David Dickinson, Author at Universe Today

February 12, 2014December 23, 2015 by David Dickinson

Space Station to Get a ‘Laser Cannon’

CATS in the laboratory. Credit: NASA/GSFC.

What’s a space station without a laser cannon?

The International Space Station will be getting its very own laser at the end of 2014. And unlike the planet-smashing capabilities of the Death Star of Star Wars fame, this laser will to be enlisted for the purpose of science.

It’s called CATS, and no, it isn’t the latest attempt to put feline astronauts in space. CATS stands for the Cloud Aerosol Transport System. The goal of CATS is to study the distribution of tiny particles of dust and air contaminants known as aerosols.

Developed by research scientist Matt McGill at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Maryland, CATS is slated to head to the International Space Station later this year on September 12th aboard SpaceX’s CRS-5 flight of the Dragon spacecraft. CATS will be installed on the Japanese Experiment Module-Exposed Facility (JEM-EF) and will demonstrate the utility of state-of-the-art multi-wavelength laser technology to study aerosol distribution and transport in the atmosphere.

Such knowledge is critical in understanding the path and circulation of aerosols and pollutants worldwide. When the Eyjafjallajökull volcano erupted in Iceland back in 2010, many trans-Atlantic flights were grounded as a precaution. These measures are necessary as several flights have suffered engine failures in the past due to encounters with volcanic ash clouds, such as the four engine failure of KLM Fight 867 in 1989 and the British Airways Flight 9 incident over Southeast Asia in 1982. Knowing where these dangerous ash clouds are is crucial to the safety of air travel.

The expanding ash cloud spewing from Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano as seen from space in 2010. Credit: NASA. — The expanding ash cloud spewing from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano as seen from space in 2010. Credit: NASA.

To accomplish this, CATS will emit 5,000 1 milliJoule laser pulses a second at the 1064, 532 and 355 nanometer wavelengths. This represents a vast improvement in power requirements and thermal capabilities over a similar instrument currently in service aboard the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) Earth remote sensing spacecraft.

And it’s that third 355 nanometer wavelength that will make CATS stand out from CALIPSO. This will also allow researchers to differentiate between particle size and measure the horizontal and vertical distribution of aerosol particles in the atmosphere. CATS will also be capable of measuring the number of individual photons being reflected back at it, which will provide a much better resolution and understanding of current atmospheric activity.

“You get better data quality because you make fewer assumptions, and you get, presumably, a more accurate determination of what kind of particles you’re seeing in the atmosphere,” McGill said in a recent press release.

The International Space Station also provides a unique vantage point for CATS. In a highly inclined 51.7 degree orbit, the station passes over a good swath of the planet on 16 orbits daily on a westward moving ground track that repeats roughly every three days. This will assure CATS has coverage over a large percentage of the planet, including known pollutant transport routes across the northern Pacific and down from Canada over the U.S. Great Lakes region.

While the first two lasers will operate in the infrared and visual wavelengths, said third laser will work in the ultraviolet. And while this will give CATS an enhanced capability, engineers also worry that it may also be susceptible to contamination. “If you get contamination on any of your outgoing optics, they can self-destruct, and then your system is dead. You end up with a very limited instrument lifetime,” McGill said.

Still, if CATS is successful, it may pave the way for larger, free-flying versions that will monitor long-range atmospheric patterns and shifts in climate due to natural and man-made activity. And the ISS makes a good platform to test pathfinder missions like CATS at low cost. “In our current budget-constrained environment, we need to use what we already have, such as the [station], to do more with less,” McGill said.

CALIPSO's LiDAR imaged from the ground by Gregg Hendry in 2008. Used with permission. — CALIPSO’s LiDAR imaged from the ground by Gregg Hendry in 2008. Used with permission.

The advent of a LiDAR system aboard the ISS has also generated a spirited discussion in the satellite tracking community concerning prospects for spotting CATS in operation from the ground. The CALIPSO LiDAR has been captured by ground spotters in the past. However, CALIPSO fires a much more powerful 110 milliJoule pulse at a rate of 20 times a second. Still, the lower power CATS system will be firing at a much faster rate, delivering a cumulative 5,000 milliJoules a second. CATS won’t be bright enough to show up on an illuminated pass of the ISS, but it just might be visible during darkened passes of the ISS through the Earth’s shadow. And, unlike CALLIPSO — which is part of the difficult to observe A-Train of Earth-observing satellites — the ISS passes in view of a majority of humanity. At very least, activity from CATS will be worth watching out for, and may well be seen either visually or photographically.

We’ll soon be adding CATS to the long list of outstanding science experiments being conducted aboard the International Space Station, and the sight of this “fully armed and operational battle station” may soon be coming to a dark sky site near you!

February 10, 2014December 23, 2015 by David Dickinson

Enter the Red Planet: A Guide to the Upcoming Mars 2014 Opposition Season

Astrophotographers are already getting some great images of Mars, such as this sequence captured by Efrain Morales Rivera on January 9th, 2014.

Get those telescopes ready: the coming months offer Earthbound viewers some great views of the planet Mars.

Mars reaches opposition for 2014 on April 8^th. This is approaching season represents the best time to observe Mars, as the Red Planet is closest to us in April and rises in the east as the Sun sets opposite to it in the west. Mars reaches 10” in apparent size this week. Mars is already beginning to show surface detail through a moderate-sized telescope as it continues to grow. In mid-February, Mars currently rises at around midnight local, and rides high to the south at local sunrise.

Mars imaged by Leo Aerts on February 3rd. Shot using a Celestron 14" scope, DMK 21AU618 webcam with a 2.5 powermate projection and a RGB Baader filter set. — Mars imaged by Leo Aerts on February 3rd. Shot using a Celestron 14″ scope, DMK 21AU618 webcam with a 2.5 powermate projection and a RGB Baader filter set.

The 2014 opposition of Mars offers a mixed bag for observers. Hanging around 5-10 degrees south of the celestial equator just east of the September equinoctial point in Virgo, viewing opportunities are roughly equal for both northern and southern hemisphere observers. At opposition, Mars will shine at magnitude -1.5 and present a 15.2” disk, only slightly larger than the near minimum apparition of 2012, when it appeared 13.9” across. This is a far cry from the historic 2003 appearance, when Mars nearly maxed out at 25.1” across.

Why such a difference? Because the planet Mars has an exceptionally eccentric orbit. In fact, the eccentricity for Mars is 9.3% compared to 1.7% for the relatively sedate Earth.

