Newsletter

Hi everyone. I'm bored. Time for me to have a bit of a rant. (heh heh)

I've just been browsing through the New Zealand edition of September 1998's Reader's Digest, where there's an article all about terraforming Mars over a couple of centuries. This is a popular idea for the long term future which injects excitement into the minds of a lot of people. It's an interesting read, but I do have a few reservations about the idea overall. We know we can terraform Mars to be quite similar to Earth, at least in theory. But should we?

Perhaps it should be considered more seriously that Mars might actually be okay the way it is. Humans, as a race, have a history of marching to new places, filling them with people and destroying the existing environment without a second thought. This time we're not just talking about chopping down trees. It's turning the environment of an entire planet on it's head. Sure, people can live there easier, but people can live anywhere given enough determination. Mars as a piece of history would be destroyed. Ironically, all this destruction would be to make it look as much as possible like something we already have.

One thing a lot of people think is in favour of colonisation is Earth's overpopulation problem. This said, there is no reason to believe that shunting a few people away would solve that problem. Another argument is that people just want a challenge. Personally I think this is a bit of an empty reason considering the damage it would cause. Why is it that conservation judgement only ever applies to this planet? If we really need to move people off the Earth, we can just build giant space stations fit for several hundred thousand people each. This is just as possible, if not more possible than terraforming.

So anyway, enjoy the view of Mars while it still looks as red as it has for hundreds of millions of years. It might be a different colour a couple of centuries from now. Colonists will be looking back at what they've managed to mess up for their own benefit, not as if that's anything unusual for the human race.

That's my opinion for the moment. :-) Happy stargazing.

For those who care, there is now a reference socklet full of dead boring numerical information about our Solar System. On the up-side however, the table has a colour scheme which is everything but monotonous. This alone makes it worth looking at, so check out the Dark Skies Solar System statistical information now!

At present, this page only contains one table which has some very straightforward numbers about the Sun, and the nine known planets. This may be expanded in the future to include more information, and probably more objects. Individual satellites of planets would be one potential direction. I spent some time getting the table set out, so if you 're having trouble getting it to display properly in a popular browser, please let me know.

I've just added a new socklet all about constellations, and why old people still join the dots. There is some fairly opinionated fact in here relating to why astrology is stupid, so if you're patriotic to the cause of astrology I suggest you do not look at it. :-)

In other news, I have made some of the visual presentation of Dark Skies better for the millionth time. The contents title looked a bit silly, really, and didn't fit the rest of the page layout. The new one is much better. A quite major change I have also made is to the fonts around the entire site. It's been pushed up by one, so things should be easier to read now. Let me know if you have any problems.

I have just made some minor modifications to all the socklets on the SiS menu to brighten them up a bit. If you happen to be one of the seriously depleted population of those who email website authors, please let me know what you think by emailing me.

Isn't it a great feeling to be not dead? I thought I should probably post something here since I haven't for well over a week. I said it would be very irregular, and I've recently started studying again.

Anyway, the moving sky socklet has had it's not yet out of draft stage removed, even though I'm still not really happy with it. If anyone can make it better then I'd be very happy. Please email me if you're interested.

Last weekend I was dragged out of bed by a group from the Wellington Astronomical Society who invited me on a trip to Palmerston North, and then later to view an occultation. Even though I'm generally dreadful at making conversation, I met a lot of great and enthusiastic people. We visited the Palmerston North Observatory, the Foxton Beach Observatory, as well as Alex Wassilieff's Observatory, where he filled us in about how he catalogued deep sky objects throughout the southern hemisphere. Unfortunately when it was time for the occultation was quite overcast. As always, it cleared up about five minutes after the event. Overall I had a really great time. It's worth joining a society, so do it. :-)

Well, not really. I've added a new socklet all about why stars won't stay still, but I'm not really happy with it yet. It's still in draft stage, so I've given it the certified status of being not yet out of draft stage. I'm expecting to slice and dice and rehash this socklet in the near future as I get annoyed at it, but for the moment it is there as it is. If there are any particular problems you have reading it that could be improved upon, please email me. Please don't tell me that it needs a conclusion, I already know that much. :-)

Dark Skies has been doing a lot to assist the astronomically impaired in recent times. This is no exception. Yes, there's a new tip available. If you thought you knew the back of your hand, you'll be shocked when you read this tip! It's all about why you should know the back of your hand. Notably you'll be shocked because there's almost no surprises at all. It's a handy trick to know, however.

Also of note is that I think I have the page formatting sorted out. For some people it might not look any different. For other people it would have had an inconsistent left margin over different pages. This should be fixed, but if you see anything that looks wierd, please email me.

I should probably say something about this slight change in address. Chances are if you're reading this, you've probably already found it. Dark Skies has MOVED and can now be found at http://www.paradise.net.nz/~zog/ds/. Please update your bookmarks. The main advantage to this is that now Dark Skies should finally be accessible from outside New Zealand.

I'm going to try and get any loopholes ironed out tonight, but if you see anything not working properly then please email me. In the mean time, I'd like to extend my thanks to paradise.net.nz, one of the most cost effective and best ISP's in New Zealand, for providing some space on their server. Particularly to Mark and Shane, the latter of whom I think must have been hiding an unmeasurable amount of frustration by the time I finally got some ftp'ing problems sorted out on my end. :-)