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Live Pictures of Cassini

Ever wanted to see a billion-dollar spacecraft get assembled? Thanks to a color camera and the Web, you can see "live" pictures (actually updated every 5-10 minutes) of the Cassini spacecraft as engineers work on the final assembly for the spacecraft, due to be launched next year. The camera offers a number of views of the main spacecraft and the Huygens Titan probe. While the images will reload automatically in Netscape and similar browsers, there's usually not enough action at any one time to warrant sticking around here for very long. Still, it's a great chance to play "backseat manager": "Hey, why aren't they done yet?"

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/cassini_cam/

3-D Pictures (and Glasses!)

NASA recently released some stunning new pictures of Eta Carinae, a star imaged in the process of exploding, with distinctive twin lobes of gas and dust. One image released provided a three-dimensional view of the explosion. The image require you to use one of the old-style 3-D glasses, with one red lens and one blue lens. NASA, sadly, doesn't provide any. However, there are a couple places on the Web that will gladly send you a free pair of 3-D glasses. October Films is offering free glasses as part of a promotion of the movie "Cemetery Man", described as "wickedly funny, ultra-violent, and unabashedly sensual." Whatever. Insight offers free 3-D glasses (and a free subscription to their catalog of computer products) which you can also use to view their 3-D Gallery of computer art. Of course, you may not have thrown out your pair from "The Creature from the Black Lagoon"...

Eta Carinae images: http://www.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/96/23.html
October Films 3-D Glasses: http://www.octoberfilms.com/cemetery/free3d.html
Insight 3-D Glasses: http://www.insight.com/web/form3d.html

Visit the Observatorium

The Observatorium is NASA's public access site for earth and space science data. There's a great collection of interesting data and pictures here, with an orientation towards students and teachers. You can check out everything from how stars shine to how remote sensing was use to provide a headcount for the Million Man March.

http://observe.ivv.nasa.gov/

Mars Direct Home Page

This site is the resource on the Web for information about Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct proposal for an inexpensive, fast-track manned mission to Mars. Zubrin has provided a number of his papers on the project in a variety of formats (ASCII, Microsoft Word, PDF) that can be downloaded and read. There are a number of images related to the proposal. You can also complete a form to be put on a list for more information. A must-visit site for anyone interested in a mission to Mars.

http://www.magick.net/mars/

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