Fraser Cain, Author at Universe Today

February 8, 2013April 26, 2016 by Fraser Cain

Weekly Space Hangout: ScienceOnline 2013 Edition

This week, we broadcast the Weekly Space Hangout from the ScienceOnline 2013 conference in Raleigh, North Carolina. Fraser Cain, Nicole Gugliucci, Alan Boyle, and Amy Shira Teitel were on location in Raleigh, and then Scott Lewis and Dr. Thad Szabo reported from their offices.

This week, we talked about:

We record the Weekly Space Hangout every Friday on Google+ at 12:00 pm PST / 3:00 pm EST / 2000 GMT. You’ll want to circle Cosmoquest on Google+ to find out when we’re recording next. The audio for the Weekly Space Hangout is also released to the Astronomy Cast podcast feed.

February 8, 2013February 8, 2013 by Fraser Cain

Virtual Star Party for Feb. 3, 2013: Superbowl Sunday Edition

While Fraser was flying back from North Carolina, the Virtual Star Party Team came together for a rousing night of astronomy – even during the Superbowl. There were many views of amazing deep sky objects, including the Orion Nebula, Horsehead Nebula, Blue Snowball, Jupiter, the “37 Nebula”, Rosette Nebula, Crab Nebula, Eskimo Nebula, and much more. It was an action-packed evening.

Continue reading “Virtual Star Party for Feb. 3, 2013: Superbowl Sunday Edition”

January 28, 2013December 23, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Virtual Star Party – January 27, 2013: The Hand-Guided Moon Edition

Cruddy winter weather kept most of our astronomers indoors, but a few spots opened up in the clouds this week – enough for three telescopes. We had great views of a recently full Moon, Jupiter, and several clusters, nebulae and galaxies, including Andromeda, the Blue Snowball, the Triangulum Galaxy, and more.

We were joined by a new astronomer this week, Russell Bateman, who kept us entertained with his fantastic hand guiding skills, keeping the Moon in view for the duration of the Hangout.

Astronomers: Stuart Forman, Dave Dickinson, and Russell Bateman.

Commentary:Scott Lewis

Host: Fraser Cain

We run the Virtual Star Party every Sunday night as a live Google+ Hangout. Want to find when it’s happening next? Just circle the Virtual Star Party page on Google+. Visit the Universe Today YouTube channel to see an archive of all our past events.

The Moon, by Russell Bateman

January 26, 2013December 29, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Weekly Space Hangout – January 25, 2013

Back by popular demand… the Weekly Space Hangout has returned. This is a weekly broadcast on Google+, where I’m joined by a wide and varied team of space and astronomy journalists to discuss the big breaking stories this week.

This week, we talked about:

January 23, 2013December 23, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Noctilucent Clouds Imaged by Astronaut Chris Hadfield

Noctilucent clouds, also known as “night shining” clouds imaged by Chris Hadfield. Image credit: NASA

What a perspective! Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield captured this stunning image of noctilucent clouds above the Pacific South Ocean on January 5th, 2013. Also known as “night shining”, or noctilucent clouds, they form at the edge of much larger polar mesospheric clouds.

Polar mesospheric clouds form at an altitude of 76 to 85 kilometers, near the boundary between the mesosphere and the thermosphere. The mesosphere is the layer of the atmosphere above the stratosphere (where airplanes fly), and the thermosphere is above that, where solar radiation causes a significant spike in temperature. (The Space Shuttle photo over on the right is positioned right between those two layers).

These clouds are typically seen between 70°-75° in latitude, and last for a season of 60-80 days during the late Spring and early Summer. The clouds themselves are made up of ice crystals which measure up to 100 nm in diameter. Scientists are still working out exactly what causes noctilucent clouds; they’re still a bit of a mystery. But their appearance has become more frequent, increasing in brightness and extent, so it’s possible they’re an indication of increasing climate change.

In this photograph, the Sun is below the horizon, and the ground is dark. Those clouds are still partially illuminated by the Sun, and so we see them with this ethereal wispy structure. Hadfield used a Nikon D35 camera with a 400 mm telephoto lens. At the very bottom of the image, you can see the pale orange color of the stratosphere.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield (did I mention he’s Canadian?) launched to the International Space Station on December 19, 2012 to participate in Expedition 34. He has been returning wondering pictures and sharing them on Twitter and Google+.

