APOD 4.3 and zooniverse progress

Zooniverse: continued working on the milky way project, drawing bubbles as I went. Unfortunately this grew old halfway through the week (since I would only find a bubble every third image, which I suppose would be an indicator of the wealth of empty space in the Milky Way.) I have now begun working on one of the galaxy zoo projects, here observing galaxies and describing their appearance.

50 years ago, Yuri Alexseyevich Gagarin was the first man sent up, and he described the image he saw before him as he orbited.

The international space station has a view that looks very much like what he described. The sky was black, the earth was bluish, and he could see clearly. Yuri survives a prototype vessel to reach orbit, but died in a crash of a Mig jet during a training flight. Ironic and unfortunate. He received a hero's funeral, ashes safely tucked away in the walls of the Kremlin. As for his achievements, the man became a legend for this journey to space. It's sad to think of it now. 50 years ago scientific achievement meant sending a man to space. Now it means building a smaller ipod.