[Noisebridge-discuss] Giant space explosion detector

[Michael C. Toren]

On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 02:38:53AM -0700, Dr. Jesus wrote:
> I would like to make this useful again, and you might be able to
> help.  Here are some of my ideas:

I was chatting with Dr. Jesus in IRC about this, and he started
explaining a bit how NASA distributes the data.  I summarized that
conversation and put some notes up on the wiki at:

    https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Gamma_Ray_Burst

> 4) Provide a repeater service for the live x-ray and gamma ray feeds
> from the satellites.  Right now, the data is only available to people
> who receive the downlink directly; I'm not aware of any University or
> other group which repeats the data to the public using the intarwebs.

I'm interested in helping set up a repeater service as a first step, as
it seem like anything else we do with the data would depend on it being
made available to a wider audience.  It also seems like this should be
an easy thing to do.  If anyone else is interested in working on this
piece of it, please let me know.

> 5) Write an XScreensaver display hack that displays the last few GRB
> locations using some freely available starcharts.

This could be fun, and a decent excuse to play with X programming some
more, but I likely won't get around to it for a while...

-mct