07 - Mercury
at inferior conjunction with the Sun
at 15h UT.
0000Mercury
passes into the morning sky (not visible).
08 - Moon
near Mars at 1h UT (evening sky). Mag.
+1.5.
19 - Venus
at superior conjunction with the Sun
at 4h UT.
0000Passes
into the evening sky (not visible).
19 - Moon
near Saturn at 7h UT (evening sky).
Mag. +0.7.
18 - Full Moon at 17:30 UT.
20 - Moon near Jupiter at 14h
UT (morning sky). Mag. -2.7. Jupiter displays
the
0000largest
and most detailed planetary disk of all the
planets. Even a small telescope
0000will
reveal Jupiter's cloud bands and its four largest
moons known as the Galilean
0000moons
(discovered by Galileo in 1610). Jupiter has
a total of 63 moons.
20 - Pluto at opposition at
16h UT. Mag. 14. Requires at least a 10-inch
telescope and
0000a
very dark sky to view.
20 - June solstice at 23:59
UT. The time when the Sun reaches the point
farthest north
0000of
the celestial equator marking the start of summer
in the Northern Hemisphere
000
and winter in the Southern Hemisphere.
00 0 0
0 0 0//
Get the complete calendar version
at skymaps.com
7 -
The
Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut
- On February 1, 1978, the first group of space shuttle
astronauts, twenty-nine men and six women, were introduced
to the world. Among them would be history makers, including
the first American woman and the first African American
in space. This assembly of astronauts would carry NASA
through the most tumultuous years of the space shuttle
program. Four would die on Challenger. Mullane vividly
portrays every aspect of the astronaut experience --
from telling a female technician which urine-collection
condom size is a fit; to walking along a Florida beach
in a last, tearful goodbye with a spouse; to a wild,
intoxicating, terrifying ride into space; to hearing
"Taps" played over a friend's grave. Mullane is brutally
honest in his criticism of a NASA leadership whose bungling
would precipitate the Challenger disaster.
Sunday, November 27, 2005
Sample from Asteroid Itokawa Successfully Collected
The latest attempt by Hayabusa spacecraft was reported a succes. Hayabusa has touched down and believed to have collected surface material from the asteroid Itokawa. It's great news to Japan Space Agency, JAXA after a serries of failure to accomplish the goal, including the loss of mini robotic probe, "minerva". The sampling process was undertaken by firing a projectile to loosen the surface material. The sample-return mission on the asteroid become the first ever mission carried out by any spacecraft. Hayabusa is expected to arrive on Earth in July 2007, land in the Australian outback.
Collecting material samples from asteroid is of importance because asteroid is believed to have materials created at the birth of our solar system, materials that unchanged in composition over the ages. The study of the asteroid materials could unveil the secret on how the solar system come into being.
Itokawa, named after the Japanese rocket scientist Hideo Itokawa, is 690m (2,300 ft) long and 300m (1,000 ft) wide and has a gravitational pull only 1/100,000th that of Earth's.
Betelgeuse and Aldebaran, Stars that on the Show in My Nighttime
If you are in the Southern Hemisphere and sitting down in your backyard at 10 o'clock at night, looking up and seeing the dark sky as far as you can, you might end up staring at these two eye-catching bright stars located at 2 o'clock direction, Betelgeuse and Aldebaran. The orangish looking stars seem to outshine the nearby stars and indeed classified as the brightest stars in the dark sky. Betelgeuse and Aldebaran are of particular interest of me. Both are now in the red phase, that means they are now at the end of their life cycle. A supernova explosion will erase their existance in their respective constellation, Orion and Taurus. But wait a minute, this will happen in the next thousands of years, if not, even longer. What will happen when Betelgeuse (sound like "beetle juice") explode as a supernova? What will it look like when viewing from our planet?
Betelgeuse would brighten at least 10,000 times as a supernova, causing it to shine with the luminosity of a crescent Moon. Some sources predict a maximum apparent magnitude equal to about that of the full Moon (mv = -12.5). This would likely last for several months. It would look like a brilliant point, the brightness of a full Moon with the color of an incandescent bulb at night, and easily visible in daylight. After that period the star will gradually diminish until after some months or years the star completely disappears, and Orion's left shoulder vanishes (quoted from Wikipedia). Betelgeuse is located 427 light years away in the constellation Orion. 1 light year is approximately equal to 10 trillion km.
