Kaboom!

~An unmanned Proton-M rocket carrying navigational satellites crashed earlier today shortly after launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.  The crash was caught on amateur video here; note the delayed shockwave that hits near the end:

^ "Hey Dmitri, I'm not a rocket scientist, but I don't think it's supposed to go in that direction..."

Habitable Exoplanets

~The Kepler Space Observatory has had a very busy and exciting last couple of years.  By detecting the infinitesimal dimming of distant stars as objects cross in front of them from our perspective, it’s been able to locate thousands of potential planets orbiting other stars. 

Most of these planets are “Hot Jupiters” -- massive gas giants orbiting very close to their primary stars – presumably because with their rapid revolutions and large sizes, they’re the easiest to detect.  However, a number of these planetary candidates have been found in the fabled “goldilocks zone”: an area of the stellar system where liquid water can exist.  Even more exciting is that some of those planets are “Earth-like”.

Don’t get too excited: in this case “Earth-like” means that the planet is small and rocky, as opposed to large and gaseous.  Still, the prospect of liquid water on a planet in the habitable zone is both thrilling and tantalizing.  Here’s a handy chart of planetary candidates found by Kepler so far, sorted by sizes and distances (that is, distances from the star they orbit):

For a more complete breakdown of the potentially-habitable planets, check out the website of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo (yes, that Arecibo).  Although you can find an explanation for what the data in each column means by looking at the bottom of this page, the key measurement is the last one: the ESI, or Earth Similarity Index, which combines and weighs all the numbers to estimate how similar the planet is to Earth. 

Look how many there are over 0.90 (90%)…how exciting!  Hopefully the James Webb Space Telescope and other future space observatories will be able to discover more about them.

Transit of Venus

~On Tuesday evening (EST), the planet Venus made an extremely rare transit of the Sun.  This happens because the planets of the solar system do not orbit directly on the same plane; all of the orbits of the major planets are ever so slightly tilted from the perspective of each other, and given the immense distances of space and the diminutive size of the planets compared to the Sun, a transit is a rare event.  In fact, this only happens with Venus roughly twice every hundred years, and the last transit (in 2004) was on a day of cloudy weather here in Raleigh, so this was the only chance in my life to see it. 

And see it I did!  My mother (who teaches astronomy) brilliantly set up a viewing box on which the transit could be projected from a telescope.  The telescope, borrowed from a local amateur astronomer, also has a filter that enabled us to look safely at the Sun and observe the transit directly, but with the viewing box, everyone could see it at once.  Here are some of the pictures that I took of the event:

^ You’d think it would be easy to point the telescope at the Sun.  You’d be wrong: unlike the Moon (which, from our perspective, is only slightly smaller than the Sun), you can’t just look up to where the Sun is without special eye protection, which we lacked.  It was surprisingly difficult to align the telescope correctly on the target, but align it we eventually did.  With the solar filter removed, the bright sunlight projected out of the eyepiece and onto the cardboard box.

The small black circle at 10 o’clock is the planet Venus as it slowly made its way across the Sun.  We managed to catch the very beginning of the transit, when Venus was on the edge of the Sun, and followed it as it moved farther on.  The smaller black dots are sunspots.

^ Tuesday evening was a bit cloudy here, and we sometimes had to wait a few minutes for the Sun to emerge (which necessitated a scramble to re-align the telescope before more clouds obscured the Sun).  In the above picture, you can see clouds moving across the face of the Sun, but Venus is still visible at 10 o’clock.

^ We set up the telescope on a sidewalk at the entrance to the housing development, and we waved over people as they drove in and out.  We had quite a few people stop, and they were amazed at this twice-in-a-lifetime event.  This woman and her fiancé stopped by to see the transit.

^ The viewing box was a great idea!

If you missed the transit, I’m afraid that, barring a longevity vaccine, you’re out of luck: the next transit of Venus across the Sun won’t occur until December 10, 2117.

