Live Meteor Back scatter board

I came across a really interesting web site the other day that featured a live data plot of meteor back scatter counts, what are they? When we think of meteors, our most common impression is often of a bright trail of light in the night sky as the incoming body vaporises itself in the upper parts of the atmosphere. But in reality of course, meteors arrive all the time even during daylight hours. Using backscattering, radio amateurs are able to pick up over the horizon radio signals, typically in the VHF band 28 to 432 Mhz, reflected from the meteors ionised trail. Credit for the meteor data which are provided by Andy, G7IZU, tuned to 55.250 / 59.257 MHz. Many thanks Andy, and do feel free to check out his Radio Reflection Detection website at http://www.tvcomm.co.uk/radio/live.htmlI must also equally thanks to Ansgar QTH: Friedberg, JN58MI, Web: http://www.dg2kbc.de for providing the image links. If you would like to visit Spaceport UK for a visit, the Meteor board is at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Star%20Beach%20Island/43/180/22 look forward to hearing from you, regards Aso

Britain to get a space launcher

Since the launch of the first British satellite Prospero into orbit by a British rocket Black Arrow some 38 years ago, when the project was cancelled, can you believe? It seems that Britain is about to get back into space once again again. Following talks with two British companies, SSTL and Virgin Galactic, it seems that an air launch capability for micro satellites will become a reality. [read more]

Space weather and Satellites

Our space weather page shown here at Spaceport UK in Second Life, shows significant red around the polar regions indicating a high chance of auroral activity (NOAA) and this is backed up by data from the ACE real time Solar Wind data stream, with the magnteic field indicator moving into negative, solar wind speed at well over 400 km per second! Particle counts at the time of the snap shot do appear still to be on the normalised low however. Could all this be in any way associated with the fact that there was significant disruption to TV signals from the Sky satellite?

Twitter Directory

Just added the astro21c Twitter to the Twtr directory.

Astro21c at the Space Conference

Went along to the annual conference on Friday, and while the day did not pan out in the way that I expected with regard to the time that was spent there, it was good to meet up with people from the previous year and chat about spacey things with everyone. I took along a demo of Spaceport UK in Second Life, produced some genuine curiosity and so managed to hand out some free pens and bookmarks so that was a result. Due to the time constraints however I was not able to meet with everyone I had intended but have since fired off some emails which is the next best thing. One very encouraging outcome from the visit however was the emerging services and it appears demand for educational resources and that's where we will come in, though I must admit not probably until the start of the next academic year. All things considered though this was as usual a conference well worth going to and I can recommend it to everyone that has even a passing interest in the part that Britain is playing in space.