The Gods Smile on Me!

Before we get to what I'm talking about in the title, some important business...

Welcome to new followers.

• puggle_monster aka SP aka Pete S (I might just call you Pete [or Mr Monster if you prefer]) - he's from SP's Project Blog.
• brownk29 - of Keith's Wargaming/Painting Blog.
• Wargame News and Terrain - of the eponymous website, which needs little introduction

Welcome guys!

Prizes!

Now, what's this about smiling gods?  Well it turns out that I'm a winner!  

As many of you know, the guys over at Canister & Grape have been having a competition to celebrate their 50K mark.  I was lucky enough to win this rather splendidly painted figure.

Lovely, eh?

I can't wait for him to arrive.  The Wife looked at him rather suspiciously and asked "What's SAGA?"

Secondly, James at the Gonzo History Project seems to have tired of the 'neat' formatting he was provided with by Wordpress.  He therefore announced that he would give prizes to the three best page submitted to him.  Luckily for me there were only three entries, so my cobbled together effort has earned a goodie bag.  See the entries here.

News from the Fourth Planet

It's been rather a long time since I posted about Mars.  Well, NASA has just released a rather nice series of pictures.

It's not, as someone claimed, a three-eyed Muppet.  Rather is the record of an solar incursion (an eclipse of the sun) by the moon Phobos taken by the Mars rover Curiosity.  I think it's rather awesome, but I'm a sucker for all things martian (and Martian!).  More information here.  

It highlights the odd coincidence that Earth is such a distance from the Sun and our Moon that both appear the same size - thus when we have eclipses the Moon sometimes matches the Sun's disc exactly.

Twinned With... Mars

Glenelg, Mars

The small Scottish settlement of Glenelg (popl 291)  is celebrating the arrive of the Curiosity Rover at its namesake in the Gale Crater, Mars (popl ???), with a twinning ceremony and ceilidh tomorrow - Party On!

Although the NASA team named the martian feature after one in Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories of Canada and the fact that it is a palindrome (they'll be visiting on the way out and the way back), the name originally comes from the Highland settlement opposite the Isle of Skye.

Glenelg, Scotland

For a comparison of the two Glenelgs, have a look at the BBC's site, which also has an interesting story

Cosmic coincidence on the road to Glenelg.

Curiosity Update #2: Riverbed find

Curiosity science team member Sanjeev Gupta explains how rounded pebbles spotted by the rover are convincing evidence of an ancient streambed on Mars.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Curiosity Update #1: The View From Mars

The Curiosity Rover has sent us its latest photos of the Gale Crater, looking towards Mount Sharp.

The gravelly area around Curiosity's landing site is visible in the foreground.  Farther away, about a third of the way up from the bottom of the image, the terrain falls off into a depression (a swale).  Beyond the swale, in the middle of the image, is the boulder-strewn, red-brown rim of a moderately-sized impact crater.  Farther off in the distance, there are dark dunes and then the layered rock at the base of Mount Sharp.  Some haze obscures the view, but the top ridge, depicted in this image, is 10 miles (16.2 kilometers) away.

'This is an area on Mount Sharp where Curiosity will go,' said Mastcam (Mast Camera) principal investigator Michael Malin, of Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego. 'Those layers are our ultimate objective. The dark dune field is between us and those layers. In front of the dark sand you see redder sand, with a different composition suggested by its different color. The rocks in the foreground show diversity — some rounded, some angular, with different histories. This is a very rich geological site to look at and eventually to drive through.'