Discover Space

Space & the beginning of summer | Gene Expression

Sun, 27 May 2012 18:51:14 +0000

It’s been a big few weeks for space, with the success of Dragon. I don’t have anything to add in a descriptive or analytic sense, I know as much (or likely less) as you on this issue (this is why should read Bad Astronomy). Needless to say I’ve been rooting for Elon Musk’s enterprise, so to speak. I’m not old enough to remember the “space race,” which put a man on the moon. Rather, for my generation space and NASA had become rather pedestrian, with the shuttle being a sky ferry par excellence. Space is important not because of what it will do for us in concrete terms (e.g., Tang), but what will do for us on a deeper level. Otherwise we may fall prey to the sort of ennui one reads about in science fiction universes such as the city of Diaspar. Remember, we’re the species which made it to the New World and Oceania. This sort of crazy and irrational endeavor is part of who we are.

On a different note, hope people are enjoying the de facto start of the summer (Memorial Day weekend ...

Your last chance to see Venus for the next few weeks | Bad Astronomy

Sat, 26 May 2012 13:00:06 +0000

As I usually do when I go outside at twilight, I glanced over to the west to look for Venus… and it was much lower toward the horizon than I was expecting. I shouldn’t have been surprised; in two weeks it’s due for a close encounter with the Sun. On June 5/6, it’ll pass directly between us and the Sun in an event called a transit. I’ll have more info on that later, though you can read up about it at the Transit of Venus website.

I set up my binoculars and even with such low power, Venus was an obvious crescent! I held my phone up to the eyepiece and took this shot:

It’s out of focus a bit, but you can see the phase. As Venus races past the Earth in its orbit, it gets a bit closer to us but presents a thinner crescent every day. It’s moving so quickly now that you only really have a few more days to take a look before it’s too close to the Sun to see comfortably. And then on June 5th it’ll look a lot different!

Related Posts:

Small asteroid to buzz Earth on May 28 | Bad Astronomy

Fri, 25 May 2012 17:33:24 +0000

Asteroid 2012 KP 24, a smallish rock about 25 meters (80 feet) across, will pass pretty close to the Earth on May 28, buzzing us at a distance of about 30,000 kilometers (18,000 miles) 51,000 kilometers (32,000 miles) [Note: the numbers at JPL have updated, making the pass a bit farther out than the numbers I originally used]. That’s close as passes go, but still a clean miss.

Closest approach is at about 15:00 UTC (11:00 a.m. Eastern US time) on May 28. It’ll actually pass Earth closer than our geosynchronous satellites! At closest approach, it’ll whiz by at about 13 km/sec (30,000 mph). I’ll note I calculated most of these numbers based on the JPL site linked above, and they may be refined over the next day or two [see?]. It was discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey (as so many near-Earth asteroids are) on the evening of May 23/24.

Let me stress, as always, that there is essentially zero chance of impact here. A miss like this is still miss, so don’t fret over what will no doubt be a slew of panicky doomsday sites and videos ...

When a Dragon mated the space station | Bad Astronomy

Fri, 25 May 2012 16:08:57 +0000

At 16:02 UTC, Friday, May 25, 2012, the SpaceX Dragon officially became the first privately-owned commercial spacecraft to be captured by and berthed at the International Space Station. It is (if I’ve done the math correctly) the 114th spacecraft to dock with ISS, including the missions sent up to build the station. It is the first privately-owned commercial spacecraft in history to do so.

You can read more about this in my last post, which also has a few pictures from the approach and capture.

Congratulations to NASA and the team at SpaceX! Fantastic.

Dragon is approaching the space station – UPDATED: CAPTURED! | Bad Astronomy

Fri, 25 May 2012 13:13:57 +0000

[UPDATE: ISS has captured the Dragon!

That's not a sim! That's the Dragon capsule held by the ISS robot arm, 30 minutes after capture. See the notes below.]

The SpaceX Dragon capsule is currently on approach to the International Space Station. As I write this (13:00 UTC) it is about 50 meters away and moving in. NASA has a live feed that I am embedding here:

You may need to refresh this page to see it.

Dragon had approached to 30 meters, but a glitch made NASA ask for it to back off to 70 meters. Dragon uses a laser ranging device called LIDAR to determine its position and velocity relative to ISS. It was getting a stray reflection from a structure on ISS that was giving it bad data. The problem was quickly fixed by narrowing he LIDAR’s field of view, excluding the stray reflection. Clever.

Dragon and ISS need to be in daylight for the astronauts to be able to grapple the capsule with the robot arm. That time is currently scheduled for 14:40 UTC (10:40 a.m. Eastern US time).

I will update this post ...

Update: the Dragon capsule as seen by the ISS | Bad Astronomy

Thu, 24 May 2012 22:49:17 +0000

Just a quick update: a new series of pictures of the Dragon capsule as seen by astronauts aboard the International Space Station has just been released, and they’re way cool. Here’s one:

[Click to embiggen.]

Earlier today, Dragon passed just 2.4 kilometers (1.5 miles) from the station, performing a series of tasks to make sure it was ready to dock with ISS tomorrow. I’m sure the folks at SpaceX are poring over these images to make sure their capsule’s OK. And of course, tomorrow we’ll get even more dramatic images and video!

Image credit: NASA

SpaceX Dragon capsule buzzed the space station | Bad Astronomy

Thu, 24 May 2012 16:43:12 +0000

Early this morning, the SpaceX Dragon capsule passed just 2.4 kilometers below the International Space Station, completing another critical step in its mission profile that’ll lead to it docking with the orbiting station Friday morning.

From the station, astronauts captured video as the capsule cruised by:

[You may need to refresh this page to see the video load.]

Very, very cool. You can see the Dragon capsule in this video frame grab: it’s in the lower left corner, silhouetted against the Earth. The extended solar panels are obvious, and you can just make out the shape of the capsule itself.

