An artist's conception of what scientists think was an asteroid collision near star NGC 2547-1D8, which is 1,200 light-years from Earth. An influx of dust was noticed from Earth between August 2012 and 2013. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
When a crop of dust spread forth from the star NGC 2547-1D8 during 2012 observations, scientists quickly sprang into action. What they believe happened was two huge asteroids 1,200 light-years away crashed into each other. What’s more, researchers say that what they witnessed could herald planetary formation similar to what created our own solar system.
“We think two big asteroids crashed into each other, creating a huge cloud of grains the size of very fine sand, which are now smashing themselves into smithereens and slowly leaking away from the star,” stated lead author and graduate student Huan Meng of the University of Arizona.
The debris was tracked with NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, and represents the first time scientists have picked up information before and after an event such as this.
Scientists did see dust variability from the system before, which prompted them to put it under close scrutiny — sometimes looking at it every day. The biggest surge took place across five months in 2012. Observations were interrupted because the star was too close to our Sun’s field of view; when it was safe to return, that’s when scientists spotted all the dust.
The Spitzer Space Telescope. Credit: NASA
“We not only witnessed what appears to be the wreckage of a huge smashup, but have been able to track how it is changing — the signal is fading as the cloud destroys itself by grinding its grains down so they escape from the star,” stated Kate Su of the University of Arizona, who is a co-author on the study.
It is believed that planets, moons and other objects in our solar system coalesced over millions of years from collisions such as this. The far-away collision did take place in a spot where planets could form some day, NASA noted, which makes it all the more interesting to scientists.
A raw shot from the front hazcam of NASA's Opportunity rover taken on Sol 3757, on Aug. 19, 2014. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Opportunity rover, which has been roaming Mars for more than 10 Earth years, requires a flash memory reformat to keep doing science on the Red Planet, the agency wrote in an update Aug. 29 along with its intentions for making that possible quickly.
“Flash-memory induced resets have increased in occurrence, preventing meaningful science until this problem can be corrected,” NASA said on the Opportunity website. “The project is developing plans to reformat the flash file system to correct the problem.”
The agency has experience in doing this procedure as they successfully ran it on the twin Spirit rover five years ago, before the rover got stuck in sand and died. A separate update on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory website noted there have been more than a dozen incidents on Opportunity in the past month, and it takes a day or two to recover from each one.
Flash memory, the update added, is useful because data remains on the rover even if it is turned off. But after 10 years of using the cells on Opportunity’s flash memory, the agency suspects that these cells are starting to wear out. “Reformatting clears the memory while identifying bad cells and flagging them to be avoided,” the update read.
The crest of Endeavour Crater is at the horizon of this picture taken by the Opportunity rover from Mars on Sol 3,749 (Aug. 10, 2014). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The procedure will take place early this month. Meanwhile, NASA is flushing the flash memory by sending the data back to Earth — as well as switching the rover to a mode where it doesn’t use flash memory. Just in case the rover resets itself during the procedure, NASA is also changing up Opportunity’s communications to send data more slowly (which makes the rover more resilient to problems, the agency said.)
“The flash reformatting is a low-risk process, as critical sequences and flight software are stored elsewhere in other non-volatile memory on the rover,” stated JPL’s John Callas, project manager for NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Project.
Opportunity is currently circling the ring of Endeavour crater and is in otherwise excellent health, NASA said. The rover has driven 25.28 miles (40.69 kilometers) since arriving on Mars in January 2004 for what was supposed to be a 90-day mission.
Last month's supermoon within 24 hours of perigee. Credit: Blobrana
Time to dust off those ‘what is a perigee Full Moon’ explainer posts… the supermoon once again cometh this weekend to a sky near you.
Yes. One. More. Time.
We’ve written many, many times — as have many astronomy writers — about the meme that just won’t die. The supermoon really brings ‘em out, just like werewolves of yore… some will groan, some will bemoan the use of a modernized term inserted into the common astronomical vernacular that was wrought by an astrologer, while others will exclaim that this will indeed be the largest Full Moon EVER…
But hey, it’s a great chance to explain the weird and wonderful motion of our nearest natural neighbor in space. Thanks to the Moon, those astronomers of yore had some great lessons in celestial mechanics 101. Without the Moon, it would’ve been much tougher to unravel the rules of gravity that we take for granted when we fling a probe spaceward.
