Bad Astronomy

Victoria, Australia government wants to stop free pertussis vaccines

Phil Plait — Tue, 29 May 2012 18:38:57 +0000

[Note: Although I think it's clear in the text below, I changed the title of this post to reflect the fact that it's the Victorian government doing this, not the Federal Australian government.]

In Australia, pertussis — whooping cough — is at epidemic levels. There were over 38,000 cases last year, and it’s killed eight babies since 2008. Despite this, the Health Minister of Victoria wants to cut a program that provides free pertussis vaccines for caregivers and parents of babies. He claims (under advice of a panel of experts) that it isn’t providing sufficient clinical results, but many doctors are concerned what this will do to the already too-high rates of infection.

Even if the results aren’t as good as hoped, it would make sense to fund this program until infection rates are down, at least to where they were before the epidemic.

Toni McCaffery — the mother of Dana McCaffery, one of those eight infants killed by pertussis — has created a petition to continue the program. If you live in Australia, I urge you to read it and sign it if you choose.

And please, please talk to your board-certified doctor and see ...

Rainbow Pinwheel galaxy

Phil Plait — Tue, 29 May 2012 13:00:31 +0000

I have no shame in admitting I love face-on spiral galaxies. Scientifically, of course, they’re fascinating; spread out in front of us are all the inner workings of a galaxy. It’s like having an X-ray of human body in front of you, making it easier to understand anatomy.

But their beauty… well. The scope and grandeur of a face-on spiral is unparalleled, I think, in astronomy, or perhaps any field of science. But don’t take my word on it. See for yourself.

[Click to galactinate, or get a 1900 x 1200 desktop image.]

This is the wonderful nearby spiral M101, and is a composite of no fewer than four orbiting observatories! It has images from Hubble, Spitzer, Chandra, and GALEX. These represent (in order) observations in visible light (shown as yellow in the picture), infrared (red), X-ray (purple) and ultraviolet (blue).

Each shows a different aspect of the galaxy. Visible light shows stars and gas, infrared indicates warm dust, X-ray show hot gas and energetic objects like supernovae and black holes, and ultraviolet is where young stars glow and light the gas around them. Each observation is incredibly ...

Another tiny rock will pass Earth tomorrow

Phil Plait — Mon, 28 May 2012 18:15:23 +0000

[tl;dr: A small 5-10 meter asteroid will pass us tomorrow; it poses no danger to us.]

[UPDATE (May 29, 16:30 UTC): The JPL website for this asteroid has been updated - the rock passed us at the predicted distance of about 14,500 km from the Earth's surface. The new numbers use 50 observations of the asteroid (the earlier orbit calculations used far fewer), so this looks pretty solid to me. As we knew all along, it was a close pass, but nothing to worry about.]

I recently wrote about near-Earth asteroid 2012 KP24, a house-sized (25 meter) rock. As I write this it passed us safely just a few hours ago, as predicted.

But thanks to scibuff and AsteroidWatch on Twitter, I just learned of another tiny visitor that will buzz past us tonight/tomorrow, May 29, at around 07:00 UTC (03:00 Eastern US time). Called 2012 KT42, this one is even smaller than KP24: it’s probably less than 10 meters across — about the size of a school bus or more likely a minivan. And it’ll be a close shave: though the ...

Memorial Day 2012

Phil Plait — Mon, 28 May 2012 13:00:11 +0000

[Note: Today is Memorial Day, a US tradition where we remember the contributions of those in the military who have fallen. Yesterday, I was thinking about what to write about it. My dad was in the Navy just after World War II, but I wasn't sure what to write about that. I decided to put the idea aside for a time, since I have a deadline for an article I'm writing about space exploration. While looking up old blog posts for that, I happened by coincidence on something I wrote three years ago, on July 20, 2009, the 40th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11. I am reposting it below. For reasons that will be clear if you read the whole thing, I don't think there's more I could say on this day.]

On July 20, 1969, at 20:17:40 GMT, human beings landed on an alien world.

That was the moment that the Eagle lander touched down on the surface of the Moon, 40 years ago today. Nearly five hours later, at 02:56:15 GMT on July 21, Neil Armstrong placed his boot in the lunar regolith, planting it firmly into history as well.

You can read all about this ...

Dragon hunting above, dragon hunting below

Phil Plait — Sun, 27 May 2012 13:10:20 +0000

On May 23 — the day after the SpaceX Dragon capsule launch — International Space Station astronaut André Kuipers snapped this shot of the Earth:

[Click to ensmaugenate.]

André — who’s Dutch — put this up with the caption "Er zit een draak achter ons aan!" — "There’s a dragon after us!". That’s a funny pun, given the name of the capsule that was already on its way there.

