30 Wednesday Nov 2011
Posted in aurora
Tags
This time-lapse video, taken by Chad Blakely, shows the Northern Lights over Abisko National Park in Sweden this past Monday, Nov. 28. See more of Chad’s work here.
Did you know that green is the most common color of auroras. Here’s a great aurora fact-sheet for you.
I can’t wait for the day when I actually get to see one! Have you seen an aurora? If so, share your story.
29 Tuesday Nov 2011
Posted in Jupiter
Tags
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope caught Jupiter's moon, Ganymede, seemingly playing a game of peek-a-boo in this image from April 2007. Ganymede is shown just before it ducks behind the giant planet. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and E. Karkoschka (University of Arizona)
I do love Jupiter.
It’s a beautiful, massive planet with swirling storms of oranges and reds. That large storm – the Great Red Spot – is twice the size of Earth. Can you imagine a storm larger than our entire planet? And that’s not the worst of it. The storm has been raging on for more than 300 years.
It would be quite fitting that I was introduced to skywatching with my favorite planet in the night sky. I’ve stared at Jupiter more times than I could believe, and each time, I’m still excited. The massive planet has been out for roughly two months, or has it been longer?
Anyway, here’s some advice. Go out and take a look at Jupiter. It’ll be the brightest object in the sky, next to our moon, of course. If you’re in North America, you’ll see Jupiter to the left of the moon, according to EarthSky.org.
For the rest of the year, we’ll be able to see the gas giant and maybe one of its moons, too.
“Given clear skies, everyone with a decent backyard telescope should be able to view Jupiter’s moons. In their outward order from Jupiter, these four major moons are Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto,” according to EarthSky.org.
Here’s a little look at Jupiter via The Universe (on the History Channel). Its one of my favorite shows. This part focuses on Jupiter’s massive storm and some of its mysteries.
27 Sunday Nov 2011
Posted in Solar activity
Tags
A massive solar storm is headed toward Earth tomorrow, Monday, Nov. 28, according to NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.
“On Saturday, Nov. 26, a solar flare hurled a coronal mass ejection (CME) at about 930 km/s or 2 million mph into Space. This fast moving CME will reach Earth on Monday, Nov. 28. The impact of the ionized particle cloud could trigger a geomagnetic storm with some aurorae sightings in high latitudes,” according to NASA.
Read more about solar storms and CME’s here and here.
More updates to come.
27 Sunday Nov 2011
Posted in launch, Mars, Photo of the week
Tags
Atlas V rocket, Curosity, Mars, Mars Science Laboratory, MSL, NASA
From NASA.GOV:
The Atlantic Ocean provides a backdrop as the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket clears the tower on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Sealed inside the rocket is NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) spacecraft, beginning a 9-month interplanetary cruise to Mars. Liftoff was at 10:02 a.m. EST Nov. 26. MSL’s components include a car-sized rover, Curiosity, which has 10 science instruments designed to search for signs of life, including methane, and help determine if the gas is from a biological or geological source.
20 Sunday Nov 2011
Posted in Uncategorized
19 Saturday Nov 2011
Europa's "Great Lake." Scientists speculate many more exist throughout the shallow regions of the moon's icy shell. Image Credit: Britney Schmidt/Dead Pixel FX/Univ. of Texas at Austin.
There’s now evidence that one of Jupiter’s moons has quite a bit of liquid water beneath its surface. The water on the moon, called Europa, is equal to that of the Great Lakes, according to NASA.
So what does it mean? Could there be microscopic life on Europa? After all, the search for life begins with the search for water.
Scientists believe many moons and planets have, or had, water on its surface or below its frozen core.
Here are some of those places.
Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
In this early-2011 image of Mars, you can what looks like liquid flowing down a Martian slope. “Sequences of observations recording the seasonal changes at this site and a few others with similar flows might be evidence of salty liquid water active on Mars today,” according to NASA. Learn more about water on Mars here.
Courtesy of NASA/Sean Smith
In 2009, NASA announced that it had found a “significant amount” of water on the moon. ”We’re unlocking the mysteries of our nearest neighbor and by extension the solar system. It turns out the moon harbors many secrets,” said Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Read more about water on the moon here.
Courtesy of NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
Jupiter has more than 60 moons, but one of its most famous is Europa. “The icy surface of Europa is shown strewn with cracks, ridges and chaotic terrain, where the surface has been disrupted and ice blocks have moved around,” according to NASA. Read more about Europa here.
Courtesy of NASA/JPL/SSI
Oh Enceladus, how I love thee. This is one of my favorite moons because I feel it has a very good chance of having some sort of microscopic life. See the lines on the moon’s surface? Scientists believe they are caused by the release of plumes of water and ice. Those icy jets led researches to believe that a large body of water lies beneath the moon’s surface. Read more about Enceladus here.
Courtesy of NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/DLR
This 2009 image shows the first flash of sunlight reflected off a lake on Saturn’s moon Titan, according to NASA. “It confirmed the presence of liquid in the moon’s northern hemisphere, where lakes are more numerous and larger than those in the southern hemisphere.” Read more about Titan here.
Courtesy of NASA/JPL/USGS
Ah yes, Triton. Not to be confused with Titan. Why are they so similarly named? Anyway, Triton is Neptune’s largest moon. “It is unusual because it is the only large moon in our solar system that orbits in the opposite direction of its planet’s rotation — a retrograde orbit,” according to a release. “Triton is so cold that most of its nitrogen is condensed as frost, making it the only satellite in the solar system known to have a surface made mainly of nitrogen ice.” Read more about Triton here.
Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech
This artist’s concept illustrates an icy planet-forming disk around a young star called TW Hydrae. Astronomers detected large amounts of cool water vapor, illustrated in blue, emanating from the star’s planet-forming disk of dust and gas. Read more about TW Hydrae here.
17 Thursday Nov 2011
Posted in nebulae, Photo of the week
Tags
astronomy picture of the day, Butterfly Nebula, dying star, hubble telescope, nasa hubble, nebula
Photo courtesy of NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team
Isn’t it amazing? It’s called the Butterfly Nebula, or NGC 6302 if you want to be technical. This image shows clouds and gas surrounding a dying star. The Butterfly Nebula is about 4,000 light-years away in the constellation of Scorpio.
This extremely detailed image was taken after the Hubble Telescope was upgraded in 2009. Take a look at what we saw before Hubble’s upgrade. Makes you appreciate the image above a little bit more, right?
Read more about the Butterfly Nebula at NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day site.
09 Wednesday Nov 2011
It has been a ‘difficult night’ for the Russian spacecraft Phobos-Grunt, which was expected to collect soil samples from a Martian moon and return to Earth.
Things did not work out as planned and the mission may be, I’m afraid to say, over.
The spacecraft, named after the Martian moon Phobos and the Russian word for “soil,” is believed to be stranded “in low Earth orbit” after a successful launch Tuesday. UPDATE: Scientists say they have three days to fix the problem. After that, no more Phobos-Grunt.
According to SpaceFlight Now (Thank goodness because I can’t read Russian and everything I’m finding is, of course, in Russian):
“Two rocket burns were supposed to propel the massive probe on a course toward Mars late Tuesday, but indications are the engine firings did not occur, according to Vladimir Popovkin, head of the Russian space agency.”
Discovery News is reporting:
“The news is ‘no news’ from the spacecraft,” said planetary scientist Pascal Lee, with the Mars Institute. “No telemetry since separation. This is not good.”
Apparently, Mars has eluded Russia for quite a while. The BBC is reporting that,
Moscow has dispatched a total of 16 missions to the Red Planet since the 1960s. None has successfully completed its goals, with the most recent endeavor – the sophisticated Mars-96 spacecraft – being destroyed in a failed launch.
How sad. Doesn’t seem like Mars is in the cards for the Russian Space Agency. Well, let’s not get too ahead of ourselves.
Good luck, Phobos-Grunt. We’re crossing our fingers.
08 Tuesday Nov 2011
Posted in asteroid, Near Earth Objects
A little grainy, but here it is.
This radar image of asteroid 2005 YU55 was obtained yesterday, Nov. 7, when the space rock was about 860,000 miles from Earth. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
A photograph of the massive, 1,300-foot wide asteroid 2005 YU55 – which will pass extremely close to Earth today – was released by NASA. The aircraft-carrier-sized object is not a threat, scientists say, but it will be closer to our planet than the moon.
