• Time-lapse map chronicles decades of global change as seen from space

    Google and Time magazine have stitched together satellite images collected by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey, showcasing developments in our planet's landscape via time-lapse. NBC's Rehema Ellis reports.

    Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News writes


    Satellite imagery can serve as a time machine, revealing dramatic change in just a few seconds — but can you imagine documenting almost three decades' worth of all that change, across most of our planet's land mass? A team of imaging experts, computer scientists and journalists did. Now they've unveiled the result: a global database of zoomable, animated satellite views known as Timelapse.

    "We believe this is the most comprehensive picture of our changing planet ever made available to the public," Rebecca Moore, engineering manager for Google Earth Engine and Earth outreach, said Thursday in Google's blog announcement of the Timelapse project.

    Moore said the project began in 2009, when Google started working with the U.S. Geological Society to make its archive of Landsat imagery available online. The team sifted through more than 2 million satellite images, adding up to 909 terabytes of data, and selected cloudless, high-quality views for every year since 1984.

    Carnegie Mellon University's CREATE Lab smoothed the views into seamless animations, and Time magazine built it all into a presentation that supplements the time-lapse animations with commentaries on climate change, urban growth and the other trends that are transforming the planet.

    "I've been chiseling away at this project over the last 11 months, and am in awe of the folks who helped this come together in ways I could never have conceived on my own. Some very bright minds figured out how to make the biggest video frames ever constructed, equivalent to 900,000 HD TVs next to one another," Jonathan Woods, the Time project's executive producer (and a former colleague at msnbc.com), said in an email.

    Google Earth is also hosting the Timelapse zoomable map. "Much like the iconic image of Earth from the Apollo 17 mission — which had a profound effect on many of us — this time-lapse map is not only fascinating to explore, but we also hope it can inform the global community's thinking about how we live on our planet and the policies that will guide us in the future," Moore said.

    When it comes to telling the story of our changing planet, one time-lapse animation is worth a thousand words. But there's more to tell. Find out more about the trends illustrated in the seven animated images you see here:

    Columbia Glacier: Alaska's retreating ice reveals how climate change is changing Earth's surface.

    Dubai coastal expansion: New islands are sprouting along Dubai's coastline as part of a $14 billion land reclamation effort, arguably the largest project of its kind.

    Irrigation in Saudi Arabia: Agriculture amid the deserts of Arabia? It's a growing concern, thanks to huge irrigation projects that take advantage of underground rivers and lakes. The water won't last, though: Hydrologists estimate that it'll be economical to pump water for only about 50 years. 

    Lake Urmia drying up: Iran's great salt lake is not as great as it was, and the reason for that is in dispute. The Iranian government blames climate change and drought, while critics blame the dams that have been built around the lake.

    Brazilian Amazon deforestation: Satellite imagery documents the loss of Amazonian forest land in Brazil due to road-building, logging and agricultural clearing.

    Las Vegas urban growth: What sprawls in Vegas doesn't stay in Vegas. Landsat pictures reveal how urban development has spread out around Nevada's biggest city over the decades.

    Wyoming coal mining: The Black Thunder mine in Wyoming's Powder River Basin ranks as the largest single coal mining complex in the world, according to Arch Coal, its operator. Satellite imagery shows how the mine has spread out over the decades.

    More time-lapse videos:

    Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • Nuclear-like in its intensity, Russian meteor blast is the largest since 1908

    A massive meteor hit the Earth's atmosphere, creating a giant shock wave that injured more than 1,000 people. On the same day, an asteroid half the size of a football field came within 17,200 miles from Earth. NBC's Tom Costello reports.

    Alan Boyle and Matthew DeLuca, NBC News writes

    A meteor flared through the skies over Russia's Chelyabinsk region early Friday, triggering an atomic bomb-sized shock wave that injured more than a thousand people, blew out windows and caused some Russians to fear the end of the world.

    NASA said it was the largest reported fireball since the Tunguska event in 1908 — an asteroid explosion that flattened millions of trees over 820 square miles of remote Siberian forest.

    Friday's event was witnessed by throngs of Russians in Chelyabinsk, a city of 1.1 million in western Siberia. Multiple amateur videos posted online showed the meteor’s flaring arc stretching hundreds of miles across the sky. Other videos from the scene captured the sound of a loud boom, followed by a cacophony of car alarms. One video showed the hurried evacuation of an office building in Chelyabinsk.

    “There was panic. People had no idea what was happening. Everyone was going around to people’s houses to check if they were OK,” Chelyabinsk resident Sergey Hametov told The Associated Press. “We saw a big burst of light then went outside to see what it was and we heard a really loud thundering sound.”

    Another resident described the meteorite's flash.

    "I was standing at a bus stop, seeing off my girlfriend," Andrei, a local resident who did not give his second name, told Reuters. "Then there was a flash and I saw a trail of smoke across the sky and felt a shock wave that smashed windows."

    The impact involved a 50-foot-wide (15-meter-wide), 7,000-ton asteroid that zoomed in from space at a velocity of 40,000 mph (18 kilometers per second), NASA officials said. They said the shock of atmospheric entry blasted the rock apart at a height of 12 to 15 miles (20 to 25 kilometers), releasing the energy equivalent of 300 to 500 kilotons of TNT. That's more than 10 times the energy released by the atom bombs that exploded over Japan at the end of World War II. In fact, NASA said its estimates were based on readings from infrasound sensors that were set up by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization to detect nuclear blasts.

    The fireball hit just hours before a 150-foot-wide asteroid, known as 2012 DA14, came within 17,200 miles of Earth during an unusually close but harmless flyby. NASA officials said there was no connection between the two events. "It's simply a coincidence," said Paul Chodas, an asteroid researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

    NASA said the flash momentarily shone brighter than the sun — an assessment that was echoed by eyewitnesses in Chelyabinsk.