The Moon reaches Full on Tuesday, September 9th at 1:38 Universal Time (UT), which is 9:38 PM EDT on the evening of the 8th. The Moon reaches perigee at less than 24 hours prior on September 8th at 3:30 UT — 22 hours and 8 minutes earlier, to be precise — at a distance 358,387 kilometres distant. This is less than 2,000 kilometres from the closest perigee than can occur, and 1,491 kilometres farther away than last month’s closest perigee of the year, which occurred 27 minutes prior to Full Moon.
A Proxigean or Perigee Full “Supermoon” as reckoned by our preferred handy definition of “a Full Moon occurring within 24 hours of perigee” generally occurs annually in a cycle of three over two lunar synodic periods, and moves slowly forward by just shy of a month through the Gregorian calendar per year. The next cycle of “supermoons” starts on August 30th, 2015, and you can see our entire list of cycles out through 2020 here.
What’s the upshot of all this? Well, aside from cluttering inboxes and social media with tales of the impending supermoon this weekend, the rising Moon will appear 33.5’ arc minutes in diameter as opposed to its usually quoted average of 30’ in size. And remember, that’s in apparent size as seen from our Earthly vantage point… can you spy a difference from one Full Moon to the next? Fun fact: the rising Moon is actually farther away from you to the tune of about one Earth radius than when it’s directly overhead at the zenith.
Fed up with supermoon-mania? The September Full Moon also has a more pedestrian name: The Harvest Moon. Actually, this is the Full Moon that falls nearest to the September Equinox, marking the start of the astronomical season of Fall in the northern hemisphere and Spring in the southern. In the current first half of the 21st century, the September Equinox falls on the 22nd or 23rd, meaning that the closest Full Moon (and thus the Harvest Moon) can sometimes fall in October, as last happened in 2009 and will occur again in 2017. In this instance, the September Full Moon would then be referred to as the Corn Moon as reckoned by the Algonquins, and is occasionally referred to as the Drying Grass Moon by Sioux tribes. In 2014, the Harvest Full Moon “misses” falling in October by about 32 hours!
The waning gibbous Moon of July 14th, 2014- shortly after the first supermoon of the year. Credit: Blobrana.
So, why is it known as the Harvest Moon? Well, in the age before artificial lighting (and artificial light pollution) the rising of the Full Moon as the Sun sets allowed for a few hours of extra illumination to bring in crops. In October, the same phenomenon gave hunters a few extra hours to track game by the light of the Full Hunters Moon, both essential survival activities before the onset of the long winter.
And that Full Harvest Moon seems to “stick around” on successive evenings. This is due to the relatively shallow angle of the evening ecliptic to the eastern horizon as seen from mid-northern latitudes in September.
The rising Full Moon on the evening of September 8th as seen from latitude 40 degrees north. Note the shallow angle of the ecliptic. Created using Stellarium.
Here’s a sample of rising times for the Moon this month as seen from Baltimore, Maryland at 39.3 degrees north latitude:
Saturday, September 6th: 5:43 PM EDT
Sunday, September 7th: 6:23 PM EDT
Monday, September 8th: 7:05 PM EDT
Tuesday, September 9th: 7:44 PM EDT
Wednesday, September 10th: 8:22 PM EDT
Note the Moon rises only ~40 minutes later on each successive evening.
The Full Harvest Moon of 2013 plus aircraft. Credit: Stephen Rahn.
