One In A Million!

UC Berkeley SETI researcher Andrew Siemion and his colleagues have put an upper limit on the number of civilizations in our galaxy that are capable of giving us a call.  He’ll explain their reasoning and provide other search updates. Emily Lakdawalla is never at a loss for great space images.  This time they include watching our moon transit the Earth, and a surprisingly beautiful scoopful of Martian dirt. Bruce Betts would rather not talk about the bad, bad things that can happen at high altitude, but he’s happy to tell us about the night sky and provide a Random Space Fact.  Bill Nye returns next week.

Related Links

• "SETI Survey of the Kepler Field"
• SETI@Home
• BLOG: Mat Kaplan's Atacama Diary
• CONTEST:  How Cheap is Planetary Science?
• BLOG: Pretty Picture: A Moon Transit
  

Trivia Contest

This week's prize is a SMBC Revenge of the Dinosaurs T-Shirt!

This week's question:
On what two bodies does Copernicus have craters named after him?

To submit your answer:
Complete the contest entry form at http:planetary.org/radiocontest no later than Monday, March 4, at 2pm Pacific Time.

Last week's question:
What is the largest refracting telescope ever used for research?  (Not the largest refractor ever!)

Answer:
The answer will be revealed next week.

Question from the week before:
According to La Sagra Observatory's Jaime Nomen, where was the discoverer of 2012 DA14 when the discovery was made?

Answer:
On  a sailboat off the coast of Spain.