Cap'n Bob & the Damsel

Astronomy

Planet Mercury in the Twilight

If you step out this evening or or tomorrow evening, you might catch a glimpse of the seldom-seen planet – Mercury. Known as the Incredible Shrinking Planet, Mercury is about to slip back out of sight as it disappears behind the Sun until it emerges later this year.

Right: Mercury over the Rockies as seen from Denver – Credit: Jeffrey Beall.

Meanwhile, a little known NASA mission – MESSENGER – got a boost from it’s thrusters to place it on trajectory for another gravity-assisted sling around planet Venus toward it’s ultimate goal of orbiting the closest planet to the sun.

New Scientist has some information about NASA’s MESSENGER mission:

Messenger probe nudged towards Venus flyby

NASA’s first mission to Mercury in more than 30 years completed its final trajectory correction manoeuvre on Wednesday before a flyby of Venus in October 2006.

Messenger – short for Mercury, Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging – is on a 7.9 billion kilometre path to becoming the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury.

Note: words in the New Scientist article are spelled correctly – at least in the UK where the magazine is based.

24 Feb 2006 by Astronomy Rocket Science

Stars – Celestial vs. Celebrity

Caving into the almighty quest for capital, a famous London company will shut down a popular planetarium & science exhibit in favor of shows featuring celebrities. In essence, celestial stars are out, superficial stars are in.

From Sky and Telescope: London Planetarium to Close

February 22, 2006 The stars at one of central London’s well-known tourist attractions will go dark for good this July. Madame Tussauds waxworks, the owner of the London Planetarium, has decided to close the facility as the company shifts its focus from science education to entertainment. The planetarium (renamed the Auditorium) will soon replace its shows with programs about celebrities.

Built in the 1950s, the London Planetarium seats around 330 under its green 18-meter (60-foot) dome. Although Madame Tussauds had cut the screenings of its shows to just one 10-minute program called “Journey to Infinity,” the planetarium has remained very popular with local schoolchildren and their teachers.

“The London Planetarium has inspired generations of schoolchildren,” notes Robin Scagell, vice president of Britain’s Society for Popular Astronomy. “Many parents can still remember their first visit to it when they were young. To lose the planetarium now would be a tragedy.”

The Royal Observatory’s new, state-of-the-art 120-seat planetarium in Greenwich Park, about 30 minutes from downtown London by boat or rail, is currently under construction and won’t be completed until early 2007. “The only other planetarium of any size within striking distance of London,” says Scagell, “is the South Downs Planetarium near Chichester on the South Coast, about 60 miles from the capital, which is certainly not readily accessible unless you happen to be in the area.”

“I don’t think the Madame Tussauds management wants to sell or lease out the London Planetarium,” he adds. “It’s a valuable bit of real estate in a very expensive part of the world, and I’m sure they want to hang on to it. The dome itself is not a listed building, that is, not protected as being of historic or architectural value, but I doubt that they would want to pull it down just yet.”

It’s a shame to trade science for sensationalism. Most celestial stars are in their main sequence and will glow for billions of years to come. Terrestrial stars might be compared to final sequence giant stars, which have only a short time left before they collapse into the dwarfs they are all destined to become.

23 Feb 2006 by Astronomy Science

New Horizons off to Pluto

Today, the New Horizons spacecraft was launched from the Cape Canaveral Launch Complex. It looked spectacular on NASA’s streaming video!

From NASA:

NASA – New Horizons

After launch aboard a Lockheed-Martin Atlas V rocket, the New Horizons spacecraft set out on a journey to the edge of the solar system. Liftoff occurred Jan. 19, 2006 at 2:00:00 p.m. EST from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. New Horizons is headed for a distant rendezvous with the mysterious planet Pluto almost a decade from now.

Space artist Dan Durda was commissioned to do artist’s renditions for the project and thinks that New Horizons could encounter this view of Pluto and Charon while looking back toward the Sun when it arrives in a decade:

19 Jan 2006 by Aerospace Astronomy Rocket Science

Stardust Home After 2.88 Billion Mile Voyage

The Stardust probe landed safely in Utah this morning, bringing with it cometary and interstellar particles collected over a nearly 3 billion mile journey. After the recovered capsule is returned to Houston, it will be opened and the process of analysis will begin. Home PC users are being asked to help with locating and identifying recovered particles.