A decade of Mars oppositions. — A decade plus of Mars oppositions, from 2012 through 2025. Graphic created by the author.

This guarantees that all oppositions of Mars – which occur roughly 26 months/780 days apart – are not created equal. In our current epoch, Mars can pass anywhere from 0.683 to 0.373 Astronomical Units (A.U.s) from the Earth. This year’s passage sees Mars overtake us at 0.62 A.U.s or over 96 million kilometres from Earth on the night of opposition. Mars is slightly closer to us at 0.618 A.U.s six nights later on April 14^th.

Why the slight difference? Well, the speedier Earth is on the inside track headed towards aphelion in July, while Mars is lagging but headed slightly inward towards perihelion just afterwards in September. This combined motion makes for a slightly closer approach just after opposition until the Earth begins to pull away.

And this also means that Mars will make its apparent retrograde loop through Virgo on the months surrounding opposition:

Mars retrograde credit-Starry Night — The motion of Mars through Virgo from March 1st through July 31st. Created by the author using Starry Night Education software.

Now for the good news. Oppositions of Mars also follow a rough 15-year cycle, meaning that they get successively closer or more distant with every two year passage. For example, the 1999 opposition of Mars had a very similar geometry to this year’s, as will to the future opposition in 2029.

And we’re currently on an improving trend: the next opposition in 2016 is much better than this year’s at 18.6” in size, and during the 2018 opposition, Mars will present a disc 24.3” across and will be nearly as favorable as the one in 2003!

It’s also worth noting that Mars sits within four degrees of the rising Moon on the evening of April 14^th. The bright star Spica also sits even closer to the Full Moon on the same evening, at less than two degrees away. This particular evening is also noteworthy as it hosts the first of two lunar eclipses for 2014, both of which favor North America.

Mars April 14th. — Mars, the Full Moon and Spica rising in the east on April 14th. Created using Stellarium.

Can you catch Mars near the Moon before sundown on the 14^th using binoculars? The Moon will also occult Mars on July 6^th for viewers across central and South America.

Though Mars is nicknamed the Red Planet, we’ve seen it appear anywhere from a pumpkin orange to a sickly yellow hue. In fact, such a jaundiced color change can be a sign that a planet-wide dust storm is under way. Such a variation can be readily seen with the naked eye. What color does Mars appear like to you tonight?

On Mars, northern hemisphere summer starts on February 15^th, 2014. This means that the northern pole cap of the planet is tipped towards us at opposition during 2014. The day on Mars is only slightly longer than Earth’s at 24 hours and 37 minutes, meaning that Mars will have seemed to rotated only an extra ~8 degrees if you observe it at the same time on each successive evening.

The white pole caps of the planet are the first feature that becomes apparent to the observer at the eyepiece. In February, Mars shows a noticeable gibbous phase in February as we get a peek at the edge of the nighttime side of the planet. Mars will be nearly “full” at opposition, after which it’ll once again take on a slightly distorted football shape.

A growing Mars. — A growing (& shrinking) Mars through the 2014 opposition season. Created by the author using Starry Night Education software.

Tracking the features of the Red Planet is also possible at moderate magnification. One of the largest features apparent is the dark area known as Syrtis Major. Sky & Telescope has an excellent and easy to use application named Mars Previewer that will show you which longitude is currently facing Earth.

Sketching the regions of Mars is a fun exercise. You’ll find that drawing planetary features at the eyepiece can sharpen your observing skills and give you a more critical eye to discern subtle detail. And this season also provides an excellent reason to turn that newly constructed planetary webcam towards Mars.

Up for a challenge? Opposition is also a great time to try and observe the moons of Mars.

moons Starry Night — The moons of Mars as seen on April 8th at around 9:00 Universal Time. Created by the author using Starry Night Education software.

Phobos and Deimos are a tough catch, but are indeed within range of amateur instruments. The chief problem lies in their close proximity to dazzling Mars: +11.5 magnitude, Phobos never strays 14” from the Red Planet in 2014, and 12.4 magnitude Deimos never travels farther than 45” away. Phobos orbits Mars once 7.7 hours — faster than the planet rotates beneath it — and Deimos orbits once every 30.3 hours. The best strategy for a successful Martian moon hunt is to either place Mars just out of the field of view at high power when a moon reaches greatest elongation or block it from view using an eyepiece equipped with an occulting bar.

Extra credit for anyone who nabs pics of the pair!

And opposition is also “Visit Mars season,” as MAVEN and India’s Mars Orbiter Mission arrive later this year. In 2016, NASA’s Mars InSight mission is slated to make the trip, and the window is fast-closing for Dennis Tito’s proposed crewed fly-by mission of Mars in 2018.

And finally, to aid you in your quest for those elusive Martian moons, reader and human astronomical calculator extraordinaire Ed Kotapish was kind enough to compile a list of favorable apparitions of the moons of Mars on the weeks surrounding opposition. (see below)

Good luck, and be sure to send in those pics of Mars and more to Universe Today!