    "I was driving to work, it was quite dark, but it suddenly became as bright as if it was day," Viktor Prokofiev told Reuters. "I felt like I was blinded by headlights.”

    No fatalities were reported, but Russia's Interior Ministry said about 1,100 people sought medical care after the shock wave. About 50 were hospitalized. Most of the injured were cut by glass from windows that were shattered by the blast's shock wave. More than 200 children at Chelyabinsk schools were said to be among the injured.

    Chelyabinsk resident Marat Lobkovsky's experience was typical: "I went to see what that flash in the sky was about," he told AP. "And then the window glass shattered, bouncing back on me. My beard was cut open, but not deep. They patched me up, it’s OK now."

    Another city resident, Valya Kazakov, said the brilliant flare and loud explosion caused older women in his neighborhood to fear that the world was ending.

    City officials told AP that 3,000 buildings in the Chelyabinsk region were damaged, including a zinc factory warehouse that lost its roof and part of a wall because of the shock wave's battering. Russia's Itar-Tass news agency said as many as 10,000 police were mobilized to aid in the recovery and remove debris.

    There were no significant disturbances to public utilities or communications, Vladimir Stepanov of the Emergency Situation Ministry told Itar-Tass. "No serious consequences have been so far recorded," Stepanov said. "There has been no disruption in the rail and air transport work."

    A search was conducted to find any fragments that survived when the space rock blew itself apart. A photo provided by the Chelyabinsk regional police department showed a 20-foot-wide (6-meter-wide) hole in the ice covering a lake near the town of Chebakul where some of the fragments reportedly fell.

    Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium, speaks to NBC's Lester Holt about the meteor and asteroid that approached Earth on Friday.

    The shallow angle at which the meteor crossed the sky over Chelyabinsk contributed to the amount of damage, according to Margaret Campbell-Brown, an astronomer and physicist at the University of Western Ontario. “It’s like a sonic boom,” Campbell-Brown said of the shock wave. “A sonic boom from a plane can shatter windows, but this sonic boom was much stronger than a plane."

    It was a once-in-a-decade event, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson told TODAY on Friday. He explained that the meteor impact was the physics equivalent of hitting a brick wall. “When you hit a brick wall, you basically explode, and that’s what happened here, and it exploded in midair,” Tyson said.

    Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said the incident showed the need for the world's nations to develop a system to intercept objects falling from space. "At the moment, neither we nor the Americans have such technologies" to shoot down meteors or asteroids, he said, according to the Interfax news agency.

    Coincidentally, experts from NASA and other agencies were at a U.N. space conference in Vienna on Friday to discuss strategies for developing an asteroid early warning system.

    Slideshow: Meteorite showers in Siberia

    Yekaterina Pustynnikova / Chelyabinsk.ru via AP

    A huge meteor flared through the skies over Russia's Chelyabinsk region, triggering a powerful shock wave that injured nearly a thousand people, blew out windows and reportedly caused the roof of a factory to collapse.

    Launch slideshow

    More about cosmic impacts:

    This report includes information from The Associated Press and Reuters.

    The videos just keep streaming in from Chelyabinsk. You'll find lots of great clips and stills on this Live Journal page and this WBVF wrap-up. Thanks to my Twitter pals for passing them along.  

    Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

    This story was originally published on Fri Feb 15, 2013 5:05 AM EST

  • Shuttle fans (and an alien) turn out for Endeavour's final journey

    Michael Nelson / EPA

    Vivian Robinson and her alien doll joined hundreds of spectators to watch the Space Shuttle Endeavour leave Los Angeles airport on its journey through the streets of Los Angeles on October 12, 2012. The trip to the California Science Center will take two full days to complete.

    Space.com reports — The space shuttle is making the 12-mile trip from LAX to the California Science Center over two days.

    Over the course of its parade through the streets of Inglewood and Los Angeles, Endeavour will stop for celebrations outside The Forum, the former L.A. Lakers arena, and at a street intersection where "Fame" actress Debbie Allen has choreographed a tribute performance. Read the full story.

    Slideshow: Endeavour's final trek

    Mike Blake / Reuters

    A look back at the space shuttle's farewell tour as it travels from Florida to its new home in California

    Launch slideshow

    Space Shuttle Endeavour leaves LAX and heads down the streets of LA en route to the California Science Center. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.

    Follow @NBCNewsPictures

    Sign up for the NBCNews.com Photos Newsletter

     

  • Martian rocks reveal that rover is driving through dried-up stream bed

    The Mars Rover has detected the first on-the-ground evidence of an ancient streambed. If there was water, could Mars have supported life? NBC's Tom Costello reports

    Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News writes


    A close look at pebble-filled layers of rock has convinced scientists that NASA's Curiosity rover is driving through a dried-up stream bed on Mars where water flowed vigorously billions of years ago. They say it's the kind of place that just might have supported life when the planet was young.

    "This is a rock that was formed in the presence of water," Caltech's John Grotzinger, project scientist for the $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission, said today during a televised news conference at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

    The evidence is in the shape, size and composition of the rocks that Curiosity came across at multiple sites during its landing on Aug. 5. Conglomerate rocks, consisting of pebbles cemented together within layers of sediment, were seen at three sites:

    • Goulburn, a bedrock formation that was exposed by the blast from Curiosity's descent.
    • Link, a rock outcrop that was seen once Curiosity headed out from the landing site.
    • Hottah, an uplifted slab of craggy rock that was given a visual inspection two weeks ago.

    Hottah in particular showed clear evidence of rounded pebbles that were too big to be smoothed by the action of the wind. Some of the rocks are as big as golf balls. The best explanation for the gravelly pebbles was that they were eroded by the vigorous flow of water, said Curiosity science team member Rebecca Williams, a senior scientist at the Arizona-based Planetary Science Institute.

