LCROSS to slam moon Friday morning; how to watch
NASA's LCROSS spacecraft and its booster rocket are on course to crash into the moon's south pole Friday morning as scientists make another bid to determine whether there is useful water ice hidden in the rocks and soil of a deep polar crater.
The idea is to blast enough of the moon into space with the booster's impact that detectors on board LCROSS itself can measure the water in the debris and send the data back to Earth before the spacecraft itself follows its booster into the dirt. (No, it won't hurt the moon.)
Plans call for both objects to target the Cabeus crater, impacting at 7:31 a.m. and 7:35 a.m. EDT. Scientists and engineers at the Goddard Space Flight Center are playing roles in the the mission's final moments.
Both impacts will also be watched closely through telescopes on Earth and in orbit, in the expectation that one or both crashes will reveal the presence of water. If the answer is positive, it would be a boost to hopes that a manned base at the south pole would have access to water, for drinking and for hydrolysis, which breaks the H2O into hydrogen and oxygen.
The oxygen could help supply the base with breathable air, and the two gases - if there's really enough there - could be repackaged and used as fuel for sending rockets and people back to 
Earth, or elsewhere in the solar system.
Previous unmanned missions to the moon have provided hints of hydrogen at the poles. And the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission now circling the moon has detected a thin, volatile "dew" of water on the lunar surface.
But lunar mission planners are especially interested in water ice at the polar craters. The moon's poles are attractive to base-builders because high elevations could provide nearly constant sunlight for solar electric generation, and shelter (thanks to the steady, low sun angles) from the extremes of heat and cold that prevail closer to the moon's equator.
And the deep polar craters, thanks to the absence of sunlight, are where scientists suspect water ice - delivered during the early bombardment of the inner solar system by icy comets - is most likely to have been preserved.
Unfortunately for people in Maryland, and anywhere east of the Mississippi, the LCROSS impacts won't be visible directly because the moon will have set. (SEE COMMENTS BELOW) In any case, you would need a telescope, with a lens or mirror at least 10 inches in diameter. But there will be ways to watch the events in your jammies via Webcast. Here are some of them:
NASA TV will Web cast the impacts beginning at 6:15 a.m. EDT. There is an onboard camera that should send back dizzying video of the fall.
LCROSS has a Twitter site, too. Follow developments minute to minute.
The mission is also on Facebook, believe it or not. Looks pretty nasty to me, but I guess you could be a friend for a few hours.
Also, the online SLOOH telescope system will provide live Web feeds of the impact.
As the autumn migration season continues, another bird has flown into the glass windows of The Sun's footbridge over Centre Street. It appears to be the fourth of the season so far. 
the WeatherDeck. They're the annual, or
These are 
"An intense supercell formed yesterday afternoon (19 Aug 2009) just 
It's a tough, expensive job, but someone's got to do it. And, of course, someone's also got to pay for it. So when the city asks for a (another) water rate increase (9 percent) later this year, at least you'll know where the money goes. The proposed hike amounts to $74 a year for a typical family of four using 39 units of water each quarter. 
of the clouds. 
erases the stars. It is costing us billions in wasted energy, contributing to climate change and divorcing us from our heritage in the night sky (right).
For example, light from a streetlight that beams into your upstairs bedroom window is not helping anyone see the street (left). That light is
wasted and intrusive. Such lights should be aimed and shielded (right) so that the light goes only where it's needed. That would not only prevent light intrusion into your bedroom; the proper engineering of the light fixture would also require less energy, since less light would be needed to do the job. 
I spent part of the night listening to the wind howling, and wondering whether the three bags of paper recycling I put on the curb last night would have blown off and papered the neighborhood by daybreak. No one else had put anything out for pickup this morning, and I began worrying that they had seen the windy forecast and decided, prudently, to wait until morning to take out the recycling. I could see the headline in the community newsletter: "Weather guy ignores own forecast, plasters neighborhood with newspapers." I imagined myself spending the morning collecting my own windblown trash.
A small 
President Barack Obama, steeled by many snowy Chicago winters, expressed disbelief Wednesday when his daughters woke up to find that their classes had been canceled for the day.
My daughter used to be addicted to The Weather Channel. She switched it on as she was getting dressed, and fell under the spell of the goofy background music they play during the "Local on the 8's" segment. (An odd child... Me, I'm partial to the 
(for sheer destructive power and lasting impact, here and elsewhere).
As the coastal "nor’easter" heads 
swept rain and snow.
The 
Relatives, say no information can pass into or out of the event horizon. 
Anyway, the idea that summer BEGINS around June 20 or 21 is a recent notion. Many of our ancestors did indeed see this as MID-summer. They used "cross-quarter days" - the midway points between the equinoxes and the solstices - to mark the beginning and end of the seasons. For example, by the Celts' reckoning, our summer began somewhere between the 4th and 10th of May, on a day they called Beltane. And it will end between the 3rd and 10th of August, on Lughnasadh.
First it was Iraq, then Iran. Now Athens, Greece is grappling with unfamiliar depths of snow in this very odd winter in the Old World. Up to three feet have fallen on communities woefully ill-equipped to deal with the stuff. Yet there it is. Here's 
A 
Owned by Landmark Communications, Inc., in Norfolk, the WC Web site alone had 32 million unique visitors in November, the story says. It's the 19th biggest media site on the Web. One estimate puts the value of the whole WC caboodle - Atlanta-based cable TV channel and Web site - at $5 billion. Who says you can't make money in weather?
The US Geological Survey is reporting a powerful earthquake today off Martinique in the Eastern Caribbean that was initially measured at 7.3 on the 
The thunderstorms that swept the Baltimore region last evening dropped widely variable amounts of water. The downpour was torrential, but brief in downtown Baltimore, and the fireworks went off despite a lingering drizzle. Other stations recorded little or no precipitation. Here's The Sun's story on the 
