The Pithy Amateur Astronomer

I decided to do some reading on the "end of the Earth in 2012" and found this in Wikipedia.

The original article can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibiru_collision

"The idea of the Nibiru encounter originated with Nancy Lieder, a Wisconsin woman who claims that as a girl she was contacted by gray extraterrestrials called Zetas, who implanted a communications device in her brain"

I rest my case.

I understand that the crew of the ISS are not phased by the way this looks but it would soooo mess with my perspective.

Pretty spectacular. Check it out in the link below.

http://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/top100/

This image was taken by the Cassini spacecraft of two moons of Saturn (Dione and Rhea) in what appears to be a marriage of the two moons. This image is just an optical illusion but it is still neat to look at.

"OOOOOO PRETTY" -What my nephew would say.

This star cloud was featured on APOD and, as always, I thought I would share it.

Source: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100809.html

Explanation: What's lighting up nebula IRAS 05437+2502? No one is sure. Particularly enigmatic is the bright upside-down V that defines the upper edge of this floating mountain of interstellar dust, visible near the image center. In general, this ghost-like nebula involves a small star forming region filled with dark dust that was first noted in images taken by the IRAS satellite in infrared light in 1983. Shown above is a spectacular, recently released image from the Hubble Space Telescope that, although showing many new details, has not uncovered a clear cause of the bright sharp arc. One hypothesis holds that the glowing arc was created by a massive star that somehow attained a high velocity and has now left the nebula. Small, faint IRAS 05437+2502 spans only 1/18th of a full moon toward the constellation of the Bull (Taurus).

Older video but still worth to watch. I keep hearing people go on about 2012 blah blah blah. This video brings up some pretty good points refuting those ideas.

Enjoy!

Source: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100806.html / NASA / Goddard / SDO AIA Team

Earlier this week, the Sun released a Coronal Mass Ejection that made the 93 million mile trip to Earth. I have been searching for images of the auroras and finally found one on Space.com. Thankfully the Earth possesses safety measures to keep us from getting nuked by our nearest star.


Source: Space.com and www.fredrik_broms.fotosidan.se

I was looking forward to hearing about my favorite Mars robot (Spirit) waking up but it isn't looking like it will happen. It is a sad but good outcome for the little rover. Who knows, maybe one day when no one is looking she will wake up and talk our ears off.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/30jul_spirit2/

"Astronomers have imaged a very young brown dwarf, or failed star, in a tight orbit around a young nearby sun-like star."

Read more: http://www.physorg.com/news199635354.html

Source: http://www.physorg.com/news199594786.html

Astronomers Find Planets in Unusually Intimate Dance around Dying Star

Hundreds of extrasolar planets have been found over the past decade and a half, most of them solitary worlds orbiting their parent star in seeming isolation. With further observation, however, one in three of these systems have been found to have two or more planets. Planets, it appears, come in bunches. Most of these systems contain planets that orbit too far from one another to feel each other's gravity. In just a handful of cases, planets have been found near enough to one another to interact gravitationally.

A few strikingly humorous arguments as why the Moon landings weren't faked. Enjoy!

Thought I would share these findings. I am going to attempt to make this sometime in the future. Enjoy!

http://www.scopemaking.net/dobson/dobson.htm

A neat invention from NASA with a use that can be applicable for every day life.

Source: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1714.html

Making Home a Safer Place

One day homeowners everywhere may be protected from deadly carbon monoxide fumes, thanks to a device invented at NASA's Langley Research Center. The device uses a new class of low-temperature oxidation catalysts to convert carbon monoxide to non-toxic carbon dioxide at room temperature and also removes formaldehyde from the air. The catalysts initially were developed for research involving carbon dioxide lasers.

Earlier this week, a Solar Eclipse took place and could best be seen from Easter Island. Below is a cool picture associated with that eclipse.

Source: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1715.html

The View From Easter Island

On July 11, 2010, the new moon passed directly in front of the sun, causing a total solar eclipse in the South Pacific. In this image, the solar eclipse is shown in gray and white from a photo provided by the Williams College Expedition to Easter Island and was embedded with an image of the sun’s outer corona taken by the Large Angle Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) on the SOHO spacecraft and shown in red false color. LASCO uses a disk to blot out the bright sun and the inner corona so that the faint outer corona can be monitored and studied. Further, the dark silhouette of the moon was covered with an image of the sun taken in extreme ultraviolet light at about the same time by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly on the Solar Dynamics Observatory. The composite brings out the correlation of structures in the inner and outer corona.

Image Credit: NASA/ESA/Williams College Eclipse Expedition

An interesting read. I think it is amazing how equipment can pick up so much information at such a great distance.

Source: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/brightest-x-rays-blind-telescopes-100714.html

Record-Breaking X-Ray Blast Blinds Space Observatory Briefly

By Clara Moskowitz
SPACE.com Senior Writer
posted: 14 July 2010 05:16 pm ET

A violent cosmic explosion has unleashed the brightest blast of X-rays ever detected from distant space, a signal so bright it temporary blinded the NASA space telescope assigned to spot it.

The powerful explosion, called a gamma-ray burst, was detected by NASA's Swift observatory, scientists announced Wednesday. Gamma-ray bursts are narrow beams of intense radiation shot out when stars explode in supernovas. In addition to gamma-ray light, they also produce X-rays and other forms of radiation, including visible light.

This recent event, dubbed GRB 100621A, was particularly powerful.

"This gamma-ray burst is by far the brightest light source ever seen in X-ray wavelengths at cosmological distances," said Penn State University astronomer David Burrows, lead scientist for Swift's X-ray Telescope. [Swift's gamma-ray burst photo]

Unprecedented brightness

The onslaught of light in X-ray wavelengths, which are shorter than visible light wavelengths, quickly overwhelmed the detector when it impacted June 21.

"The burst was so bright when it first erupted that our data-analysis software shut down," said Phil Evans, a postdoctoral research assistant at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom who wrote parts of Swift's X-ray-analysis software. "So many photons were bombarding the detector each second that it just couldn't count them quickly enough. It was like trying to use a rain gauge and a bucket to measure the flow rate of a tsunami."

Light from this explosion traveled through space for 5 billion years before slamming into Swift, overwhelming its X-ray camera. The observatory, launched in November 2004, was designed specifically to hunt for gamma-ray bursts, though scientists didn't count on a blast quite so strong.

"The intensity of these X-rays was unexpected and unprecedented," said Neil Gehrels, Swift's principal investigator at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

GRB 100621A was the brightest blast of X-ray light since Swift's X-ray telescope began observing in 2005.

"Just when we were beginning to think that we had seen everything that gamma-ray bursts could throw at us, this burst came along to challenge our assumptions about how powerful their X-ray emissions can be," Gehrels said.

One for the record books

After the shutdown, Swift quickly got back online, and scientists were able to recover the data the observatory acquired during the onslaught. The observations allowed astronomers to learn more about these mysterious explosions, including just how bright they can be.

Swift's measurements showed that the burst emitted 143,000 X-ray photons per second during its short period of greatest brightness. That's more than 140 times brighter than the brightest continuous X-ray source in the sky – a neutron star that releases a steady 10,000 X-ray photons per second.

"When I first saw the strange data from this burst, I knew that I had discovered something extraordinary," Evans said. "It was an indescribable feeling when I realized, at that moment, that I was the only person in the whole universe who knew that this extraordinary event had occurred. Now, after our analysis of the data, we know that this burst is one for the record books."

Gamma-ray bursts focus most of their energy in the short-wavelength, high-frequency range of X-rays and gamma-rays. In fact, they don't stand out at all in optical and ultraviolet wavelengths, emitting only a middling amount of light compared to other objects in the sky.

When a very massive star runs out of fuel and reaches the end of its life, it will collapse into an extremely dense black hole. This event releases an explosion of energy, including some that gets channeled into beams of gamma-ray and X-ray light.

Earlier I posted a mosaic celebrating APOD's 15th birthday. Now they have released a mosaic of The Blue Marble.

It is very neat to look up close and try to identify the various images used to compile this mosaic.

Source: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100713.html
Credit: Apollo 17 Crew, NASA; Photographic Mosaic & Digital Copyright: Rob Stevenson

Explanation: Welcome to Planet Earth, the third planet from a star named the Sun. The Earth is shaped like a sphere and composed mostly of rock. Over 70 percent of the Earth's surface is water. The planet has a relatively thin atmosphere composed mostly of nitrogen and oxygen. This picture of Earth, dubbed Blue Marble, was taken from Apollo 17 in 1972 and features Africa and Antarctica. It is thought to be one of the most widely distributed photographs of any kind. Here, the world famous image has been recast as a spectacular photomosaic using over 5,000 archived images of Earth and space. With its abundance of liquid water, Earth supports a large variety of life forms, including potentially intelligent species such as dolphins and humans. Please enjoy your stay on Planet Earth.  

The Galileo craft is long since departed from our presence but that doesn't mean much can't be learned.

I was browsing through the NASA site and found some sounds that the spacecraft recorded. I recommend this as something to listen to. The sounds are haunting and mesmerizing.

http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/sounds.html

Source: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/18jun_newhorizons/

The probe New Horizons wakes up for a bit of instrument testing. I am very anxious to see the findings this probe will come up with for Pluto and other Kuiper belt objects (KBO).

This is the fastest probe ever launched, traveling 1 million miles a day. The solar system is so vast that it will take another 5 years for the probe to reach its destination.

APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) turns 15 today! I remember being 15 and it was...well...just weird...

But I digress. APOD is one of the many sources I use to share my favorite pictures. Todays picture is no exception. It is a nice collection of various astronomy pictures to recreate Vermeer's Astronomer and Geographer.

Thanks and keep up the good work!

Source: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100616.html

Explanation: Welcome to the quindecennial year of the Astronomy Picture of the Day! Perhaps a source of web consistency for some, APOD is still here. As during each of the 15 years of selecting images, writing text, and editing the APOD web pages, the occasionally industrious Robert Nemiroff (left) and frequently persistent Jerry Bonnell (right) are pictured above plotting to highlight yet another unsuspecting image of our cosmos. Although the above image may appear similar to the whimsical Vermeer composite that ran on APOD's fifth anniversary, a perceptive eye might catch that this year it has been digitally re-pixelated using many of the over 5,000 APOD images that have appeared over APOD's tenure. (Can you find any notable APOD images?) Once again, we at APOD would like to offer a sincere thank you to our readership for continued interest, support, and many gracious communications.

Source: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100609.html

Explanation: Even a quiet Sun can be a busy place. And over the deep Solar Minimum of the past few years, our Sun has been unusually quiet. The above image, taken last week in a single color of light called Hydrogen Alpha and then false colored, records a great amount of detail of the simmering surface of our parent star. The gradual brightening towards the Sun's edge in this color-inverted image, called limb darkening, is caused by increased absorption of relatively cool solar gas. Just over the Sun's edges, several prominences are visible, while two prominences on the Sun's face are seen as light streaks just above and right of the image center. Two particularly active areas of the Sun are marked by dark plages. In contrast to recent quiet times, our Sun is moving toward Solar Maximum, and for years will likely appear much more active.

A friend of mine said it looks like the yellow part of an egg...now I'm hungry for some fried eggs!

 Source http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100607.html

Explanation: A new comet is brightening and is now expected to become visible to the unaided eye later this month. C/2009 R1 (McNaught) is already showing an impressive tail and is currently visible through binoculars. The above image, taken yesterday from the Altamira Observatory in the Canary Islands and spanning about five degrees, shows an impressive green coma and a long ion tail in front of distant star trails. Although predicting the brightness of comets is notoriously difficult, current estimates place Comet McNaught as becoming visible to unaided northern hemisphere observers in late June, before sunrise, and in early July, after sunset. Discovered by Robert McNaught last year, the sun-orbiting iceberg will pass the Earth next week and will continue to melt and shed debris as it closes in on the Sun until early July. After reaching about half of the Earth-Sun distance from the Sun, the comet should fade rapidly as it then heads out of the inner Solar System.

Going against the grain may turn out to be a powerful move for black holes. New research suggests supermassive black holes that spin backwards might produce more ferocious jets of gas. The results have broad implications for how galaxies change over time.

"A lot of what happens in an entire galaxy depends on what's going on in the miniscule central region where the black hole lies," said David Garofalo of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

Black holes are immense distortions of space and time with gravity that is so great, even light itself cannot escape. Astronomers have known for more than a decade that all galaxies, including our own Milky Way, are anchored by tremendous supermassive black holes containing billions of Suns' worth of mass. The black holes are surrounded and nourished by disks of gas and dust called accretion disks. Powerful jets stream out from below and above the disks like lasers, and fierce winds blow off from the disks themselves.

The black holes can spin either in the same direction as the disks — prograde black holes — or against the flow — the retrograde black holes. For decades, astronomers thought that the faster the spin of the black hole, the more powerful the jet. But there were problems with this "spin paradigm" model. For example, scientists found some prograde black holes with no jets.

Garofalo and his colleagues have been busy flipping the model on its head. In previous papers, they proposed that the backward, or retrograde, black holes spew the most powerful jets, while the prograde black holes have weaker or no jets.

The new study links the researchers' theory with observations of galaxies across time or at varying distances from Earth. They looked at both "radio-loud" galaxies with jets and "radio-quiet" ones with weak or no jets. The term "radio" comes from the fact that these particular jets shoot out beams of light mostly in the form of radio waves.

The results showed that more distant radio-loud galaxies are powered by retrograde black holes, while relatively closer radio-quiet objects have prograde black holes. According to the team, the supermassive black holes evolve over time from a retrograde to a prograde state.

"This new model also solves a paradox in the old spin paradigm," said David Meier at JPL, who is not involved in the study. "Everything now fits nicely into place."

The scientists say that the backward black holes shoot more powerful jets because there's more space between the black hole and the inner edge of the orbiting disk. This gap provides more room for the build-up of magnetic fields that fuel the jets, an idea known as the Reynolds conjecture after the theoretical astrophysicist Chris Reynolds of the University of Maryland, College Park.

"If you picture yourself trying to get closer to a fan, you can imagine that moving in the same rotational direction as the fan would make things easier," said Garofalo. "The same principle applies to these black holes. The material orbiting around them in a disk will get closer to the ones that are spinning in the same direction versus the ones spinning the opposite way."

Jets and winds play key roles in shaping the fate of galaxies. Some research shows that jets can slow and even prevent the formation of stars not just in a host galaxy itself, but also in other nearby galaxies.

"Jets transport huge amounts of energy to the outskirts of galaxies, displace large volumes of the intergalactic gas, and act as feedback agents between the galaxy's very center and the large-scale environment," said Rita Sambruna of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland. "Understanding their origin is of paramount interest in modern astrophysics."

Article Source: http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=9915

A sliver of the crescent Earth shines in bright blue in this ultraviolet view of the planet taken May 21, 2010 by Japan's Akatsuki probe headed for Venus.

How do astronauts go potty in space? Watch this video to find out!

http://www.space.com/common/media/video/player.php?videoRef=SP_100519_SpacePotty

I know it sounds childish but I can't help but snicker when they use terms such as "docking" when it comes to proper technique.

I was browsing around the Spitzer Space Telescope Astronomical Images gallery when I found an image that would make a great poster.

If anyone would know a way to purchase this (as a poster of course), let me know and I would be glad to purchase one and put in my office.

I haven't posted recently because I have been really busy with finding out I am going to be a father. A future amateur astronomer is going to be welcomed into my family. Due date is sometime in November (I am hoping in middle of the month or Halloween since we have a lot of family members with November birthdays).

I have been watching a lot of Astronomy Picture of the Day by NASA. The latest one was M72: A Globular Cluster of Stars.

Source: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100512.html

I challenge you to count the stars. Also visit http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/1005/m72_hst_big.jpg for the entire image (around 11 megabytes).

Explanation: Globular clusters once ruled the Milky Way. Back in the old days, back when our Galaxy first formed, perhaps thousands of globular clusters roamed our Galaxy. Today, there are less than 200 left. Many globular clusters were destroyed over the eons by repeated fateful encounters with each other or the Galactic center. Surviving relics are older than any Earth fossil, older than any other structures in our Galaxy, and limit the universe itself in raw age. There are few, if any, young globular clusters in our Milky Way Galaxy because conditions are not ripe for more to form. Pictured above by the Hubble Space Telescope are about 100,000 of M72's stars. M72, which spans about 50 light years and lies about 50,000 light years away, can be seen with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Water Bearer (Aquarius).

Guenter (Günter) Wendt died today at the age of 85. Wendt died after being hospitalized for congestive heart failure and then suffering a stroke.

The first time I heard of Guenter was from the movie Apollo 13.

For more information, read about him on Wikipedia.

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/newsreleases/newsrelease20100329/

Obviously, our planet is not the only one to experience different seasons. MSNBC has put together a small slideshow of "springtime in space".

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36018718/displaymode/1247/beginSlide/1/beginChapter/1/beginTab/1/

And that's all I am going to say about that.

Ahh! The better to make you confused and dazed, my dear.

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2010/03/24/2239532.aspx

I always thought it was humorous how dark energy is being studied but (to my knowledge, which is little) how much we don't know about it.

When I was in 4th grade, my teacher said we know more about space than we do the ocean. While that was true, I've come to believe that we know equally as less about one as we do the other.

Source: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1621.html

I made a post a few weeks ago about "Bigfoot on Mars" and how I personally see it as a Tuscan Raider from Star Wars. Well, sticking to that same silly thought pattern, this can be called Jabba the Hutt.

Sorry for not updating. I've been real busy.

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is of the Sun (Sol) and a feature called a prominence.

Source: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100323.html

Explanation: Dramatic prominences can sometimes be seen looming just beyond the edge of the sun. Such was the case last week as a giant prominence, visible above on the right, highlighted a Sun showing increased activity as it comes off an unusually quiet Solar Minimum. A changing carpet of hot gas is visible in the chromosphere of the Sun in the above image taken in a very specific color of light emitted by hydrogen. A solar prominence is a cloud of solar gas held just above the surface by the Sun's magnetic field. The Earth would easily fit below the prominence on the right. Although very hot, prominences typically appear dark when viewed against the Sun, since they are slightly cooler than the surface. A quiescent prominence typically lasts about a month, and may erupt in a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) expelling hot gas into the Solar System. The next day, the same prominence looked slightly different.

Some other comparisons:
http://www.avertedimagination.com/img_pages/monster_031710.html
http://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=18&month=03&year=2010

http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/solarsys/scale.html has a nice image on how the other planets look in comparison to the Sun.

I just downloaded the new Firefox update (3.6) and learned that there are personas. Personas are basically themes but seem to be a bit more personal (Wow...That sounded a bit redundant, didn't it?). I went and searched for some space personas and though I would share the ones I really like.

The one I am using now is the Hubble NGC http://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/persona/74585

The second favorite one of mine is http://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/persona/116

Both of these are irrelevant unless you just like to customize your browser. I have to say my personal favorite is the Hubble NGC (it is of NGC 2818 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_2818 for reference because I don't think the persona has the details listed).

I have no idea what galaxy is in persona 116 but if I figure it out I will let you know (or you can always post your best guess).

I tried to photograph Saturn again tonight. I had it perfectly aligned on the telescope and it was a clear night. The view was so clear, I could even see a moon (that I haven't identified yet).

However...the images are horrible. I have yet to purchase a proper camera mount. If I had the mount and aligned Saturn to show up in the center like I did tonight, a simple 30-90 second video would yield great quality. But alas, things in life aren't free.

Here are my pictures that I had to heavily doctor up just so you could see SOMETHING that looked like rings even though they are a blur in the photograph. Trust me though, it is cooler to see in better quality.

This picture was taken a few years ago but it is still humorous. Apparently, bigfoot has been sighted on Mars. I know that it's not bigfoot because he's too busy getting back at people eating Jack Link's Beef Jerky.

According to Fox News (I lost the citation, sorry):

The "alien" is actually a blurry detail in a huge panoramic photograph snapped on the edge of Mars' Gusev crater by NASA's Spirit rover in early November, and posted on NASA's Web site on Jan. 2.

For more of an interesting and comical read, check out http://www.universetoday.com/2008/12/31/the-return-of-little-bigfoot-on-mars/

Source: http://www.space.com/spacewatch/venus-is-back-100226.html

Here shortly, Venus will be back in the evening sky. For a while, the monster Jupiter was in the evening sky (of course, so was Saturn in my back yard, But alas, I do not have the money for a camera mount just yet so you all will have to make do with other pictures).

This article discusses all the details of how to spot Venus and when one can find other Planets in the evening.

I changed the comment moderation on the blog where followers can comment without me having to check every post.

I hope to see this grow in the future but without the proper mountings, my pictures are not worth the quality to upload.

Addendum: Apparently I chose the wrong setting. Now Google users can make posts. I will still be watching them to avoid the spammers.

Still snowing outside (not that I hate snow or anything) and I have had only one good day of weather and that was to photograph the moon and view Saturn for the first time.

So since there is nothing going on that I can see, let's look at what NASA has to offer on the Astronomy Picture of the day

Explanation: This beautiful cosmic portrait features NGC 891. The spiral galaxy spans about 100 thousand light-years and is seen almost exactly edge-on from our perspective. In fact, about 30 million light-years distant in the constellation Andromeda, NGC 891 looks a lot like our Milky Way. At first glance, it has a flat, thin, galactic disk and a central bulge cut along the middle by regions of dark obscuring dust. Also apparent in NGC 891's edge-on presentation are filaments of dust that extend hundreds of light-years above and below the center line. The dust has likely been blown out of the disk by supernova explosions or intense star formation activity. Faint neighboring galaxies can also been seen near this galaxy's disk.

Source: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100225.html

Just a quick shout-out to my 2 commenter's and 1 follower. Thanks guys!

Maybe one day I'll get 2 people!

Finally there was a break in the weather and I was able to go outside and observe the moon and Saturn.

Unfortunatly, Saturn was not very photogenic tonight. However, I do I have a picture of the moon for your viewing pleasure.

Just for informational purposes, the moon phase was waxing crescent. My favorite feature is where the light meets the dark. There is more definition on the craters in my honest opinion.

NASA's new wrap-around porch is up and running. By that I mean the newly installed cupola on the ISS (International Space Station), giving the astronauts a more full view of the heavens (or the Earth).

I'm sure a view like this beats looking through a small window or computer monitor any day of the week.

Source: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1594.html

I never paid much attention to NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day until my wife got me my all-time "wants" for Christmas (a telescope). Since then, on clear nights, I always want to find and identify stasrs.and planets.

Anways, NASA released this interesting photo of 4 Vesta.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100218.html

Explanation: Main belt asteroid 4 Vesta is at its brightest now. The small world is near opposition (opposite the Sun in the sky) and closest to Earth. But even at its brightest, Vesta is just too faint to spot with the naked-eye. Still, over the next few days it will be relatively easy to find in the constellation Leo, sharing a typical binocular field of view with bright star Gamma Leonis (aka Algieba). In fact on February 16 Vesta passed between Gamma Leonis and close neighbor on the sky 40 Leonis. Gamma Leonis is the brightest star in these two panels, while the second brightest star, 40 Leonis, is directy to its right. As marked, Vesta is the third brightest "star" in the field. Vesta shifts position between the two panels from well below 40 Leonis on Feb. 14 to near the top of the frame from Feb. 16, shooting the gap between the close Gamma/40 Leonis pair. Of course, premier close-up views of the asteroid will be possible after the ion-powered Dawn spacecraft arrives at Vesta in August of 2011. 

 






From Wikipedia

4 Vesta is the second most massive object in the asteroid belt, with a mean diameter of about 530 km[1] and an estimated mass of 9% of the mass of the entire asteroid belt.[10] It was discovered by the German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers on March 29, 1807,[1] and named after the Roman virgin goddess of home and hearth, Vesta.

EDIT [2/19/10 06:37]: I was a bit on the "loopy" side from an accident when I wrote this article. Pardon my grammar and any other form of error that was made.

Still bound to my computer and other tasks because the weather has been so poor. I have not even been able to see anything except Betelgeuse and that was for 2-3 minutes till fast moving clouds moved in. So to show off some coolness that I do not take credit for, check out today's Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Source: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100215.html

Explanation: If this is Saturn, where are the rings? When Saturn's "appendages" disappeared in 1612, Galileo did not understand why. Later that century, it became understood that Saturn's unusual protrusions were rings and that when the Earth crosses the ring plane, the edge-on rings will appear to disappear. This is because Saturn's rings are confined to a plane many times thinner, in proportion, than a razor blade. In modern times, the robot Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn now also crosses Saturn's ring plane. A series of plane crossing images from 2005 February was dug out of the vast online Cassini raw image archive by interested Spanish amateur Fernando Garcia Navarro. Pictured above, digitally cropped and set in representative colors, is the striking result. Saturn's thin ring plane appears in blue, bands and clouds in Saturn's upper atmosphere appear in gold. Since Saturn just passed its equinox, today the ring plane is pointed close to the Sun and the rings could not cast the high dark shadows seen across the top of this image, taken back in 2005. Moons appear as bumps in the rings.

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/astronauts-urine-recyler-repair-100210.html

I used to wonder how the astronauts on the space station got all their provisions such as food and water. I used to think that various missions brought those provisions and off-loaded them into a reservoir. It turns out that urine, sweat, and any other condensation produced on the ISS is purified using a $250 million dollar piece of equipment.

Sound gross? What do you think the water treatment plants on Earth do?

For further reading, check out http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/090520-space-urine.html

I learned just yesterday that Venus is the home of two cyclones at the pole.

I don't know a whole lot of answers of what kind of storms these are except apparently they are a permemant fixture. What I thought was interesting was that the storms are in close proximity to each other and unlike Earth tornados that are big at the top, these tornados are big at the bottom.

More to come if I ever figure out why this is the case.

My goal was when I started this blog was to post pictures of certain objects I find in the sky as an amateur astronomer and [amateur] astrophotographer. However, the weather has been just miserable for the past few days (it has actually been horrible since I have started blogging) so I have not been able to take any pictures.

So in the meantime, enjoy this from Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Explanation: Most galaxies have a single nucleus -- does this galaxy have four? The strange answer leads astronomers to conclude that the nucleus of the surrounding galaxy is not even visible in this image. The central cloverleaf is rather light emitted from a background quasar. The gravitational field of the visible foreground galaxy breaks light from this distant quasar into four distinct images. The quasar must be properly aligned behind the center of a massive galaxy for a mirage like this to be evident. The general effect is known as gravitational lensing, and this specific case is known as the Einstein Cross. Stranger still, the images of the Einstein Cross vary in relative brightness, enhanced occasionally by the additional gravitational microlensing effect of specific stars in the foreground galaxy.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/pluto-20100204.html

I am one of those people who think Pluto should still be a planet. So when I heard that there are new images of Pluto that shows it is going through some changes, the first thing I could thing of was "HAH!"...but that could mean anything.

It appears that Hubble has made a map of Pluto showing seasonal changes. Now one can only hope that future telescopes may be able to image Pluto in more detail.

I still can't get over how it looks a lot like CGI but I didn't expect the detail to be outstanding.

While doing some reading about stars, I never noticed the Greek letters beside certain names as uncommon. This is because I have taken 1 year of Greek and when I saw the letters, I didn't think twice about what that letter was.

Below is a small picture that may help if you see a funny looking symbol near celestial names.

Example: α Centauri (α is alpha).

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2837262/Space-UFO-baffles-boffins.html

Apparently there seems to be talk of a UFO somewhere between Mars and Jupiter. Now when I mean UFO, I am not talking about little green men in spaceships obviously (that would be silly). It is said to be the result of two objects colliding at around 15,000 kilometers (around 9,320 for the non-metric crowd). I would have liked to have seen that collision in real time though.

It brings images to my head of a scene in Star Wars where the asteroids are colliding while the protagonists are trying to escape the Empire. Good times...good times...

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100203.html

http://www.space.com/common/media/video/player.php?videoRef=SP_100129_solar-eclipse-from-space

An interesting view of a solar eclipse from space. The last time I saw a solar eclipse was in 3rd grade and "I" broke the pinhole camera. I actually didn't break it by myself because I was the last one to look at it after a room full of 3rd graders handled it. It just so happens that someone before me handled it poorly and since I was the only one who got the camera examined it was passed around. All I'm saying is DON'T ASSUME WITHOUT EVIDENCE.

Uh...anyways...enjoy!

http://www.universetoday.com/2010/02/01/no-moon-missions-thats-a-relief/

Being fair to both sides, Fraser Cain brings up a good point.

What's the best way to extract fuel from an asteroid? How can ion engines cut down flight times? Is there a better way to make a spacesuit? What are some good materials for space elevators? What are some safer rocket fuels? How can we make rocket launches better for the environment? Is there a way to make velcro better?

I would still like to see a moon base sometime in the future. I could think of many purposes it could serve in the future if there are Mars Expeditions.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/feb/01/barack-obama-nasa-moon-budget
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/01/moon-mission-obama-budget

So you can cut budgets to something with great research and historical value but you can spend money everywhere else? Why not cut some more lame programs Congress has set up and do something worth the money?

If you ever wanted to explore the sky from your home, there are free software available to you that can help you achieve this.

Stellarium - http://www.stellarium.org/ - Good for looking at what the sky would like like from your back yard. You can go to different moons of different planets and see what the planet would look like while on that moon (Search Io, then press control + g, it's pretty cool)

Celestia - http://www.shatters.net/celestia/ - I haven't used this one too much but I like to just type a keyword in and it will take you to that location. It provides a different point-of-view but I haven't figured out how to master the software yet.

Google Earth - http://earth.google.com/ - Google Earth has a sky mode. It also lets you explore the Moon and Mars. Also there is a flight simulator that lets you fly a plane on Earth, the Moon, and Mars. I challenge you to start at a random spot on Mars and fly to the Olympus Mons (the biggest known mountain in our solar system).

WIKISKY.ORG - http://www.wikisky.org/ - I have looked at this one a bit and it's similar to using Google Maps to navigate the sky. It is handy if you just wanted to browse and are not able to install software or just don't want to spend the time messing with software.