Crescent moon, rapid

I took this picture not even 30 minutes ago on the roof of my condo complex and here it is ready to show off. I love digital astrophotography.

Saturn

A new first for my 5" telescope was my viewing of Saturn last night. Saturn currently rises in the eastern sky well after sunset and gets high in the sky towards midnight. I captured the image above with my small CCD camera using 0.177 second exposures stacked and averaged to bring out the details. The rings are obvious and I could convince myself that the large gap in the rings, the Cassini Division, is visible but I'll leave that to the viewer. A cloud band on the upper portion of Saturn itself may also be visible. Regardless of the details, the image definitely captures the subtle pastel colors of Saturn.

Comet McNaught

I hope everyone at least tried to see Comet McNaught during early January, it really doesn't get much easier to see a comet than it did for McNaught. Naked eye comets are fairly regular, every few years maybe, but McNaught was especially spectacular. Unfortunately for us southern California types, the comet was low on the horizon. I only saw it one night from my location, in retrospect I wish I had stopped near the ocean one night to see it well. My sad picture at top above barely admits the presence of a comet, but it's there near the center on the horizon. The image below mine shows a beautiful sunset image of the comet taken by Jens Hackmann in Bad Mergentheim, Germany on January 7.

I have now seen three naked eye comets in my life. Hyakutake in the spring of 1996, Hale-Bopp in April 1997, and now McNaught. I plan to be around when Halley's Comet makes another pass through the inner solar system, in mid 2061. I will be 86 years old, let's hope the eyes hold out.

Astronomy Cast

If you are interested in an accessible discussion of astronomical topics I recommend Astronomy Cast, a new podcast. Astronomy Cast is available each week and is about 30 minutes in duration. Recent topics have included supernovae, dark matter, meteor showers, and getting started in amateur astronomy. Fraser Cain and Pamela Gay from Southern Illinois University offer an enjoyable tour of some of the major topics in astronomy.

astronomycast.com

A new take on coal in the stocking

The following is from Tom Toles of the Washington Post.

winter solstice

Today at 7:22 PM winter solstice 2006 arrives, the shortest day of the year and the beginning of winter in the Northern Hemisphere. I'm currently in Buffalo, NY, the media ordained cold capital of the universe, and there is no snow and relatively mild temperatures. Nevertheless, winter has arrived.

astroarchaeology....sort of

Thirty years ago this past summer the Viking 1 and 2 landers set down on Mars and provided some of our first images from the surface of the red planet. The landers didn't rove and they didn't abrade rocks for spectroscopic studies. They just sat there, took a few images, dug a small hole in the nearby soil, and then died. For thirty years they have sat exactly where they landed, and until recently we had no way of checking on them. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) entered orbit around Mars earlier this year carrying an imaging system that can resolve surface features as small as a few feet across. The images above show the regions where Viking 1 and 2 landed. While you can't see fine detail of the landers, you can see that they are still resting on the surface after 30 years. I consider these images the beginnings of astroarchaeology, which actually began over 30 years ago when Apollo 12 landed on the moon near a lunar lander. Despite our human need to explore new places, we have a powerful need to explore our past in the form of relics and ruins. Even with all of Mars at our disposal with an advanced imaging system, our first targets were relics of the first robotic exploration of Mars.

Y2K7 fears

From CNN:

NASA wants Discovery back from its 12-day mission by New Year's Eve because shuttle computers are not designed to make the change from the 365th day of the old year to the first day of the new year while in flight. Engineers have developed a fix but are reluctant to try it because it hasn't been thoroughly tested.


I can absolutely appreciate the difficulties of managing time with computer software (we've been having lots of problems lately at work handling time changes with software) but this seems like something that should have shot to the top of the to-do list as soon as this shuttle flight was scheduled. A shorter shuttle flight is better than no flight though.

Hubble saved, again

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin announced today that the Hubble Space Telescope would receive one last shuttle servicing in 2008 to extend it's life another 2 or 3 years. Hubble is currently suffering from some system failures and will not last much longer without some help. Because the shuttle program is also not long for this world, there was considerable debate about the wisdom of "wasting" a shuttle mission on a servicing trip to Hubble. Most of the remaining shuttle missions are needed for the completion of the international space station. However, scientific interests appear to have won out on the Hubble decision. If Hubble is not serviced soon and fails in the next year or two, there will offically be a gap in our optical observations of the universe from Earth orbit because the next generation space telescope does not launch until at least 2011. A Hubble servicing will keep it alive into 2011 until the James Webb Space Telescope is launched. This appears to be the course of action that NASA announced today. So, in May 2008 Shuttle Discovery will pay Hubble a visit, 18 years after the launch of the great observatory.

