Astronomy Folk | Planets, Meteors, Comets, Telescopes: May 2010

Monday, May 31, 2010

Picture of the Day - Scattered Light from the Boomerang Nebula

The Hubble Space Telescope caught the Boomerang Nebula in this image taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys in early 2005. This reflecting cloud of dust and gas has two nearly symmetric lobes of matter that are being ejected from a central star.

Each lobe of the nebula is nearly one light-year in length, making the total length of the nebula half as long as the distance from our Sun to our nearest neighbors - the alpha Centauri stellar system, located roughly 4 light-years away. The Bo [...]

Full story at http://spacefellowship.com/news/art20564/picture-of-the-day-scattered-light-from-the-boomerang-nebula.html

This Week On The Space Show

The Space Show, hosted by David Livingston under www.TheSpaceShow.com, will have the following guests this week:

1. Monday, May 31, 2010, 2-3:30 PM PDT (21-22:30 GMT)
Diane Murphy of the Rocket Racing League comes to the show.
Diane Murphy is a senior executive with a unique portfolio of achievement in designing and implementing marketing, communications, education, issue management and public outreach campaigns for private industry, the federal government, US Congress, political candidat [...]

Full story at http://spacefellowship.com/news/art20568/this-week-on-the-space-show.html

City Lights at Night along the France-Italy Border From Space

The brightly lit metropolitan areas of Torino (Italy), Lyon, and Marseille (both in France) stand out amidst numerous smaller urban areas in this dramatic astronaut photograph. The image captures the nighttime appearance of the France-Italy border. The southwestern end of the Alps Mountains separates the two countries. The island of Corsica is visible in the Ligurian Sea to the south (image top).

The full moon reflects brightly on the water surface and also illuminates the tops of low patc [...]

Full story at http://spacefellowship.com/news/art20570/city-lights-at-night-along-the-france-italy-border-from-space.html

Amazing shot of ISS and Jupiter? during daytime!

The amazing pictures of the space station taken by ground-based amateur astronomers keeps on coming. On May 29th, Anthony Ayiomamitis used a 16 cm (6″) telescope to capture a phenomenal image of the International Space Station passing Jupiter… in broad daylight!

Wow! Note the color of the sky; it was about 9:00 a.m. local time when he took this shot, with the Sun well above the horizon. This is actually two images added together; the first shows the ISS to the lower right, and in the second shot it had moved to the upper left. Jupiter shows its disk near the center of the frame, it being easily bright enough to be seen using a telescope in daylight.

What an incredible picture! But it gets cooler…

The picture on the right is the same shot, but this time he connected the two ISS images with a line. Given the size of both the ISS and Jupiter, it looks like the station flew directly in front of the planet from Anthony’s position! Had he taken that first shot literally a tenth of a second later, he would have had the picture of a lifetime. As it is, it’s still way cool.

Want more? I got more.

Robert Vanderbei, at Princeton University, took this picture of Jupiter, also in daylight. You can see the moons!

The picture has the moons labeled. Ganymede and Europa are faint, but visible. For an added coolness, Io was poised right on the limb of the planet’s disk. You can see the Red Spot, and also how the southern equatorial belt of Jupiter is missing (it should be at about the same latitude as the Red Spot). To get this Robert used a 9 cm (3.5″) Questar ’scope, which is small but has very nice optics.

And one more, but it’s a link: Universe Today is reporting that an amateur got shots of the Air Force X37-B in orbit!

All this goes to show that the word "amateur", as I’ve been saying for years, is losing its meaning. Like everything in nature, when you get near the boundary between two entities, the lines get blurry. I know lots of so-called amateurs who have a far keener grasp of the sky and the objects in it than some professionals. Astronomy is one of the few sciences where someone with even modest equipment can do phenomenal work in the field. I love it, and it’s a great time to be an astronomer!

Image credits: Anthony Ayiomamitis, Robert Vanderbei, used by permission.

Full story at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BadAstronomyBlog/~3/5ZKafQgvx2I/

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Micro-Space is Currently Manifested to fly TWO tiny CubeSats

Micro-Space is currently manifested to fly TWO tiny CubeSats "Ride Sharing" launch with EduSat, Sich-2 and other spacecraft, to be flown on a Dnepr into Sun Synchronous (near Polar) Orbit, Oct. 29, 2010. Payload Integration for this satellite group is being handled by Morehead State University, involving Dr. Ben Malphrus (Space Science Center director) and professor Bob Twiggs. Micro-Space will also be delivering two similar spacecraft to Morehead State University, and the University of C [...]

Full story at http://spacefellowship.com/news/art20556/micro-space-is-currently-manifested-to-fly-two-tiny-cubesats.html

X-51A Makes Longest Scramjet Flight

An engine first validated in a NASA wind tunnel successfully made the longest supersonic combustion ramjet-powered hypersonic flight to date off the southern California coast on May 26.

The air-breathing scramjet engine, built by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, burned for more than 200 seconds to accelerate the U.S. Air Force's X-51A vehicle to Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound. It broke the previous record for the longest scramjet burn in a flight test, set by NASA's X-43 vehicle.
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