    The Hottah slab, which measures 4 to 6 inches (10 to 15 centimeters) thick, looks as if "somebody came along the surface of Mars with a jackhammer and lifted up a sidewalk that you might see in downtown LA, sort of like in a construction site," Grotzinger said.

    NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS

    A closeup view of the "Hottah" rock outcrop shows the characteristic pebbly rock that is associated with the action of a flowing stream. Broken surfaces of the outcrop have rounded, gravel clasts, such as the one circled in white, which is about 1.2 inches (3 centimeters) across. The rock formation was named after Hottah Lake in Canada's Northwest Territories.

    The Planetary Science Institute's Rebecca Williams describes new images from Mars.

    NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS / PSI

    This set of images compares the Link outcrop of rocks on Mars (left) with similar rocks seen on Earth (right). The image of Link, obtained by NASA's Curiosity rover, shows rounded gravel fragments, or clasts, up to a couple of inches (few centimeters) wide, within the rock outcrop. In accordance with the Mars mission's tradition, Link takes its name from a rock formation in Canada's Northwest Territories.

    The evidence from the ground meshes well with the evidence from orbit indicating that Curiosity is near an 11-mile-wide (18-kilometer-wide) fan of material that may have washed down a channel in ancient times, when Mars was warmer and wetter, according to William Dietrich, a planetary scientist at the University of California at Berkeley.

    "These stones ... are very, very revealing to us about the process," Dietrich said. Some previous research has suggested that water flowed on Mars only for brief periods, separated by long, cold, dry spells. That scenario might not have provided enough time for life to get a foothold on the Red Planet in ancient times. But Dietrich said the patterning of the channels within the fan suggested that water streamed through the area for well beyond a thousand-year time scale.

    "We can step away from the idea that there was a single burst of water ... that built it all in a day," he told reporters.

    Based on the size of the gravel seen by Curiosity, Dietrich estimated that the water moved at a speed of about 3 feet (1 meter) per second, at a depth somewhere between ankle and hip deep.

    "Plenty of papers have been written about channels on Mars with many different hypotheses about the flows in them," Dietrich said in a NASA news release. "This is the first time we're actually seeing water-transported gravel on Mars. This is a transition from speculation about the size of streambed material to direct observation of it."

    NASA / JPL-Caltech / Univ. of Ariz.

    This image shows the topography, with shading added, around the area where NASA's Curiosity rover landed. Higher elevations are colored in red, with cooler colors indicating transitions downslope to lower elevations. The map highlights an alluvial fan of material, apparently issuing from a channel named Peace Vallis. The black oval indicates the targeted landing area for the rover known as the "landing ellipse," and the cross shows where the rover actually landed.

    NASA / JPL-Caltech / UC-Berkeley

    This image shows a dry streambed on an alluvial fan in Chile's Atacama Desert, revealing the typical patchy, heterogeneous mixture of grain sizes deposited together. On Mars, Curiosity has seen two rock outcrops close to its Bradbury Landing site that also record a mixture of sand and pebbles transported by water. Scientists say the mixture was probably deposited along an ancient streambed.

    So far, the scientists' conclusions are based exclusively on visual observations by Curiosity's high-resolution Mastcam imager. Further imagery, along with chemical readings from other instruments on the rover, will likely be used to fill out the story of the ancient stream bed, Grotzinger said.

    The main goal of Curiosity's two-year primary mission is to assess how habitable Mars was in ancient times. That's why mission managers chose 96-mile-wide (154-kilometer-wide) Gale Crater as Curiosity's landing site. It has that alluvial fan, which appears to issue forth from a channel that has now officially been designated Peace Vallis. It also has a 3-mile-high (5-kilometer-high) mountain, known as Aeolis Mons or Mount Sharp, which could preserve billions of years' worth of Mars' geological record.

    Grotzinger noted that the three requirements for habitability typically listed by astrobiologists are the presence of liquid water, the availability of an energy source (such as sunlight) and the presence of carbon-based compounds that can be used as the building blocks of life. 

    "Now we've got a hall pass for the water examination," Grotzinger joked.

    Theoretically, a long-flowing stream could be a habitable environment. "It is not our top choice as an environment for preservation of organics, though," Grotzinger said in NASA's news release. "We're still going to Mount Sharp, but this is insurance that we have already found our first potentially habitable environment."

    Even if the rover's instruments detect the right kinds of carbon compounds, that would not serve as confirmation of ancient life on Mars. That would "have to wait for another mission," Grotzinger said.  

    More from Mars Curiosity:

    Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • Mars rover targets a rock called Jake

    Scientists plan to analyze the pyramid-shaped rock that's nicknamed "Jake." NBC's Brian Williams reports.

    Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News writes


    The first rock that NASA's Curiosity rover will touch for science's sake on Mars is a pyramid-shaped chunk that's been named in honor of a top engineer who worked on every one of NASA's rover missions — but passed away just days after Curiosity's landing.

    Curiosity's study of the rock, dubbed "Jake Matijevic," will dominate the next few days of the rover's operations on Mars, just as its observations of Martian mini-eclipses dominated the past few days.

    Jake the rock, which measures about 10 inches (25 centimeters) tall and 16 inches (40 centimeters) wide, isn't all that exotic. It seems to consist of garden-variety basalt, similar to the first Martian rock that NASA's Spirit rover examined eight and a half years ago. And that's exactly the point, according to Caltech's John Grotzinger, project scientist for the Curiosity mission. Jake will provide a good yardstick for sophisticated instruments such as the Alpha Proton X-Ray Spectrometer, or APXS, and the laser-zapping ChemCam analyzer.

    By matching up the chemical readings from the different instruments, Curiosity's science team will be able to confirm that the findings from the fancy-schmancy ChemCam are consistent with the readings from the APXS, an upgraded version of a device that was included on the Spirit and Opportunity rovers. Grotzinger told reporters today that it's an opportunity to compare "something which is tried and true with the latest and greatest new technology."

