Playing with Space & Time

I'm currently in an Astronomy mood and fortunately there's some really good low cost programs out there.

Stellarium [free] - View the stars and planets from whatever time you want.

Which leads me to thinking about the Solar Eclipse on the 22nd of July 2009 in India/China/Japan etc. which you can simulate within Stellarium. You can even check out the "flight path" of the moon's umbra (shadow) with these awesome Solar Eclipse Interactive Maps.

And if that wasn't enough then it's time to mess around with gravity & planets & blacholes. Even better if you've got some 3D glasses. The Universe Sandbox [1 hour free trial] rocks.

This isn't a proper blog from me because I'm experimenting with blogger's Vista sidebar gadget. It's okay but I wish it loaded my preset post layout along with supporting tags.