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Pictured is a Delta IV rocket launch from Cape Canaveral on November 21st, 2010. The image is a 20 second exposure taken at dusk, shot from about 100 miles west of the launch site. The launch placed a classified payload in orbit for the United States Air Force.
Difficult but not impossible to catch against the dawn or dusk sky, spotting an extreme crescent moon can be a challenge. The slender crescent pictured was shot 30 minutes before sunrise when the Moon was less than 20 hours away from New. A true feat of visual athletics to catch, a good pair of binoculars or a well aimed wide field telescopic view can help with the hunt.
The Sun is our nearest star, and goes through an 11-year cycle of activity. This image was taken via a properly filtered telescope, and shows the Sun as it appeared during its last maximum peak in 2003. This was during solar cycle #23, a period during which the Sun hurled several large flares Earthward. The next solar cycle is due to peak around 2013-14.
Located in the belt of the constellation Orion, Messier 42, also known as the Orion Nebula is one of the finest deep sky objects in the northern hemisphere sky. Just visible as a faint smudge to the naked eye on a clear dark night, the Orion Nebula is a sure star party favorite, as it shows tendrils of gas contrasted with bright stars. M42 is a large stellar nursery, a star forming region about 1,000 light years distant.
Orbiting the planet in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) every 90 minutes, many people fail to realize that you can see the International Space Station (ISS) from most of the planet on a near-weekly basis. In fact, the ISS has been known to make up to four visible passes over the same location in one night. The image pictured is from the Fourth of July, 2011 and is a 20 second exposure of a bright ISS pass.
Next to the Sun, the two brightest objects in the sky are the Moon and the planet Venus. In fact, when Venus is favorably placed next to the Moon, it might just be possible to spot the two in the daytime. Another intriguing effect known as earthshine or ashen light is also seen in the image on the night side of the Moon; this is caused by sunlight reflected back off of the Earth towards our only satellite.
A mosaic of three images taken during the total lunar eclipse of December 21st, 2010. The eclipse occurred the same day as the winter solstice. The curve and size of the Earth’s shadow is apparent in the image.
The Algonquin Indians had names for each of the seasonal Full Moons, many of which survive today. The Full Snow Moon pictured occurs in the month of December, when the first large winter storms coat the ground with snow. This Full Moon also tends to fall near the Winter Solstice, and thus rides high in the nightly sky opposite to the Sun on long winter nights.
Every rocket launch is unique, but twilight shuttle launches where by far the most impressive. The image pictured was of the April 5th, 2010 launch of Space Shuttle Discovery from the Kennedy Space Center at dawn. The exhaust plume caught the rising Sun overhead just right, and numerous noctilucent clouds persisted right up until sunrise. Unfortunately, space shuttle launches are now relegated to the pages of history.
27.07.9: What Ails Jupiter?
The "Black Spot" in Infrared! (Credit: NASA/JPL/Infrared Telescope Facility).
Something has slapped the largest planet in our solar system as of late. A large black spot has emerged in Jupiter’s southern polar region, reminiscent of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 collision of 15 years ago. Initially discovered by Anthony Wesley of Australia utilizing a 14.5” reflector early last week, the discovery was backed up mid-week by NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility in Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Looking similar to a Galilean satellite shadow, it has all the hallmarks of an impact. Will it evolve and develop over the coming weeks and months? By the time this goes to (word)press, we hope to get a glimpse of it here at Florida Astroguyz HQ. Leading theories are; 1. a comet; 2. an asteroid; 3. The monolith from 2010 compressing Jupiter into a star. The “Great black spot” of 09′ leads the more pedestrian Great Red Spot by about 2 hours of longitudinal rotation, as Jupiter spins once an amazing 11 hour day. Rising around 10 PM local, the planet is well placed for observation from midnight onward. And don’t forget to check your observations against any potentially confusing moon shadow transits! Word has even come to us of a “white spot” on Venus… its nice to see folks looking at, and making discoveries in our solar backyard again. Will the whole solar system (or at least the Internet) break out in spots?
This week’s astro-word of the week is the Roemer Hypothesis. I love the quote from the Hitchhiker’s Guide where Douglas Adams states “light travels so fast that it takes most civilizations millennia to discover that it travels at all.” Danish astronomer Ole Romer was the first one in our civilization to figure this out, and he used Jupiter to do it. In 1676, he discovered a curious fact; that transits and occultations of Jupiter’s four large moons consistently occurred later than predicted when the Earth was on the opposite side of its orbit and consistently earlier when it was on the same side as the gas giant. Rather than dismissing this as simply a product of the “crappiness” of the almanacs of the day (as most astronomers did) he correctly deduced that the light was being “retarded” in some manner, hence taking time to transit. Not that he was searching for the speed of light; like many of the great discoveries in science, his was purely serendipitous. Many astronomers of the day sought to use the transits of Galilean satellites to solve the longitude dilemma. Just how navigators were supposed to fix on the tiny moons from the deck of a pitching ship was another problem entirely! From Roemer’s meticulous observations, Christian Huygens calculated that light travels about 130,000 miles per second, about 70% of today’s accepted value of 186,282 miles per second. Had he not misinterpreted Roemer’s value of 22 minutes for light to cross the diameter of the Earth’s orbit, he would have got it almost right. (It actually takes 998 seconds, or about 16 minutes and 38 seconds, according to Astroguyz’ calculations).
Incidentally, this is an experiment that you can do from your back yard as you are “black spot hunting…” just remember that modern day tables account for this deviation. Do I smell a “home experiment” blog post in the offing?