Original Source: NASA Earth Observatory

January 23, 2013December 23, 2015 by Fraser Cain

In Orion, There Really is a Hole in the Sky

Clouds of cosmic dust in the region of Orion. Credit: ESO

A new image from ESO’s APEX instrument shows a cloud of gas and dust in the Orion region. Image credit: ESO

When astronomers see dark regions in nebula in visible light, they know there’s something going on. There’s got to be some kind of star forming activity pumping out material that obscures the view to the newly forming starts. Switch to infrared and you can peer through that intervening dust to see the young stars at work.

Astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope in Chile were surprised to see a dark region in the nebula NGC 1999, even in infrared, when the cause of the dark region should have been apparent.

Ooo, mystery.

These dark regions in nebulae have been observed for hundreds of years. Even William Herschel found one in the constellation Scorpius back in 1774.”Truly there is a hole in the sky here!” he noted. But it wasn’t a hole. It was a region where star formation is actively happening.

Under construction, nothing to see here, come back in a million years when the newly formed stars have generated powerful solar winds and are clearing out their stellar neighborhoods.

Here, I’ve attached an image of bok globules (dark nebulae in IC 2944), which can contain 2 to 50 solar masses of material contained within a volume of about a light-year. Often these dark regions can result in double or even multiple star systems.

But in the case of NGC 1999, astronomers used the APEX instrument to peer at this region in infrared; the perfect wavelength to see through all that dust.

And the hole, this dark region, was still there.

This is a widefield view of the region around NGC 1999. The nebula itself is right at the middle of this image, with the more famous Orion Nebula up at the top of the picture. Image credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin

Thanks to multiple observations from different instruments, astronomers think they’ve puzzled out the nature of this dark hole. It’s actually a cavity carved out by the star V380 Orionis. It really is a dark hole in the nebula, and not a secret star forming region at all.

V380 Orionis is the brightest star in the region of NGC 1999 – it’s actually the brightest member of a triple star system. It’s got a surface temperature of about 10,000 Kelvin and contains about 3.5 times the mass of the Sun. Back in 2010, researchers uncovered that a powerful jet from V380 Ori is probably responsible for carving out this gap in the nebula.

Original Source: ESO News Release

P.S. Pixies running through my head as I’m writing this.

January 23, 2013December 23, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Detailed View of Betelgeuse, on a Collision Course with a Nearby Wall of Dust

A photograph of the red supergiant Betelgeuse interacting with a mysterious dusty wall. Image credit: Herschel/ESA

Betelgeuse is one of my favorite objects to look at, partly because of its pure red color, and mostly because my imagination fills in the rest. That bright red star, the shoulder of Orion is a supergiant, with dozens of times the mass of the Sun, and ready to detonate as a supernova any day now (any day within the next few million years).

But look at Betelgeuse with a really powerful telescope, like the European Space Agency’s Herschel telescope, and you’ll see something like this: the red supergiant Betelgeuse in all its glory, smashing its ferocious solar winds into its environment.

In this photograph, just released from the European Space Agency, you can see the powerful solar winds creating a bow shock around the star as it ploughs through the interstellar medium at a speed of 30 km/s. Closer into the star there are asymmetric structures, where the star shed material in fits and starts into its surroundings, like convective bubbles randomly popping to the top of a pot of boiling water.

It’s the interaction of this supergiant star and its surroundings that astronomers were attempting to unravel with their research, in a paper titled: The enigmatic nature of the circumstellar envelope and bow shock surrounding Betelgeuse as revealed by Herschel. Researchers from several European universities combined data from Herschel, the GALEX space observatory, WISE, and even radio wavelengths to study Betelgeuse and its environment. They studied the star, the bow shock, and the asymmetric clumps of material around it.