This flyby was an important milestone, since it showed that the capsule could approach the station and also abort the approach if needed. Other key elements it demonstrated were that it could float freely (as it will have to when it docks with ISS), that its proximity sensors worked, and that its GPS was operational as well. Astronauts on the ISS were also able to command a strobe light remotely, confirming they could link to the capsule.

All this leads up to the big show on Friday: docking. At about ...

Mars craters are sublime | Bad Astronomy

Thu, 24 May 2012 13:00:46 +0000

Someday, Mars will stop surprising me.

Today is not that day.

The image below was taken by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been taking devastatingly high-res pictures of the Red Planet for many years. While passing over the edge of the Tharsis Shield — a huge uplifted region of Mars home to its four gigantic volcanoes –it saw this bizarre fieldof craters:

[Click to hephaestenate.]

First, you may think these are mounds and not craters, but that’s an illusion. Our brain uses illumination to gauge up and down in pictures like these, and assumes the sunlight is coming from above. However, these really are craters, but the illumination is coming from below — north is roughly toward the top of the picture and the crater field is at a northern latitude of about 50°. Flip the picture over if it helps (I’ll be honest, even doing that makes it hard for me to see these as other than mounds; confounded brain!). You can see more examples of this illusion here, here, and here.

But that’s not the weirdest thing about these ...

OK, one more eclipse shot | Bad Astronomy

Wed, 23 May 2012 19:28:55 +0000

I’ve posted a lot of stuff about Sunday’s annular eclipse (see Related Links below), and I figured I was done… but then I got a pretty remarkable picture sent to me.

During the eclipse, in northern California, two men sent a small (6 cubic meter) helium-filled balloon up to 90,000 feet (roughly 27 km). Equipped with a camera and an ingenious system that used puffs of gas to orient the payload, they took this pretty amazing shot of the eclipse:

[Click to penumbrenate.]

That’s the Earth on the left (duh), and on the upper right you can see the eclipsed Sun! They used a solar filter to cover half the camera’s view so that they could get the correct exposure for both the Earth and the much brighter Sun.

I really enjoyed reading their story on how they set this up and executed it. I especially liked how they launched, sat around to watch the eclipse itself, then set off to find the balloon once it came back down (shredded after it popped at its lofty apex).

I ...

Saturn, surreally | Bad Astronomy

Wed, 23 May 2012 13:00:55 +0000

Take 7+ years of Saturn observations by the Cassini spacecraft, stitch a whole lot of them together into short, film-noir-like segments, and add a Beethoven soundtrack. What do you get? Awesomeness.

The video was put together by Nahum Chazarra, who says on Twitter he’s a "Geology student, science lover". There’s literally too much in this to describe! Moons, rings, the planet itself… but I think my favorite part is when some object, usually a tiny moon, stays centered while the rings and planet and other objects wheel around it. It’s a change-of-perspective effect, but amazing to watch. And you really can’t go wrong with "Moonlight Sonata".

Something like this video has been done before (specifically here and here, and both are well, well worth your time to watch) but to be honest it’s impossible to get too much of this. The changing lighting and exposure, the sometimes jerky apparent motion (due to the inconstant times between exposures combined with the spacecraft’s motion), and the simply jaw-dropping spectacle of the ridiculously gaudy Saturnian system, all combine to make this an engaging and even mesmerizing show.

Tip o’ the dew shield to ...

SpaceX Dragon on its way to the ISS! | Bad Astronomy

Tue, 22 May 2012 17:19:42 +0000

At 07:44 UTC, May 22, 2012, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket thundered into space, carrying the Dragon capsule into orbit.

So first, holy wow, and yay! That’s fantastic news! This was the second attempt, after a glitchy valve caused a launch abort a few days ago.

This morning’s launch went very smoothly. After achieving orbit, the uncrewed Dragon craft decoupled from the rocket and successfully deployed its solar panels, a key milestone in the mission. When that happened, the cheering from the SpaceX team could be heard in the webcast background, which was delightful. A lot of people on Twitter commented on how NASA’s narration of the event was very stoic and calm, but the SpaceX webcast was very emotional and involved*. I think both of those are as they should be!

Here’s a short video of the launch:

The entire SpaceX webcast is also online. The key moments are the launch at 44:30 into the video, main engine cutoff and start of the second stage at 47:30, the rocket achieving orbit and Dragon capsule separation

SpaceX’s Ship Blasted Off This Morning, Bound for the International Space Station | 80beats

Tue, 22 May 2012 14:54:40 +0000

It’s been a rocky few years for spaceflight. NASA’s budget isn’t getting any bigger. And though the Space Shuttle program was expensive, dangerous, and kept better designs from being developed, once it ended last year, US astronauts have had to hitch rides on Russian rockets, which are themselves not too reliable. But this morning’s launch of SpaceX’s first International Space Station supply rocket was a bright spot.

NASA is betting on the private sector to bring about the next great space age. It has made grants to various private space flight companies, including PayPal founder Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies, colloquially known as SpaceX, to develop space taxi technologies and supply the International Space Station.

And early this morning, after an aborted launch attempt on Sunday, SpaceX’s first rocket left Earth, carrying a capsule bound for the space station. You can watch the unmanned vehicle take off in the video above, and you can hear in the excitement in the NASA launch commentator’s voice as the fiery ship takes off through the night.

A fake and a real view of the solar eclipse… FROM SPACE! | Bad Astronomy

Tue, 22 May 2012 13:00:57 +0000

[First: CONGRATS to SpaceX for the successful launch of the Falcon 9 and deployment of the Dragon capsule! Everything looked great and things are apparently going smoothly. You can watch the whole thing here, and I'll have more about all this in a little while. Until then, back to your regularly scheduled blog post.]