The asteroid will reach its closest point to Earth today at 6:28 p.m. EST. It might be difficult for an amateur astronomer to see, but here’s some fabulous advice from Sky and Telescope.
Scientists were expecting to photograph the object as it speed by Earth. The imaging will continue and we’ll be sure to post additional photos here on Space Oddities. This is the first time astronomers know about a flyby of an object this large.
07 Monday Nov 2011
The “first detailed radar images” of Enceladus, one of Saturn’s 60+ moons, were expected to be taken yesterday when NASA’s Cassini spacecraft flew by the icy body.
Artist's concept of the Nov. 6, 2011, flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
According to NASA:
These will be the first high-resolution radar observations made of an icy moon other than Titan. The results will provide new information about the surface of Enceladus and enable researchers to compare its geological features as seen by radar with those of Titan.
During this flyby, the mission’s visible-light cameras will take images of Enceladus and its famous jets, and the composite infrared spectrometer will make new measurements of hot spots from which the jets emerge. Cassini’s ultraviolet imaging spectrograph will also make distant observations of Saturn’s moon Dione and its environment.
It is believed that Enceladus’ jets – think ‘Old-Faithful-like geysers erupting from giant fractures’ – supply ice to one of Saturn’s rings. Pretty cool, right?
This image of Saturn's moon Enceladus was obtained by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on Jan. 31, 2011. It shows the famous jets erupting from the south polar terrain of Enceladus. Image credit: NASA/JPL/SSI
06 Sunday Nov 2011
Posted in aurora, Earth, Solar activity
The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured the Sun releasing a massive solar flare on Nov. 3, 2011. The image - which was selected as "Picture of the Week" on Space Oddities - concerns scientists because it shows astronomers how serious flares can be. This one happened to be an X-class, is the most powerful type of flare. Credit: NASA/SDO
From Discovery News:
There’s a storm brewing on the sun’s surface and it could unleash its magnetic fury on Earth within the next five days.
That ominous warning comes from solar scientists at the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center who are tracking a huge group of sunspots that are slowly rotating to face our planet. As imaged by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) in Friday, this is the largest group of sunspots seen on the sun since 2005. The largest sunspot is 17-times the width of the Earth.
Active region 1339 has been crackling with flare activity — for now blasting the majority of its energy away from us — but on Thursday, it showed solar astronomers what it’s capable of; erupting with the most powerful type of flare.
I wonder what these storms will bring. More auroras in unusual places? How about satellite interruption, or even worse, loss of power? Maybe nothing. Only time will tell.
If you happen to see auroras this week, take pictures and send one to lillian.m.ortiz@gmail.com. We’ll post your pictures here on Space Oddities.
05 Saturday Nov 2011
Posted in aurora, Earth, Solar activity
Tags
aurora, CME, coronal mass ejection, earthquake, earthquakes and CME, Northeast snowstorm, Solar activity
There have been a lot of ‘rare’ events happening lately. And if you ask me, there have been way too many for a person to rest easy.
Last week, the northeast was blasted by an ‘unusual’ snowstorm that left millions without power.
“Two times in the history of climate, and that goes back to the 1880s, where we’ve had accumulating snow in October, so that’s kind of remarkable … It is unusual. In fact you could even call it rare,” said Tim Morrin to The Montclair Times.
Snow piled on trees, which had yet dropped its leaves. The branches, heavy from the wet, snowy foliage, crashed into streets, snagged power lines and damaged property. Even now, seven days later, some are still living without power.
Can we all say “climate change?”
A week before the freak snowstorm, we faced another intense storm – this time, of the solar variety. A large solar storm collided with Earth two weeks ago, causing brilliant auroras to be visible in more than half of the United States, according to this Popular Science article.
Image Credit: NASAHere’s why this is a bit scary. Auroras – typically found in the southern and northern hemispheres – were seen in unlikely states like New Mexico, Tennessee, Kansas, and Oklahoma.
“Sky gazers reported seeing rare deep red auroras that only occur during serious geomagnetic storms and are poorly understood,” according to the Popular Science article.
So auroras were seen in unlikely places because a “serious” solar storm was impacting Earth. Are we in for more solar storms? You betcha.