    ChemCam can focus on areas that are less than a millimeter (0.04 inch) wide, while the APXS' best resolution ranges around 1.5 centimeters (0.6 inch).

    Grotzinger estimated that the testing could begin on Friday — which is the Martian day, or sol, after tomorrow ("solorrow," he quipped). It could take a couple of sols for the rover to reach out its 7-foot-long (2.1-meter-long) robotic arm and use the APXS as well as the fine-resolution Mars Hand Lens Imager, or MAHLI. The rover might have to back up a bit to give the rock a proper zapping with ChemCam's laser. The flashes of light from the tiny laser blasts will be analyzed by an onboard spectrometer to determine the rock's elemental composition.

    Remembering Jake
    Richard Cook, project manager for the $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission, said the rock's name pays tribute to Jacob Matijevic, a leading engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who was involved in NASA's rover missions since Mars Pathfinder and the Sojourner rover in 1997. Matijevic was a Chicago native who earned his Ph.D. in mathematics and came up with the Matijevic Theorem, which was once described as "one of the most beautiful results of recent years in commutative algebra."

    Matijevic's obituary in the Chicago Tribune notes that he came to JPL in 1981 and took on a variety of assignments. Eventually, he came to specialize in systems engineering for the Mars rover designs as well as rover surface operations. "He was probably one of the top one or two experts on surface operations here at JPL," Cook said.

    Matijevic played a key role in the Spirit and Opportunity rover missions, which were originally planned to last just 90 days on Mars. Grotzinger recalled that Matijevic once said "if this rover lasts six months, it'll probably last six years."

    "He seems to have come pretty close," Grotzinger observed.

    The engineer switched over from Opportunity to the Mars Science Laboratory mission, but passed away at the age of 64 on Aug. 20, after battling respiratory problems, the Tribune reported.

    Grotzinger said Matijevic would have loved dealing with the complexities involved in studying the rock that's named after him. "All that activity and all those considerations are what honor Jake Matijevic so well," he said.

    The chief aim of Curiosity's two-year primary mission is to analyze Mars' geology and surface chemistry and determine whether the planet could have been potentially habitable in ancient times. After studying Jake's memorial rock, Curiosity is due to move on to an area known as Glenelg, where three types of geological formations come together.

    Since its landing on Mars on Aug. 5, the six-wheeled rover has covered more than half of the quarter-mile (400-meter) distance to Glenelg, and its cameras are getting a better view of the place. Grotzinger said the pictures show thin bands of dark rock that appear to alternate with lighter-toned rock. "As we get closer in to the Glenelg area, we'll understand better and better what these areas are," Grotzinger said. Curiosity is expected to get to the area in a couple of weeks, he said.

    NASA / JPL-Caltech / Univ. of Ariz.

    This map shows the route driven by the Curiosity rover through the mission's 43rd Martian day, or sol (Sept. 19). By Sol 43, Curiosity had driven about 950 feet (290 meters). The area known as Glenelg is indicated by a red dot and label.

    NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS

    A scan of the Martian terrain looking toward Glenelg reveals areas of light and dark rock.

    NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS
    An animated GIF image shows Phobos crossing over the sun, as seen by NASA's Curiosity rover.

    Messages from mini-eclipses
    The Curiosity team is also planning to receive more pictures of the partial solar eclipses that the rover's high-resolution Mastcam system has observed over the past week. Mark Lemmon, a science team co-investigator from Texas A&M University, said close analysis of the imagery could provide insights into the interior structure of Mars and its two moons, Phobos and Deimos.

    Mastcam took hundreds of pictures when Phobos made two passes over the sun's disk, and again when Deimos made one pass. Such transits occur multiple times during a short season, and then they don't occur again for nearly one Earth year. Lemmon explained that the timing of the eclipses could be compared with past sightings to produce precise measurements of how the moons' orbits have changed due to Mars' gravitational tides.

    "We can't go inside Mars, but we can use these to tell how much Mars is deformed when the moons go by," Lemmon said. "So we measure the transits very precisely [and] we get information on Mars' interior structure."

    Some high-resolution images from Phobos' first transit were sent down to Earth over the weekend, but most of the imagery is still saved in the rover's computer memory on Mars, awaiting the right opportunity for transmission, Lemmon said.

    Phobos and Deimos have irregular shapes, and the prevailing wisdom is that they're both asteroids that were pulled into orbit by Mars' gravitational pull. Phobos averages 14 miles (22.2 kilometers) in width, and Deimos is roughly 8 miles (12.6 kilometers) wide. Deimos circles Mars at a distance of 14,580 miles (23,460 kilometers), while Phobos is much closer (5,800 miles, or 9,400 kilometers). Phobos is gradually coming even closer to Mars, which makes the moon's orbit unstable over the long term: One of these days, it will break up into pieces and perhaps produce a ring of debris around the Red Planet.

    Fortunately, that day isn't expected to come for 10 million to 15 million years. "Curiosity will be safe for a little while," Lemmon said.

    More about Mars:

    Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • Curiosity rover makes its first moves at 'Bradbury Landing' on Mars

    The NASA rover Curiosity has taken its first test drive on the Red Planet. NBC's Brian Williams reports.

    Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News writes


    NASA's Curiosity rover made its first drive on Mars today, more than two weeks after its high-stakes landing on the Red Planet. To celebrate the day, as well as what would have been the late science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury's 92nd birthday, NASA said the rover's landing site would be forever known as Bradbury Landing.

    The raw images, displayed on the Mars Science Laboratory mission's Web portal, showed the tracks of the rover's wheels curling around and backing up, in accordance with the driving plan that was sent up overnight.