Over the past couple of days, a lot of people are passing this image around, saying it’s from the eclipse Sunday, taken by an astronaut from the International Space Station:

Here’s the thing: it’s not. It’s actually a lovely piece of artwork done in 2009 by a Japanese artist who goes by the name A4size-ska on DeviantArt.

There are plenty of clues to show it’s not real, if you know where to look. For one, the real eclipse was annular, meaning a lot of the Sun was still seen around the silhouetted Moon. That’s not apparent here. Plus, the bright Earth (and Sun!) would wash out the background stars in a picture like this, so you’d not see them, and certainly not the Milky Way (the fuzzy band under the eclipse in the ...

Gallery: When the Moon ate (most of) the Sun | Bad Astronomy

Mon, 21 May 2012 15:15:46 +0000

Click here to view gallery

The May 20, 2012 annular solar eclipse in motion | Bad Astronomy

Mon, 21 May 2012 12:30:59 +0000

So yesterday was the annular eclipse of the Sun, and I held a live impromptu video chat on Google+ about it. I was joined by Pamela Gay, Fraser Cain, Nicole Gugliucci, and Jason Major, and we had a live video feed using astronomer Scott Lewis’s telescope. It was way too much fun! I’ve embedded the video at the bottom of this post.

We asked for pictures, and my Twitter feed overfloweth with them! I’m collecting them to put into a gallery which I’ll have up soon, but until then, watch this incredible video taken by John Knoll in his front yard in northern California:

Isn’t that amazing? What happened is that all the overlapping leaves made thousands of tiny holes that sunlight could poke through. This acts like a lens, focusing images of the Sun through every hole — it’s how a pinhole camera works. [UPDATE: Timothy in the comments below points out that some people were confused by my wording. I can see why; I had started to explain how a pinhole camera works then decided it was too distracting and instead just linked ...

LIVE Q&BA Hangout for the eclipse | Bad Astronomy

Sun, 20 May 2012 22:39:00 +0000

[UPDATE: The hangout's over. Thanks to all who watched! I'll have the YouTube video up as soon as I can!]

I know this is last minute, but I decided to do a live Hangout on Google+ to talk about the solar eclipse. I’ve embedded the video below if you want to watch. If you want to ask questions, go to the link above or send me something on Twitter. If you leave a comment here I won’t see it!

Eclipse followup part 2: tons o’ links on how to safely watch | Bad Astronomy

Sun, 20 May 2012 16:45:32 +0000

Today’s the eclipse! I’m excited, though our weather here in Boulder has been fairly touch-and-go the past few weeks. I’m hoping for clear skies so I can see it; I got my eclipse glasses in the mail yesterday, so I’m all set. Locally, CU Boulder is holding a viewing in the football stadium! That’s a pretty nifty idea. As a reminder, the eclipse begins at 20:56 UTC (13:56 Pacific US time) on May 20, and ends at 02:49 UTC May 21 (19:49 on May 20 Pacific time).

I have links in an earlier post on where and when to watch (and yesterday I posted about why the "Supermoon" two weeks ago guarantees today’s eclipse being annular).

Observing the Sun during an eclipse can be tricky, since it’s very bright and can damage your eyes. Wikipedia has an excellent article about this. Something I want to make special note of: during the deepest eclipse, when the Sun is blocked the most, is ironically the most dangerous time to look at it with your unaided eye. Your pupil dilates (opens wide), letting in more light, but the parts of the Sun not ...

SpaceX launch aborted; next attempt Tuesday | Bad Astronomy

Sat, 19 May 2012 17:20:15 +0000

The launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 this morning was aborted at literally the last second — the sensors detected too high a pressure in a combustion chamber in one of the engines. Apparently this didn’t put the rocket in any danger, but it was outside the limits for an allowable launch so the computer shut things down.

[UPDATE: SpaceX is reporting a faulty valve caused the issue, and it's being replaced. They should be ready for the Tuesday launch window.]

Here’s video of the last few seconds of the countdown.

Ouch. My thoughts on this are pretty clear: it’s a bummer, but then again that’s all it is. Not a disaster, not a failure, just a setback. These are complicated, complex machines, and delays are inevitable.

The good news is there’s a backup launch date of Tuesday, May 22, at 07:44 UTC (03:44 Eastern US time), and another the next day, May 23, at 07:22 UTC. Hopefully, this glitch can be fixed and the rocket launched on one of those dates.

Followup: Supereclipse | Bad Astronomy

Sat, 19 May 2012 13:00:01 +0000

I wrote earlier about the annular eclipse happening this coming Sunday. It’s a solar eclipse, with the Moon blocking the Sun, but because the Moon is at apogee — the point in its orbit farthest from Earth — the Moon appears smaller in the sky, so it doesn’t completely block the Sun. We’re left with a ring of solar surface surrounding the Moon, the so-called Ring of Fire.

I got a couple of people asking me why this eclipse is happening at lunar apogee when we just had a "Supermoon", when the Moon was full at perigee (when it’s closest to Earth in its orbit). This is a good question! It’s not a coincidence. In fact, it must happen this way! Here’s why.

First, here’s a drawing of the Moon’s orbit, courtesy NASA:

The Moon orbits the Earth in an ellipse, so sometimes it’s closer to us, and sometimes farther. The ellipticity is exaggerated in the drawing; it’s actually about a 10% difference in distance between apogee and perigee. The Moon orbits the Earth once every 27.3 days, so ...

Don’t forget the Space X launch! | Bad Astronomy

Fri, 18 May 2012 20:24:58 +0000

Space X is looking good to launch its Falcon 9 + Dragon capsule on Saturday morning at 08:55 UTC (04:55 Eastern US time). NASA tweeted about it, saying there’s a 70% chance of good weather at that time. It’s Florida, so that can change in an instant. Check with NASA and Space X for updates.