But he didn’t say what this feature was! I wanted to find out, and wound up with a fun story.

Because I was curious, I first read the comments on the Flickr page for this picture. Flickr use PC101 said it was Lake Puarun in Peru seen at an oblique angle. I looked on Google maps, and there’s a decent resemblance. But it didn’t sit right with me. I couldn’t get enough landmarks to match up between the two photos, so I investigated a bit more.

Looking at the picture header, it says the photo was taken at 05:58 UTC on May 23, 2012. Wolfram Alpha shows that’s when ISS was over Australia, way too far around the Earth ...

Your last chance to see Venus for the next few weeks

Phil Plait — 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:

-

In which I SEE the light

Phil Plait — Fri, 25 May 2012 19:00:27 +0000

The Science and Entertainment Exchange is a program run by the National Academy of Sciences (!) to hook up entertainment professionals and scientists. The idea is to get better science in movies, and a better portrayal of scientists themselves. The win for science is obvious, but it also means better movies – a lot of folks in Hollywood want the science in their movies to be better – and better stories. Everyone wins!

Marty Perreault, the SEE Director, asked me to write an article for SEE’s blog, and not being a fool I agreed. I figured I’d write about how I used to be kindof a nitpicky science accuracy Nazi when it came to movies, but then figured out (with some help) that maybe there’s more to movie-making than educating people about science.

The article — "How I Stopped Worrying (About Science) and Learned to Love the Story" — is now online. It’s relatively short, but I think you’ll like it. Here’s a brief excerpt:

Movie after movie came and went, and I watched each in the darkened theater, off to the side, hunched over my notepad with my ...

Small asteroid to buzz Earth on May 28

Phil Plait — 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

Phil Plait — 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!

Phil Plait — 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

Phil Plait — 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

Obi Wan better watch his back

Phil Plait — Thu, 24 May 2012 18:45:00 +0000

It’s a tough time to be a science fiction hero. Just look at the headlines for proof!

First, there’s this:

Honestly, that’s not surprising. He does seem to get into trouble wherever he goes. So misunderstood. But it would’ve been interesting to know where the TARDIS materialized in that situation.

This next one though is clearly her own fault:

Not that I blame her. I’ve spent many an hour alone in an observatory, and I imagine the Astrometrics Lab on Voyager wasn’t that much more entertaining. Hey Janeway, maybe this wouldn’t have happened if you had let her use the Holodeck more!

Tip o’ the sonic screwdriver to my sister Marci, and to Jeri Ryan on G+ who linked to Kevin Hanning’s post. And yes, those are real headlines.

SpaceX Dragon capsule buzzed the space station

Phil Plait — 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

Phil Plait — 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

Phil Plait — 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 ...

Cateidolia

Phil Plait — Wed, 23 May 2012 16:41:01 +0000

Via my pal Miss Cellania (possibly not her real name) at Neatorama, I saw this short cat video which is really pretty funny:

Ha! This is a great example of audio pareidolia; hearing (instead of seeing, as it’s usually done) some recognizable pattern in a completely unrelated series of noises. It helps a lot if you’re cued in some way to hear it with subtitles. In this case the title of the Neatorama post had me listening for the words "I don’t want to", but I think I would’ve heard it anyway.

But I wonder: if they were going to a dispensary and asked the cat what they were getting, would you hear "marijuana"?

Check out the posts below for more of this sort of thing. The first one still makes me laugh.

Related Posts:

- It’s Caturday? NONONONO.
- Ba? Fa!
- The hallmark of a black hole
- Carmina Buraneidolia

Saturn, surreally

Phil Plait — 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!

Phil Plait — 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

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

Phil Plait — 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

Phil Plait — Mon, 21 May 2012 15:15:46 +0000
Click here to view gallery

The May 20, 2012 annular solar eclipse in motion

Phil Plait — 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

Phil Plait — 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

Phil Plait — 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 ...

Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe (of asteroid mining and Mayans)

Phil Plait — Sun, 20 May 2012 13:00:15 +0000

As a change of pace, I was the guest rogue on this week’s episode of The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe. We covered a lot of ground, from Futurama heads to asteroid mining to Mayans… and I have an abysmal record at the Science or Fiction segment when I’m on the show, so you can hold your breath in anticipation to see if I finally get one right, or once again go down in flames. I’ll note, obviously, that I always get it right when I listen to the show at home.

And nothing says love like Rebecca promising she’d freeze my head. Such a romantic.

SpaceX launch aborted; next attempt Tuesday

Phil Plait — 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.

Related Posts:

- Space X set to launch on Saturday May 19
- Elon Musk of SpaceX on CBS’s 60 Minutes
- SpaceX ...