    Today's drive amounted to only about 23 feet (7 meters) of maneuvers, but it represented the first step in a $2.5 billion, two-year trek that's expected to go at least 12 miles (20 kilometers) and take in a commanding view from the flanks of a 3-mile-high (5-kilometer-high) mountain within 96-mile-wide (154-kilometer-wide) Gale Crater.

    The mission's project manager, Peter Theisinger, said the drive "couldn't be more important."

    "We built a rover," he told reporters during today's briefing at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "So unless the rover roves, we couldn't really accomplish anything. It's a big moment."

    The drive also marked a transition for the Curiosity team — from the entry, descent and landing phase of the mission, known as EDL, to surface operations and rover mobility. "Wheel tracks on Mars. The EDL team is finally done. :) Congrats to the mobility and surface teams!" Allen Chen, the mission's EDL operations and flight dynamics lead, declared in a Twitter update.

    Lead rover driver Matt Heverly said that today's drive started at 7:17 a.m. PT (10:17 a.m. ET) and lasted roughly 16 minutes. "The majority of that time was spent taking images," he said. The rover rolled out 15 feet (4.5 meters), made a 120-degree turn in place, and then backed up 8 feet (2.5 meters) to a new spot for scientific observations.

    Lead rover driver Matt Heverly explains the maneuvers that went into Curiosity's first Martian excursion.

    NASA / JPL-Caltech

    A polar projection image, assembled from pictures taken by the Curiosity rover's navigation cameras, shows the tracks of the rover at Bradbury Landing on Mars as seen from above.

    NASA / JPL-Caltech

    An image from the navigation-camera system on NASA's Curiosity rover shows the six-wheeled craft's hardware in the foreground, and wheel tracks going around a rock just a few yards (meters) away.

    NASA / JPL-Caltech

    A mosaic of black-and-white images shows a panoramic view of the Curiosity rover's trail, including wheel tracks leading to an area where the rover turned in a circle, and then backed up to its current position. Four blast marks, or "scours," can be made out near where the rover landed. The flanks of Mount Sharp can be seen in the far background, toward the upper left corner of the frame.

    Team members celebrate at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory when images are received confirming the rover's first drive.

    First trek will follow checkouts
    Since the rover's landing on the night of Aug. 5, Curiosity has been going through a series of checkouts and taking pictures of its immediate surroundings. Nearly all of the systems are working as planned — with the sole exception of wind sensors on one of the booms connected to the rover's weather station. Scientists speculate that the circuit boards for those sensors were probably damaged by small rocks that were thrown up onto the rover during landing. Despite the damage, the weather station will be able to gather wind speed data using other sensors.

    Curiosity's first destination will be a spot known as Glenelg, about a quarter-mile (400 meters) from the landing site, where three types of geological formations come together. That months-long trek could begin in about a week, deputy project scientist Joy Crisp said today. The rover's first scoop sample could be taken on the route between Bradbury Landing and Glenelg, she said, but the first drilling sample would probably be extracted at Glenelg.

    By the end of the year, the nuclear-powered rover is expected to retrace its route and head toward the mountain, known as Aeolis Mons or Mount Sharp. The layers of rock along the mountainside are thought to preserve a geological record going back billions of years.

    The primary goal of Curiosity's mission is to look for geological and chemical evidence that could reveal how habitable Mars might have been over eons of geological time. To take on that challenge, the 1-ton, car-sized rover has been equipped with a bevy of scientific instruments — including high-resolution color cameras, two onboard chemical labs, an X-ray spectrometer and a rock-zapping laser.

    Theisinger said Curiosity was making "excellent progress" at Bradbury Landing, 16 days into a mission that could last far longer than its scheduled duration of nearly two Earth years. "We've got a long way to go before this mission reaches its full potential," he said. "But the fact that we haven't had any early problems is fantastic."

    In memoriam
    Michael Meyer, the lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters, announced the naming of the landing site at the start of today's news briefing. He began by airing a clip of Bradbury discussing Mars with Arthur C. Clarke, Carl Sagan and other luminaries, just before NASA's Mariner 9 probe entered the Red Planet's orbit in 1971. During that session, Bradbury read a short poem titled "If Only We Had Taller Been."

    Ray Bradbury reads a poem about space exploration on the eve of Mariner 9's arrival at Mars in 1971.

    A Mars rover driver pays tribute to author and visionary, Ray Bradbury.

    Bradbury, best known for science-fiction tales such as "The Martian Chronicles" and "Fahrenheit 451," passed away in June at the age of 91. "Today would have been Ray Bradbury's 92nd birthday, but he's already reached immortality in his short stories and books," Meyer observed. In his honor, Meyer said the landing site would "forever be known as Bradbury Landing."

    In a statement issued by NASA, Meyer said deciding on the name "was not a difficult choice for the science team."

    "Many of us, and millions of other readers were inspired in our lives by stories Ray Bradbury wrote to dream of the possibility of life on Mars," he said.

    Today's christening adds to NASA's list of Martian landing sites named after VIPs, including:

    • Mutch Memorial Station, the Viking 1 lander site, named after Thomas Mutch, former NASA associate administrator and Viking team member.
    • Soffen Memorial Station, the Viking 2 lander site, named after Gerald Soffen, NASA scientist and leader of the Viking mission.
    • Sagan Memorial Station, the Mars Pathfinder landing site, named after astrophysicist Carl Sagan.
    • Challenger Memorial Station, the Opportunity rover landing site, named in honor of the shuttle Challenger's fallen crew.
    • Columbia Memorial Station, the Spirit rover landing site, named in honor of the shuttle Columbia's fallen crew.

    More about Mars:

    This report was last updated at 5 p.m. ET.

    Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • NASA's Mohawk Guy marvels at newfound fame ... and Mars mission

    Bobak Ferdowsi, a flight director for the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity mission, piqued the public's curiosity with his unique style. NBC's Brian Williams reports.

    Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News writes


    It's been a crazy 24 hours for flight director Bobak Ferdowsi, and not just because he and the rest of his team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory landed an SUV on Mars. Ferdowsi has catapulted to Internet fame — thanks to his star-spangled Mohawk hairdo and the warm-hearted hotness he exuded during TV coverage of the Curiosity rover's landing.

    He's picked up 20,000-plus Twitter followers, with most of those added just since last night. He's getting come-ons from fans of both sexes ("I'd let that be-mohawked NASA dude land his rover on my red planet any time," one admirer wrote). A Tumblr tribute site has been created in his honor. And there's a widely distributed LOL picture with the caption, "Becomes an Internet sensation ... Too busy landing a robot on Mars to notice."

    Well, Ferdowsi has noticed.

    "It's a little surreal," he told me this morning. "I'm still just getting over the 'We're on Mars' thing. That's the thing I can't believe."

    As Ferdowsi strolls through JPL's campus in Pasadena, Calif., he can't resist going over to teammates for hugs. He's been working at the lab for nine years. For most of that time he's been preparing for the $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission, and particularly for Sunday night's successful landing. These people are not only his co-workers. They're his friends.

    "What a wonderful moment to share together," he said.

    Shira Lazar caught up with Bobak Ferdowsi at JPL in Pasadena, Calif.

    Ferdowsi has a habit of adopting a fresh hairdo for each of the space missions for which he's at the controls, based on a vote by his teammates. For the Mars mission, they came up with a variety of fashion choices.

    "We had a Martian red," he said. "One vote to shave my head. Natural black. Then we had the Captain America look."

    He went with the Captain America Mohawk: black hair flecked with blue and red highlights, plus some bleached white stars on the side. He didn't ponder the effect of having his edgy 'do broadcast on NASA TV, and he was so wrapped up in Curiosity's entry, descent and landing that it took him a while to notice he was becoming a star himself. But then the messages and tweets started popping up on his phone.

    "I'm looking down, and thinking, 'This is crazy,'" he recalled.

    He was back at work today, trying to do his job while coping with media requests and watching the evolution of a meme.

    "I am laughing pretty hard at some of the captions," he said. "I think it's hilarious."

    I didn't have the nerve to ask him about his, um, personal relationships — but for all his admirers, here are a couple of factoids: He's 32 years old. He's originally from the Bay Area and still has family there. He earned his bachelor's degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from the University of Washington, and he went to MIT to get a master's degree in the same subject.

    You can join the Bobak fan club by following @tweetsoutloud. But if his fans really want to get Ferdowsi's attention, they probably shouldn't tweet him a marriage proposal. Instead, they should talk about Mars.

    "I hope that they are as excited about Curiosity as I am," the Mohawk Guy said.

    Update for 7:35 p.m. ET Aug. 7: Is Mohawk Guy taken? In a follow-up chat with BuzzFeed's Chris Geidner, Ferdowsi reports that he's "dating somebody," and "she's awesome."

    "She's put up with me working a lot of long hours on this project, and I am definitely looking forward to things being calmed down a little bit so I can actually hang out with her," Ferdowsi says. A photo on the MemeGenerator website shows Ferdowsi with his arm around a lady friend. The caption reads, "Behind every great Mohawk is a great woman."

    Meanwhile, other Internet celebrities are welcoming Mohawk Guy to the fold. Felicia Day told Ferdowsi in a tweet that "your mohawk made my night" — to which Ferdowsi replied, "Your tweet made me blush." Wil Wheaton registered his yen for a NASA Mohawk Guy Fan Club T-shirt — and reportedly put in an order with CafePress. 

    More about Mars:

    Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • 50 years after Telstar: How Space Age spawned communication age

    It's been 50 years since the launch of the world's first commercial satellite. Not only did it change the way we get our news, it redefined the way we communicate with one another. NBC's Brian Williams reports.

    Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News writes


    Fifty years ago today, the Space Age gave birth to the age of satellite communication as we know it — though it wasn't clear at the time just how world-changing that outer-space angle would turn out to be. In retrospect, you could argue that the launch of AT&T's Telstar 1 satellite on July 10, 1962, made as much of a mark on the space frontier as Sputnik.

    At the time, Americans worried that outer space was turning into a Cold War battleground, thanks to the Soviet Union's launch of the first-ever satellite (Sputnik in 1957) and the first human in space (Yuri Gagarin in 1961). "Only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new, terrifying theater of war," President John F. Kennedy declared in 1962.

    Telstar, the world's first commercial satellite, marked the shift from outer space's potential military applications to its peaceful uses — which is the way most people think of space ventures today. Within hours of Telstar's launch on a Thor-Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., the satellite beamed a non-public test transmission from Andover Earth Station in Maine to the Pleumeur-Bodou ground station in France. Two weeks later, on July 23, it relayed the first-ever public, live trans-Atlantic TV signal, linking Europe and North America.

    That was the start of something big.

    In a July 24, 1962 broadcast of The Huntley-Brinkley Report, David Brinkley reports on the public's reaction to the Telstar transmission.

    "With Telstar and its successors, the world was made a smaller place, as billions of people around the world had instant access to news, sports and entertainment," Jeong Kim, president of Bell Labs, said in a statement marking the anniversary. "The phrase 'live via satellite' became part of the common vernacular. At the time, few people would have believed that 50 years later you could actually talk to your house or car, or predicted that children would play video games with other children 10,000 miles away."

    Telstar 1 was capable of carrying just one black-and-white TV channel, plus 600 simultaneous voice calls. It was in operation for less than a year, but it blazed a trail for generations of satellites, including Telstar 18 in 2004.

    "Today, as we celebrate the enormous achievement that Telstar represented, Bell Labs researchers are laying the foundation for communications and collaboration for the next 50 years," Kim said.

    That vision includes satellite-connected digital personal assistants ... devices that can bring 21st-century medicine to anyplace on Earth or in orbit ... and avatars that can let Earthlings explore Mars from millions of miles away, through virtual reality.