ELONGATIONS OF THE MARTIAN MOONS DATES AND TIMES IN UT STARTING 3/30/2014
MAR 30 PHOBOS 0300 W PHOBOS 0645 E DEIMOS 0900 W PHOBOS 1040 W PHOBOS 1425 E PHOBOS 1815 W PHOBOS 2205 EMAR 31 DEIMOS 0005 E PHOBOS 0155 W PHOBOS 0545 E PHOBOS 0935 W PHOBOS 1320 E DEIMOS 1515 W PHOBOS 1715 W PHOBOS 2100 E APR 01 PHOBOS 0055 W PHOBOS 0440 E DEIMOS 0620 E PHOBOS 0830 W PHOBOS 1220 E PHOBOS 1610 W PHOBOS 2000 E DEIMOS 2130 W PHOBOS 2350 W APR 02 PHOBOS 0340 E PHOBOS 0730 W PHOBOS 1115 E DEIMOS 1235 E PHOBOS 1510 W PHOBOS 1855 E PHOBOS 2245 W APR 03 PHOBOS 0235 E DEIMOS 0345 W PHOBOS 0625 W PHOBOS 1015 E PHOBOS 1405 W PHOBOS 1755 E DEIMOS 1855 E PHOBOS 2145 W APR 04 PHOBOS 0130 E PHOBOS 0525 W PHOBOS 0910 E DEIMOS 1000 W PHOBOS 1305 W PHOBOS 1650 E PHOBOS 2040 W APR 05 PHOBOS 0030 E DEIMOS 0110 E PHOBOS 0420 W PHOBOS 0810 E PHOBOS 1200 W PHOBOS 1550 E DEIMOS 1615 W PHOBOS 1940 W PHOBOS 2325 E	APR 06 PHOBOS 0320 W PHOBOS 0705 E DEIMOS 0725 E PHOBOS 1055 W PHOBOS 1445 E PHOBOS 1835 W PHOBOS 2225 E DEIMOS 2230 WAPR 07 PHOBOS 0215 W PHOBOS 0605 E PHOBOS 0955 W PHOBOS 1340 EDEIMOS 1340 E (Mutual) PHOBOS 1735 W PHOBOS 2120 E APR 08 PHOBOS 0115 W DEIMOS 0445 W PHOBOS 0500 E PHOBOS 0850 W PHOBOS 1240 E PHOBOS 1630 W DEIMOS 1955 E PHOBOS 2020 E APR 09 PHOBOS 0010 W PHOBOS 0355 E PHOBOS 0750 W DEIMOS 1100 W PHOBOS 1135 E PHOBOS 1530 W PHOBOS 1915 E PHOBOS 2305 W APR 10 DEIMOS 0210 E PHOBOS 0255 E PHOBOS 0645 W PHOBOS 1035 E PHOBOS 1425 W DEIMOS 1715 W PHOBOS 1815 E PHOBOS 2205 W APR 11 PHOBOS 0150 E PHOBOS 0545 W DEIMOS 0825 E PHOBOS 0930 E PHOBOS 1320 W PHOBOS 1710 E PHOBOS 2100 W DEIMOS 2330 W	APR 12 PHOBOS 0050 E PHOBOS 0440 W PHOBOS 0830 E PHOBOS 1220 W DEIMOS 1440 E PHOBOS 1605 E PHOBOS 2000 W PHOBOS 2345 EAPR 13 PHOBOS 0340 W DEIMOS 0550 W PHOBOS 0725 E PHOBOS 1115 W PHOBOS 1505 E PHOBOS 1855 W DEIMOS 2055 E PHOBOS 2245 E APR 14 PHOBOS 0235 W PHOBOS 0620 E PHOBOS 1015 W DEIMOS 1205 W PHOBOS 1400 E PHOBOS 1755 W PHOBOS 2140 E APR 15 PHOBOS 0130 W DEIMOS 0310 E PHOBOS 0520 E PHOBOS 0910 W PHOBOS 1300 E PHOBOS 1650 W DEIMOS 1820 W PHOBOS 2040 E APR 16 PHOBOS 0030 W PHOBOS 0415 E PHOBOS 0810 W DEIMOS 0925 E PHOBOS 1155 E PHOBOS 1545 W PHOBOS 1935 E PHOBOS 2325 W APR 17 DEIMOS 0035 W PHOBOS 0315 E PHOBOS 0705 W PHOBOS 1055 E PHOBOS 1445 W DEIMOS 1540 E PHOBOS 1830 E PHOBOS 2225 W APR 18 PHOBOS 0210 E PHOBOS 0605 W DEIMOS 0650 W PHOBOS 0950 E PHOBOS 1340 W PHOBOS 1730 E PHOBOS 2120 W DEIMOS 2200 E

February 6, 2014December 23, 2015 by David Dickinson

A History of Curious Artifacts Sent Into Space

A penny for Mars... Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Since the dawn of the Space Age in 1957, thousands of artifacts and memorabilia have been flown into space. Some have been hoisted on brief suborbital flights, while others have been flung out of the solar system, never to return. And of course, it’s become a fashionable — and highly commercialized — trend as of late to briefly loft products, stuffed animals, etc via balloon towards the tenuous boundary of space. Fly a souvenir or artifact into orbit, and it goes from mundane to priceless. But a few may also serve as a final testament to the our ephemeral existence as a species long after our passing.

Here’s a look at some of the most memorable objects sent into space:

The Florida State Quarter dispatched with New Horizons. Image Credit: NASA/Bill Rodgers, JHU/APL.

New Horizons Memorabilia

Launched on January 19th, 2006, New Horizons is headed towards a historic encounter with Pluto and its moons next year. From there, New Horizons will survey any Kuiper Belt objects of opportunity along its path and then head out of the solar system, becoming the fifth spacecraft to do so. In addition to a suite of scientific instruments, New Horizons also carries the ashes of Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh, a Florida & Maryland state quarter, a piece of Scaled Composites SpaceShipOne, and an American flag. These will doubtless confuse any extraterrestrial salvagers!

The Humanoids Where Here: the plaque affixed the the Pioneer 10 & 11 spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL.

The Pioneer Plaques

The first spacecraft sent on escape trajectories out of our solar system, the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft each carry a plaque which serves as a sort of postcard “greeting” to any future interceptors. The plaque depicts a diagram of the solar system, a map of our location in the galaxy using the positions of known pulsars, and a nude man & woman, which actually generated lots of controversy. Scientist James Van Allen tells of deliberately placing a fingerprint on the Pioneer 10 plaque in his biography The First Eight Billion Miles.

Earth's Greatest Hits: the Golden Record attached to the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL. — Earth’s Greatest Hits: the Golden Record attached to the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL.

The Voyager 1 and 2 Golden Records

Conceived and designed in part by Carl Sagan, these records contain images and sounds of the Earth that’ll most likely outlive humanity. The records carry greetings in 55 languages, music ranging from Mozart to Chuck Berry, 116 images and more, along with instructions and a stylus for playback. The record is also enclosed in an aluminum cover electroplated with Uranium-238, which an alien civilization could use to date its manufacture via half-life decay.

A closeup of the "Mars Penny." Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. — A closeup of the “Mars Penny.” Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

The Mars Curiosity Penny

Strange but true: The Mars rover Curiosity carries a 1909 U.S. Penny for a backup camera calibration target. The penny itself is embedded just below the primary color calibration targets used by Curiosity’s MArs Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI). Rare enough on Earth, the 1909 Lincoln “Mars penny” will be priceless to future collectors!

Jupiter-bound figurines from left: Jupiter, Juno, & Galileo. Credit: NASA.

Juno’s LEGO Figurines

Mini-figurines of Galileo and the Roman deities Jupiter and Juno were launched in 2011 aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft en route to Jupiter . LEGO has flown products aboard the U.S. Space Shuttles and to the International Space Station previously, but Juno’s cargo represents the “most distant LEGO launch” ever. The figurines will burn up in Jupiter’s atmosphere along with the spacecraft at the end of the mission in October 2017.

An Apollo 15 postal cover flown to the Moon. Credit: NASA.

Apollo 15 Postal Covers Fiasco

Apollo 15 astronauts got in some hot water over a publicity scheme. The idea that stamp collector and dealer Hermann Sieger approached the astronauts with was simple: 400 commemorative postage stamp covers would be postmarked at point of departure from the Kennedy Space Center and again at the return point of arrival aboard the USS Okinawa after their circuitous journey via the Moon. NASA was less than happy with the whole affair, and Command Module Pilot Al Worden recounts the aftermath in his book, Falling to Earth.

A Marsbound DVD... Courtesy of Lockheed Martin/LSP. — A Marsbound DVD… Courtesy of Lockheed Martin/LSP.

Haiku for MAVEN

Last year’s MAVEN mission to Mars also carried haiku submitted by space fans. Over 12,530 valid entries were submitted and over 1,100 haiku received the necessary minimum of two votes to be included on a DVD disk affixed to the spacecraft. MAVEN reaches orbit around Mars in October 2014.

The copy of the Soviet pennant aboard Luna 2on display at the Kansas Cosmoshpere. Credit: Patrick Pelletier under a Wikimedia Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. — The copy of the Soviet pennant aboard Luna 2 on display at the Kansas Cosmoshpere. Credit: Patrick Pelletier under a Wikimedia Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Luna 2: A Russian Pennant on Moon

On September 12^th, 1959, the Soviet Union’s Luna 2 spacecraft became the first man-made object to impact the Moon. Luna 2 carried two spherical “pennants” composed of pentagon-shaped elements engraved with the USSR Coat of Arms and Cyrillic letters translating into “CCCP/USSR September 1959.” An identical pennant is now on display in the Kansas Cosmosphere.

EchoStar XVI in its clean room. Credit: Space Systems Loral.

A GeoSat Time Capsule Aboard EchoStar XVI

A disk entitled Last Pictures similar to the Voyager records was placed on a satellite headed to geosynchronous orbit in 2012. Launched aboard EchoStar XVI, Last Pictures is an ultra-archival disk containing 100 snapshots of modern life along with interviews with several 21^st century artists and scientists. Geosynchronous satellites aren’t subject to atmospheric drag, and may be the last testament to the existence of humanity on Earth millions of years hence.

An artist's conception of NASA's Lunar Prospector mission leaving Earth orbit. Credit: NASA. — An artist’s conception of NASA’s Lunar Prospector mission leaving Earth orbit. Credit: NASA.

Lunar Prospector Carries An Astro-Geologist’s Ashes to the Moon

Though he never made the selection to become an astronaut, scientist Eugene Shoemaker did make a posthumous trip to the Moon. The Lunar Prospector spacecraft departed Earth with Shoemaker’s ashes on January 7th, 1998 in a capsule wrapped in brass foil. Lunar Prospector impacted the south pole of the Moon on July 31^st, 1999.

The SpaceX Dragon capsule on approach to the ISS during the COTS 2 mission. Credit: NASA.

SpaceX Takes Star Trek Actor to Space

The ashes actor James Doohan (AKA Scotty) were launched aboard a 2012 SpaceX flight to the International Space Station. The COTS Demo Flight, or COTS 2, was the first commercial spacecraft to berth at the ISS. SpaceX had flown a small amount of Doohan’s ashes on the 2008 unsuccessful test launch of the Falcon 1 rocket.

The "Top Secret Payload" of Credit: Chris Thompson/SpaceX. — The “Top Secret Payload” of the Dragon capsule revealed. Credit: Chris Thompson/SpaceX.

Cheese Wheel Makes a Suborbital Journey

All eyes were also on SpaceX during their December 8^th 2010 maiden flight of the Dragon space capsule. And the hinted mystery cargo? None other than a wheel of cheese, a nod by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to a classic Monty Python sketch.

The Apollo 12 “Moon Museum”

Did it really go into space? One of the legends surrounding the Apollo program is the existence of what’s been dubbed the “Moon Museum.” This was a postage stamp-sized “gallery” of art which included a sketch by Andy Warhol and other 1960s artists that was supposedly attached to descent stage of Apollo 12 and left on the Moon. It will be up to future lunar visitors to confirm or deny its existence!

…And lastly, I give you the “Space Hubcap”

Was the first man-made object propelled into space actually a 1 ton armor plate? On August 27^th, 1957 — just two months prior to Sputnik 1 — the Pascal-B underground nuclear test was conducted in southern Nevada. During the explosion, a steel plate cap was blasted off of a test shaft. The plate could be seen in the initial high-speed video frames, and it was estimated to have reached a speed six times the sufficient escape velocity to depart Earth. To this day, no one knows if this strange artifact of early Space Age folklore still roams the void of space, or simply vaporized due to atmospheric compression at “launch”.

February 5, 2014April 26, 2016 by David Dickinson

Watch Today’s Progress Launch and Docking Live

The Soyuz-U rocket sits ready for launch at the baikonur Cosmodrome earlier today. Credit: The Russian Space Agency.

Live streaming video by Ustream
The first launch of February 2014 worldwide is about to light up the night skies over the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, with the launch of a Soyuz-U rocket carrying the uncrewed Progress M-22M spacecraft to the ISS. You can watch the launch live here, as well as the “fast-track” docking just 5 hours and 58 minutes later.

Progress will be carrying 2.8 tons of fuel, oxygen, supplies and experiments to the International Space Station. This will be the 54^th Progress flight to the International Space Station since the first Progress launch to the station in 2000.

The launch is set to occur at 16:23:33 Universal Time or 11:23:33 AM EST. NASA TV will go live with the launch at 11:00 AM EST/16:00 UT, and TV Tsenki will also broadcast video from the pad just prior, though the broadcast frequently its sans audio.

Progress is also on a four orbit “fast-track” launch headed to the International Space Station. Tune in to NASA TV at 5:00 PM EST/22:00 UT later today, and you’ll be able to catch the docking of the Progress spacecraft to the Pirs module of the ISS as well. Docking is set to occur at 5:25 PM EST/22:25 UT over the North Atlantic Ocean.

Fun fact: Neil Armstrong still holds the record for the fastest journey from liftoff to docking at 5 hours and 33 minutes during Gemini 8 way back in 1966.

Update: ISS Astros indeed report during the live broadcast of the launch of Progress M-22M on NASA TV today of catching sight of the first stage of the Soyuz-U at liftoff… we’ll post any pics if and when they surface.