Space X put together a press kit with details on the launch and mission activities. Via Universe Today I saw this nice video with a great CGI animation of what will happen:

It’s actually a couple of years old, but still fun to watch. NASA TV will be carrying the launch live, as will Space X, and Elon Musk — CEO of Space X– will be live-tweeting it.

Andromeda’s majestic spray of billions of hot stars | Bad Astronomy

Fri, 18 May 2012 17:33:00 +0000

Well, what can I say about this devastating and jaw-dropping picture of our nearest spiral neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy?

[Click to massive chainedmaidenate. Do it!]

Well, I could start with HOLY HALEAKALA!

This image is a collection of 11 separate observations of Andromeda taken by NASA’s GALEX satellite. Launched in 2003, GALEX (which stands for Galaxy Evolution Explorer) scans the sky in ultraviolet light, specifically targeting galaxies. Hot stars produce UV light, and so does the gas it illuminates, so by looking in the ultraviolet astronomers can learn about how galaxies are constructed. In the decade since its launch, GALEX has been phenomenally successful, cataloging hundreds of millions of galaxies, some as far as ten billion light years away!

This image of Andromeda is simply stunning. It’s comprised of two colors: what you see here as blue is higher-energy ultraviolet light, and red is lower energy (closer to the kind of light we see). Right away you can see that objects emitting the higher-energy UV are confined to the spiral arms, and lower-energy emitters are spread out across the galaxy. That’s exactly what I would expect: massive stars, the kind that really blast out UV, ...

The closest supernova candidate? | Bad Astronomy

Fri, 18 May 2012 13:00:51 +0000

[NOTE: Whenever I write about actual cosmic events that might possibly affect us on Earth, I get scared emails from some folks. So let me be up front: there are no stars close enough to Earth to hurt us should they explode. Nothing I write in this post changes that; I'm talking about a star that can go supernova that's closer than I thought any was, but still much too far away to do much to us. So don't panic. But do please enjoy the over-the-topness of what happens when a star explodes. Because it's cool.]

Back in January I started writing what I call BAFacts; daily snippets of astronomy factoids. I post them on Twitter and Google+, and I keep an archive of them on the blog, too.

On May 13 I tweeted this one: BAFact: A supernova has to be less than about 75 light years away to hurt us. No star that close can explode, so we’re OK. The distance may actually be somewhere between 50 – 100 light years, and it depends on the kind of exploding star, but I have to keep these factoids to about 110 characters to tweet them. Nuance is ...

As promised: Jupiter and moons seen by SOHO | Bad Astronomy

Thu, 17 May 2012 19:56:45 +0000

A little while back, I wrote about Jupiter appearing in an image from NASA’s SOHO Sun-observing satellite. I promised that it would soon appear in a SOHO camera that had higher magnification, and we’d be able to see its moons.

I am not one to break promises:

Awesome. It helps to set the resolution to 720p to see the moons when they’re pointed out.

And just you wait: in early June, Venus will appear in the LASCO C3 and C2 cameras, on its way for a date transiting the Sun for the last time in over a century. I’ll have more about that event in a few days… I promise!

Tip o’ the occulting bar to SungrazerComets on Twitter.

Related Posts:

- Jupiter, acting all superior
- Lovejoy lives!
- The Sun fries a comet and we got to watch
- The Galilean Revolution, 400 years later

Ring of fire eclipse on May 20 | Bad Astronomy

Thu, 17 May 2012 16:49:13 +0000

On Sunday, May 20, the Moon will pass between the Earth and the Sun, creating a solar eclipse.

However, this isn’t your usual event: because the Moon will be at apogee (the farthest point in its orbit), it won’t completely cover the face of the Sun. Instead of the Sun being totally blocked and the ethereal glow of its corona visible, we’ll see an annular eclipse, also called a "Ring of Fire" eclipse. The picture here — from the October 2005 annular eclipse — makes it clear why!

The eclipse begins at 20:56 UTC (16:56 Eastern US time) on May 20, and ends at 02:49 UTC May 21 (22:49 on May 20 Eastern time). Folks on the east coast of the US will not see the entire eclipse (for those on the extreme east coast, the Sun sets before the eclipse starts for that location [UPDATE: here's a good map to show you if you can see it or not, from the AstroGuyz site]), whereas people on the west coast will barely see the whole thing. For me, in Boulder, Colorado, the Sun ...

I was into astronomy when it was still astrology | Bad Astronomy

Thu, 17 May 2012 13:00:06 +0000

One of the things I love about the internet, and specifically Twitter, is how an offhand comment turns into awesome. And it happens within seconds.

For some reason, a super-hi-res picture of the Earth is making the rounds right now. It’s a gorgeous pic, and lots of people are sending me the link via email and Twitter. The thing is, I wrote about this picture back in April, on Earth Day. But such is the nature of the interwebz that stuff pops back up.

I appreciate that folks think enough of me to send me stuff, in case I hadn’t seen it. But in this case I figured I’d better stem the tide, so I tweeted about it, just basically saying thanks, but I already wrote about it.

Right after tweeting that, I realized how hipster it sounded. So I decided to go full hipster, tweeting:

It says, "I wrote about the Earth, it’s an obscure planet, you’ve probably never heard of it. #BadAstrohipster". I added the #BadAstrohipster hashtag as an afterthought; hashtags were originally meant to be used as a way to organize and categorize tweets, but now most ...

The long reach of the Centaur’s dark heart | Bad Astronomy

Wed, 16 May 2012 13:21:28 +0000

Every now again I get surprised by a photo, showing me something I didn’t know about. And I love it even more when that surprise is from an object I thought I knew!

So check out this incredible image of the nearby galaxy Centaurus A, a nearby galaxy harboring a whole slew of surprises:

[Click to galactinate, or get the 4000 x 4000 pixel version, or, if you're feeling frisky, cram this onto your hard drive: an image that's 8500 x 8400 pixels and 29 Mb in size! And trust me: you want to.]

