Carnival of Space #17

Welcome to the seventeenth Carnival of Space! Here's what's being discussed on space-related blogs this week. It's an unusually light week -- people must be on vacation, at least mentally, if not physically!

For Stuart Atkinson at Cumbrian Sky, the mission and landing of Space Shuttle Endeavour has made him powerfully melancholic, as he can't bring himself to love Orion...

For Louise Riofrio at A Babe in the Universe, the discovery of a pulsar in the dark halo surrounding our Milky Way makes her feel a step closer -- but still far away -- from understanding what the universe is made of.

Paul Gilster of Centauri Dreams has also been reading about new discoveries in dark matter, and considers their significance for whether we'll ever have a warp drive for faster-than-light space travel.

Brian Wang at Advancednano also has future propulsion technologies on his mind, urging the development of molecular nanotechnology and advanced fission and fusion.

Wilson Afonso at Astronomy Down Under has some more practical advice for you on how to select a pair of binoculars for sky watching.

Also from Down Under is Ian Musgrave at Astroblog, who describes how JPL's Horizons program can help observers solve pesky pesky parallax problems.

And a late addition, because it got stuck in a spam filter for some reason, is SpaceFiles, with an entry about the Phobos-Grunt mission, for which The Planetary Society is going to provide an experiment called LIFE.

That's it! If you'd like to submit an entry for next week, here are the instructions for submissions. Next week's will be hosted by Out of the Cradle, and the following week it will return to Universe Today.