Over on the left-hand side of the photograph is a mysterious dusty wall structure that Betelgeuse is heading straight for. Because this dusty wall doesn’t curve, like the bow shock around Betelgeuse, astronomers don’t think it was caused by the star itself. According to the researchers:

The linear bar might be the edge of an interstellar cloud illuminated by Betelgeuse or a linear filament whose a possible origin is linked to the Galactic magnetic field. Since no curvature is present in the bar, we believe that the bar is not directly linked to a previous blue supergiant wind

Betelgeuse is, however, responsible for illuminating this structure, like a flashlight illuminating a nearby fog bank. And according the astronomer’s calculations, the star’s bow shock will collide with that wall in a mere 5,000 years, with the star itself following suit 12,500 years later.

Original Source: ESA News Release

January 21, 2013December 23, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Virtual Star Party: January 20, 2013: The Welcome Rookie Edition

Another wonderful Virtual Star Party, this time with 5 astronomers broadcasting their view of the night sky live. We had amazing views of Jupiter, the Moon, and several deep sky objects, including the Orion Nebula, the Pleiades, M33, the Rosette Nebula, Andromeda, the Cave Nebula, and several others. Check out the really cool “37 star cluster”, where the stars in the cluster actually write out the number 37.

This was also the first time were joined by Louis Mamakos, who delighted us with his dark sky views from Pennsylvania.

Astronomers: Roy Salisbury, Stuart Forman, Mike Phillips, Bill McLaughlin and Louis Mamakos.

Commentary: Nicole Gugliucci, Dr. Pamela Gay, Dr. Thad Szabo, Scott Lewis

Host: Fraser Cain

Here are some amazing pictures that were captured during the event:

January 17, 2013December 23, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Our Phases of the Moon App is Now a Lunar Atlas

We’ve done a major update to our Phases of the Moon app for iPhone/iPad and Android, finally fulfilling the most requested feature: a Lunar Atlas.

You can now pinch-zoom the Moon and two-finger pan it around. As you zoom the Moon beyond a certain size, labels for lunar features will appear, like major craters, Apollo landing sites and lunar seas (mare). As you zoom in more, smaller features become visible. Now that we’ve figured out how to actually implement this functionality, we’ll keep improving it, to make Phases of the Moon a really handy tool for stargazing, especially when you’re using a telescope.

There are lots of other features we’ve recently added including: total lunar eclipses, Live Wallpaper and Widgets (for Android), social sharing, and more.

You can download the iPhone/iPad version here.

Or you can access the Android version here.

Either app costs only $.99 and helps support the costs of Universe Today.

P.S. If you’ve already got either app, please take a second and give us a review on iTunes or Google Play. Every little bit helps.

January 11, 2013April 26, 2016 by Fraser Cain

Watch this Solar Prominence Blast Off the Surface of the Sun

“I may not get a lot done today with the Sun putting on this sort of show”, announced amateur astrophotographer Paul Stewart from his upside down observatory in New Zealand yesterday. No kidding Paul, I can’t imagine anything else that you should be doing with your day other than recording this amazing animation of a massive prominence blasting off the surface of the Sun.

The animation you’re seeing attached to this article was captured by Paul on January 10th, 2013 and consists of 28 separate images of the Sun. But each of these images is actually a composite of about 1000 frames of video; only the best 30% of the frames were kept, and the rest were discarded. Paul stacked up each individual frame using AutoStakkert with Registax, and then manually lined them up in Photoshop. Finally, the whole thing was animated in Virtualdub.

Wondering about the gear Paul used? He was equipped with a Lunt Solar Systems 80mm H-Alpha Pressure Tuned Telescope (that’s it over on the right), using a DMK21AU618AS camera. “It was the first light with this camera, I think it has passed the test.” Indeed it has.

Known as the Upside Down Astronomer, Paul recently got his new website operating, with amazing photographs, detailed info on his gear, and an ongoing blog of updates. Check out the detailed construction images of his green dome.

A single frame of the animation, showing the power of the prominence on the Sun.

So what are we looking at here; what are these solar prominences? With all its twisting swirling gas, the Sun is surrounded by powerful magnetic fields which are constantly shifting, combining and snapping apart. Hot plasma (charged hydrogen and helium atoms) in the Sun’s atmosphere flows along the tangled structure of the magnetic fields. When these magnetic fields shift and snap, a tremendous amount of energy is released, and the plasma is blasted off into space. When these prominences are directed towards Earth, the stream of particles interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field to produce the beautiful auroras we see in the Northern and Southern latitudes.