Comet Lovejoy from the space station

Mega Cool.
–Ben

Comet Lovejoy from the space station

International Space Station Commander Dan Burbank captured spectacular imagery of Comet Lovejoy as seen from about 240 miles above the Earth’s horizon on Wednesday, Dec. 21. Burbank described seeing the comet as “the most amazing thing I have ever seen in space,” in an interview with WDIV-TV in Detroit

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=125774121

CASSINI DELIVERS HOLIDAY TREATS FROM ACROSS THE SOLAR SYSTEM

Holiday Greeting from your favorite ringed planet.
–Ben

IMAGE ADVISORY: December 22, 2011

CASSINI DELIVERS HOLIDAY TREATS FROM ACROSS THE SOLAR SYSTEM

No team of reindeer was necessary for these holiday treats from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. A beam of radio signals, from clear across the solar system, has delivered a Christmas package of glorious images of Saturn’s largest, most colorful ornament, Titan, and other icy baubles in orbit around this splendid planet. These treats are being featured today in a public release from the mission’s imaging team.

The release includes images of satellite conjunctions in which one moon passes in front of or behind another. Cassini scientists regularly make these observations to study the ever-changing orbits of the planet’s moons. But even in these routine images, the Saturnian system shines. A few of Saturn’s stark, airless, icy moons appear to dangle next to the orange orb of Titan, the only moon in the solar system with a substantial atmosphere. Titan’s atmosphere is of great interest because of its great similarities to the atmosphere believed to exist long ago on the early Earth.

The images can be found at
http://ciclops.org,
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and
http://www.nasa.gov/cassini

While it may be Christmastime and wintry in Earth’s northern hemisphere, it is currently northern spring in the Saturnian system and will remain so for several Earth years. Current plans to extend the Cassini mission through 2017 will surely beget a continued bounty of scientifically rewarding and majestic views of Saturn and its moons and rings, as we spectators are treated to the passage of northern spring and the final arrival of summer in May 2017.

“As another year traveling this magnificent sector of our solar system draws to a close, all of us on Cassini wish all of you a very happy and peaceful holiday season,” said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team lead at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo…

http://www.ciclops.org/view.php?id=7041

Hubble Serves Up a Holiday Snow Angel

fyi:
Be sure to check out the zoom in video from entire galaxy to HST shot.

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2011/38/video/b/

–Ben

Hubble Serves Up a Holiday Snow Angel
December 15, 2011: The bipolar star-forming region, called Sharpless 2-106, or S106 for short, looks like a soaring, celestial snow angel. The outstretched “wings” of the nebula record the contrasting imprint of heat and motion against the backdrop of a colder medium. Twin lobes of super-hot gas, glowing blue in this image, stretch outward from the central star. This hot gas creates the “wings” of our angel. A ring of dust and gas orbiting the star acts like a belt, cinching the expanding nebula into an “hourglass” shape.

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2011/38/

MSL is on its way to Mars !!!!

MSL is on its way to Mars !!!!
Next Stop Gale.

Congrats to NASA, JPL and the ULA Atlas V / Centaur teams.

–Ben

A signal from NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft, including the new Curiosity rover, has been received by officials on the ground. The spacecraft is flying free and headed for Mars after separation from the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket that started the spacecraft on its journey to the Red Planet. Liftoff was on time at 10:02 a.m. EST from Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida…

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html

Latest from Cassini: The Saturn Storm Chronicles

News from your favorite Ringed Planet
–Ben

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Ever since the birth of a colossal atmospheric disturbance that has ravaged the northern face of Saturn for nearly a year, the Cassini imaging team has been systematically recording the associated tumultuous changes in the planet’s appearance.

Today, I am enormously pleased to bring to your attention, for your sheer dazzlement, the public release of a large series of images, mosaics and movies that are the result of these methodical observations, and chronicle, month by month, and in kaleiodoscopic color, the development and evolution of this monster tempest, the longest lasting ever observed on Saturn.

You can begin your journey, down the rabbit hole and through the land of wonder, right here …

ciclops.org

… where you’ll discover an updated Captain’s Log and a link (at the top of the page) to this mind-bending and spectacular event.

In times as restless and troubled as ours, it is worth remembering that we humans are capable of extraordinary feats. And I think you will agree: Cassini’s exploration of Saturn has been one of them.

Enjoy!

Carolyn Porco
Cassini Imaging Team Leader
Director, CICLOPS
Space Science Institute
Boulder, CO

http://ciclops.org

http://twitter.com/carolynporco

http://www.facebook.com/carolynporco

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS

Nice collection of time lapse videos of Earth @ Night as seen from the International Space Station.

–Ben

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS

http://vimeo.com/32001208

Rover’s Eye View of Three-Year Trek on Mars

not as smooth as other rover movies but still nice.

–Ben

Three years on Mars … in 3 minutes

By Alan Boyle

It’s been a long, lonely three years for NASA’s Opportunity rover, which has just finished a 13-mile (21-kilometer) trek from Victoria Crater across the Martian wasteland of Meridiani Planum to Endeavour Crater. A newly released time-lapse video from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory condenses the odyssey down to just three minutes.

The video draws upon a series of 309 images, each taken when the rover stopped driving at the end of a Martian day. The pictures give you a sense of the loneliness that an astronaut might feel while following in Opportunity’s wheel tracks. Drifts of sand go on for miles and miles, interrupted only by craters or patches of bedrock.

The soundtrack for the video was created by taking low-frequency recordings from Opportunity’s accelerometers and speeding them up by a factor of 1,000. “The sound represents the vibrations of the rover while moving on the surface of Mars,” Paolo Bellutta, a roer planner at JPL in Pasadena, Calif., said in NASA’s video advisory. “When the sound is louder, the rover was moving on bedrock. When the sound is softer, the rover was moving on sand.”

More at:

http://tinyurl.com/6dltlch

aka:

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/10/11/8274228-three-years-on-mars-in-3-minutes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj4e2FyNFIE

GLORIA

sounds interesting.

Also interesting no US partners.

–Ben

What is GLORIA?

GLORIA stands for “GLObal Robotic-telescopes Intelligent Array”. GLORIA will be the first free and open- access network of robotic telescopes of the world. It will be a Web 2.0 environment where users can do research in astronomy by observing with robotic telescopes, and/or analyzing data that other users have acquired with GLORIA, or from other free access databases, like the European Virtual Observatory (http://www.euro-vo.org).

Who can access GLORIA?

The community is the most important part of GLORIA project. Access will be free to everybody who has an Internet connection and a web browser. Therefore it will be open not only to professional astronomers, but also to anyone with an interest in astronomy.

Which services will GLORIA offer?

Many Internet communities have already formed to speed-up scientific research, to collaborate in documenting something, or as social projects. Research in astronomy can only benefit from attracting many eyes to the sky – to detect something in the sky requires looking in the right place at the right moment. Our robotic telescopes can search the sky, but the vast quantities of data they produce are far greater than astronomers have time to analyze. GLORIA will provide a way of putting thousands of eyes and minds on the problem. GLORIA is intended to be a Web 2.0 structure, with the possibility of doing real experiments. The community will not only generate content, as in most Web 2.0, but will control telescopes around the world, both directly and via scheduled observations. The community will take decisions for the network and that will give “intelligence” to GLORIA, while the drudge work (such as drawing up telescope schedules that satisfy various constraints) will be done by algorithms that will be developed for the purpose.

How will GLORIA face its challenges?

GLORIA project will define free standards, protocols and methodology for:

1. Controlling Robotic Telescopes: and all related instrumentation i.e. cameras, filter-wheels, domes, etc.
2. Giving Web access to the Network: access to an arbitrary number of robotic telescopes via a web portal.
3. Conducting On-line experiments: It will be able to design specific web environments for controlling telescopes for research in some specific scientific issue.
4. Conducting Off-line experiments: It will be able to design specific web environments for analyzing Astronomical meta-data produced by GLORIA or other databases…

http://venus.datsi.fi.upm.es/gloria/index.php/en/

Aurora From Orbit Sept. 17, 2011

Coolest thing I’ve seen all month.
–Ben

Aurora From Orbit Sept. 17, 2011

This gorgeous view of the aurora was taken from the International Space Station as it crossed over the southern Indian Ocean on September 17, 2011. The sped-up movie spans the time period from 12:22 to 12:45 PM ET.

While aurora are often seen near the poles, this aurora appeared at lower latitudes due to a geomagnetic storm – the insertion of energy into Earth’s magnetic environment called the magnetosphere – caused by a coronal mass ejection from the sun…

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=112616781

Is this one of the “First Stars”?

A Star That Should Not Exist

The above link is to astrobites. The article is about a star that is 13 billion years old and of very low metallicity (4.5×10^-5 that of the Sun). Could this be a Pop III star?

Doug?