NASA’s Stardust sample return mission returned safely to Earth when the capsule carrying cometary and interstellar particles successfully touched down at 2:10 a.m. Pacific time (3:10 a.m. Mountain time) in the desert salt flats of the U.S. Air Force Utah Test and Training Range.

“Ten years of planning and seven years of flight operations were realized early this morning when we successfully picked up our return capsule off of the desert floor in Utah,” said Tom Duxbury, Stardust project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “The Stardust project has delivered to the international science community material that has been unaltered since the formation of our solar system.”

. . .

The sample return capsule’s science canister and its cargo of comet and interstellar dust particles will be stowed inside a special aluminum carrying case to await transfer to the Johnson Space Center, Houston, where it will be opened. NASA’s Stardust mission traveled 2.88 billion miles during its seven-year round-trip odyssey. Scientists believe these precious samples will help provide answers to fundamental questions about comets and the origins of the solar system.

My money’s on finding traces of the same heavy elements we see on our own planet and in spectrographs of astronomical objects throughout the universe.

Read NASA’s Comet Tale Draws to a Successful Close in Utah Desert for the entire story.

15 Jan 2006 by Astronomy Rocket Science

The Eye of God

This startling Astronomy Picture of the Day image from the Spitzer Space Telescope reminded me of the “Eye of God.”

From APOD:

Over six hundred light years from Earth, in the constellation Aquarius, a sun-like star is dying. Its last few thousand years have produced the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293), a well studied and nearby example of a Planetary Nebula, typical of this final phase of stellar evolution. Emission in this infrared Spitzer Space Telescope image of the Helix comes mostly from the nebula’s molecular hydrogen gas. The gas appears to be clumpy, forming thousands of comet-shaped knots each spanning about twice the size of our solar system. Bluer, more energetic radiation is seen to come from the heads with redder emission from the tails, suggesting that they are more shielded from the central star’s winds and intense ultraviolet radiation. The nebula itself is about 2.5 light-years across. The Sun is expected to go through its own Planetary Nebula phase … in another 5 billion years.

Here’s looking at you, Kid!

12 Jan 2006 by Astronomy

Stardust to Return to Earth

NASA’s Stardust capsule is scheduled to streak across western skies over a path from Crescent City, California, Winnemucca and Elko, Nevada to its touchdown point in western Utah. The probe will return minute particles collected during it’s journey in space.

One of my daily visits, SpaceWeather.com had this information:

FIREBALL ALERT: On Sunday morning, Jan. 15th, between 1:56 and 1:59 a.m. PST, a brilliant fireball will streak over northern California and Nevada. It’s NASA’s Stardust capsule, returning to Earth with samples of dust from Comet Wild 2. The best observing sites are near Carlin and Elko, Nevada, where the man-made meteor is expected to shine as much as 60 times brighter than Venus.

The flight path of the Stardust capsule

The fireball might be widely visible from parts of Oregon, Idaho and Utah as well as California and Nevada: observing tips. NASA is interested in videos and photos of the re-entry, which could help researchers learn more about, e.g., the physics of heat shields. Got data? Send it here.

After the spacecraft returns, volunteers will analyze the micrographs by looking for “needles” in “haystacks” – minute particles, few and far between – from electronic images distributed for analysis, similar to the Search for Extra Terrestrial Institute’s distributed processing of SETI data. You can volunteer and maybe be part of the team at Stardust@Home.

10 Jan 2006 by Astronomy Cyberspace Rocket Science

Moonbat Alert

There will be FIFTEEN HOURS of full moon tonight. Beware of extra-lunaticular activities.

From SpaceWeather.com:

LONG NIGHTS MOON:

According to folklore, tonight’s full moon is called the Long Nights Moon. The reason is obvious: December nights are long (in the northern hemisphere).

Tonight’s moon also happens to be the highest-soaring full moon in 18 years. As seen from most parts of the USA and Europe, it will be above the horizon for more than 15 hours–a long night indeed.

14 Dec 2005 by Astronomy Culture Science

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