Astronomy Awareness Program at Galle Concluded a Success

Well, as I told you in the previous post, on last Monday the 22nd, we left from Colombo to Galle.In fact I departed from home at 7:30 am local time and soon I was joint by my fellow astronomer Pulasthi Kanatthage at about 8:45 am. We traveled from bus to Galle town and arrived there at 11:00 am. Since the school, that were to lecture, was situated in the suburbs of Galle we had been given the transportation by a three-wheeler to the school. Within a drive of 10 minutes, we got to our location.The Richard Pathirana College (In fact the college was thus named after the late Minister of Education, who was from Galle and earlier this had been named...

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An Astronomy Awareness Program to be held tomorrow

It is a pleasure to tell you all that I have been invited together with my fellow astronomer Pulasthi Shyamika Kanatthage for an astronomy awareness program to be held at Richard Pathirana College, Galle, Sri Lanka. The program will be held tomorrow 22nd June, at 11:00 am (01:30 h EDT) at the college premises.The awareness program includes 2 main lectures on Basic Astronomy & Eclipses. The session is scheduled to last 2 hours plus an interactive discussion session. What I feel is that there should be more events like this for the awareness and better understanding of astronomy. Since this is IYA 2009, the opportunity is here, so as to popularize...

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H2 Fuel Leak Again Postpones the Launch of Space Shuttle Endeavor

For the second attempt during a session of 5 days, NASA had to postpone the launch of space shuttle Endeavor's STS-127 mission due to a detection of the hydrogen gas leak, on last Wednesday the 17th. The launch was postponed earlier on last Saturday, the 13th due to a similar reason. The leak had been observed from the gaseous hydrogen venting system, located outside the shuttle's external fuel tank.However Endeavor's next launch has been arranged to tale place on next 11th. This is because, of a beta angle cut-out, which is an orbital sun-angle condition, occurring from 22nd June to 10th July. Basically this cut-out results in a thermal condition...

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Ancient Chinese Star Map: Please Decode

This is an image I found at Facebook. In fact this is the 1st occasion I stumbled at this.It is supposed to showcase the ancient Chinese map of Earth. It portrays northern hemisphere and it is a part of Chinese Dunhuang Star Atlas from 649 to 684 d.C.I would like to investigate more on this and I see some Chinese characters written on the image.I shall be more than glad if I could find someone out there, who is able to translate them to English.In fact it's a worthy cause and I request our readers to find more about this and let the others know about the findings as well.Just go to Google and do some research.Comments are always welcome...

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Spaceport: A Reality by Next Summer | Virgin Galactic Will be Ready

It seems that Western US will be more and more popular in the times to come, as the world's first ever rather primordial Spaceport is planned to be set-up in the frontier, starting from today 19th June 2009. Today will remark the beginning of an extraordinary episode of space travel, and to be precise space tourism in fact. New Mexico will provide the house to this first commercial spaceport, enabling a wide range of global citizens to go beyond Earth's limits.This imaginary picture depicts of the completed Spaceport, named as Virgin Galactic. The groundbreaking ceremonies will start with a flyover by the White Knight Two, which is the Mothership...

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Latest Astronomy Podcast of http://SkyLK.com Kaguya & Endeavor News

I was again privileged to contribute for yet another astronomy podcast, courtesy of SkyLK.com.In fact the podcast was scheduled to be recorded online via Skype in the night of last Saturday, the 13th June 2009. However there we 3 pod casters online, namely the two webmasters of SkyLK.com Hasitha Karunarathne and Madusha Dedigamuwa, together with me. We had planned to focus on 2 latest topics, which were the Kaguya's Lunar Impact and Endeavor Shuttle's delay, which was reported to us a short while ago. Unfortunately due to a certain technical problem, (In fact it was my mike, which was not performing properly) we postponed the podcast to next...

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Astronomy News: Kaguya Crashed into Moon

Having orbited Moon for almost 2 years and having completed its mission successfully, Kaguya the Japanese Spacecraft, crashed on the surface of Moon last Wednesday, leaving the Earthlings its cherished memory as it make flashes of flares upon smashing into the Lunar territories.Having snapped for each 0.6 seconds this series of images, features how the collusion took place. If you look carefully, you will probably notice the flare being brightly visible on the second image (center). The third shows a much faded-away image while the flare seems to have been disappearing when it comes to the last image of the series.(Image: Jeremy Bailey/University...

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IYA 2009 Astronomy Sri Lanka Blogger Onair

Hello Everyone!I'm getting back to you after a while and some pause. Thanks a lot for those who sent comments enclosing feedback. Well now I'm gonna tell you about a privilege that I was entitled to, as per my title of IYA 2009 Astronomy Sri Lanka blogger.In fact, I was invited for an astronomy-related radio program, broadcast in local Radio. The recordings were held at SLBC (Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporations) in the evening of last Saturday, the 6th.I took part to the recordings together with 2 of my astronomy colleagues, who are namely Pulasthi Shyamika Kanatthage and Hasitha Karunarathne. It is important to say that latter is a webmaster...

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