See also 'The Mind Is Flat: The Remarkable Shallowness of the Improvising Brain' by Nick Chater.

See also TRAPPIST to Scout the Sky and Uncover Exoplanets and Comets. (TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope) A robotic .6 meter telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory on the outskirts of the Atacama Desert in Chile.

Their atmospheric entry is expected and recorded.

See also Integrated library system

Businesses use Customer relationship management systems. These tools also provide statistics.

You don't need a telescope and it is not really astronomy but... ISS is very bright. Iridium flares are interesting. It is a whole world to explore and think about. You can see first satellite watchers in 'October Sky/Rocket boys'; a very nice film about science education in the US after the Sputnik launch.

• Satellite watching
• heavens-above for local ephemerids
• Iridium flares
• Rocket Boys
• Sputnik

Thank you!

I don't know what it is (I still use Firefox 1.5 on an old Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake) and /. is so slow that I hesitate to visit it. (There is always a busy script I have to stop, GoogleAds or something takes an eternity to load; not to speak about the FLASH adds... Unfortunately, RSS does not help as it is so full of advertizing that the text is difficult to find. I thing I will ditch Slashdot and digg elsewhere.