Your name here

I'm not really sure what I think about this new "send your name into space" movement with the space program, but I think I'm ok with it. Anything that attracts public attention to space missions is a good thing. So, I thought I'd put this out there for anyone who is interested. Dawn is a spacecraft mission to the asteroid belt that launches next summer. It arrives in the asteroid belt in 2011 and will study the two largest asteroids there, Vesta and Ceres. A microchip will be onboard that contains the names of people who submit to this website by November 4. It looks like you can submit as many as you want, and the current tally is about 170,000 names. So, submit yourself, submit your family, submit your cat, it's not every day you get to send your name to an asteroid.

Crescent Moon and Venus

We have all seen the Moon during the day, but not many people know that the planet Venus is also visible during the day. It's generally not visible to the naked eye, but if you know where to look you can easily spot it with binoculars or a small telescope. The image above, taken by Ivan Eder in Budapest, Hungary, shows not only a daytime crescent Moon but a crescent Venus just to the left of the Moon. The image captures an incredible distance range of millions of kilometers and reminds the viewer of the importance of perspective. Venus is much larger than the Moon but because it is so distant it appears almost insignificant in this image. How is it that Venus is visible during the day? Venus is actually one of the brightest objects in our sky. Completely shrouded in cloud cover, it reflects an enormous amount of sunlight into space. Being relatively close to the Earth it becomes a very bright object in our sky, bright enough to overcome a brilliant blue sky.

Mauna Kea

The picture shows the domes of the observatory on the extinct volcano Mauna Kea on the big island of Hawai'i. It was taken from the Kohala Coast on the western shore of Hawai'i at a distance of about 30 miles from the peak. This was the best view we had of the domes all week, the peak was clouded in the rest of the week. The telescopes on Mauna Kea are diverse and international. Over a dozen countries are represented at the observatory with about a dozen different telescopes. The United States, Canada, Britain, Japan, the Netherlands, Taiwan, and France all have a stake in the telescopes on the mountain. Mauna Kea is very well suited for optical astronomy but is extra special because the water vapor content of the atmosphere at 14000 feet elevation is quite low. Low water vapor content is essential for infrared astronomical observations from beneath the Earth's atmosphere. Water vapor in the atmosphere absorbs infrared radiation from space, making earthbound infrared observations very difficult. Furthermore, Mauna Kea is one of the few locations on Earth at 14000 feet where the landscape is amenable to construction. So, low water vapor content and a relatively friendly landscape make Mauna Kea an astronomical gem here on Earth.

Unfortunately, several of the telescopes and their housings were damaged in the large earthquake that struck the Hawaiian islands on October 15. Damage is still being assessed, but initial indications are that at least one dome was pushed off bearings and a few telescopes were knocked out of alignment. Provided lenses and mirrors survived unscathed, the damage is not too bad. Regardless, some of the telescopes will probably be out of commission for months.

back in a (green) flash

Sorry for the delayed return, a week in Hawaii can hamper one's interest in doing much of anything other than sitting on the beach and enjoying frosty drinks. Hawaii itself actually provided a few interesting points of astronomical interest, and I'll get back in the swing of things with those. I saw my first green flash last August on my first trip to Hawaii. There are enormous details involved that I don't entirely understand, but the green flash is basically a refractive phenomenon in which the rising or setting sun shows a brief (1 or 2 seconds at most) flash of green light just before crossing the horizon. The light from the sun is bent through the atmosphere, different wavelengths being bent to different degrees, and for a brief instant green is separated out from the other colors. After seeing this spectacle last summer in Hawaii, I was determined to not only see it again on this trip, but also photograph it. I was successful on both counts. The photo here was taken on our second night on the big island, probably the best sunset of the entire week. It's not perfectly in focus, but the green is definitely there. A third viewing of the green flash followed on our second to last night. Considering that many people never manage to see a green flash, even with years of trying, I consider myself lucky to have now seen three.

9-1 = 8

Now that the smoke appears to be clearing, I wanted to comment on this whole Pluto demotion circus of recent weeks. Pluto has always been considered an oddity. It has a highly eccentric orbit (non-circular) as well as a very inclined orbit (Pluto leaves the "equatorial" region of the solar system, unlike the rest of the planets). We do not yet know all the details of it's composition, but we know enough to state that Pluto has compositional characteristics that put it on par with comets and general icy bodies of the outer solar system. In recent years, astronomers have discovered a number of large icy bodies in the outer solar system. This region, the Kuiper Belt and the larger Oort Cloud, are potentially populated with a dozen or so Pluto sized objects. So, when the IAU sat down to consider the definition of a planet, in my mind they were faced with two options: add more planets to the solar system, or create a new category of bodies. I think they chose the right option, which is to add one category rather than add a new planet every 5 or 10 years when we find another large Kuiper Belt object. This leaves us with eight classical planets and an open-ended number of "dwarf" planets. Pluto, or I should say 134340, is a member of a class of bodies that number in the millions. There's only one Earth, or Mars, or Jupiter. In my mind, Pluto just isn't that odd anymore. I think of it as the Kuiper Belt's ambassador to the solar system, an object that tells us the outer solar system is a very interesting and important region that may have brought water and even the seeds of life to Earth. That's not too shabby, if you can't be a planet.

the setup

This photo shows my typical setup with the new telescope. I was targeting Jupiter this particular night and I was attempting to image the planet with my small CCD camera. The gray wire running from the telescope to the USB port of the laptop is the CCD. All the other wires are the various power cords, including a 50 foot extension cord that I actually throw over the "roof" of my condo and onto my patio one flight beneath where this photo was taken. From this top flight of my complex I can see most of the southern sky.

