Blogs / Bad Astronomy

I have to say, I can never figure out my feelings on stuff like this. Selling Alien Abduction Dogtags is a clever idea; people who know it’s a joke will get a laugh, but people who are gullible might think it’s a good idea. Y’know, Just In Case.

Taking money from people like that seems so unfair… but then again, caveat emptor. And maybe taking money from True Believers is better than letting them spend it on UFO conferences and other nonsense. Maybe someone could point them to my Amazon book store…

Tip o’ the tin foil beanie to BABloggee Lee Sphar.

My close personal friend Penn Jillette has a new series… on teh intertubes.

Called Penn Says, it’s a series of short (shockingly swear-free) vids where he opines on various issues. I don’t always agree with him, but I always like to listen to him, and he makes me laugh a lot.

In a cool move, they are asking for people to upload responses. I may do that myself. But I’ll be careful. He’s way bigger than me.

P.S. Showtime– it helps if you allow embedding of videos. I know, I know, you won’t get the additional $0.000001 per view of the vid, but it helps spread the word, and your audience on teh toobs likes it. Sometimes it’s a good idea to make the audience happy.

Finally, someone who treats pareidolia with the respect and seriousness it deserves.

Tip o’ the mitre to BABloggee Piotr Slisz.

I just learned via the Royal Observatory Greenwich blog that asteroid 2008 AF3 passed pretty close to the Earth last night — 475,000 kilometers from us — just outside the orbit of the Moon. It won’t hit us, but it was a close enough shave to be somewhat interesting.

The asteroid was discovered on January 10, just three days ago, and has an elliptical orbit that maxes out at the orbit of Mars and brings it in to the Sun as close as Earth’s own orbit. This pass is close enough to change its orbit, so I’ll be interested in seeing what the orbit looks like after it swings by.

2008 AF3 is pretty faint (it’s small, though I cannot find its actual size), and will only be viewable with biggish ’scopes — at a max magnitude 14, it’s less than one-thousandth as bright as the faintest star you can see with your naked eye. I expect there will be plenty of amateurs getting images of it, though. If you get any, post them to BAUT! A skymap of the flyby — and for many other asteroids too — is at Tom’s Asteroid Flyby page, a very cool resource that I have now bookmarked.

Interestingly, Tom’s page has it approaching a bit closer (380,000 km) than what’s at the JPL page (475,000 km). I’m not sure which is correct, but both mean it was a clean miss.

We’re getting another near miss at the end of the month, too. This is a good time to be an asteroid hunter!

… Boston Globe, that is. They printed a nice article about her new radio show, Curiosity Aroused.

BTW, Rebecca will be at TAM 5.5, and I will be sure to mock praise her when I introduce her.