We’re also headed towards a “shallow year” in 2015, as the Moon bottoms out relative to the ecliptic and only ventures 18 degrees 20’ north and south of the celestial equator at shallow minimum. This is due to what’s known as the Precession of the Line of Apsides as the gravitational pull of the Sun slowly drags the orbit of the Moon round the earth once every 8.85 years. The nodes where the ecliptic and path of the Moon meet — and solar and lunar eclipses occur — also move slowly in an opposite direction of the Moon’s motion, taking just over twice as long as the Precession of the Line of Apsides to complete one revolution around the ecliptic at 18.6 years. This is one of the more bizarre facts about the motion of the Moon: its orbital tilt of 5.1 degrees is actually fixed with respect to the ecliptic as traced out by the Earth’s orbit about the Sun, not our rotational axis. Native American and ancient Northern European knew of this, and the next “Long Night’s Moon” also called a “Lunar Standstill” when the Moon rides high in the northern hemisphere sky is due through 2024-2025.
The footprint of the September 11th occultation of Uranus. Credit: Occult 4.0.
And to top it off, the Moon occults Uranus just two days after Full on September 11th as seen from northeastern North America, Greenland, Iceland and northern Scandinavia. We’re in a cycle of occultations of Uranus by the Moon from late 2014 through 2015, and this will set the ice giant up for a spectacular close pass, and a rare occultation of the planet for a remote region in the Arctic during the October 8th total lunar eclipse…
NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft is depicted in orbit around an artistic rendition of planet Mars, which is shown in transition from its ancient, water-covered past, to the cold, dry, dusty world that it has become today. Credit: NASA
Now just 3 weeks and 4 million miles (6 million kilometers) from rendezvous with Mars, NASA’s ground breaking Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) orbiter is tracking precisely on course for the crucial Mars Orbital Insertion (MOI) engine firing slated for September 21, 2014.
MAVEN will investigate Mars transition from its ancient, water-covered past, to the cold, dry, dusty world that it has become today.
It’s been a picture perfect flight thus far during the ten month interplanetary voyage from Earth to Mars. To date it has traveled 93% of the path to the Red Planet.
As of August 29th, MAVEN was 198 million kilometers (123 million miles) from Earth and 6.6 million kilometers (4.1 million miles) from Mars. Its velocity is 22.22 kilometers per second (49,705 miles per hour) as it moves on a heliocentric arc around the Sun.
“MAVEN continues on a smooth journey to Mars. All spacecraft systems are operating nominally,” reported David Mitchell, MAVEN Project Manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, in an update.
MAVEN is NASA’s next Mars Orbiter and will investigate how the planet lost most of its atmosphere and water over time. Credit: NASA
In fact, MAVEN’s navigation from Earth to Mars has been so perfect that the team will likely cancel the final Trajectory Correction Maneuver (TCM) that had been planned for September 12.
The team will make a final decision on whether TCM-4 is necessary on Sept. 4.
Previously the team also cancelled TCM-3 that had been planned for July 23 because it was “not warranted.”
“We are tracking right where we want to be,” says Mitchell.
TCM-1 and TCM-2 took place as scheduled in December 2013 and February 2014, Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN’s Principal Investigator told Universe Today.
These thruster firings ensure the craft is aimed on the correct course through interplanetary space.
See MAVEN’s trajectory route map below.
Maven spacecraft trajectory to Mars. Credit: NASA
“Since we are now in a ‘pre-Mars Orbit Insertion (MOI) moratorium’, all instruments are powered off until after we arrive at the Red Planet,” according to Mitchell.
Although MAVEN’s instrument are resting, the team has no time to rest.
They must ensure that all is in readiness for the MOI burn and held a review at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory with the Deep Space Network (DSN) team and confirmed its readiness to support the engine firing on MOI night.
The entire team also conducted a readiness rehearsal, comprising Lockheed Martin operations center in Denver, Colorado, the backup operations center at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
“The review was successful; DSN is ready to support us on MOI night,” says Mitchell.
The do or die MOI maneuver is scheduled for approximately 10 p.m. EDT on Sept. 21, 2014 when MAVEN will rendezvous with the Red Planet following a ten month interplanetary voyage from Earth.
The $671 Million MAVEN spacecraft’s goal is to study Mars upper atmosphere to explore how the Red Planet lost most of its atmosphere and water over billions of years.
The MAVEN probe carries nine sensors in three instrument suites to study why and exactly when did Mars undergo the radical climatic transformation.
