Carnival of Space #68

It's back!
Fraser Cain from Universe Today has selected another fine host for this week's Carnival of Space.

Carnival of Space #68 is hosted by Adam Crowl at Crowlspace. Once there, I started reading some of his previous blogs. Great, just what I need, another fascinating blog to keep track of each day!

This week, Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, answers why we don't just use telescopes to prove the lunar landings happened. I don't know if the people who keep bringing up this moon landing hoax nonsense are gonna want to hear that even Hubble could barely make out a football stadium on the moon. But Phil does an excellent job of explaining it to the more rational among us.

There is an entry from Dr. Ian O'Neill, whose blog Astroengine is linked here as one of my favorite stops on the blog tour each morning. Another of my first cup o' Joe favorites, Ray Villard, Cosmic Ray, covers the ongoing debate over Pluto. He recently attended the 'great debate' and has a number of great blogs on it. A new addition to my blog favorites, Emily Lakdawalla, puts out a great blog at the Planetary Society Weblog. I read her entry into the Carnival, also about naming planets, a few days ago, and it's very good.

I even managed to get an entry in the Carnival this week. I crawled out from under the mountain of grant research and writing long enough to write up a piece on computer modeling of planetary formation. I confess, I found the story while investigating National Science Foundation grants, but it's nice to be able to mix a little business with pleasure and spread the word when I find new and exciting research like this.

I've read nearly all the Carnival offerings already, and give it a 9.9 on the Simoscale. I would have given it a 10, but I learned there is no such thing any more while watching the Olympics last week.

So what are you still doing here? Get on over to the Carnival -and have a cotton candy on me.