With the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing approaching this summer, we can expect lots of tributes to the historic event. Steve Eves is going above and beyond by launching a model rocket Saturn V that is 1/10th scale of the original behemoth (see above) that launched the Apollo missions to the moon. This is a big model rocket and it launches April 25.
One man's quest to honor American's Saturn V rocket
2009 is the International Year of Astronomy, commemorating the 400th anniversary of Galileo's first telescopic observations. As a contribution to the IYA, a thoughtful group of educators and engineers have designed and produced the Galileoscope, a cheap ($15 base cost, $23.95 with shipping) telescope that makes astronomy affordable and accessible to everyone.
galileoscope.org
Look for a total lunar eclipse tomorrow night, February 20. A lunar eclipse occurs when the moon enters the shadow of the Earth, casting the usually bright full moon in a reddish hue. The moon will enter the darkest part of the Earth's shadow around 8:45pm Eastern time (5:45pm Pacific) and will look reddish for a couple hours. Unfortunately, it is looking like certain rain for us Southern California types.
So NASA is going to transmit the Beatles song "Across the Universe" out into space in the direction of Polaris, the north star. This is to celebrate anniversaries of the song itself and NASA. While this is a fine idea that melds popular culture with some fun science it doesn't really accomplish anything productive for NASA's image. Instead of fostering youth accomplishment in math and science and inspiring the next generation of American technical leadership, NASA again comes off as wasting time and effort on silly gestures (like hitting a golf ball from the space station). Furthermore, this all comes during the week in which we remember the loss of 3 crews.
Today marks 5 years since space shuttle Columbia was lost during re-entry.
Rick Husband.
William McCool.
Michael Anderson.
Ilan Ramon.
Kalpana Chawla.
David Brown.
Laurel Clark.
per aspera ad astra
Say hello to Mercury, the closest planet to the sun. This is a true color image of the planet acquired by the MESSENGER spacecraft during a flyby on January 14. MESSENGER is currently traveling through the inner solar system working toward orbit insertion around Mercury in 2009. We have not seen new imagery of Mercury in 30 years and only now are we completing a global visual survey of the surface. More wonders await once MESSENGER is in orbit.
Michael Smith.
Dick Scobee.
Ronald McNair.
Ellison Onizuka.
Christa McAuliffe.
Greg Jarvis.
Judith Resnick.
More stunning imagery from the Japanese Kaguya spacecraft currently orbiting the Moon. You can see the actual movies of Earth "rise" and Earth "set" here. The image here is a still shot from one of the movies, showing the Arabian Peninsula and the Indian Ocean. The image approximates what the Apollo astronauts saw as they orbited the Moon. Well done JAXA!
Click on the image here to see some beautiful HDTV footage of the Moon acquired from an altitude of 62 miles above the surface. The imagery is from the Kaguya satellite, the first Japanese satellite to orbit the Moon. Kaguya settled into lunar orbit about a month ago.
China and Japan have joined the club of nations that have put satellites in orbit around the Moon. China's Chang'e 1 satellite entered lunar orbit in the last 24 hours and will soon begin its mission of examining the chemical composition of the lunar surface. The Chinese satellite entered orbit on the heels of a Japanese satellite that arrived about a month ago. While both China and Japan deny that their lunar efforts represent a budding space rivalry, I can confidently say it does. The Moon is no longer an American playground, other nations are showing interest and you can be assured they do not all view the Moon as a place to visit for spectacular vistas. The Moon is a mineral and resource bonanza waiting to be tapped.
Do not miss a chance to see a naked eye comet, they do not come around often (although we've been lucky enough to have 2 in the last year or so). The sky map here, from Sky & Telescope magazine, shows you how to find Comet Holmes in the northern sky. The simplest approach is probably to find the North Star (Polaris) and then start moving to your right and down in your field of view. Another option is to find the bright star Capella and then move up in your field of view. The comet will look a bit like a fuzzy star. Comet Holmes is not a spectacular long-tailed comet, so in that sense it will disappoint, but it is still an amazing celestial object that is spewing gas and dust into space at enormous speeds.
Click on the image above to see a movie of the tail being ripped off a comet by a wall of plasma thrown off the sun. The comet in the image is Encke, a short period comet that orbits the sun every 3.3 years. The mechanism that removed the comet tail is not collisional but rather electromagnetic. Comets typically have two tails, a dust tail (the one seen by our eyes) that consists of dust particles thrown off the comet head and an ion tail that consists of electrically charged atoms and molecules thrown off the comet head. The imagery here shows the ion tail, which responds to magnetic fields. It is likely that as the solar plasma swept past it compressed the magnetic field within the comet's ion tail, causing it to reconfigure in such a way that the tail was severed from the comet head. The solar plasma strips off the tail, carrying it downstream (to the left in the image). The comet quickly forms a new ion tail near the end of the image sequence. Each frame in the movie is 45 minutes apart.
The space age began 50 years ago today with the Soviet launch of Sputnik, a 184 pound satellite with 4 battery powered transmitters. We've accomplished amazing things in space over the last 50 years, but we should have done more.
Here's hoping that aviation adventurer Steve Fossett is found alive in the New Mexico desert. Fossett has been missing for 5 full days now after taking off in a small aircraft on Monday. He didn't file a flight plan (not necessary for the trip he was planning to execute) and the beacons from his aircraft never reported so rescuers are currently searching a large swath of New Mexico desert looking for the proverbial needle. Adventurers like Fossett are currently the financial and inspirational drivers for bold private aviation efforts, including private spacecraft.
The global dust storms on Mars have finally abated (for now) and the Spirit and Opportunity rovers are getting back to work. The dust storms nearly ended the rover missions by severely diminishing the amount of sunlight the rover solar panels were able to absorb. Fortunately, the brightening skies have allowed the rovers to recharge and start moving again. Opportunity is currently sitting at the lip of the enormous Victoria crater and will enter the crater sometime next week.
The image above was taken from an altitude of 117,597 feet above the surface of the Earth. It was taken with a Nikon Coolpix digital camera from a helium balloon launched in Alberta, Canada on August 11, 2007. As best I can gather from their website, the balloon was launched by a group of radio/space enthusiasts with their own money and a digital camera that can be bought at any store. I consider this accomplishment a part of the growing civilian exploration of space, the cutting edge of that effort being companies like Virgin Galactic that will soon offer paid seats to space.
I finally had a chance to download the new version of Google Earth featuring Google Sky and it is definitely worth checking out. The navigation is the same as for the Earth globe, although keeping track of north is a little harder until you get your bearings. The sky view includes a number of layers that can be turned on and off, including constellations, planet tracks, and flags for detailed Hubble Space Telescope imagery that is available for major night sky objects like the Andromeda galaxy. The zoom capability that is a hallmark of Google Earth is particularly educational for the Google Sky view. It provides a great sense of scale, demonstrating the relative sizes of objects in the night sky.
Download the new version of Google Earth and you will get the latest offering from Google, Google Sky. It is a navigable map of the night sky with imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope. You can zoom and rotate among other bells and whistles.