Isn’t that stunning? This picture was taken by the MPG/ESO 2.2 meter telescope in Chile, and once you get over its beauty you’ll realize this galaxy is, frankly, seriously messed up.

Cen A is about 12 million light years away and has roughly the same mass as our Milky Way, containing a few hundred billion stars. The underlying glow of those stars is what makes that round background fuzz in the image, and takes on the familiar elliptical shape of many such galaxies. [Note: All the individual stars you see here are in our on galaxy, since we're inside ...

Help find Hubble’s Hidden Treasures | Bad Astronomy

Tue, 15 May 2012 15:00:57 +0000

I worked with Hubble Space Telescope data for about ten years, and one of the most amazing things about that was seeing the images fresh off the mirror. Knowing that no human on Earth had ever seen that particular object that sharply was a thrill.

Not every Hubble observation gets turned into a gorgeous image, though. A lot of them don’t need to be for scientific publications, for one thing, and for another not every observation is of a targeted object for a specific purpose. Because of that, there are probably hundreds and hundreds of amazing objects — galaxies, nebulae, star clusters — buried in the data, waiting to be found.

That’s where you come in: the folks at the European Space Agency’s Hubble HQ are holding a contest they call Hidden Treasures. You can look through the Hubble observation archive for images and tweak them using online tools they provide, or you can really roll up your sleeves and use professional astronomical software to prettify the images. They’ve made a video explaining the Hubble archive, which may help.

The contest has nice prizes (an iPod Touch, ...

If the Mayans were right, it was probably about Internet comments | Bad Astronomy

Tue, 15 May 2012 12:55:11 +0000

A little while back, I was at Utah State University to give a public talk about the threat from asteroid impacts and what we can do to stop them (PLUG ALERT: if you want me to come talk at your venue, my agent would love to hear from you).

While I was there I was interviewed by Utah Public Radio, and that interview is online.

I was also chatted up by the local TV station, KSL. I think it went OK, and they put it online as well:

[You may have to refresh this page to get the video to load.]

While I rather wish I had stated succinctly that even the basis of the "Mayan 2012 doomsday" nonsense is itself a gross misinterpretation of Mayan history, culture, and calendar, I think I was pretty clear. I have to walk a fine line sometimes: debunking crap doomsday scenarios like 2012 while also warning of real dangers like asteroid impacts… while neither over- or understating that danger. It’s a delicate balance.

A balance, I’ll note, which is apparently completely lost on some of the commenters on the KSL website who ...

WANT Part XIII: Moon throw | Bad Astronomy

Mon, 14 May 2012 19:00:15 +0000

When I’m getting the mid-afternoon drowsies, and looking for a comfortable, warm, cozy place to take a nap, what could possibly be better than… the impact crater-scarred surface of the Moon?

This may be the greatest blanket throw in the history of blankets. Who wouldn’t want to cuddle up in a little regolith?

And ZOMFSM and it comes with matching pillows! And there’s a floor cushion!

Supermoon, indeed.

Tip o’ the spacesuit visor to Design for Mankind via Jeri Ryan on Pinterest.

Related Posts:

- WANT Part XII: Earth Globe Fire Pit
- WANT Part XI: To boldly slice
- WANT Part X: The TARDIS. A REAL TARDIS!
- WANT Part IX: Levitating TARDIS edition
- WANT Part VIII: Zen and the art of Apollo maintenance
- Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnt!!!
- Want: Part 6
- Want: Part V, lunar furniture edition
- Want: Part IV
- Want: Part III
- Want: Part II
- Want

Psychedelic space station stars and cities | Bad Astronomy

Mon, 14 May 2012 17:01:23 +0000

The view from the International Space Station is always pretty cool, but when an astronaut points the camera at the Earth’s horizon and takes a series of short exposures, adding them together gives a view right out of Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s:

[Click to psilocybinate.]

Whoa, man!

Astronaut Don Petit took the pictures to make this composite. Basically, it’s a series of eighteen 30-second exposures added together so the motion of the ISS around the Earth makes the stars trail, the cities blur, and your mind expand, dude.

The brown and green glow over the horizon is the atmospheric aerosol layer; molecules that absorb sunlight during the day and release that energy at night. The red glow above that puzzles me; I’ve written about it before. It might be a reflection of lights from inside the space station, but I suspect it’s actually the aurora; it follows the curve of the Earth, and as you can see from the star trails the camera was pointed toward the poles — the direction you’re likely to see an aurora.

You can see faint star trails above the bright ones ...

Space X set to launch on Saturday May 19 | Bad Astronomy

Mon, 14 May 2012 15:31:19 +0000

The private company Space X is set to launch its Falcon 9 rocket with the Dragon space capsule to the International Space Station on Saturday, May 19, with a backup launch date of May 22.

The launch is set for 04:55 a.m. Eastern time, which is 09:55 08:55 UTC — there’ll be a live webcast at Space X’s site and no doubt NASA TV will carry it as well. They have what’s called an "instantaneous launch window", which means if they don’t launch right on time they can’t just wait a few minutes and try again; they’ll have to go to their backup date. The reason for this is the vagaries of orbital dynamics. The space station is circling the Earth, the planet is rotating underneath it, and the rocket itself has a certain amount of thrust to get Dragon into orbit so it can catch up to ISS. All this adds up to a single Go/No Go decision at the appointed time.

If all goes well, it’ll launch on Saturday, and then the Dragon will take a day to match orbits with ISS. ...

China’s space lab has a spot in the Sun | Bad Astronomy

Mon, 14 May 2012 12:30:55 +0000

On May 11, the phenomenal astrophotographer Thierry Legault took another amazing picture of the Sun (See Related Posts below for more of Thierry’s work that’s been featured here at the BA blog). Setting up his equipment in the south of France, he captured this truly magnificent shot of our nearest star… and when you finish picking your jaw off the floor, stick around, because your amazement isn’t done yet:

[Click to hugely ensolarnate.]

