Okay, a quick glance through some exciting astronomy stories before I head into work today…

• Pinwheel Galaxy – First off, go check out this incredible image of M101, the Pinwheel Galaxy. It is the largest image ever taken of a spiral galaxy, and the detail is amazing. Guess what my new desktop wallpaper is?
• Mar Reconnaissance Orbiter – NASA’s latest Martian orbiter is set to for Mars orbit insertion on March 10. It will spend the next few months aero-braking to reduce its highly elliptical orbit to a tight 300 kilometer circular working orbit. The MRO carries the biggest and most powerful camera ever flown to another world, so expect some incredible high resolution images from this orbiter.
• Venus Express – Speaking of space probes, Venus Express will arrive at Venus on April 11 and begin its mission of the hothouse planet. Lots of exciting new missions about to begin.
• Titan Flyby – And of course current missions continue to bring home the bacon. Cassini zoomed past Titan for the 12^th time on February 27, the first of four passes to determine the shape, strength and structure of Titan’s gravitational field. Cassini recently investigated a gigantic thunderstorm on the gas planet, with lightning flashes and winds that could scour the flesh from your bones.

Well, time to go make the doughnuts…

It ain’t everyday you turn up a kingdom lost in time. But Haraldur Sigurdsson, a volcanologist with the University of Rhode Island, did just that in Indonesia. Sigurdsson discovered the remains of the kingdom of Tambora buried on the slopes of it eponymous volcano. The volcano, located on the island of Sumbawa, exploded in a gargantuan eruption in 1815. The eruption killed 117,000 people and cast a pall around the planet, marking 1815 as the year without a summer.

Locals told Sigurdsson of a ‘museum gully’ full of ceramics and bones. He took a brief look, then returned the next year with ground penetrating radar. Along with Indonesian archaeologists, he uncovered houses, ceramics and he remains of Tamborans apparently caught unawares by the eruption.

Tambora was smothered in minutes beneath a pyroclastic flow of superheated ash and pumice. Dubbed the ‘Eastern Pompeii,’ hopes are high that the town of Tambora is preserved under the loose ash, much like the ancient Roman city was preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius 2000 years ago. The few artifacts already recovered indicate that Tambora was probably linked to Vietnam and Cambodia. The scraps of Tamboran language that were preserved also indicate Khmer roots. The kingdom was lost before the colonial Dutch reached this corner of Indonesia, so the town will be a vital source of information about pre-Dutch trade and village life. Historical records suggest the Tamborans traded in honey, sappanwood used to make red dye, and sandalwood used for incense and medications.

Here’s a cool little site full of Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings and sketches from his famous notebooks. Very interesting stuff, lots of anatomical studies, portraits and technical drawings.

From lowbrow to highbrow, we keeps things mixed up here.