As for imaging Jupiter, it didn't turn out all that well. I think there was a brushfire in the area and it was kicking up smoke that made the seeing terrible. I tried to slew to some deep sky objects but no success, the seeing just wouldn't cooperate. So, it was time to break down the set and despite the tangle of wires, everything was put away in about 5 minutes.

nearing Victoria Crater

The Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, nearing 3 years on Mars and 5 miles on the odometer, is fast approaching a geological treasure trove. In the next week Opportunity will reach the rim of Victoria Crater, a half mile wide impact crater that is over 200 feet deep. Layered rock in the crater rim should present a clean cross section of millions of years of Martian history. Opportunity has already gathered evidence for the ancient presence of liquid water on Mars at Endurance Crater, a much smaller impact feature. Victoria Crater will hopefully provide more evidence for how extensively liquid water flowed on the surface and for how long. The image shows Opportunity's progress to date with the yellow trace.

Orion has a home

Lockheed Martin Corporation was awarded the prime contract for the Orion manned space vehicle today. The move is interesting since most analysts predicted the Northrop Grumman/Boeing team would win the contract considering their experience with manned spaceflight and heritage from the Apollo program. Instead NASA has opted to give the work to the largest defense contractor in the nation that specializes in unmanned rocketry. The contract award is the beginning of an ambitious project that could last until at least 2019 and end up doling out nearly $10 billion. Here's hoping all goes well.

Moon images

These images were taken last night, a nearly first quarter Moon. I scrapped afocal imaging with my standard digital camera and opted for a nifty and affordable little CCD camera designed for astronomical imaging. I'm amazed at how much the cost of astronomical CCDs has dropped in the past 10 years. These images are stacked (several dozen individual images averaged together to produce a sharper composite image) and were taken at 1/8 second exposure. The top image shows one of the heavily cratered landscapes near Mare Nectaris. The three larger craters on the right of the image are the same craters I posted an old photographic image of a month or so ago. The bottom image is Mare Serenatatis and the Apollo 17 landing site is toward the top right of the image. Note the mountains toward the lower left and the long shadows cast toward the terminator.

getting better...

I still have a long way to go, but my pictures of Jupiter are improving. Using the afocal method (manually holding the digital camera up to the telescope eyepiece) is far from ideal, but as you can see, it can capture some of the larger details of a planet. This image was a 1/25 second exposure with some minor post-processing brightening. I managed to escape any vignetting on this image, which is an optical effect similar to looking through a straw that results from using afocal imaging. At this point I'm more looking forward to imaging the moon because of the orders of magnitude more detail that can be captured. Right now the moon is 2 days past full so it's very bright and lacking in contrast, but I'll probably take a shot at it later tonight.

Dr. Van Allen

A fond farewell to Dr. James Van Allen, who died today at the age of 91. Van Allen just about single-handedly gave birth to the field of magnetospheric physics, the field in which I pursued my graduate studies. He discovered the Earth's radiation belts, regions near the Earth where energetic ions and electrons are trapped in the Earth's magnetic field. The discovery was made with a simple Geiger counter placed on the first United States satellite in 1958, Explorer I. While the United States was trying to respond to the Soviet success of Sputnik, the discovery of the radiation belts ushered in an entirely new field of geophysics.

James Van Allen also distinguished himself for being a vocal critic of manned space exploration. He believed that space exploration was more cost effective and scientifically rewarding when done robotically. While there is some legitimacy to this stance, I think a recent example shows how valuable human presence is in space exploration. I attended a symposium for work last year and one of the key note speakers was a staff scientist on the Mars Exploration Rover program. He showed how the rovers Spirit and Opportunity have provided an enormous amount of robotically acquired data that will keep scientists busy for years to come. However, he made sure to point out that all the science performed robotically by the rovers in 1 year on Mars could have been done in about an hour by a human. That's a sobering number, and it illuminates the incredible power of the human eye, human mobility in uneven terrain, and of course the human brain. Certainly robotics is making leaps and bounds in the approximation of human capabilities, but in the end the only way we can truly know a new environment is by going there and letting it engage our senses, our logic, and our wonder. We are currently heading into a period of more aggressive human space exploration that will require unprecedented financial and time commitments. Time will tell if Van Allen's approach to space exploration wins out in the end.