I know, right? That HUGE sunspot cluster is Active Region 1476, which has been blorting out some small flares, but nothing major. That’s a bit surprising, given how big and active the magnetic field is in those spots. Still, the cluster has grown to something like 200,000 km (120,000 miles) stem to stern, and that one big spot is 100,000 or so km (60,000 miles) across. Mind you, the Earth is about 13,000 km (8000 miles) across, so keep that in mind when you’re looking at it.

But there’s more to see! Including the reason Thierry took this picture in the first place…

See the ...

Fire, water, and ice | Bad Astronomy

Sat, 12 May 2012 13:00:10 +0000

Because you simply cannot have enough incredibly beautiful photographs of aurorae in your life, here’s one taken near Tromso, Norway, on March 28, 2012 by photographer Helge Mortensen:

[Click to coronalmassejectenate, and you should.]

What a shot! Dead center in the picture is the Pleiades, the small cluster of bright stars. The bright object is the Moon, and to the lower right is Venus. If you look carefully, just above the horizon, lies Jupiter. To see it, start at the Pleiades, let your eyes move down and to the right to Venus, then keep going; Jupiter is in line with the clouds, just at the edge of the aurora itself.

I love how that one long swooshing ribbon of aurora cuts across the whole picture. See how it looks broader to the left, then narrower as you follow it to the right? That’s almost certainly perspective making it looks smaller. It’s probably something like 100 kilometers (60 miles) above the Earth’s surface and follows the Earth’s curve. The far end of it, near the horizon, is much farther away than the part at the upper left.

And despite all the drama occurring ...

The start of a long, long dance | Bad Astronomy

Fri, 11 May 2012 12:30:29 +0000

A hundred million light years away, two gorgeous spiral galaxies are locked in an embrace that may end with them merging, a dance spread across a hundred thousand light years in space and a hundred million years of time.

[Click to galactinate, and yeah, just do it. The hi-res version is big and lush and lovely indeed.]

This image, taken by frequent BABlog contributor Adam Block, shows this cosmic waltz in lovely detail (another wonderful image is available via the ESO as well [UPDATE: ... and from Gemini, with a diagram of the two and a nice explanation]). The two galaxies (NGC 5426 on the left, and NGC 5427 on the right) are just starting this eons-long encounter, but affects are already visible. You can see tendrils of material stretching from NGC 5426 to its companion, drawn out by the force of NGC 5427′s gravitational attraction.

Inside the galaxies, you can easily see the pink glow of gas clouds, disturbed by the interaction, starting to furiously churn out hot young stars. Actually, stars of all masses are born in these clouds, but it’s the rare ...

Dawn flies over Vesta | Bad Astronomy

Thu, 10 May 2012 18:51:30 +0000

The Dawn mission has been orbiting the asteroid Vesta since July 2011. It’s taken thousands of images of the 500 kilometer-wide (300 mile) rock since then, and JPL just released an amazing video which uses real data from Dawn to simulate flying over the asteroid.

Wow. The animation at Marcia Crater (the bottom crater making up the Snowman triple impact) is especially beautiful and realistic!

Dawn is scheduled to leave Vesta in August and then take a long, slow voyage to the even-larger asteroid Ceres, arriving in 2015. So we still have several months of riveting images of Vesta to look forward to.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

Related Posts:

- Dawn dips down to Vesta
- Vesta’s odd bottom
- Vesta’s double whammy
- Vesta in breathtaking detail

Will ATK beat everyone into space? | Bad Astronomy

Thu, 10 May 2012 16:57:15 +0000

Right now, the future of US human space exploration is a little unsettled. NASA is still talking about building a new rocket system to replace the Shuttle, but it’s unclear how long it will take and how much it will cost. Space X is a private company that has already launched rockets into orbit, and is working to make their vehicles rated to carry humans (there are strict rules about that, which I’ll get to in a sec). They’re planning an uncrewed launch of the Falcon 9 rocket with a Dragon space capsule to the space station for May 19, which is a massive step in their plans to be the go-to company for launches.

Other companies are working on this as well. Jeff Bezos — billionaire creator of Amazon.com — has Blue Origin, a secretive group that is looking to launch sub-orbital and eventually orbital vehicles. Sierra Nevada is working on the Dream Chaser, another orbital vehicle (and they’re pretty far along with it, too). Orbital Sciences plans two test launches this year, including a pass of the space station as well.

And now ATK steps up. I’ve heard about their Liberty rocket, ...

A Sweet View of the Icarus of Comets

Thu, 10 May 2012 14:50:00 +0000

Comet C/2011 N3, a 160-foot-wide ball of rock and ice discovered by astronomers on July 4, 2011, was brutally incinerated by the sun’s atmosphere two days later.

C/2011 N3 is fondly remembered as the first comet ever captured on camera as it succumbed within the sun. Although comets appear in the solar neighborhood about twice a week, they usually disintegrate long before getting so close.

On July 4, Lockheed Martin astrophysicist Karel Schrijver spotted the comet on satellite images and quickly determined that it was on a collision course with the sun. He tracked its death plunge on July 6 with the ultraviolet camera on the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite. Over an exhilarating 10 minutes, Schrijver followed C/2011 N3 as it hurtled deep into the sun’s atmosphere before vanishing some 50,000 miles from the solar surface. He chronicled these final moments in a study published in Science in January...

Image: Comet C/2011 N3, seen in a series of UV images just before its death. Courtesy Wei Liu/Karel Schrijver/SDO/AIA/Lockheed Martin's Advanced Technology Center

What People in 1859 Thought of the Great Solar Storm (Hint: They Were Very Confused) | 80beats

Wed, 09 May 2012 17:41:15 +0000

An 1865 painting by Frederic Edwin Church, possibly inspired by the aurora of 1859.

