Category: Sciencey Stuff

This HST photo took my breath away.

For the 21st anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA released this mesmerizing picture of 2 galaxies colliding called ARP 273, nicknamed The Galactic Rose.  This photo shows the 2 galaxies individually named UGC 1810, the larger galaxy, and its companion UGC 1813.  Millions of years ago the smaller galaxy, UGC 1813, passed through UGC 1810 causing the distortion that you can see.  The larger companion has 5 times the mass of the smaller and probably stripped out much of its baryonic matter.  We don’t know yet about the volume of Dark energy or matter.  UGC 1810 was a spiral galaxy similar to our own Milky Way, but now has the lopsided appearance that gives them the rose shape that we see today.

Arp 273 lies in the constellation Andromeda and is roughly 300 million light-years away from Earth.  That’s 1.76 septillion miles or 1,762,376,745,600,000,000,000,000 miles away or 1 septillion,762 sextillion, 376 quintillion, 745 quadrillion, 600 trillion miles or a long far ways.

Notice the blue clusters around the edge?  These are star clusters of very large stars (many times bigger than our sun) that collected matter from the collision forming super-giant and super-hot stars.  The brightest spots that have the diffraction spikes are stars from our Milky Way in front of the camera as viewed from earth orbit.  If you look at the fuzzies in the background – those are other galaxies that are much farther away.

As I said – Breathtaking.

bob

Since July 21 1969 the landing sites of the Apollo missions had not been seen until the LRO, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, photographed them earlier this year.  Launched earlier this year the LRO’s mission was to take the highest resolution photographs ever of the surface in preparation for future moon landings.  Here is a photo released in July for the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing.  This photo and the original photos of the other landing sites were taken before LRO settled into its close orbit.  Here is Apollo 12, ClickThePic to visit the LRO website and see the high resolution versions.

Now that LRO has settled into its permanent orbit the resolution is much better.  Depending on lighting and angle it is able to capture as little as 20 inches per pixel.  So what do we see with better resolution?  Check out the Apollo 11 landing site.

Remember the story of how Neil Armstrong saw that the computer was going to land them in a boulder field near West Crater.  If you look closely to the left of West Crater you can actually see some of the larger boulders strewn out towards Little West Crater.

Here’s a closeup of the Lunar Module Descent Stage.

That darker line over the unmarked arrow towards Little West Crater are Neil Armstrong’s footprints, the brightest spot in the center is the descent stage.  The small crater to the left near the descent stage was photographed by Armstrong.  Here’s the picture from the Nasa Gallery.

I don’t believe that anything captures my imagination more than these incredible images.

AZ bob

I wish I could have shared this sooner, but the week leading up to Oct. 16 was John, my brother, and my Elk Hunt so I was busy getting ready to go.

In the morning sky at daybreak, 3 planets were in clear view.  The dimmest and closest to the dawn sun was Mercury.  The brightest was Venus and the third was Saturn.  You could see all 3 planets throughout the first 2 weeks of October if you were up before dawn and on the 16th a special appearance was made by a crescent moon.   John was able to share this view with me from 6700 feet up in the mountains on my friend John Toner’s property.  Clear skies, unseasonably warm weather, 15% humidity and no light pollution made for great observing and camping – but lousy elk hunting.

Oh well, at least we enjoyed the night sky even though the daytime was a bust.

Lucky elk.

AZ bob

Have you been watching that bright star near the moon the last few nights?  That’s Jupiter.  Get out your binoculars and look for the 4 Galilean moons, those bright pin pricks of light near the planet.  Left to right will be Ganymede first, then Europa second and Io right next to the planet.  If you ambitious look for Io’s shadow on Jupiter through your telescope.  On the right will be Callisto.

On October 2nd all 4 moons will be on the right side of Jupiter.

bob

My last post in January, Saturn Goes Commando, is about Saturn at its equinox.  This means the rings are now edge on with the sun and at their thinnest from our vantage on earth.  You cannot see the rings at all from my astrobinoculars.  Check out this picture from Ciclops http://ciclops.org/view/5815/Shadow_South_of_Another?js=1

Ciclops.org is the official website for the Cassini mission.  Check it out.

If you look on the sphere of the planet you can see the razor thin shadow line of the rings.  That little bump on the ring shadow is the shadow of the moon Enceladus.  Enceladus is not in the picture since it orbits beyond the rings but it still casts a shadow on Saturn.

Man I love this stuff.

bob

     The jewel of the solar system, Saturn, is going naked from our viewpoint for a while.  If you have a telescope, watch the ring plane disappear and reappear over the next few months.  The actual disappearance will be in September, but will be unobservable.  Saturn will be on the opposite side of the sun from us. 

     Saturn has a tilt of approximately 26.7 degrees, the Earth has a 23.5 degree tilt.  That means every so often our viewpoint crosses the ring plane and the rings disappear.  The rings are incredibly thin, a few yards at most, yet the full diameter of the rings is over 124,000 miles.  That ratio means that the rings would be far sharper than a razor in relation to its diameter.  Here’s a classic view of Saturn’s rings from www.spacetelescope.org.

     But this how Saturn looks now.  Seems almost naked without the rings.

Here’s one of the latest of thousands of photos from the Hubble Space Telescope.

That’s the moon Ganymede in its orbit going behind Jupiter.  Ganymede is the largest of the moons orbiting not only Jupiter, but the largest moon in the solar system.  It is slightly larger than Mercury with a diameter of 3,270 miles, (Mercury is 3,032 miles).  That means if it were in orbit around the sun, it would be classified as a planet.  It also gives the scale of the size of Jupiter.  Ganymede is approximately 40% the size of Earth.  If you look closely at the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, which is a gigantic storm that’s been raging for centuries, Earth would easily fit inside with plenty of room to spare.

bob

Ever notice that the moon looks bigger when it’s low on the horizon, seen through trees or next to buildings?

This optical illusion is not fully understood by scientists or psychologists.  But there is truth to the fact that the moon appears larger at times because it is slightly closer to the earth.  No orbiting body has a perfectly circular orbit.  Orbiting bodies like asteroids, planets, moons, etc. have elliptical orbits and Astronomers refer to the apogee and perigee of orbiting bodies.  Apogee is when the moon, or other orbiting body, is farther away and Perigee is when the moon is closer to the earth.

This Friday, Dec. 12, the Full Moon is at Perigee in the east.  Moonrise will be a Full Moon about 31,000 miles closer than when the moon is at Apogee.  If my math is correct, that’s about 14% closer.  Since you will see this at sunset, the optical illusion should be spectacular.  A truly giant moon rise in the east.  The moon will also be about 30% brighter, so you will be able to easily see the moon before sunset and watch as it rises, appearing to get smaller throughout the evening.  For your reference hold your thumb out at arms length to gauge the size of the moon.  As the moon rises and appears to get smaller you will notice that the size in relation to your thumb will NOT change.  Cool.

So how come you can’t see the Apollo landing sites, even with the Hubble Space Telescope?

AZ bob

2009 has been dedicated by the United Nations as the International Year of Astronomy.  There will be worldwide events starting with the dedication in Paris January 15th.  Check out the website at www.astronomy2009.org.

The main thing this means to amateurs like me is that telescopes will be available on the web like never before.  Currently there are several telescopes available to the public through links on the Internet.  People simply log-on, suggest certain views of the night sky and if chosen, the telescope slews to the requested object.  Recently I asked for a 60 second viewing of M33, the Pinwheel Galaxy, just for fun.  The telescope site is in the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa.  Isn’t the Internet incredible.  Unfortunately I missed the screen capture, but have requested the picture be e-mailed to me.  I’ll post it when it arrives.

bob