“I’m really looking forward to getting to Mars and starting our science!” Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN’s Principal Investigator from the University of Colorado at Boulder, told me.
MAVEN aims to discover the history of water and habitability stretching back over billions of years on Mars.
It will measure current rates of atmospheric loss to determine how and when Mars lost its atmosphere and water.
NASA’s Mars bound MAVEN spacecraft launches atop Atlas V booster at 1:28 p.m. EST from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Nov. 18, 2013. Image taken from the roof of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
MAVEN thundered to space over nine months ago on Nov. 18, 2013 following a flawless blastoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 41 atop a powerful Atlas V rocket and thus began a 10 month interplanetary voyage from Earth to the Red Planet.
MAVEN is streaking to Mars along with ISRO’sMOM orbiter, which arrives a few days later on September 24, 2014.
MOM and MAVEN will join Earth’s fleet of 3 current orbiters from NASA and ESA as well as NASA’s pair of sister surface rovers Curiosity and Opportunity.
Meanwhile last week, NASA announced it was proceeding with development of the mammoth SLS heavy lift rocket that will one day launch astronauts to Mars in the Orion capsule.
Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing MAVEN, MOM, Rosetta, Opportunity, Curiosity, Mars rover and more Earth and planetary science and human spaceflight news.
NASA’s MAVEN Mars orbiter, chief scientist Prof. Bruce Jakosky of CU-Boulder and Ken Kremer of Universe Today inside the clean room at the Kennedy Space Center on Sept. 27, 2013. MAVEN launched to Mars on Nov. 18, 2013 from Florida. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
As you might know, a few of us were attending Dragon*Con this weekend in Atlanta, where the Parsec Awards are held every year. Astronomy Cast has been up for a nomination every year, but we’ve always lost out to other folks like Star Talk and Planetary Radio.
Well, this year, we took a different tack and submitted our Guide to Space video series for the Fact Behind the Fiction category… and we won!
A big thanks and congratulations to my video co-creator, Jason Harmer as well as everyone else who has helped us write, edit, produce and shoot these videos: Susie Murph, Brian Koberlein, Chad Weber, Scott Lewis, Kevin Gill and Elizabeth Howell.
Is Earth going at warp speed in this image? This is a composite of two photographs, one for the foreground and one for the sky. The photographer zoomed in on the image of the Milky Way for the last 10 seconds of the exposure to give it a 'warp speed' look. Credit and copyright: Mike Taylor/Mike Taylor Photography.
Whoa! Having just returned from the science and science fiction mashup that is Dragon Con, my mind is still combining the two. Then I saw this image from Mike Taylor, which is one of the most unique Milky Way images I’ve ever seen. Perfect!
Mike said he combined two images, one for the foreground and one for the night sky image of the Milky Way. “I zoomed in on the Milky Way for the last 10 seconds of the exposure to give it the “warp speed” look,” he said.
He calls the image “Somniloquy” which is a term that describes the act of talking while asleep. Yep. I’m pretty sure that happened at Dragon Con, too….
Check out another awesome Milky Way image by Mike, below.
This is a 7 image vertical panorama of the night sky in Maine where the late Summer Milky Way makes a dramatic background for a small shack and tree. Credit and copyright: Mike Taylor/Mike Taylor Photography.
Mike noted this image was taken right next to a cell tower that emits a red light over the landscape throughout the night. “Normally I would change the color balance but I decided to leave the red color in the foreground (although I toned it down quite a bit) to add to the overall feeling of the image,” he said. Mike stitched the images together via PTGui and processed through Lightroom 5 & Photoshop CS5.
Nikon D600 & 14-24 @ 14mm
f/2.8 – 7 x 30 secs – ISO 4000
08/28/14 – 10:20PM
Milky Way image taken with a Nikon D600 & 14-24mm at 24mm, f/2.8 – 30 seconds at ISO 4000 on 05/30/14 at 1:38 AM at Goblin Valley State Park, Utah.
Foreground image also taken with the same camera at f/5.6 – 1/60 seconds at ISO 100 on 05/25/14 at 6:28 PM, on Potash Rd near Moab, Utah.
