Slashdot Mirror
One of HST's Cameras Is Back In Action
StupendousMan writes "One of the two big cameras aboard the Hubble Space Telescope is the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, or WFPC2 for short. As the most recent HST status report indicates, the camera was recently powered up again and sent commands to take some test images. Today (Sunday, Oct 26), I received E-mail from a colleague at STScI indicating that the calibration images were 'nominal.' That's NASA-speak for 'fine and dandy.' The E-mail goes on to say 'The data look nominal, indicating that
Hubble optical imaging capabilities are in fine shape. (We can expect more glorious Hubble images in the near future.) ...
Science with WFPC2 has resumed, and plans are underway to restore ACS/SBC to service this coming week.' Let's hope that the other big instrument, the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), also comes back to life successfully. We should find out in just a week or so."
Hopefully they will also be able to restore functionality to WPSHU (Whatever Propulsion System Hubble Uses), so we can get a nice DOL (Direct Oriented Look) on the STARS (Stars That ARe Special). If not, I will commit SWABBL (Suicide With A Big, Big fraking Lens) and then BLAH (Burn Like A Hubble inferno) like Pinback on bomb #20!
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
So the aliens have finished their flyby?
A couple weeks ago, while browsing around the library downtown, I had to take a piss. As I entered the john, Barack Obama -- the messiah himself -- came out of one of the booths. I stood at the urinal looking at him out of the corner of my eye as he washed his hands. He didn't once look at me. He was busy and in any case I was sure the secret service wouldn't even let me shake his hand.
As soon as he left I darted into the booth he'd vacated, hoping there might be a lingering smell of shit and even a seat still warm from his sturdy ass. I found not only the smell but the shit itself. He'd forgotten to flush. And what a treasure he had left behind. Three or four beautiful specimens floated in the bowl. It apparently had been a fairly dry, constipated shit, for all were fat, stiff, and ruggedly textured. The real prize was a great feast of turd -- a nine inch gastrointestinal triumph as thick as his cock -- or at least as I imagined it!
I knelt before the bowl, inhaling the rich brown fragrance and wondered if I should obey the impulse building up inside me. I'd always been a liberal democrat and had been on the Obama train since last year. Of course I'd had fantasies of meeting him, sucking his cock and balls, not to mention sucking his asshole clean, but I never imagined I would have the chance. Now, here I was, confronted with the most beautiful five-pound turd I'd ever feasted my eyes on, a sausage fit to star in any fantasy and one I knew to have been hatched from the asshole of Barack Obama, the chosen one.
Why not? I plucked it from the bowl, holding it with both hands to keep it from breaking. I lifted it to my nose. It smelled like rich, ripe limburger (horrid, but thrilling), yet had the consistency of cheddar. What is cheese anyway but milk turning to shit without the benefit of a digestive tract?
I gave it a lick and found that it tasted better then it smelled.
I hesitated no longer. I shoved the fucking thing as far into my mouth as I could get it and sucked on it like a big half nigger cock, beating my meat like a madman. I wanted to completely engulf it and bit off a large chunk, flooding my mouth with the intense, bittersweet flavor. To my delight I found that while the water in the bowl had chilled the outside of the turd, it was still warm inside. As I chewed I discovered that it was filled with hard little bits of something I soon identified as peanuts. He hadn't chewed them carefully and they'd passed through his body virtually unchanged. I ate it greedily, sending lump after peanutty lump sliding scratchily down my throat. My only regret was that Barack Obama wasn't there to see my loyalty and wash it down with his piss.
I soon reached a terrific climax. I caught my cum in the cupped palm of my hand and drank it down. Believe me, there is no more delightful combination of flavors than the hot sweetness of cum with the rich bitterness of shit. It's even better than listening to an Obama speech!
Afterwards I was sorry that I hadn't made it last longer. But then I realized that I still had a lot of fun in store for me. There was still a clutch of virile turds left in the bowl. I tenderly fished them out, rolled them into my handkerchief, and stashed them in my briefcase. In the week to come I found all kinds of ways to eat the shit without bolting it right down. Once eaten it's gone forever unless you want to filch it third hand out of your own asshole. Not an unreasonable recourse in moments of desperation or simple boredom.
I stored the turds in the refrigerator when I was not using them but within a week they were all gone. The last one I held in my mouth without chewing, letting it slowly dissolve. I had liquid shit trickling down my throat for nearly four hours. I must have had six orgasms in the process.
I often think of Barack Obama dropping solid gold out of his sweet, pink asshole every day, never knowing what joy it could, and at least once did, bring to a grateful democrat.
While this is good news, its still important to remember that Hubble is running on backup systems, and that whatever redundancy was built into the original design is largely used up. Hopefully this will allow NASA to push the scheduled repair mission forward.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
The glitch is gone.
The Solar Blind Channel (the least useful component of ACS, unless you happen to use it) is the only component coming back. The Wide Field Channel and High Resolution Channel, the real workhorses, aren't coming back until after the Servicing Mission. Even then, the ACS repair is on the bottom of their priority list since most of its functionality is duplicated (albeit not as well) by the optical channel of WFC3. This means that the ACS repair, perhaps along with the STIS repair, most likely will be crowded out of the schedule by replacement of the instrument control computer.
Microsoft delenda est!
Sorry! When I first read this and saw that they could see a test image as normal. I was thinking if those guys have any senses of humor or not? For me, I would have enjoyed it if they pointed the telescope back to earth, zoom in on their own office building and moon the camera from a balcony. "Yep, you can see the freckle on Joe's butt just fine! Well done Joe! Nice photo of the moon!"
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
This just reminds me of possibly one of the greatest cartoons of all time - in my humble opinion that is.
It was a Gary Larson (sorely missed, but much respected) daily shortly after the launch with a picture of a blurry UFO with two equally blurry aliens waving to the camera with the caption "Another fine photo from the Hubble Space Telescope" (or words to that effect).
Obviously the joke does not have to be explained to *this* crowd. Genius.
When I read the headline I thought it had something to do with a secret surveillance network left behind by Hunter S. Thompson.
...as 99% of us have absolutely no clue what you're talking about.
the calibration images were 'nominal.' That's NASA-speak for 'fine and dandy
It also sounds so much better when spoken by a sultry female computer, normally just after your Jade Falcon TimberWolf as touched down on a hostile alien world.
Hubble speaks in a sultry female voice, right, right?
First read "HST" in the title as Hunter S. Thompson.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Hubble isn't malfunctioning, it has been turned around and now is looking in your backyard for terrerists. Wake up sheeple.
And now for some political and technological dynamite! No, sorry actually - just a rather trivial question about language, and not even a programming one.
...the calibration images were 'nominal'
Just out of curiosity - what is this about the word 'nominal'? According to the Wiktionary, 'nominal' has a number of meanings, including: "Of, resembling, relating to, or consisting of a name or names" and "Insignificantly small; trifling", both of which make sense, considering that it comes from 'nomen' (='name'). It also means "According to plan or design" and that doesn't seem to make any sense. Is this a mispronunciation that has become mainstream, along the same lines as 'nucular', which actually means "Of or related to a nucule -- a section of a compound (usually hard) fruit"?
Clearly this means the aliens have had a chance to figure out how the telescope works and alter it so that it conveniently fails to see their massive flotilla en route to Earth.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS