Posted on by Fraser Cain

Google+ Documentary about the Virtual Star Parties

As you probably know, we’ve been holding Virtual Star Parties every Sunday night, where we pull together live feeds from multiple telescopes around the world and broadcast them into a live Google+ hangout. We’ve done dozens of them now, showcasing the Moon, many of the planets, and so many deep sky objects. The response of this has been overwhelming, helping people without telescopes or terrible weather a chance to see the night sky from the comfort of their home.

We’ve held special events, broadcasting the recent solar eclipse and transit of Venus right into a Google+ Hangout. During the 6-hour marathon transit of Venus, we had almost 7,000 people joining us live.

What you didn’t know was that Google was secretly creating a documentary featuring the Virtual Star Party team. A camera crew from Google flew out to North Carolina to film +Mike Phillips, to Edwardsville to meet with +Dr. Pamela Gay, here to capture me and the family on Vancouver Island and then down to Los Angeles to meet with +Gary Gonella.

The final version of this documentary was released at the big Google I/O keynote address in San Francisco on June 27, 2012. And seriously, they did an amazing job. A huge thanks to everyone at Google+ for providing this platform to give us this ability and thanks to +Jessica Brillhart and +Owen Katz for dedicating so much time to producing this documentary. If you still think Google+ is a ghost town, I hope this will help you realize it’s one of the most vibrant social networks happening on the internet right now.

We hold these Virtual Star Parties every Sunday night, once it gets dark on the West Coast of North America (9pm Pacific in the summer). If want to watch it live, just circle +Fraser Cain on Google+, or circle the +Virtual Star Party page. Then you’ll see the hangout when it happens in the stream.

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Virtual Star Party – June 24, 2012

In case you missed it live, here was our Virtual Star Party for June 24, 2012. In this edition, we had live telescopes from Gary Gonella, Peter Lake and Stuart Forman. And we were joined by Dr. Pamela Gay, Scott Lewis and Ray Sanders – hosted by Fraser Cain.

We had a really great night, with views of the Moon, Saturn, and Mars, as well as several deep sky objects: the Trifid Nebula, the Swan Nebula, the Lagoon Nebula, the Ring Nebula, the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules, the Sombrero Galaxy, and several others.

We hold these Virtual Star Parties every Sunday night, starting when it gets dark on the West Coast. It’s the summer solstice, so we start pretty late right now, but we’ll move earlier and earlier as the days get shorter.

If you want to get a reminder of the next event, follow universetoday on YouTube, or circle Fraser on Google+. We’ve also got a page just for the Virtual Star Party on Google+.

Posted on by Fraser Cain

The Challenge of Landing on Mars

The folks at NASA/JPL posted this amazing video to their YouTube channel today, highlighting the incredible engineering feat it will be to land the Curiosity Rover onto the surface of Mars. Because of Curiosity’s weight and size, the traditional “airbag” method isn’t going to cut it. Instead, Curiosity will be lowered gently to the surface of Mars via a rocket-propelled “skycrane”. It makes the landing even more complex and dangerous, and introduces a whole new level of risk into the landing. But once we get that SUV-sized rover crawling around the surface of Mars, all that risk will be totally worth it.

I’d also like to give NASA kudos in the production design of this feature. It really felt like I was watching a movie trailer, and not some dusty instructional video from a stodgy space agency. If NASA wants to inspire and educate, they hit the nail squarely on the head with this video. Okay, maybe it was a little over the top. I’m waiting to see a cameo from Batman, but still… nice work.

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Weekly Space Hangout – June 21, 2012

In this edition of the Weekly Space Hangout, we welcome a new participant: Mike Wall, senior writer at Space.com. We were also joined by Alan Boyle from MSNBC’s Cosmic Log, Ian O’Neill from Discovery Space, and Amy Shira Teitel from Vintage Space.

This week we talked about using black holes as particle detectors, the recent launch of a female Chinese astronaut, the historical echoes of China and the Soviet Union launching women into space, and the newly announced asteroid telescope by the B612 Foundation.

We record the Weekly Space Hangout on Google+ every Thursday at 10 am Pacific / 1 pm Eastern. Circle Fraser on Google+, to see the show when it’s happening live.

Posted on by Fraser Cain

This Video Will Make You Grateful for the Earth’s Magnetosphere

A newly released video from NASA showcases the space agency’s data visualization skills, as well as the dramatic science behind the Sun’s powerful coronal mass ejections and their interactions with the Earth’s magnetosphere and climate. These ejections stripped the lighter elements away from Venus long ago, leaving the planet with a desolate, hostile environment. But in this animation, you can watch as the particles from the solar wind are redirected around the Earth, keeping us safe – and hydrated.