Mike offers photography classes, and you can find out more about when/where here.
Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group or send us your images by email (this means you’re giving us permission to post them). Please explain what’s in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.
NASA is planning to launch a time capsule aboard the Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft, which is expected to head to an asteroid in 2016. Credit: Heather Roper/University of Arizona/OSIRIS-REx
What’s your vision for solar system exploration? And how cool would it be to send it literally into the solar system?
NASA is offering its fans the chance to compose a tweet or send a picture showing how we can step out into the cosmos. The best ones among these will be placed aboard a spacecraft that will zoom to an asteroid in 2016.
The “time capsule” will be placed aboard the Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx). If all goes to plan, it will meet with the asteroid Bennu in 2019, pick up a sample and then return it to Earth in 2023.
And by the way, you can also send your name to Bennu via this form (a joint initiative of NASA and the Planetary Society.) Seems a good chance to get your name off of Earth, until the time when space travel becomes affordable to ordinary citizens.
For more details about the tweets and images time capsule, visit this NASA website. Make sure to submit your message before Sept. 30.
What’s it like to spend a night at a huge telescope observatory? Jordi Busque recorded a brilliant timelapse of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). What makes this video unique is not only the exotic location in Chile, but the use of sound in the area rather than music.
What if Earth had multiple moons? Our world has one large natural satellite, just over a quarter the diameter, 1/50th the volume, and less than 1/80th the mass of our fair world. In fact, the Earth-Moon system has sometimes been referred to as a “binary planet,” and our Moon stands as the largest natural satellite of any planet — that is, if you subscribe to bouncing Pluto and Charon out of “the club” — in contrast to its primary of any moon in our solar system.
But what if we had two or more moons? And are there any tiny “moonlet” candidates lurking out there, awaiting discovery and perhaps exploration?
While historical searches for tiny secondary moons of the Earth — and even “moons of our Moon” — have turned up naught, the Earth does indeed capture asteroids as temporary moons and eject them back into solar orbit from time to time.
Now, a recent paper out of the University of Hawaii written in partnership with the SETI Institute and the Department of Physics at the University of Helsinki has looked at the possible prospects for the population of captured Near-Earth asteroids, and the feasibility of detecting these with existing and future systems about to come online.
The hunt for spurious moons of the Earth has a fascinating and largely untold history. Arthur Upgren’s outstanding book Many Skies devotes an entire chapter to the possible ramifications of an Earth with multiple moons… sure, more moons would be a bane for astrophotographers, but hey, eclipses and transits of the Sun would be more common, a definite plus.
In 1846, astronomer Frederic Petit announced the discovery of a tiny Earth-orbiting moon from Toulouse observatory. “Petit’s Moon” was said to orbit the Earth once every 2 hours and 44 minutes and reach an apogee of 3,570 kilometres and a perigee of just 11.4 (!) kilometres, placing it well inside the Earth’s atmosphere on closest approach.
The announcement (in German) of the discovery of Waltemath’s Moon. “Ein zweiter Mond der Erde” translates into “a second Earth moon.” Credit: Wikimedia Commons image in the public domain.
A slightly more believable claim came from astronomer Georg Waltemath in 1898 for a moon 700 kilometres in size — he claimed it was, of course, a very dark body and not very easily visible — orbiting the Earth at about 2.5 times the distance of the Moon. Waltemath even made an announcement of his discovery, and claimed to have found a third moon of the Earth for good measure.
And a much more dubious claim came from the astrologer Walter Gornold in 1918 of a secondary moon, dubbed Lilith. Apparently, then (as now) astrologers never actually bothered to look at the skies…
Turns out, our large Moon makes a pretty good goaltender, ejecting —and sometimes taking a beating from — any tiny second moon hopeful. Of course, you can’t blame those astronomers of yore entirely. Though none of these spurious moons survived the test of observational verification, these discoveries often stemmed from early efforts to accurately predict the precise motion of the Moon. Astronomers therefore felt they were on the right track, looking for an unseen perturbing body.