Progress M-20M undocked from the same Pirs compartment earlier this week on Monday in order to make way for the arrival of Progress M-22M. Progress M-20M is still in orbit, and is slated for a fiery destructive reentry on February 11^th over the South Pacific. The long span between undocking and reentry for Progress M-20M allows for experiments on the spacecraft’s attitude control system to be carried out by ground controllers.

...and LIFTOFF of the Soyuz-U rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome with Progress M-22M! Credit: NASA TV. — …and LIFTOFF of the Soyuz-U rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome with Progress M-22M! Credit: NASA TV.

This also marks the start of a busy 2014 season at the International Space Station. On March 1^st, SpaceX continues its contract to resupply the station with the launch of a Falcon 9 rocket with its fifth Dragon capsule making its third operational delivery to the station on CRS-3. Then later in March on the 12^th, Expedition 38 crewmembers Oleg Kotov, Sergey Ryazansky, and NASA astronaut Michael Hopkins will return to Earth aboard Soyuz TMA-10M. The next crewed launch headed to the International Space Station are Expedition 39 cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov, Oleg Artemyev, and NASA astronaut Steve Swanson launching from Baikonur on March 26^th on Soyuz TMA-12M.

Progress M-22M is ultimately slated to undock from the Pirs module of the International Space Station on April 7^th for a destructive reentry over the South Pacific. Three additional SpaceX launches utilizing Dragon capsules and two more launches of Orbital Science’s Cygnus cargo spacecraft will be conducted in 2014, as well as visits by the European Space Agency’s ATV-5 Georges Lemaitre in June and JAXA’s HTV-5 in July.

And another launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome is coming right up on Valentine’s Day, February 14^th, with the liftoff of an International Launch Services Proton rocket carrying the Turksat 4A satellite. The launch will be carried live via the ILS website and is slated for 21:09 UT/4:09 PM EST.

And though these are all standard resupply missions to the International Space Station, spaceflight is anything but routine. Avid trackers of live launches will remember the Progress M-12M spacecraft that was lost shortly after launch back in August 2011. To date, Progress M-12M was the only supply craft that failed to reach the International Space Station. Progress M-12M impacted in the Choisk Region of Russia’s Altai Republic in the Far East. The RD-0110 engine began to experience a flight anomaly just over five minutes after launch, causing the flight computer to execute a termination of thrust. Progress M-12M was the first loss of a Progress spacecraft since the start of the program in 1978. Ironically, Progress M-12M carried among its cargo manifest 10 paintings made by the son of Russian artist Alesandr Shilov said to be for “the psychological support of the crew…” There’s also a small cottage industry in Siberia east of Russian launch sites in salvaging rocket parts and boosters for scrap metal as they plummet from the sky.

Tonight's passage of Progress M-20M and the International Space Station over the US SE and the Caribbean region. Created by the author using Orbitron. — Tonight’s passage of Progress M-20M and the International Space Station over the US SE and the Caribbean region. Created by the author using Orbitron.

It’s also possible to spot these spacecraft from your backyard as they arrive and depart from the International Space Station. We caught sight of Progress M-20M just last night, passing very near the waxing crescent Moon. Progress was about magnitude +1 when directly overhead, and was about 9 minutes ahead of the International Space Station. We’ve seen the Dragon, HTV, ATV spacecraft, as well as the U.S. Space Shuttle shortly after undocking from the International Space Station when it was in service. In fact, there’s a series of good passes of the ISS at dusk over the next few evenings for the southeastern United States, including a pass at ~6:58 PM EST tonight. Progress M-20M should be about 20 minutes ahead of the station at this point, assuming, of course, it hasn’t maneuvered in its orbit as a part of ongoing thruster control experiments.

We’ll be checking those final orbital corrections just prior to the pass tonight, as well as tracking the launch and docking of Progress M-22M. Follow us on Twitter (@Astroguyz) for further updates.

Be sure to catch all the action at Baikonur and in low Earth orbit today, both online and overhead!

February 3, 2014December 23, 2015 by David Dickinson

Watch Venus as it Wanders Through the Dawn in 2014

Venus as captured by Shahrin Ahmad (@shahgazer) on January 31st, 2014. Credit- Shahgazer.net.

Are you a chronic early riser? Observational astronomy often means late nights and early mornings as daylight lengths get longer for northern hemisphere residents in February through March. But this year offers another delight for the early morning crowd, as the Venus is hanging out in the dawn skies for most of 2014.

You may have already caught sight of the brilliant world: it’s hard to miss, currently shinning at a dazzling -4.5 magnitude in the dawn. Venus is the brightest planet as seen from Earth and the third brightest natural object in the night sky after the Sun and the Moon.

Venus just passed between the Earth and the Sun last month on January 11th at inferior conjunction. Passing over five degrees north of the Sun, this was a far cry from the historic 2012 transit of the solar disk, a feat that won’t be replicated again until 2117 AD.

But February and March offer some notable events worth watching out for as Venus wanders in the dawn.

The path of Venus from February 4th to September 23rd, 2014. The first (top) graphic lays out the path as seen at dawn from latitude 30 degrees north, while the bottom lays out the path of Venus as seen from latitude 30 degrees south. Note that the orientation of the ecliptic in the top frame is set for September 23rd, while the bottom frame is set for February 4th, respectively. Created using Starry Night Education software.

This week sees Venus thicken as a 48” 16% illuminated waxing crescent as it continues to present more of its daytime side to the Earth. We’ve always thought that it was a bit of cosmic irony that the closest planet too us presents no surface detail to observers: Venus is a cosmic tease. This assured that astronomers knew almost nothing about Venus until the dawn of the Space Age — guesses at its rotational speed and surface conditions were all widely speculative. Ideas of a vast extraterrestrial jungle or surface-spanning seas of seltzer water oceans gave way to the reality of a shrouded hellish inferno with noontime temps approaching 460 degrees Celsius. Venus is also bizarre in the fact that it rotates once every 243 Earth days, which is longer than its 224.7 day year — you could easily out walk a Venusian sunrise, that is if you could somehow survive to see it from its perpetually clouded surface!

Venus also passes 4.3 degrees from faint Pluto this week on February 5^th. And while Pluto is a tough catch at over a million times fainter than Venus, it’s interesting to consider that NASA’s New Horizons and ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft are also currently off in the same general direction:

Venus and the invisible lineup of deep space missions in the same general direction this week. Also note that Venus has been skirting the non-zodiac constellation of Scutum this season! Created using Starry Night Education Software, — Venus and the invisible lineup of deep space missions in the same general direction this week. Also note that Venus has been skirting the non-zodiacal constellation of Scutum this season! Created using Starry Night Education Software.

Venus also reaches greatest brilliancy at magnitude -4.6 next week on February 11^th. Venus is bright enough to cast a shadow onto a high contrast background, such as freshly fallen snow. Can you see your “Venusian shadow” with the naked eye? How about photographically?

Venus then goes on to show its greatest illuminated extent to us on February 15^th. This combination occurs because although the crescent of Venus is fattening, the apparent size of the disk is shrinking as the planet pulls away from us in its speedy interior orbit. Can you spy the elusive “ashen light of Venus” through a telescope? Long a controversy, this has been reported by observers as a dim “glow” on the nighttime hemisphere of Venus. Proposed explanations for the ashen light of Venus over the years have been airglow, aurorae, lightning, Venusian land clearing activity (!) or, more likely, an optical illusion.

And speaking of which, the crescent Venus gets occulted by the waning crescent Moon on February 26^th. Observers in western Africa will see this occur in the predawn skies, and the rest of us will see a close pass of the pair worldwide. Can you spot Venus near the crescent Moon in the daytime sky on the 26^th?

The Moon and Venus at dawn on February 25th for observers along the U.S. Eastern Seaboard. Created using Stellarium.

In March, Venus begins the slide southward towards the point occupied by the Sun months earlier and heads towards its greatest westward elongation for 2014 on March 22^nd at 46.6 degrees west of the Sun. Interestingly, Venus is tracing out roughly the same track it took 8 years ago in 2006 and will trace again in 2022, when it will also spend a majority of the year in the dawn once again. The 8-year repeating cycle of Venus is a result of the planet completing very nearly 13 orbits of the Sun to our 8. Ancient cultures, including the Maya, Egyptians, and Babylonian astronomers all knew of this period.

Through the telescope, Venus appears at a tiny “half-moon” phase 50% illuminated at greatest elongation, a point known as dichotomy. It’s interesting to note that theoretical and observed dichotomy can actually vary by several days surrounding greatest elongation. An optical phenomenon, or a true observational occurrence? When do you judge that dichotomy occurs in 2014?

In April, one of the closest planetary conjunctions occurs of 2014 on the 12^th involving Neptune and Venus at just 40’ apart, a little over the span of a Full Moon. Can you squeeze both into an eyepiece field of view? At +7.7th magnitude, Neptune shines at over 25,000 times fainter than Venus. Neith, the spurious “moon” of Venus described by 18th century astronomers lives!

But two even more dramatic conjunctions occur late in the summer, when Jupiter passes just 15’ from Venus on August 18^th and Regulus stands just 42’ from Venus on September 5^th. Fun fact: Venus actually occulted Regulus last century on July 7th, 1959!

From there on out, Venus heads toward superior conjunction on the far side of the Sun on October 25th, to once again emerge into the dusk sky through late 2014 and 2015.

Be sure to check out these dawn exploits of Venus through this Spring season and beyond!

January 31, 2014April 26, 2016 by David Dickinson

From Webcam to Planetcam: Planetary Imaging on the Cheap

It’s a question we get often.

“What sort of gear did you use to capture that?” folks ask, imagining that I’m using a setup that required a second mortgage to pay for.

People are often surprised at the fact that I’m simply using a converted off-the-shelf webcam modified to fit into the eyepiece-holder of a telescope, along with freeware programs to control the camera, stack,and clean up images. And while there are multi-thousand dollar rigs available commercially that yield images that would have been the envy of professional observatories even a decade ago, you may just find that you have the gear lying around to start doing planetary and lunar photography tonight.

OK, I’ll admit: you do need a laptop and telescope, (things that we typically have “laying around” our house!) but these are the two priciest items on the list to get started. Living the vagabond life of a veteran, a teacher, and a freelance science writer assures that our preferred cameras for conversion are always in the double-digit dollar range.

Converted "Planetcam" installed on the 'scope. — Our first converted “Planetcam” installed on the ‘scope.

But converted webcam imaging is not new. We first read about the underground movement over a decade ago. Back in the day, amateur astrophotographers were hacking their Phillips Vesta and ToUcam Pro webcams with stunning results. Celestron, Meade and Orion later caught up to the times and released their own commercial versions for planetary imaging some years later.

A few freeware installations and the modification of a Logitech 3000 that I bought on rebate for 50$ later, and I was soon imaging planets that same night.

Just about any webcam will yield decent results, though the discontinued Phillips ToUcam Pro webcams are still the heavily sought after Holy Grail of webcam astrophotography. The modification simply consists of removing the camera lens (don’t do this with any camera that you don’t want to gut and void the warranty) and attaching a standard 1 ¼” eyepiece barrel in its place using cement glue.

For camera control, I use a program called K3CCDTools. This was freeware once upon a time, now the program costs $50 to install. I still find it well worth using, though I’ve been turned on to some equally useful programs out there that are still free. (more on that in a bit).

K3CCDTools will process your images from start to finish, but I find that Registax is great for post-image processing. Plus, you don’t want to waste valuable scope time processing images: I do the maximum number of video captures in the field, and then tinker with them later on cloudy nights.

Screen cap — A screen capture of K3CCD tools during a daytime alignment test. Note the focusing dialog (FFT) box to the right.

Stacking video captures enables you to “grab” those brief moments of fine atmospheric seeing. Many astrophotographers will manually select the best frames from thousands one by one, but I’ll have to admit we’re often impatient and find the selection algorithm on Registax does an acceptable job of selecting the top 10% of images in a flash.

And like Photoshop, a college course could be taught around Registax. Don’t be intimidated, but do feel free to experiment! After stacking and optimizing, we find the true power in making the images “pop” often lies in the final step, known as wavelet processing. A round of sharpening and contrast boosting in Photoshop can also go a long way, just remember that the goal is to apply the minimum to get the job done, rather than looking unnatural and over-processed.

Photos by author — A photo mosaic of the historic Mars opposition of 2003.

At the eyepiece, the first target hurdle is object acquisition. A standard webcam can go after bright targets such as the Moon, the Sun (with the proper filter) planets, and bright double stars. We’ve even nabbed the International Space Station with our rig using a low-tech but effective tracking method. Your field of view, however, will typically be very narrow; my webcam coupled to a Celestron C8” Schmidt-Cassegrain typically yields a field of view about 10’ on a side. You’ll want to center the object in the eyepiece at the highest power possible, then plop the camera in place.

The next battle is centering and focusing the object on the screen. An out-of-focus planet scatters light: tweaking the focus back and forth sometimes reveals the silvery “doughnut” of the planet lurking just out of view.

From there, you’ll want the object in as razor sharp a focus as possible. K3CCDTools has a great feature for this known as a Fine Focusing Tool (FFT). Some observers also using focusing masks, which can also be easily built — remember, were being cheapskates! — out of cardboard. Be sure those reflector mirrors are properly collimated as well.

Don’t be surprised if the planet initially looks over-saturated. You’ll want to access the manual controls of via the camera software to take the brightness, contrast and color saturation down to acceptable levels. I typically shoot at about 15 frames a second. Fun Fact: the “shutter speed” of the dark adapted “Mark 1 human eyeball” is generally quoted around 1/20^th of a second, slower than you’d think!

Note: all those thousands of frames of video go somewhere… be sure to occasionally clean them off your hard-drive, as it will swiftly fill up!

When you image makes a big difference as well. The best time to shoot an object is when it transits the local north-south meridian and is at its highest point above the horizon. The reason for this is that you’re looking through the thinnest possible cross-section of the often turbulent atmosphere.

Universe Today reader Scott Chapman of Montpelier, Virginia also recently shared with us his exploits in planetary webcam imaging and his technique:

A webcam image of the Mare Crisium region on the Moon. Credit-Scott Chapman

“Recently, while looking for an affordable basic telescope, to see if I really had any interest in astronomy, searches and reviews led me to purchase a 70mm refractor. The last thing on my mind was that I could expect to take any pictures of what I might see.

Previously, I had assumed that the only way to take even basic pictures of sky objects was with equipment that was way out of my price range. Imagine my surprise to learn that I could use a simple webcam that I already had sitting around!”

Like many of us mere mortal budget astrophotographers, Scott’s goal was great images at low cost. He also shared with us the programs he uses;

–SharpCap2: For capturing .avi video files from the webcam connected to the telescope.

–VirtualDub: For shortening the .avi video.

–PIPP: For optimization of stacked images.

–AutoStakkert2: Selects and stacks the best frames into a single .tiff file using a simple 3-step process. Scott notes that its “MUCH easier for a beginner to use than Registax!”

-Registax6: The latest version of the software mentioned above.

–JPEGView: For final cropping and file conversion. (I sometimes also use ye ole Paint for this).

Even after a decade of planetary imaging, some of these were new to us as well, a testament to just how far the technique has continued to evolve. Astrophotography and astronomy are lifelong pursuits, and we continue to learn new things every day.

The current camera I’m shooting with is a Logitech c270 that I call my “Wal-Mart 20$ Blue Light Special.” (Yes, I know that’s Kmart!) Lots of discussion forums exist out there as well, including the QuickCam and Unconventional Imaging Astronomy Group (QCUIAG) on Yahoo!

Some observers have even taken to gutting and modifying their webcams entirely, adding in cooling fans, more sensitive chips, longer exposure times and more.

All great topics for a future post. Let us know of your trials and triumphs in webcam planetary photography!

-Watch Dave Dickinson pit his 20$ webcam against multi-thousand dollar rigs weekly in the Virtual Star Party.

-Be sure to send those webcam pics in to Universe Today!

January 30, 2014December 23, 2015 by David Dickinson

Stormy with a Chance of Molten Iron Rain: First Ever Map of Exotic Weather on Brown Dwarfs

Think the weather is nasty this winter here on Earth? Try vacationing on the brown dwarf Luhman 16B sometime.

Two studies out this week from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy based at Heidelberg, Germany offer the first look at the atmospheric features of a brown dwarf.

A brown dwarf is a substellar object which bridges the gap between at high mass planet at over 13 Jupiter masses, and a low mass red dwarf star at above 75 Jupiter masses. To date, few brown dwarfs have been directly imaged. For the study, researchers used the recently discovered brown dwarf pair Luhman 16A & B. At about 45(A) and 40(B) Jupiter masses, the pair is 6.5 light years distant and located in the constellation Vela. Only Alpha Centauri and Barnard’s Star are closer to Earth. Luhman A is an L-type brown dwarf, while the B component is a T-type substellar object.

More to the story: Read a “behind the scenes” account of how this discovery was made — from the proposal to the press release.

“Previous observations have inferred that brown dwarfs have mottled surfaces, but now we can start to directly map them.” Ian Crossfield of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy said in this week’s press release. “What we see is presumably patchy cloud cover, somewhat like we see on Jupiter.”

To construct these images, astronomers used an indirect technique known as Doppler imaging. This method takes advantage of the minute shifts observed as the rotating features on brown dwarf approach and recede from the observer. Doppler speeds of features can also hint at the latitudes being observed as well as the body’s inclination or tilt to our line of sight.

But you won’t need a jacket, as researchers gauge the weather on Luhman 16B be in the 1100 degrees Celsius range, with a rain of molten iron in a predominately hydrogen atmosphere.

The study was carried out using the CRyogenic InfraRed Echelle Spectrograph (CRIRES) mounted on the 8-metre Very Large Telescope based at the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Paranal observatory complex in Chile. CRIRES obtained the spectra necessary to re-construct the brown dwarf map, while backup brightness measurements were accomplished using the GROND (Gamma-Ray Burst Optical/Near-Infrared Detector) astronomical camera affixed to the 2.2 metre telescope at the ESO La Silla Observatory.

A closeup of the GROND instrument (the blue cylinder to the lower left) on the La Silla 2.2-metre telescope. Credit-ESO/European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere.

The next phase of observations will involve imaging brown dwarfs using the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research (SPHERE) instrument, set to go online at the Very Large Telescope facility later this year.

And that may just usher in a new era of directly imaging features on objects beyond our solar system, including exoplanets.

“The exciting bit is that this is just the start. With the next generations of telescopes, and in particular the 39-metre European Large Telescope, we will likely see surface maps of more distant brown dwarfs — and eventually, a surface map for a young giant planet,” said Beth Biller, a researcher previously based at the Max Planck Institute and now based at the University of Edinburgh. Biller’s study of the pair went even more in-depth, analyzing changes in brightness at different wavelengths to peer into the atmospheric structure of the brown dwarfs at varying depths.

“We’ve learned that the weather pattern on these brown dwarfs are quite complex,” Biller said. “The cloud structure of the brown dwarf varies quite strongly as a function of atmospheric depth and cannot be explained with single layer clouds.”

