This /. post about exceptional seeing at Dome C in Antarctica lead me to a page about with details about a project that measured the interference from aborations in the earth’s atmosphere and their affect on telescopes. It (mainly a FAQ) was a really interesting read with some pretty cool pictures on the page and links to more. The fact mentioned using jet fuel powered stirling engines as a heat and electricity source so i decided to do some searching to find out what exactly a stirling engine is. Following a link on the WikiPedia page about them lead me to this article on HowStuffWorks. If you’ve never run across HowStuffWorks it’s a really cool site that does exactly what the name implies and explains how various things work. There’s 100′s of articles about all sorts of technologies and concepts. It’s a good place to kill a little bit of time in a productive manner.