Meanwhile, Aldebaran has diameter 38 times than that of Earth, and is located 65,1 light year away. Aldebaran is the brightest star in the constellation Taurus and one of the brightest stars in the nighttime sky. In 1997, a possible large planet (or small brown dwarf) companion was reported, with a minimum mass of 11 Jupiters and orbiting at a distance of 1.35 AU. 1 AU is the distance of Earth to the Sun. The unmanned Pioneer 10 spacecraft was last reported to have been heading toward Aldebaran. Assuming the spacecraft avoids some form of collision, the spacecraft will arrive at Aldebaran in 2 million years (info from Wikipedia). That's interesting.
These two stars are always night companions in my journey into admiring God's creation of the vastness and richest of universe. I'm always looking at these two stars and wondering if they speak to me and conveying message "kinzi, we are late old stars, and soon to die but the greatness of us will always prevail forever on your inhabitants' mind." Well, just my humble words.;)
A Japanese robotic probe failed to communicate with its orbitting mothership, Hayabusa, after deployment to Itokawa asteroid. Japanese mission controller said that the probe didn't touch down and they lost contact with it after minutes released. It was not known where it went. This is a blow to Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) because one of their primary purpose is to collect soil sample from the asteroid surface and deliver it back to Earth. After a month hovering the asteroid, and snapped pictures of the asteroid landscape, the spacecraft should return to Earth with the sample in December and expected to reach the Terra Firma in 2007.
NASA Spitzer Infrared Telescope snapped a picture of giant pillars of cool gas and dust. The object region reminded me of the iconic image of Eagle Nebula, popularly known as "pillars of creation", taken in 1995 by Hubble space telescope. The infrared view of the nebula is quite unique thanks to the capability of the Spitzer telescope that can penetrate into the glowing gas and dust, and captured many newborn stars inside the region. The largest pillar is driven by radiation and winds from hot, massive stars. Located 7000 light years away in the constellation Cassiopeia, the majestic pillars are dubbed "cosmic mountains of creation".
Yesterday I roamed the night sky with my naked-eyes. I was trying to see the Andromeda galaxy, which in ideal condition, it will prevail its gigantic feature. But I am not at the right place at the time, I am in the heart of city light. So to see it with the naked-eyes is not possible. But I am eager to watch it because according to the night sky calendar, this month of the year, the island of universe is at its best for viewing. Then, I took out my telescope and search for a dark spot. Well, It's an ardous effort to locate the galaxy. With the sky map in hand, I was trying to figure out its location by following the path of the constellation Aries and Pegasus and tracking the individual star on the constellations. Then I found it after couple of minutes try. Only white speck was seen. I was excited although it's not so impressive image. Well, next time, I think I can go out to remote place away from the city to see this celestial object again.
Sorry for not having time to update this journal for couple of months due to loss of enthusiasm in both real and blogging life. Anyway, we have a rather exciting news from NASA informing us that now Pluto, the ninth and debatable planet in solar system, has possible two new moons in addition to Charon. The news came from the recent observation of Hubble space telescope on this tiny planet. The new moons, dubbed respectively as S/2005 P1 and S/2005 P2, are only between 45km and 160km in diameter. By comparison, Charon's diameter is about 1,200km. The objects is hard to discern as it is 5000 fainter than Pluto itself. Orbital distance of these moons from Pluto is at least twice than Charon's one. P2 stays about 49,000km from the planet, P1 lies even further away at 65,000km. Pluto lies in the Kuiper Belt object, a vast region containing icy objects beyond Neptune's orbit. With the discovery, Pluto will be the first object in Kuiper Belt region known to have more than one satellite.
The
Oort cloud, is a postulated spherical cloud
of comets situated about 50,000 to 100,000 AU from
the Sun. This is approximately 1000 times the distance
from the Sun to Pluto or roughly one light year, almost
a quarter of the distance from the Sun to Proxima
Centauri, the star nearest the Sun. The Oort cloud
would have its inner disk at the ecliptic from the
Kuiper belt. Although no direct observations have
been made of such a cloud, it is believed to be the
source of most or all comets entering the inner solar
system (some short-period comets may come from the
Kuiper belt), based on observations of the orbits
of comets. Source: Wikipedia
Viewing the Andromeda Galaxy 