Astrosphere for October 7, 2007

Happy Thanksgiving to all my fellow Canadian readers. Mmmm, turkey.

Today’s astrophoto is Saturn, captured by Paul F. Campbell. I like this image because it reminds me of what you see when you look through a nice telescope at Saturn. Although, this image has better clarity of the rings and bands on the planet than what you’d see in the eyepiece.

It was a crazy, yet awesome idea. Build a 200+ kg model of an X-Wing, affix 4 powerful rocket engines, and blast it off. It started out well, and then things went wrong.

Astroprof reviews a handheld planetarium called Pocket Stars.

Need some kind of currency when you head up into orbit? Check out the Quid.

SPACE.com has a great article profiling the upcoming X-Prize Cup.

Got a lot of time on your hands? Try making this scale model of the Sputnik rocket. Thanks to the Rocketry Blog for the tip.