Online Scratchpad | the astronote

Night Sky Calendar - Southern Hemisphere

June 2008

Celestial Object

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 photo was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and shows a detail of the nebula. This close-up shows a dense cloud of dust and gas, a stellar nursery full of embryonic stars. This cloud is about 8 light-years away from the nebula's central star, not shown in this picture. Located in Sagitarius, the nebula's name means "divided into three lobes".

Featured Book ~ The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut | Mike Mullane

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.

Monday, March 20, 2006

Front Wheel on Mars Rover Gets Troubled

One of the front wheel on the NASA's Spirit rover has stopped operating. This is one of the series of technical hitches encountered by the aging rover. Spirit has already been unable to use its rock abration tool for its worn-out teeth. The recent trouble has forced the rover to drag the front wheel while it moves on the Martian surface. According to the rover engineering team, the motor that rotates the wheel has ceased to function. Front wheel of the rovers has troubled before because of lubrication problem but the engineers on Earth managed to fix the problem. Spirit is now roaming a elevated terrain known as "McCool Hill" and trying to get to the North-facing side of the terrain.

Mission Website

Posted @ 8:00 PM by kinzi

Thursday, March 16, 2006

What a Strange Looking Nebula

An unprecedented double helix nebula was spotted by NASA's Infrared Spitzer Telescope. It lies in the center of our galaxy, and is located about 300 light years from gigantic black hole of the galactic center. Earth lies 25,000 away from it. The nebula spans 80 light years. The shape of nebula is different from most known nebula in cosmic realm. The structure looks like a DNA molecule, two intertwining strands wrapped around each other as seen in the picture below.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

Posted @ 9:10 PM by kinzi

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

New Icy Super Earth Discovered

A "Super Earth" that weighs 13 times as much as our planet was discovered by an international collaboration of astronomers. The new planet is orbiting a red dwarf from a cold outer region of the system. The Neptune-sized planet has a frigid surface temperature measuring at -330 degrees Fahrenheit, it's one of the coldest planets ever discovered outside our solar system. The distant system lies 9,000 light years away and found by observing a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. It is when a massive object such as a star crosses in front of another distant star. The object's strong gravity bends the light rays from the more distant star and magnifies them like a lens. Here on Earth, we see the magnified star get brighter as the lens star crosses in front of it, and then fade as the lens gets farther away.

As pointed by Andrew Gould, leader of the MicroFUN collaboration and professor of astronomy at Ohio State University, the finding of the new icy planet outside our solar system has suggested that these icy super-Earths are pretty common and are three times more common than Jupiter-sized planets.

Full Story

Posted @ 7:40 PM by kinzi

Years of Observing Combined Into Best-Yet Look at Mars Canyon

A new view of the biggest canyon in the solar system, merging hundreds of photos from NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter, offers scientists and the public an online resource for exploring the entire canyon in detail. This canyon system on Mars, named Valles Marineris, stretches as far as the distance from California to New York. Steep walls nearly as high as Mount Everest give way to numerous side canyons, possibly carved by water. In places, walls have shed massive landslides spilling far out onto the canyon floor.

A simulated fly-through using the newly assembled imagery is available online at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/missions/odyssey/20060313.html.

The fly-through plus tools for wandering across and zooming into the large image are at http://themis.asu.edu.

Small parts of the canyon have been seen at higher resolution, but at 100 meters (328 feet) per pixel, the new view has sharper resolution than any previous imaging of the entire canyon.

In addition to the completed mosaic of Valles Marineris images, the camera team has also prepared an online data set of nearly the entire planet of Mars at 232 meters (760 feet) per pixel, the most detailed global view of the red planet. The team plans to post 100-meter-resolution mosaics of other regions of Mars in coming months.

Source: JPL News Release

Posted @ 7:35 PM by kinzi

Saturday, March 11, 2006

Mars Orbiter Reaches the Red Planet

The Mars Recconaissance Orbiter (MRO) successfully enters Mars orbit in elliptical path, ending the tension among mission team for dealing with the MRO's critical phase. The Mars probe is now undertaking orbit adjustment called "aerobraking" to put itself in a circular orbit and reaches the targeted altitude that ranging from 320 kilometers (199 miles) to 255 kilometers (158 miles), which is lower than any other Mars probes currently orbitting the red planet. This process takes for 6 months. The probe's scientific study on Mars will commence in November 2006.

Launched in August 2005, MRO traveled about 500 million kms (310 million miles) to reach Mars. The spacecraft carries six scientific instruments that will study Mars's surface and atmosphere in unprecedented detail.