Apollo Site Pictures from Lunar Orbit

~The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has been orbiting the Moon since 2009, creating detailed maps of the lunar surface.  NASA recently released several images showing the landing sites from Apollo 12, 14, and 17.  Here’s one showing the Apollo 17 site:

 

^ “The Apollo 17 landing site: To the far right, the Lunar Roving Vehicle; Toward the center, the descent stage of the Challenger lunar module. The lines are tracks and cables.”

Click on the above image for a larger view, or see more of the images here.  Or explore the surface of the moon with Google Moon!

Cassini Saturn Flyby

~It's been a while, but I'm back!  For now, enjoy this video animation of Saturn images taken by Cassini.  It's not computer-generated; these are actual images taken by the space probe and placed consecutively, just like a film.

[For a better view, after the video starts to play, click on the '360p' button at the bottom of the video and select a higher resolution (like 720p), then click the full-screen button on the lower-right]

Solar Dynamics Observatory

~Most of the space news I've been hearing about lately concerns the window recently installed on the International Space Station, but of more interest to me is the Solar Dynamics Observatory, which was launched from Cape Canaveral last Thursday, February 11th (click here for a video of the launch).

The Solar Dynamics Observatory, or "SDO" for short, will gather data on the sun. From a geosynchronous orbit over a specially-constructed communications center in New Mexico, SDO will capture detailed images of the surface of the sun and take accurate measurements of changes in the sun's magnetic field and the solar wind.

Ultimately, the data from SDO should reveal some of the mysterious inner workings of the sun. For example, it's long been known that the sun undergoes a regular eleven-year cycle of magnetic intensity, resulting in a spate of solar flares every eleven years that can damage satellites. However, the cause of this cycle is unclear. SDO should also provide us with better tools to predict solar disturbances that occur seemingly at random, and can harm astronauts and sensitive electronics in Earth orbit. The stated scientific goals of the mission are to answer, or at least gather information on, these seven questions:

1. What mechanisms drive the quasi-periodic 11-year cycle of solar activity?
2. How is active region magnetic flux synthesized, concentrated, and dispersed across the solar surface?
3. How does magnetic reconnection on small scales reorganize the large-scale field topology and current systems and how significant is it in heating the corona and accelerating the solar wind?
4. Where do the observed variations in the Sun's EUV spectral irradiance arise, and how do they relate to the magnetic activity cycles?
5. What magnetic field configurations lead to the coronal mass ejections, filament eruptions, and flares that produce energetic particles and radiation?
6. Can the structure and dynamics of the solar wind near Earth be determined from the magnetic field configuration and atmospheric structure near the solar surface?
7. When will activity occur, and is it possible to make accurate and reliable forecasts of space weather and climate?
   

SDO is also the first mission in NASA's Living With a Star program, a series of projects designed to investigate space weather and its effects on Earth. Future program missions include the Geospace missions, which will measure the radiation belts around Earth that result from the Earth's magnetic field interacting with charged solar particles, and a solar probe that will fly into the sun's corona!

You can learn much more about SDO at the mission web site, or by reading the official mission guide.

Saturn at Eqinox

~Check out the amazing pictures of Saturn and its satellites and rings, taken by the Cassini space probe, at Boston.com.

LRO Sees Apollo Landing Sites

~Check out this amazing picture of the Apollo 14 landing site, taken by the Moon-orbiting Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter launched last month by NASA:


Here's a close-up of the above image, with sites labeled:


I think it's amazing that the footpath is still there; but of course, with no atmosphere, there is very little to cause such disturbances to fade, save for long-term micrometeorite bombardment and the occasional moonquake.

The scientific instruments aboard LRO are still undergoing calibration; these images, and others of different Apollo landing sites, were taken in part to test the cameras. Once fully operational, its mission is to "...[find] safe landing sites, locate potential resources, characterize the radiation environment, and demonstrate new technology." You can learn more about the LRO and its mission at this NASA site.

By the way, "Moonquake" would be a great name for a rock band.