On September 1, 1859, the sky erupted in color: “alternating great pillars, rolling cumuli shooting streamers, curdled and wisped and fleecy waves—rapidly changing its hue from red to orange, orange to yellow, and yellow to white, and back in the same order to brilliant red,” read a New York Times account. This was the aurora seen around the world.

Meanwhile, the telegraph operators were perplexed to find that the system suddenly failed. None of the lines worked, and telegraph paper spontaneously caught on fire. The aurora and disconnected telegraphs were both the working of the largest solar storm recorded in history.

As charged particles from the sun showered down onto Earth, people in 1859 didn’t quite know what to think. Matthew Lasar over at Ars Technica has collected historical accounts from reporters, telegraph operators, astronomers, and people who believed it was the end of the world. As science writers ourselves, we were especially curious to read this:

In the months shortly after the incident, newspapers and scientific journals found other possible causes. Scientific American postulated falling debris from active volcanoes, the San Francisco Herald theorized about “nebulous matter” from “planetary ...

Asteroid, mine | Bad Astronomy

Wed, 09 May 2012 16:45:30 +0000

I write a sporadically monthly column for Blastr, the science/science fiction web news portal for the SyFy channel. My latest is about asteroid mining — the company Planetary Resources announced recently they have big plans to Go Where No Mine Has Gone before, and I give it the once over.

As I said when I wrote about this earlier, I’m enthusiastic about it, but I’d like to see details. But I’ll say that the first few steps the company wants to take make a great deal of sense to me.

And hey, if you speak French — je ne pas parles merci bleh bleh PeeWee — the French newspaper 20 Minutes has an interview with me about all this as well. I think I come off sounding really smart, because I can’t understand a word of the interview.

More of my Blastr articles are listed below, too. I seem to have a predilection for destruction. Hmmm. Maybe I’ll write about unicorns and rainbows next.

Oh, wait.

Spitzer sees the glow of a boiling planet | Bad Astronomy

Tue, 08 May 2012 20:04:51 +0000

Since the first planet was discovered orbiting another Sun-like star in 1995, nearly 800 more have been discovered. Only a handful have been directly detected: most are discovered by their influence on their star, either by tugging it or blocking its light as the planet orbits (at the bottom of this post is a gallery of images of exoplanets detected in these ways). But some have been directly seen: either glowing by their own light, reflecting that of their star, or — ironically — seen when they’re not seen.

Say what? OK, this takes a sec to explain, but it’s cool.

The star 55 Cancri hosts at least 5 planets. Located 40 light years away, it’s one of the closer planetary systems, and has been intensely studied. One of the planets, 55 Cancri e, is bizarre: it’s twice the diameter of the Earth and has 8 times our mass. It’s thought to have a dense core surrounded by water… but Earth-like it ain’t. It orbits its star in a very tight orbit, circling it once every 18 hours. It’s so close to the star that the surface temperature is probably ...

"Dead" Galaxies Live On

Mon, 07 May 2012 15:50:00 +0000

“Red and dead” is the unflattering label astronomers attach to giant elliptical galaxies full of aged stars. But funeral plans may be premature. With the help of the Hubble Space Telescope’s recently enhanced vision, researchers have uncovered flickers of star formation in these quiescent galaxies.

Nobody had ever observed star birth in red-and-dead galaxies...

Dull, red-and-dead galaxies like Messier 87 (below) may not look as pretty as the youthful Antennae Galaxies (above), but they, too, contain regions where stars are forming. Courtesy NASA Hubble Heritage Team/ESA Hubble Collaboration

The Point on asteroid mining and antiscience | Bad Astronomy

Sat, 05 May 2012 13:00:28 +0000

The Point is a web-based talk show on the Young Turks YouTube channel where various issues are discussed by panelists. They have people send in short videos making some salient point, then panelists discuss it. Cara Santa Maria — the senior science correspondent at The Huffington Post — guest-hosted the show this last week, and asked me to send in a video for discussion. I talked about asteroid mining, which started an interesting discussion.

For more information about asteroid mining and Planetary Resources, you can read my recent post about them.

The video embedded above is set to start at my segment, but I’ll note that my friend Chris Mooney was the first video they discussed, talking his new book "The Republican Brain". Chris is always careful when he discusses this topic, knowing it will be misinterpreted willfully or otherwise, which of course it has been. But I do have to point out one thing that bugged me: noted science author K. C. Cole was on the panel, and I agreed with much of what she said. But when talking about Chris’s book, she brought out the "Well, there’s antiscience ...

Pursuit of Light | Bad Astronomy

Thu, 03 May 2012 18:00:42 +0000

I don’t think I need to tell you much about this. Set it to the highest resolution, make it full screen, sit back, and watch this NASA promotional video called "Pursuit of Light".

[A huge 3420 x 1152 pixel version is available for download as well.]

Most of the images shown have graced this blog over the past few months, and you can find various descriptions of them with details if you search.

But that’s not the point of this video. It’s to inspire: wonder, awe, beauty, majesty, curiosity, and imagination.

So, a note to NASA: YES. This is how you do it. Well done.

Star Breeding Grounds

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:50:00 +0000

Vast clouds of star-forming gas and dust burst into view in this newly released image of the constellations Cassiopeia and Cepheus, taken by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer satellite, or WISE. Space-based infrared telescopes like WISE allow astronomers to see past the hot, bright stars that dominate visible-light images and probe the subtle, cold regions of gas and dust where stars are born. The most frigid stuff, which can be –280 degrees Fahrenheit, appears red here; warmer objects look bluer...