    Perhaps the biggest legacy of Telstar 1 lies in how it brought nations together 50 years ago, reassuring us that outer space really could be the "sea of peace" that Kennedy was aiming for. Will it always be that way? Please feel free to weigh in with your reflections on the anniversary in the comment space below.

    More about satellite history:

    The Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum is presenting a "Telstar 50th Anniversary" symposium at the facility on Washington's National Mall at 1:30 p.m. ET Thursday. It will begin with a satellite TV connection to the Pleumeur-Bodou Telecommunications Museum in France, commemorating the first global transmission of a TV signal in 1962. Speakers include Wayne Clough, secretary of the Smithsonian; Francois Delattre, France's ambassador to the United States; and Robert Tate, U.S. consul for western France. Historians and experts from industry and government will discuss Telstar's impact. The symposium will be webcast via the Smithsonian's website. For more information, check Telstar50.org.

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • Your views of the supermoon

    Skywatchers were treated to a "supermoon" on Saturday night. NBC's Charles Hadlock reports.

    Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News writes




    The supermoon of 2012 is over, but the joys of moongazing are not. Even though Saturday night's lunar showing was the biggest and brightest of the year, the views are nearly as good anytime around the full moon — tonight, for example.

    Photographs of the supermoon sight streamed out over online channels, including Twitter feeds, Facebook updates, blog postings and slick slideshows (such as our own roundup). They also streamed into msnbc.com's FirstPerson in-box. I've put together a selection of 10 submissions here.

    The kind of supermoon we saw last night isn't exactly a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. The phenomenon, also known as a perigee moon, can be seen whenever the full moon occurs while it's near the closest point of its elliptical orbit around Earth. Last night, the moon was just 221,802 miles away from Earth, or about 15,000 miles closer than average. The moon's angular size was 14 percent wider than it is at maximum distance, and it was 30 percent brighter than minimum moonshine.

    If we define a supermoon as the biggest, brightest full moon of a given year, next year's supermoon will be almost as good as this year's, on June 23, 2013. The supermoon of 2014 will be brighter, and the 2016 supermoon will outdo last year's, which got the moongazing fad started. EarthSky News has the schedule for the next few years. Some rightly note that the moon is worth watching on every night of the year, and that the full moon isn't necessarily the best time to see all the detail the lunar disk can offer. But there's nothing wrong in having an annual holiday devoted to moongazing, is there?

    The next big sky event is coming up on May 20, when the new moon blots out most of the sun to create an annular solar eclipse. A wide swath of the Asia-Pacific region and North America will see a partial eclipse, while folks situated along a narrow track of territory extending from China across to the Oregon-California coast and down to Texas can witness a "Ring of Fire," in which the moon's disk covers all but the thin rim of the sun's disk. That'll be an amazing thing to see, but make sure you use proper eye protection. You can get the details from my eclipse viewing guide, and learn more about the appeal of an annular eclipse.

    There's an astronomical connection between this weekend's supermoon and this month's "Ring of Fire": Because the moon was nearly as close as it can come for the full-moon phase, it's nearly as far out as it can go for the new-moon phase. Thus, the moon's apparent size is significantly smaller than usual when it tries to covers up the sun — and that's why we have a ring of fire rather than the fully blacked-out sun of a total eclipse. For that, we'll have to wait until November. Stay tuned in the weeks and months ahead for more about all these astronomical phenomena, plus June's last-in-a-lifetime transit of Venus.

    Submitted by Isaiah Blount / Smooth Images / UGC

    Florida photographer Isaiah Blount of Smooth Images submitted this picture of an airplane crossing the disk of the supermoon on Saturday night.

    Submitted by Penny Wainwright / UGC

    The supermoon looms in the skies of Louisiana, outside Farmerville.

    Submitted by Campbell McCubbin / UGC

    Campbell McCubbin says this is the "first glimpse of the 'supermoon' from my deck overlooking Semiahmoo Bay, White Rock, B.C., Canada."

    Submitted by Prashanti Pasupuleti / UGC

    Prashanti Pasupuleti of New Delhi, India, says the supermoon is "within my reach."

    Submitted by Angie Lucero / UGC

    Wisps of clouds waft over the supermoon in this view from Albuquerque, N.M.

    Submitted by Maria Johnson / UGC

    Maria Johnson took this picture of the moon around 1 a.m. ET on Sunday in Sarasota, Fla.

    Submitted by Larry Shiflett / UGC

    The supermoon rises over a sailboat in the waters near Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

    Submitted by Bianca Fister / UGC

    Spring flowers are silhouetted against the supermoon in this picture from Bianca Fister of Hilton, N.Y.

    Submitted by Joe Leonard / UGC

    The supermoon peeks over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in a picture from Joe Leonard of Taos, N.M..

    Submitted by Justine Daniel / UGC

    The supermoon is partly hidden by clouds in the skies above St. Augustine on the island of Trinidad.

    More about the supermoon:

    Many thanks to all our FirstPerson photographers, including Lynn Schneider, John McNamara, Josh Warner and Mitzi Easley.

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • Aurora extravaganza glows in space

    NASA videos show January's northern lights from high above. NBC's Brian Williams reports.

    Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News writes




    Colorful videos prove that the astronauts on the International Space Station had the best seats in the house during last month's flare-up of auroral activity.

    NASA's Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth is offering a whole new batch of time-lapse videos from the Jan. 25-30 period, when an active region on the sun was blasting out a healthy dose of electrically charged particles and lighting up Earth's upper atmosphere.

    Time-lapse video from the International Space Station on Jan. 29. These sequences of frames were taken at the rate of one frame per second, which is closer than usual to the station's true speed.