Fast forward to the 21st century. Quasi-moons of the Earth, such as 3753 Cruithne, have horseshoe-shaped orbits and seem to approach and recede from our planet as both orbit the Sun. Similar quasi-moons of Venus have also been discovered.
And even returning space junk can masquerade as a moon of Earth, as was the case of J002E3 and 2010 QW1, which turned out to be boosters from Apollo 12 and the Chinese Chang’e-2 missions, respectively.
What modern researchers are looking for are termed Temporarily Captured Orbiters, or TCOs. The study notes that perhaps an average of a few dozen asteroids up to 1 to 2 metres in size are in a “steady state” population that may be orbiting the Earth at any given time on an enter, orbit, and eject sort of conveyor belt. Estimates suggest that a large 5 to 10 metre asteroid is captured every decade so, and a 100 metre or larger TCO is temporarily captured by the Earth every 100,000 years. The study also estimates that about 1% occasionally hit the Earth. And though it wasn’t a TCO, the ability to detect an Earthbound asteroid before impact was demonstrated in 2008 with the discovery of 2008 TC3, less than 24 hours prior to striking in the Sudanese desert.
“There are currently no projects that are solely looking for minimoons at this time,” lead researcher Bryce Bolin of the University of Hawaii told Universe Today. “There are several surveys, such as PanSTARRS, the Catalina Sky Survey and the Palomar Transit Factory that are currently in operation that have the capability of discovering minimoons.”
The convoluted orbit of 2006 RH120 around the Earth-Moon system, to date the only confirmed TCO. Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Ohms law.
We’re getting better at this hazardous asteroid detection business, that’s for sure. The researchers modeled paths and orbits for TCOs in the study, and also noted that collections may “clump” at the anti-sunward L2 opposition point, and the L1 sunward point, with smaller distributions located at the east and west quadrature points located 90 degrees on either side of the Earth. The L2 point in particular might make a good place to start the search.
Ironically, systems such as LINEAR and PanSTARRS may have already captured a TCO in their data and disregarded them in their quest for traditional Near Earth Objects.
“Surveys such as PanSTARRS/LINEAR utilize a filtration process to remove artifacts and false positives in the data as it gets processed through the data pipeline,” Researcher Bryce Bolin told Universe Today. “A common method is to apply a rate of motion cut… this is effective in eliminating many artifacts (which) tend to have a rate of motion as measured by the pipeline which is very high.”
Such systems aren’t always looking for fast movers near Earth orbit that can produce a trail or streak which may reassemble space junk or become lost in the gaps over multiple detection devices. And speaking of which, researchers note that Arecibo and the U.S. Air Force’s Space Surveillance System may be recruited in this effort as well. To date, one definite TCO, named 2006 RH120 has been documented orbiting and departing from the vicinity of the Earth, and such worldlets might make enticing targets for future manned missions due to their relatively low Delta-V for arrival and departure.
An artist’s concept of a possible future asteroid mission near Earth. Credit: NASA.
PanSTARRS-2 saw first light last year in 2013, and is slated to go online for full science operations by the end of 2014. Eventually, the PanSTARRS system will employ four telescopes, and may find a bevy of TCOs. The researchers estimate in the study that a telescope such as Subaru stands a 90% chance of nabbing a TCO after only five nights of dedicated sweeps of the sky.
Finally, the study also notes that evidence miniature moonlets orbiting Earth may lurk in the all sky data gathered by automated cameras and amateur observers during meteor showers. Of course, we’re talking tiny, dust-to-pebble sized evidence, but there’s no lower limit as to what constitutes a moon…
And so, although moons such a “Lilith” and “Petit’s Moon” belong to the annuals of astronomical history, temporary “minimoons” of Earth are modern realities. And as events such as Chelyabinsk remind us, it’s always worthwhile to hunt for hazardous NEOs (and TCOs) that may be headed our way. Hey, to paraphrase science fiction author Larry Niven: unlike the dinosaurs, we have a space program!
Read more about the fascinating history of moons that never were and more in the classic book The Haunted Observatory.
And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to [email protected], and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out, sign up to be a host. Send an email to the above address.
