CompuServe Messages

Dave, I was just wondering if your ears were burning this afternoon. You were the topic of quite a discussion in the High Energy Astrophysical Sciences Archive Research Center at Goddard Space Flight Center today. <g>. The HEASARC group at Goddard creates and maintains databases of astronomical satellite data and makes these data available to non-NASA researchers through their Guest Observers' Program Office. They are networked pretty solid into the rest of the world, and that's where I started when I sought to bring the recent COBE discovery images to CompuServe. They are also working with me to assemble files from various sources relating to the "Great Observatory" satellites, for a NASA Astronomy feature I'm organizing for GO NASA. Anyway, they called today to tell me that they've found some beautiful Gamma Ray Observatory images which they've sent (look for these online next week). In the course of the conversation, they asked if I knew of a program called "Earth Centered Universe", which they had stumbled across in an anonymous FTP directory at NASA Ames while poking around looking for Great Observatory material for us. An accompanying text file said it was available on CompuServe's Astronomy Forum. I said that indeed we had it. That lead to maybe 20 minutes of non-stop accolades for ECU, in which the Goddard folks RAVED about it. I logged on while I had them on the phone and read the file description to them and they GROANED, exclaiming how understated the description is. They insisted that I FTP the file from their computer to mine via Ethernet link while we chatted, since I've just installed Windows and therefore had not been able to run it before. So I did. It really is quite a remarkable piece of work. ECU is spreading at Goddard like a virus now. <g>. The Guest Observers' Program managers want to know when you'll have a version they can run on their Macs. <g>. Just wanted to share these events with you, and to thank you for the kind of great work I'm always pleased to have associated with the Astronomy Forum. Well done. — Dick There is 1 Reply. Read action !