The sun is approaching a cycle of high activity called “solar maximum.” During these times, the Sun suddenly – and quite violently – releases gas, radiation, and magnetic fields called CMEs, or coronal mass ejections. A large CME has so much energy that it could power the United States for a million years, according to NASA.
When the Sun’s radiation interacts with Earth’s magnetic field, auroras occur. But beautiful colors of light aren’t the only effects of a CME. As mentioned in this Space Oddities post, a large enough CME can disrupt our satellites and cause severe power outages in towns across the nation.
This isn’t a conspiracy theory. NASA has warned that a solar storm could cause mass destruction of our power grids. It’s just a matter of time before an extremely powerful CME is released in our direction.
Take a look at this one. It’s massive enough that, according to NASA, “it can trigger planet-wide radio blackouts and long-lasting radiation storms.”
Luckily, this storm is not directed at us. But remember, more CMEs and solar flares are coming our way. During solar maximum (expected in 2013), the Sun releases about three CMEs a day.
Besides auroras, disruption or destruction of satellites, and power outages, can CMEs cause a natural disaster here on Earth? Some believe that there’s a strong correlation between the massive radiation blasts and earthquakes on our rocky planet.
This writer believes a CME could be responsible for the massive earthquake that hit Japan in March. This person agrees. And this person writes about instances where an earthquake followed a CME. It is hard to ignore that there could be a correlation between the two. Admittedly, there have been a lot of earthquakes this year. But not enough to absolutely say that a large CME will cause an earthquake here on Earth.
But wait, wasn’t there a ‘rare’ earthquake in the Northeast this past August? Oh yes. That Aug. 23 quake began in Virginia and went all the way up to Canada. I felt it in my office in Montclair, N.J. After some research, I found that there was a solar wind/aurora alert during that time frame. But no CME. However, it still doesn’t make that earthquake any less odd. It was the strongest in Virginia in 114 years and since then, there have been more than 600 aftershocks in that state, according to this article.
So what does it all mean?
We’ve experienced stronger, unusually-timed storms (remember Hurricane Irene in August?), more powerful and oddly-located earthquakes, and intense solar storms that keep getting stronger with every blast.
I can’t help but ask, “Is it the beginning of the end?” Or am I watching way too much news?
05 Saturday Nov 2011
The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured this image of the X1.9 class solar flare from November 3, 2011. Credit: NASA/SDO
From NASA:
Solar flares are giant explosions on the sun that send energy, light and high speed particles into space. These flares are often associated with solar magnetic storms known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs). The number of solar flares increases approximately every 11 years, and the sun is currently moving towards another solar maximum, likely in 2013. That means more flares will be coming, some small and some big enough to send their radiation all the way to Earth.
The biggest flares are known as “X-class flares” based on a classification system that divides solar flares according to their strength. The smallest ones are A-class (near background levels), followed by B, C, M and X.
Read more about solar flares here.
Posted by Lillian | Filed under Photo of the week, Solar activity
04 Friday Nov 2011
Posted in asteroid, Earth, Near Earth Objects
Next week, a massive, aircraft carrier-sized asteroid will be closer to Earth than our own moon. The asteroid, called 2005 YU55, will speed past our planet on Tuesday, Nov. 8.
The 1,300-foot-wide asteroid is not a threat to us, but astronomers are extremely excited because this is the first time that they know about an object of this size approaching the planet. The asteroid – which is darker than coal, round, and rougher than other objects that have approached Earth – will be photographed and analyzed as it whizzes by.
This radar image of asteroid 2005 YU55 was generated from data taken in April 2010 by the Arecibo Radar Telescope in Puerto Rico. Image credit: NASA/Cornell/Arecibo
The asteroid will reach its closest point to Earth at 6:28 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. So I know you’re wondering: Can I catch a glimpse? Maybe. Here’s what you need, according to Space.com,
The asteroid will pose a challenge for amateur astronomers because it will be faint and fast-moving. A small telescope with a mirror no smaller than 6 inches (15 centimeters) is required to try and spot it.
This isn’t the first time 2005 YU55 has visited our area of the solar system. However, it’s the closest approach the asteroid has made in the last 200 years.
Want to learn about more near-Earth objects? Look here.
