I remembered Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9.

Mars Exploration Videos -variation of landing-

I found an interesting video.

This video is the animation from launch to landing of Mars Exploration Rover (MER).

The particularly important point is the landing of MER. It blew up air bags at landing. It bounced at several times after collision with the land.

I have already heard how MER landed on the land. But, I haven't seen the animation yet.



On the other hand, Phoenix Mars Lander jeted to the land at the landing.
There are various methods to land.
Which method is efficient?