I know this is rather short notice, but i thought someone might be interested in getting a first hand view of NASA's efforts. If you live in the northwest US, on Saturday (Jan14) night (Sunday morning) at 1:57am PST, you might be able to see the Stardust probe on it's return to earth. It is returning from a rendevous with comet Wild 2, during which it collected samples of dust (yeah we went all that way for some dirt; but what interesting dirt it is!) It is also going to set a record for fastest reentry speed ever by a man mad object! 28,000mph!!  Since i live in northern CA i will take a look, and report back anything interesting.  If you are interested here are two links:

http://reentry.arc.nasa.gov/viewingforum.html

http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html

OK Saturday night started fairly clear, but then it got rainy and overcast, then finally at about 1:45 it cleared up suddenly. So i grabbed my camera, went outside, and waited...... and waited........and waited......and i saw nothing!  I did hear a muffled sonic boom, but no lights/flash/brightness of any kind in the sky  There was a full moon, and i am pretty far from its projected path, but the newspaper i read said it was going to "light up the sky" and things of that sort..... guess not! I did watch it on NASA channel 99, though, and it did touch down safely.

Anyone know where i might get some good pictures of the comet itself? JPL site doesn't have much up yet.

Also check this site out: http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2006/01/10_dust. shtml

"Discoverers will get to name their dust grains."  Awesome!!!!!

Never even knew about this. I gotta stop sticking my head in the sand!!

Im sure NASA or some related site will put up some pictures soon.

If anyone is interested you can sign up to help them folks find the dust particles. (Sounds real fun dont it? )

Forget the sites name but if ya goto NASA site you should find it easily enough.

I'm sorry for my pretty bad english, but I want to say something...

Regulus, are you interested only of Stardust or not? Can you advice sites about space exploration except NASA site? My knowledge of web segment outside Runet is very bad.

Payne, try these sites:

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/index.html

http://www.solarviews.com/eng/history.htm

http://www.universetoday.com/

http://www.solstation.com/index.html

@ Stardust, i saw on the tv that they found way more pieces of space dirt (and bigger ones) than they expected! Guess it was a pretty successful mission!