    These latest videos are notable because they're assembled from still pictures that were taken at a rate of one frame per second, rather than the usual frame every three seconds. As a result, the pace of the videos is more leisurely and a somewhat closer match to the true speed of the space station.

    The video above documents a minute of flight heading east from the Pacific over the Canadian West Coast, heading toward southern Alberta near Calgary. I love watching the ripples and flashes of the green aurora over Canada — seasoned with a dash of red from the atomic oxygen that exists at higher altitudes. Why is there red as well as green in the aurora? We've addressed that question before, but this Aurora FAQ from the University of Alaska provides a quick explanation.

    Here are a couple more videos, tracking the space station's flight over the U.S. East Coast as well as central North America. But you don't have to stop here. Visit NASA's Gateway, which offers still photos from the space station in addition to the videos, and check out the YouTube channel for NASA Crew Earth Observations. My favorite places for space imagery also include the Fragile Oasis Facebook page, NASA astronaut Ron Garan's Google+ page and Jason Major's Lights in the Dark blog.

    This video was taken from the International Space Station on Jan. 29 during a pass from just southwest of Mexico to the North Atlantic Ocean, northeast of Newfoundland. As the space station travels northeast over the Gulf of Mexico, you can see New Orleans, Mobile, Jacksonville and Atlanta. Continuing up the East Coast, the cities of Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York City stand out brightly. The northern lights shine in the background as the pass finishes near Newfoundland.

    This video was taken from the International Space Station on Jan. 26 during a pass from North Dakota to central Quebec. The northern lights can be seen near the space station, with small patches of the green auroral light dancing around.

    If auroras, atmospheric phenomena and solar activity are your thing, you can't do much better than SpaceWeather.com, which is keeping track of lovely aurora pictures like this one from Chad Blakley at Abisko National Park in Sweden. Be sure to check out Blakley's Lights Over Lapland website while you're at it.

    Chad Blakley / Lights Over Lapland

    Photographer Chad Blakley captured this view of the northern lights over Sweden's Abisko National Park on Feb. 6. "The lights started around 6:00 p.m. and continued into the very early hours of the morning," Blakley told SpaceWeather.com. Check out Blakley's gallery on SpaceWeather.com for still more stunning views.

    AuroraMAX / CSA

    The rippling northern lights share the skies with a nearly full moon over Yellowknife in Canada's Northern Territories early today, as seen by the Canadian Space Agency's AuroraMAX wide-angle camera. To keep on top of northern Canada's aurora extravaganza, check the AuroraMAX website and Twitpic account.

    Update for 3:25 p.m. ET Feb. 8: I originally wrote that the pace of the latest videos from the space station was nearly a true match to the station's orbital speed, but after double-checking with the folks at Johnson Space Center, I'd say it's more accurate to call them a "truer" match than usual. The videos were assembled from still photographs that were captured by a digital camera at the rate of one frame per second, rather than the usual frame every three seconds. That makes for a slower-paced video, but not a real-time speed, because the Web video plays at a rate that's more than one frame per second.

    M ore auroral glories:

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

     

  • Gems from Geminid meteor shower

    David Harvey

    The Geminid meteor shower was in full swing when this image was taken from Arizona's Kitt Peak National Observatory.

    Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News writes

    This week's Geminid meteor shower, one of the year's best sky shows, has been living up to expectations — as demonstrated by the photos you've sent in. We asked you to share your Geminid gems with Nightly News, and we're posting a sampling of your submissions right here. You can still send your photos to us here, and we'll add a selection to the gallery.

    One of the choicest gems was sent in by David Harvey, who works at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Ariz. "It was a great shower," Harvey told me today. "We're having a warm spell here in Arizona, and it was perfectly clear."

    Harvey got the picture you see above by setting up his camera at the observatory and taking a series of time exposures over the course of the night. "I would see dozens of meteors ... well over a hundred an hour," Harvey said.

    That fits right in with other reports about the Geminids: Chris Peterson of Colorado's Cloudbait Observatory said on the Meteorobs mailing list that "this year's shower was very impressive, reaching a peak visual rate of about 120 meteors per hour." The International Meteor Organization recorded rates of 80 or more meteors per hour leading up to last night's expected peak.

    Matt Freechack

    Matt Freechack created this picture by pointing his camera north from Lake Odessa, Mich., for a 13-minute exposure. The curved arcs are star trails, and the straight lines are meteor streaks.

    Two other Geminid pictures were sent in by Matt Freechack. The first is the result of a 13-minute camera exposure, looking north from Lake Odessa, Mich., at 3:20 a.m. today. "If you look closely, you can see 18 meteor trails," he wrote. But to look that closely, you'll have to peer at this enlarged view.

    Freechack's last meteor of the night shows up at upper right in this snapshot, taken just before 7 a.m. looking south from Grand Rapids, Mich.

    For other pictures from last night's Geminids, check out this roundup from Space.com, this collection at SpaceWeather.com, and this beaut from Photoblog.

    Want to see the meteors for yourself? Even though the peak has passed, you can still spot some gems tonight. The best time for viewing comes after midnight, when the world is turning directly into the stream of cosmic grit left behind by Phaeton, a highly unorthodox asteroid. Try to find a vantage point far from city lights, where skies are clear and you have a nice, wide view of the night sky. Although the Geminids appear to emanate from the constellation Gemini, they can flash in any area of the sky.

    Be sure to bundle up and get comfortable — for example, in a lounge chair or winter sleeping bag. And give your eyes at least 15 minutes to adjust to the darkness. If you want to take pictures, here's some advice from SpaceWeather.com.

    You're not likely to see more than 100 meteors per hour tonight. In fact, Harvey isn't even going to try repeating his photographic feat. "Looks like the weather might be changing here," he told me, "and the peak is fairly steep. Tonight probably won't get more than 30 to 40 an hour."

    But maybe you'll get lucky tonight. If you capture a gem of Geminid on camera, please share it with us.

    Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter.