The Pithy Amateur Astronomer

When some people look at clouds, they interpret the shapes and make comparisons to other objects. I do the same but instead of clouds I look at astronomical bodies.

Source: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110922.html


Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scream


Explanation: Linking spiral arms, two large colliding galaxies are featured in this remarkable cosmic portrait constructed using image data from the Hubble Legacy Archive. Recorded in astronomer Halton Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies as Arp 272, the pair is otherwise known as NGC 6050 near center, and IC 1179 at upper right. A third galaxy, likely also a member of the interacting system, can be spotted above and left of larger spiral NGC 6050. They lie some 450 million light-years away in the Hercules Galaxy Cluster. At that estimated distance, the picture spans over 150 thousand light-years. Although this scenario does look peculiar, galaxy collisions and their eventual mergers are now understood to be common, with Arp 272 representing a stage in this inevitable process. In fact, the nearby large spiral Andromeda Galaxy is known to be approaching our own galaxy and Arp 272 may offer a glimpse of the far future collision between Andromeda and the Milky Way.

This image reminds me of some serious confetti.

Abell 2744: Pandora's Cluster of Galaxies 
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Merten (ITA, AOB), & D. Coe (STScI)
Explanation: Why is this cluster of galaxies so jumbled? Far from a smooth distribution, Abell 2744 not only has knots of galaxies, but the X-ray emitting hot gas (colored red) in the cluster appears distributed differently than the dark matter. The dark matter, taking up over 75 percent of the cluster mass and colored blue in the above image, was inferred by that needed to create the distortion of background galaxies by gravitational lensing. The jumble appears to result from the slow motion collision of at least four smaller galaxy clusters over the past few billion years. The above picture combinesoptical images from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Very Large Telescope with X-ray images from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Abell 2744, dubbed Pandora's cluster, spans over two million light years and can best be seen with a really large telescope toward the constellation of the Sculptor.

The space shuttle appears to break through the clouds in what would be the ultimate adrenalin rush for me.

Source: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110525.html
Credit: NASA
 

  Explanation: What's that rising from the clouds? The space shuttle. If you looked out the window of an airplane at just the right place and time last week, you could have seen something very unusual -- the space shuttle Endeavour launching to orbit. Images of the rising shuttle and its plume became widely circulated over the web shortly after Endeavour's final launch. The above image was taken from a shuttle training aircraft and is not copyrighted. Taken well above the clouds, the image can be matched with similar images of the same shuttle plume taken below the clouds. Hot glowing gasses expelled by the engines are visible near the rising shuttle, as well as a long smoke plume. A shadow of the plume appears on the cloud deck, indicating the direction of the Sun. The shuttle Endeavour remains docked with the International Space Station and is currently scheduled to return to Earth next week.

Found this on the interwebs and thought I would re-post it. It's an amazing picture of Europa, Jupiter, and the Great Red Spot. I wonder how Jupiter would appear from Europa...

Mark your calendars for November 8, 2011, because:

The near-Earth asteroid named 2005 YU55 — on the list of potentially dangerous asteroids — was observed with the Arecibo Telescope's planetary radar on April 19, 2010 when it was about 1.5 million miles from the Earth, which is about 6 times the distance to the moon.

Source: http://www.space.com/11310-huge-asteroid-2005-yu55-passing-earth-november.html

Source: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110403.html

Image Credit: Sydney Girls High School Astronomy Club,
Travis Rector (Univ. Alaska), Ángel López-Sánchez (Australian Astronomical Obs./ Macquarie Univ.), Australian Gemini Office
 
Explanation: Over 400,000 light years across NGC 6872 is an enormous spiral galaxy, at least 4 times the size of our own, very large, Milky Way. About 200 million light-years distant, toward the southern constellation Pavo, the Peacock, the remarkable galaxy's stretched out shape is due to its ongoing gravitational interaction, likely leading to an eventual merger, with the nearby smaller galaxy IC 4970. IC 4970 is seen just below and right of the giant galaxy's core in this cosmic color portrait from the 8 meter Gemini South telescope in Chile. The idea to image this titanic galaxy collision comes from a winning contest essay submitted last year to the Gemini Observatory by the Sydney Girls High School Astronomy Club. In addition to inspirational aspects and aesthetics, club members argued that a color image would be more than just a pretty picture. In their winning essay they noted that "If enough colour data is obtained in the image it may reveal easily accessible information about the different populations of stars, star formation, relative rate of star formation due to the interaction, and the extent of dust and gas present in these galaxies". (Editor's note: For Australian schools, 2011 contest information is here.)

Source: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110329.html

Illustration Credit: Jason Rowe, Kepler Mission
Explanation: Using the prolific planet hunting Kepler spacecraft, astronomers have discovered 1,235 candidate planets orbiting other suns since the Kepler mission's search for Earth-like worlds began in 2009. To find them, Kepler monitors a rich star field to identify planetary transits by the slight dimming of starlight caused by a planet crossing the face of its parent star. In this remarkable illustration, all of Kepler's planet candidates are shown in transit with their parent stars ordered by size from top left to bottom right. Simulated stellar disks and the silhouettes of transiting planets are all shown at the same relative scale, with saturated star colors. Of course, some stars show more than one planet in transit, but you may have to examine the picture at high resolution to spot them all. For reference, the Sun is shown at the same scale, by itself below the top row on the right. In silhouette against the Sun's disk, both Jupiter and Earth are in transit.

Source: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110326.html

Image Credit & Copyright: Adam Block, Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter, U. Arizona
Explanation: The yellowish star near center in this remarkable telescopic skyview is T Tauri, prototype of the class of T Tauri variable stars. Nearby it is a dusty yellow cosmic cloud historically known as Hind's Variable Nebula (NGC 1555). Over 400 light-years away, at the edge of a molecular cloud, both star and nebula are seen to vary significantly in brightness but not necessarily at the same time, adding to the mystery of the intriguing region. T Tauri stars are now generally recognized as young (less than a few million years old), sun-like stars still in the early stages of formation. To further complicate the picture, infrared observations indicate that T Tauri itself is part of a multiple system and suggest that the associated Hind's Nebula may also contain a very young stellar object. The naturally colored image spans about 4 light-years at the estimated distance of T Tauri.

Source: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110323.html

Credit & Copyright: Peter Tuthill (Sydney U.) & James Lloyd (Cornell)


Explanation: What could cause a nebula to appear square? No one is quite sure. The hot star system known as MWC 922, however, appears to be embedded in a nebula with just such a shape. The above image combines infrared exposures from the Hale Telescope on Mt. Palomar in California, and the Keck-2 Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. A leading progenitor hypothesis for the square nebula is that the central star or stars somehow expelled cones of gas during a late developmental stage. For MWC 922, these cones happen to incorporate nearly right angles and be visible from the sides. Supporting evidence for the cone hypothesis includes radial spokes in the image that might run along the cone walls. Researchers speculate that the cones viewed from another angle would appear similar to the gigantic rings of supernova 1987A, possibly indicating that a star in MWC 922 might one day itself explode in a similar supernova.

Watch how NASA recovers the Solid Rocket Boosters. I never realized how big the SRB's were until I saw this video. It really puts things into perspective.

Source: http://www.space.com/11068-shuttle-discovery-astronauts-tribute.html

On the eve of space shuttle Discovery's final scheduled trip back to Earth, the six astronauts aboard the spaceship paid tribute to their tried and true orbiter.

"I think the legacy that this shuttle has made for herself is just nothing short than cause for celebration," said mission specialist Michael Barratt during a call with reporters today (March 8). "Just something that our country should be very, very proud of."


Discovery is finishing up its 39th and final voyage, a two-week mission to deliver supplies and a robotic astronaut helper to the International Space Station. [Photos from Discovery's Final Mission]

After this STS-133 mission, only two more space shuttle flights remain, and then NASA is retiring the fleet. Shuttle Endeavour is slated to launch on its STS-134 voyage in April, and Atlantis is scheduled to blast off one last time on the STS-135 mission in June.

Over the course of 39 missions, Discovery has launched probes and satellites, deployed the Hubble Space Telescope, and then visited to repair it. The shuttle has also contributed significantly to the construction and operation of the International Space Station.

"The legacy for the shuttle fleet and the shuttle program undoubtedly, in my mind, will be the space station," LeRoy Cain, NASA's mission management team chairman, told the media today. "We could not have assembled this marvelous facility in orbit without the capabilities of the space shuttle."
After the shuttles retire, they will be sent to U.S. museums for public display.

"I don’t know what the plaque is going to say, but hopefully it will talk about Discovery's legacy as a great ship of exploration, as a class of spacecraft with capabilities … unmatched by anything else we've ever seen in space and probably unmatched for a long, long time to come," said Discovery's commander, Steve Lindsey."Hopefully it will talk about not the crews, not us, but the entire space shuttle teams that span across the country that have allowed this to happen – the thousands and thousands and thousands of people to keep this vehicle running. Hopefully the legacy will be more about the people than anything else."

Discovery and the other shuttles are being retired after 30 years of service to make way for NASA's next step, a push to travel beyond low-Earth orbit to an asteroid and Mars. The space shuttles, while still functioning well, are simply considered too expensive to operate while NASA is also trying to develop and build its next-generation spaceship.[Gallery: Building Space Shuttle Discovery]

"There is not a single thing wrong with her," Lindsey said of Discovery, the oldest of the shuttles."Every single system and every piece of every system is working just like it's brand new."

Once it retires the shuttles, NASA will have to rely on Russian Soyuz spaceships to get to the International Space Station until American commercial companies start producing vehicles capable of doing the job. No spaceship under development will be able to carry so many crew members and so much cargo to the station as the massive shuttles have.

"It's going to be sad when it's over, when we land tomorrow or the next day," Lindsey said."The hardest part of this for me is giving up the capability. It can do everything except leave low-Earth orbit."
Yet he said it was the right thing to do.

"It's sad to give up this type of capability, but I really strongly believe in the next step to try to get out of low-Earth orbit, to try to go to an asteroid, go to the moon," Lindsey said. "We do need a new vehicle for that."

Other astronauts expressed similar sentiments.

"There are plenty of opportunities out there, and we're a great country that has done really, really amazing things with our space program and I really just hope that that will continue," mission specialist Nicole Stott said.

Discovery is scheduled to land tomorrow at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., at 11:57 a.m. EST (1657 GMT).

Amazing video. Worth the time to watch.



5.6k Saturn Cassini Photographic Animation from stephen v2 on Vimeo.

Source: http://www.universetoday.com/83751/ground-based-observations-capture-spacewalking-astronaut-in-action/

More impressive ground based images of the STS-133 mission, this time, Amateur astronomer Ralf Vandebergh of the Netherlands took images during one of the spacewalks for the mission, and likely captured astronaut Steve Bowen at work on the end of the Canadarm 2! Click on the image above, or go to Ralf’s website for a better view and more information.

Another amateur astronomer from the UK, Martin Lewis also took similar images of the spacewalk.
Ralf uses a 10 inch Newtonian telescope with a videocam eyepiece, and manually tracks the ISS and other objects across the sky. He takes most of his images in color to obtain the maximum possible information of the objects.

He took a similar image about 2 years ago of astronaut Joe Acaba on an EVA outside the ISS in March of 2009, which was featured on Astronomy Picture of the Day. He has also taken images of of ISS and Dexter, the special purpose manipulator, or this one of space shuttle Discovery on the STS-131 mission.

Source: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110226.html

Image Credit & Copyright: Stephen Leshin
 
Explanation: This colorful cosmic skyscape features a peculiar system of galaxies cataloged as Arp 227 some 100 million light-years distant. Swimming within the boundaries of the constellation Pisces, Arp 227 consists of the two galaxies prominent on the left; the curious shell galaxy NGC 474 and its blue, spiral-armed neighbor NGC 470. The faint, wide arcs or shells of NGC 474 could have been formed by a gravitational encounter with neighbor NGC 470. Alternately the shells could be caused by a merger with a smaller galaxy producing an effect analogous to ripples across the surface of a pond. Remarkably, the large galaxy on the right hand side of the deep image, NGC 467, appears to be surrounded by faint shells too, evidence of another interacting galaxy system. Intriguing background galaxies are scattered around the field that also includes spiky foreground stars. Of course, those stars lie well within our own Milky Way Galaxy. The field of view spans 25 arc minutes or about 1/2 degree on the sky.

I am intrigued by the bow shock the star creates.

Source: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-026

A massive star flung away from its former companion is plowing through space dust. The result is a brilliant bow shock, seen here as a yellow arc in a new image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.

The star, named Zeta Ophiuchi, is huge, with a mass of about 20 times that of our sun. In this image, in which infrared light has been translated into visible colors we see with our eyes, the star appears as the blue dot inside the bow shock.

Zeta Ophiuchi once orbited around an even heftier star. But when that star exploded in a supernova, Zeta Ophiuchi shot away like a bullet. It's traveling at a whopping 54,000 miles per hour (or 24 kilometers per second), and heading toward the upper left area of the picture.

As the star tears through space, its powerful winds push gas and dust out of its way and into what is called a bow shock. The material in the bow shock is so compressed that it glows with infrared light that WISE can see. The effect is similar to what happens when a boat speeds through water, pushing a wave in front of it.

This bow shock is completely hidden in visible light. Infrared images like this one from WISE are therefore important for shedding new light on the region.

JPL manages and operates WISE for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The principal investigator, Edward Wright, is at UCLA. The mission was competitively selected under NASA's Explorers Program managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory, Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

More information is online at http://www.nasa.gov/wise, http://wise.astro.ucla.edu and http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/wise.

Source: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/12jan_cometstorm/

Jan. 12, 2011:  The sun has just experienced a storm—not of explosive flares and hot plasma, but of icy comets.

"The storm began on Dec 13th and ended on the 22nd," says Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab in Washington, DC. "During that time, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) detected 25 comets diving into the sun. It was crazy!"

Sundiving comets—a.k.a. "sungrazers"—are nothing new. SOHO typically sees one every few days, plunging inward and disintegrating as solar heat sublimes its volatile ices. "But 25 comets in just ten days, that's unprecedented," says Battams.

"The comets were 10-meter class objects, about the size of a room or a house," notes Matthew Knight of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. "As comets go, these are considered small."

This is a neat picture. I thought I would share it.

Source: http://www.space.com/10630-mismatching-companion-galaxies-wise-telescope-photo.html

Source: http://www.universetoday.com/82391/the-biggest-astrophoto-ever/

Today, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-III (SDSS-III) is releasing the largest digital color image of the sky ever made, and it’s free to all. Just how big? Step inside and find out…

According to the American Astronomical Society press release, the image has been put together over the last decade from millions of 2.8-megapixel images, thus creating a color image of more than a trillion pixels. Just how does that relate? Even a large format professional CCD camera will only produce about 11 million pixels and really big screen to view – but this terapixel image is so big and detailed that it would take 500,000 high-definition TVs to view it at its full resolution. Can you imagine?! “This image provides opportunities for many new scientific discoveries in the years to come,” exclaims Bob Nichol, a professor at the University of Portsmouth and Scientific Spokesperson for the SDSS-III collaboration.

(The SDSS-III Data Release Eight (DR8) can be found at http://www.sdss3.org/dr8. All data published as part of DR8 is freely available to other astronomers, scientists, and the public. Technical journal papers describing DR8 and the SDSS-III project are on the arXiv e-Print server (http://arxiv.org).)

 
Source: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap110110.html

Credit & Copyright: Peter Rosén
 
Explanation: What's happened to the Sun? Sometimes it looks like the Sun is being viewed through a large lens. In the above case, however, there are actually millions of lenses: ice crystals. As water freezes in the upper atmosphere, small, flat, six-sided, ice crystals might be formed. As these crystals flutter to the ground, much time is spent with their faces flat, parallel to the ground. An observer may pass through the same plane as many of the falling ice crystals near sunrise or sunset. During this alignment, each crystal can act like a miniature lens, refracting sunlight into our view and creating phenomena like parhelia, the technical term for sundogs. The above image was taken last year in Stockholm, Sweden. Visible in the image center is the Sun, while two bright sundogs glow prominently from both the left and the right. Also visible is the bright 22 degree halo -- as well as the rarer and much fainter 46 degree halo -- also created by sunlight reflecting off of atmospheric ice crystals.

Taken from http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1837.html

Two European Space Agency observatories combined forces to show the Andromeda Galaxy in a new light. Herschel sees rings of star formation in this, the most detailed image of the Andromeda Galaxy ever taken at infrared wavelengths, and XMM-Newton shows dying stars shining X-rays into space.

ESA’s Herschel and XMM-Newton space observatories targeted the Andromeda Galaxy, the nearest large spiral galaxy, which like our own Milky Way contains several hundred billion stars. This is the most detailed far-infrared image of the Andromeda Galaxy ever taken and clearly shows that more stars are on their way.

In this image, Herschel’s infrared image of the Andromeda Galaxy shows rings of dust that trace gaseous reservoirs where new stars are forming and XMM-Newton’s X-ray image shows stars approaching the ends of their lives. Both infrared and X-ray images convey information impossible to collect from the ground because these wavelengths are absorbed by Earth’s atmosphere.