This video is actually an excerpt from a longer video called Dynamic Earth: Exploring Earth’s Climate Engine, which is playing at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C; this portion showcases the interaction between the Sun’s solar wind and the Earth’s ocean currents. What’s really amazing about this video is that the underlying data visualizations are based on real satellite observations. The swirling ocean currents were created from real ocean current data.

Still sitting on the fence, finger hovering over the play button, not sure if you should spend a few minutes of your valuable time? You might be interested to know that the video was recently chosen as a “select entry” for the 2012 SIGGRAPH conference, held in Los Angeles on Aug. 5 to 9, 2012. This is the conference where all the film studios showcase their 3D graphics work. A NASA video chosen as a select entry? I like their taste.

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Weekly Space Hangout – June 7, 2012

In this week’s episode of the Weekly Space Hangout, Universe Today’s Fraser Cain is joined by Alan Boyle from MSNBC and Amy Shira Teitel from Vintage Space.

They discussed:

  • The 2012 Transit of Venus
  • The space shuttle Enterprise’s final journey to a museum.
  • NASA’s new plans for commercializing space
  • A quick review of the new movie Prometheus

We record the Weekly Space Hangout live every Thursday at 10 am Pacific/ 1 pm Eastern. Watch us record the show live on Google+ every week. The show is also broadcast live over on Cosmoquest.

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Weekly Space Hangout for May 31, 2012

In this episode of the Weekly Space Hangout, we’re joined by special guest Robert Nemiroff from Astronomy Picture of the Day. We also talked about the return of the SpaceX Dragon capsule, a manned mission to Venus, nomadic planets and the announcement of the Square Kilometer Array. Our team included: Amy Shira Tietel, Jason Major, Alan Boyle, Nicole Gugliucci and Robert Nemiroff.

We record a new episode of the Weekly Space Hangout every Thursday at 10:00 am PT / 1:00 pm ET. You can watch us live and ask us questions, right on Google+. Circle Fraser on Google+ to see when the recording starts.

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Meteor Shower Timelapse Seen from the Space Station

Just as the Lyrid Meteor Shower was peaking on April 21, 2012, astronaut Don Pettit captured this incredible timelapse sequence from the International Space Station. Of course you can see the familiar view of cities sweeping beneath the station as it orbits the Earth, but if you watch carefully, you can see the bright flashes of meteors burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere. The timelapse was made up of 310 individual frames captured during that evening, which were then stitched together into a single video.

Posted on by Fraser Cain

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Posted on by Fraser Cain

M55 — Or a Swarm of Angry Bees?

M55. Image credit: ESO
M55. Image credit: ESO

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Globular clusters are my absolute favorite telescope targets. Okay, Saturn, and then globular clusters. And that’s why I’ve absolutely fallen in love with this amazing picture from the European Southern Observatory of the globular cluster M55, located in the constellation Sagittarius. In fact, it’s my new desktop wallpaper (it should be yours too, click here and download the screensize that fits your monitor)

Globular clusters contain vast numbers of stars clumped together in a tight area. In the case of M55, there are about 100,000 stars grouped up within a sphere only 100 light-years across. Astronomers know that globular clusters are old, almost as old as the Universe itself. In fact, for the longest time, astronomers calculated the age of globular clusters to be older than the estimated age of the Universe. Of course, there was an incorrect measurement there, and astronomers eventually aligned the age of globular clusters and the Universe.

M55 is thought to have formed 12.3 billion years ago, when the Universe was less than 3 billion years old. The most ancient stars in the cluster burned out a long time ago, detonating as supernovae. We’re now left with the cooler, lower mass stars, which slowly wink out one-by-one becoming white dwarfs as they proceed through the full stellar life cycle. Our own Sun is only halfway through its own lifespan, before it runs out of hydrogen fuel and becomes a white dwarf.

There are at least 160 globular clusters scattered across the Milky Way, grouped up more towards our galaxy’s core. We can only see some of the clusters because the bright core of the Milky Way obscures our view to objects on the other side. But other galaxies, with their own globular clusters show us what our own galaxy probably looks like from afar.

M55 is part of the Messier catalog; a collection of objects that looked comet-like to the eyes of Charles Messier, a French astronomer working in the 18th century. Messier recorded a list of more than 100 objects which could be confused as comets: galaxies, clusters, and nebulae.

Want to see M55 on your own? You’ll need at least a pair of 50 mm binoculars or a small telescope, some nice dark skies, and a clear view to the constellation Sagittarius. Sagittarius looks exactly like a teapot in the sky, hovering above the southern horizon in summer. The further south you go, the higher Sagittarius will be in the sky.

But you’ll never see a view or take an image as detailed as this photo. That’s because it was captured with the ESO’s 4.1-metre (13.4 foot) Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in northern Chile.

Original Source: ESO News Release