More info on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter can be found here at www.nasa.gov/mro

Posted @ 10:44 AM by kinzi

Friday, March 10, 2006

Potential Liquid Water Discovered on Enceladus

I've just received a newsletter from NASA/JPL and here's the shocking news. The Saturn's moon of Enceladus could have reservoirs of liquid water! That means there could be a potential living organism lurking on the icy moon (and this is my hasty conclusion). Data from Cassini spacecraft that orbitting the ringed planet have indicated the evidence of icy jets and towering plumes ejecting large quantities of particles at high speed. The possibility is that the jets might be erupting from near-surface pockets of liquid water above 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit), like cold versions of the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone.

Scientists have long been baffled by the presence of oxygen atoms in the Saturnian system, now that oddity is explained by this finding. Enceladus is spewing out water molecules, which break down into oxygen and hydrogen. I think that this is another supporting evidence for the existance of liquid water on the moon. With this finding, Enceladus surely becomes one the most exciting places in solar system, waiting for the next big scrutiny and another NASA's prime mission targets after Europa, Titan and Triton.

Read the press release by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory for details
Image credit: NASA

Posted @ 12:26 PM by kinzi

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Near its Risky Stage

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) will enter a critical phase in its endeavour to reach the red planet. Mission team at Jet Propulposion Laboratory is anxious to see the moment when MRO gets into Mars orbit on March 10. After travelling from Earth at the speed of 6,400 miles per hour and currently approaching Mars at a distance of 325,000 miles away, the instruments-laden spacecraft will fire its main engine before reaching the planet to slow down its speed in order to slip into the right orbit. This nail-biting process is scheduled on March 10 at 4:47 p.m. EST (2147 GMT). The engine burning will take place for 27 minutes and if successful the spacecraft will be captured by Mars gravity and enter a very elongated elliptical orbit just 250 miles above Mars at its closest point and stretching as far as 27,340 miles at the highest point. But if there is a burning mishap or the burn does not happen, the probe would be doomed to fly right past Mars and the $720 million mission would add another failure list on NASA's Mars mission probes since 1993. Mars Observer and Mars Climate Orbiter previously failed to orbit Mars due to technical failure during phases when the probes entering the Mars orbit. The Mars Observer disappeared a few days before reaching the red planet, apparently because of a fuel system pressurization mishap, and the Mars Climate Orbiter was off course due to a navigational error in 1998.

MRO carries 6 scientific instruments, including a high-resolution camera that can spot rocks as small as three-feet across and surface layering that will be critical to Mars research as well as selecting safe but interesting sites for future landers.

Mission Website

Posted @ 7:02 PM by kinzi

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Comet Pojmanski Gives Stargazers a Surprising Visit

Comet Pojmanski, catalouged as C/2006 A1, is today grabbing skywatchers' attention since its discovery in early January this year. Detected for the first time in the deep Southern sky at the constellation Indus, it is steadily heading to the Northern sky. Folks in the mid Northern latitude will be able to dispatch the comet using binocular. It will brighten at the maximun magnitude of 5 as it approaches the Sun. The shining moment is at its best during the last days of February and the first week of March in the dawn morning sky. The comet will be passing closest to Earth on March 5, when it be 71.7 million miles (115.4 million kilometers) away. After March 5, the comet will be receding from both the Sun and Earth and rapidly fade as it heads back out into space, beyond the limits of the outer solar system.

Comet Pojmanski was discoverd on January 2 by Grzegorz Pojmanski at the Warsaw University Astronomical Observatory on a photograph that was taken on New Year's Day from the Las Campanas Observatory in La Serena, Chile, as part of the All Sky Automated Survey (ASAS).

Check out these links for a guide to spot the comet.
A diagram showing the current location of the comet
A few pictures snapped by some astronomers
Keep up with its doings at the Comet Observation Home Page

Posted @ 3:08 PM by kinzi

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Latest Portrait From Hubble

Giant galaxies were not assembled in a day. Neither was this Hubble Space
Telescope image of the face-on spiral galaxy Messier 101 (M101). It is
the largest and most detailed photo of a spiral galaxy that has ever
been released from Hubble. The galaxy's portrait is actually composed of 51
individual exposures taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys
and the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 in March 1994, September 1994,
June 1999, November 2002, and January 2003. The newly composed image
also includes elements from images from ground-based photos.

More story

Posted @ 5:07 PM by kinzi

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ryan kinzi
Nightsky calendar (a brief version) by Skymaps & NASA's Space Calendar | Image of FCO - credit: NASA. Hosting generously provided by Site Design Magazine
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M20 | NGC 6514

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