Angry Birds make Phil angry (kinda) | Bad Astronomy

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 16:30:09 +0000

A few weeks ago, I got a note from my pal Brian Brushwood (via Ashley Paramore and, somehow, Veronica Belmont; the actual email path was Möbius-like) asking if I’d like to be a part of a short, funny video about Angry Birds Space for his videocast "Game On!"

Not being an idiot, I said yes. Here’s the result.

I had fun filming this! Angry Birds is evil and addicting and I don’t recommend downloading it unless you like evil and addicting games, which of course I do.

Sadly, "Game On!" was canceled. But the good news is that:

a) Veronica is now doing the show "Sword and Laser" with Tom Merrit on Felicia Day’s Geek and Sundry channel on YouTube, and

2) Brian has a book out, "Scam School", which I’ve been perusing and is both very funny and highly, highly evil*. It’s all about tricks and puzzles and brain teasers you can pull in bars to win free drinks off people (it also has the amazing super-cooled beeer thing in it). I’m really enjoying it, and you will too if you buy ...

Saints + Sinners: Satellite Crashers, Alien-Hunter Funders

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:45:00 +0000

Saint: The Environmental Protection Agency  In January the EPA launched a public database of power plants, landfills, and other facilities that emit at least 25,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases annually. In addition to providing eye-popping statistics—for example, the dirtiest 3 percent of these large facilities account for 45 percent of their total emissions—the registry should put pressure on companies to cut emissions and to report them accurately.

Sinners: Nuclear Looters  Over the last year political turmoil in Egypt has led to looting of shops, restaurants, and museums. Now it has spread to a scarier target: nuclear storage sites. In January, the International Atomic Energy Agency announced that unidentified thieves had stolen “low-level radioactive sources” from a safe at El Dabaa, the planned site of Egypt’s first nuclear power plant...

More debunking of the ex-NASA 49 climate change deniers | Bad Astronomy

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 12:34:34 +0000

Remember that embarrassingly bad letter written by 49 ex-NASA employees saying that global warming is a fraud and that NASA shouldn’t support it?

Over at Scholars and Rogues, Brian Angliss tears it apart for the sham that it is. It’s a pretty good review that destroys the claims made in the letter and has plenty of links to back up the debunking.

I find a lot of the climate change deny-o-sphere pretty baffling. A lot of the claims are trivially wrong, a lot more are cherry-picked and can be seen to be wrong when presented in the correct context, and others are just spin and rhetoric ("carbon dioxide is plant food!") that is facile at best and outright nonsense at worst. Of course, many of them touted this letter by the ex-NASA 49 as more proof that climate change is wrong. Amazing.

So as usual, let me make this clear:

The Earth is warming up. The rate of warming has increased in the past century or so. This corresponds to the time of the Industrial Revolution, when we ...

Come to Space Fest IV! | Bad Astronomy

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 12:30:36 +0000

Like space? Like astronomy? Wanna meet some astronauts, astronomers, space artists, and hang out with like-minded space enthusiasts?

Then you want to come to Space Fest IV, a convention for people with their feet on the ground but their heads in the clouds.

SpaceFest IV will be from May 30 to June 2, 2012 in Tucson, Arizona. The speakers there are top-notch, including my friends Andy Chaikin, Dan Durda, Emily Lakdawalla, and Seth Shostak. Also in attendance will be a slew of astronauts, including quite a few who walked on the Moon! It’s also a gathering of fantastic space artists, and the art on display is always pretty amazing.

I went to the first and second SpaceFests and had a great time, and that’s why I’ll be back at SpaceFest IV! I’m speaking at 09:00 Saturday morning, and generally hanging out and soaking up the awesome. Admission for all three days starts at $105, and there are lots of special packages.

I hope to see y’all there!

Related Posts:

- SpaceFest Report 1
-

Happy 22nd, Hubble! | Bad Astronomy

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:08:46 +0000

Today is the 22nd anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope. I worked on Hubble one way or another for a decade or so, and it changed not just my life, but the lives of astronomers around the world, and of course forever altered — for the better! –how the public viewed of astronomy.

To acknowledge this, below is a repost of my "Ten Things You Don’t Know About Hubble", first put on the blog in 2010, and which I think still holds up. And what better way to celebrate this observatory’s anniversary than to get to know it a little better?

Introduction

On April 24, 1990, the Space Shuttle Discovery roared into space, carrying on board a revolution: The Hubble Space Telescope. It was the largest and most sensitive optical-light telescope ever launched into space, and while it suffered initially from a focusing problem, it would soon return some of the most amazing and beautiful astronomical images anyone had ever seen.

Hubble was designed to be periodically upgraded, and even as I write this, astronauts are in the Space Shuttle Atlantis installing two new cameras, fixing two others, and replacing a whole slew of Hubble’s parts. ...

Breaking: Private company does indeed plan to mine asteroids… and I think they can do it | Bad Astronomy

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 06:01:45 +0000

Planetary Resources, Inc. is not your average startup: its mission is to investigate and eventually mine asteroids in space!

Last week, the company issued a somewhat cryptic announcement saying they “will overlay two critical sectors – space exploration and natural resources – to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP”. I predicted this meant they wanted to mine asteroids, and yes, I will toot my own horn: I was right. They’re holding a press conference Tuesday morning to officially announce they’re going asteroid hunting.

The company had a pretty fierce amount of credibility right off the bat, with several ex-NASA engineers, an astronaut, and planetary scientists involved, as well as the backing of not one but several billionaires, including a few from Google… not to mention James Cameron. The co-founders of Planetary Resources are Peter Diamandis — he created the highly-successful X-Prize Foundation, to give cash awards to incremental accomplishments that will help achieve technological breakthroughs, including those for space travel — and Eric Anderson, X-Prize board member and Chairman of the Board of the Space Spaceflight Federation.

These are very, very heavy hitters. Clearly, they’re not ...