A rotational surface map of Luhman 16B Credit-ESO/I. Crossfield.

The paper on brown dwarf weather pattern map comes out today in the January 30^th, 2014 edition of Nature under the title Mapping Patchy Clouds on a Nearby Brown Dwarf.

The brown dwarf pair targeted in the study was designated Luhman 16A & B after Pennsylvania State University researcher Kevin Luhman, who discovered the pair in mid-March, 2013. Luhman has discovered 16 binary systems to date. The WISE catalog designation for the system has the much more cumbersome and phone number-esque designation of WISE J104915.57-531906.1.

We caught up with the researchers to ask them some specifics on the orientation and rotation of the pair.

“The rotation period of Luhman 16B was previously measured watching the brown dwarf’s globally-averaged brightness changes over many days. Luhman 16A seems to have a uniformly thick layer of clouds, so it exhibits no such variation and we don’t yet know its period,” Crossfield told Universe Today. “We can estimate the inclination of the rotation axis because we know the rotation period, we know how big brown dwarfs are, and in our study, we measured the “projected” rotational velocity. From this, we know we must be seeing the brown dwarf near equator-on.”

The maps constructed correspond with an amazingly fast rotation period of just under 6 hours for Luhman 16B. For context, the planet Jupiter – one of the fastest rotators in our solar system – spins once every 9.9 hours.

“The rotational period of Luhman 16B is known from 12 nights of variability monitoring,” Biller told Universe Today. “The variability in the B component is consistent with the results from 2013, but the A component has a lower amplitude of variability and a somewhat different rotational period of maybe 3-4 hours, but that is still a very tentative result.”

This first mapping of the cloud patterns on a brown dwarf is a landmark, and promises to provide a much better understanding of this transitional class of objects.

Couple this announcement with the recent nearby brown dwarf captured in a direct image, and its apparent that a new era of exoplanet science is upon us, one where we’ll not only be able to confirm the existence of distant worlds and substellar objects, but characterize what they’re actually like.

January 29, 2014December 23, 2015 by David Dickinson

NEOWISE Spots Mars-Crossing Comet

NASA's NEOWISE Mission takes aim at Comet A1 Siding Spring on January 16th, 2014 when the comet was 571 million kilometres distant. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

One of the big ticket astronomical events of 2014 will be the close passage of Comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring past the planet Mars in October 2014. Discovered just over a year ago from the Australian-based Siding Spring Observatory, this comet generated a surge of excitement in the astronomical community when it was discovered that it was going to pass very close to the planet Mars in late 2014.

Now, a fleet of spacecraft are poised to study the comet in unprecedented detail. Some of the first space-based observations of the comet have been conducted by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the recently reactivated NEOWISE mission. And although the comet may not look like much yet in the infrared eyes of NEOWISE, its estimated 4 kilometre in diameter nucleus is already active and shedding about 100 kilograms of dust per second.

And although an impact has been since ruled out, it’s that dust that may present a hazard for Mars orbiting spacecraft, as well as a unique scientific observing opportunity.

“Our plans for using spacecraft at Mars to observe Comet A1 Siding Spring will be coordinated with plans for how the orbiters will duck and cover, if we need to do so that,” said NASA/JPL Mars Exploration Program chief scientist Rich Zurek.

The 2014 passage of Comet A1 Siding Spring through the inner solar system. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Comet A1 Siding Spring is projected to pass within just 138,000 kilometres of Mars on October 19^th, 2014. This is one-third the Earth-Moon distance, and 10 times closer than the closest recorded passage of a comet by the Earth, which was Comet D/1770 Lexell in the late 18^th century. The comet will also miss the Martian moons of Phobos and Deimos, which have the closest orbits of any moons in the solar system at just 5,989 and 20,063 kilometres above the surface of Mars, respectively.

Assets in orbit around the Red Planet are also slated to observe the close approach and passage of Comet A1 Siding Spring, as well as any extraterrestrial meteor shower that its dust may generate.

“We could learn about the nucleus – its shape, its rotation, whether some areas on its surface are darker than others,” Zurek said in a recent NASA/JPL press release.

The rovers Curiosity and Opportunity are currently active on the surface of Mars. Above in orbit, we’ve got the European Space Agency’s Mars Express, and NASA’s Mars Odyssey and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). These will be joined by India’s Mars Orbiter Mission and NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft just weeks prior to the comet’s passage.

“A third aspect for investigation could be what effect the infalling particles have on the upper atmosphere of Mars,” Zurek said. “They might heat it and expand it, not unlike the effect of a global dust storm.”

Just last year, Mars based spacecraft caught sight of the ill-fated sungrazer Comet C/2012 S1 ISON as it passed Mars. But that dim passage yielded a scant pixel-sized view in the eyes of MRO’s HiRISE camera; Comet A1 Siding Spring will pass 80 times closer than Comet ISON and could yield a view of its nucleus dozens of pixels across.

Though the tenuous Martian atmosphere will shield to surface rovers from any micro-meteoroid impacts, they may also be witness to a surreptitious meteor shower from the debris shed by the comet, a first seen from the surface of another world.

But engineers will also be assessing the potential hazards that said particles may posed to spacecraft orbiting Mars as well.

“It’s way too early for us to know how much of a threat Siding Spring will be to our orbiters,” said JPL’s Mars Exploration Program chief engineer Soren Madsen recently. “It could go either way. It could be a huge deal or it could be nothing – or anything in between.”

In a worst case scenario, Mars orbiting spacecraft would be shuttered and oriented to “shelter in place” as the dust from the comet passes. There’s precedent for this in Earth orbit, as precious assets such as the Hubble Space Telescope were closed for business during the Leonid meteor storm of 1998.

“How active will Siding Spring be in April and May? We’ll be watching that,” Madsen continued. “But if the red alarm starts sounding in May, it would be too late to start planning how to respond. That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing right now.”

Comet A1 Siding Spring was the first comet discovered in 2013 at 7.2 Astronomical Units (AUs) distant. From our Earth based perspective, the comet will reach opposition on August 25^th at 0.96 AU from the Earth, and approach 7’ from Mars on October 19^th in the constellation Ophiuchus in evening skies. The comet reaches perihelion just 4 days later, and is slated to be a binocular comet around that time shining at magnitude +8.

The comet nucleus itself is moving in a retrograde orbit relative to Mars. Particles from A1 Siding Spring will slam into the atmosphere of Mars — and any spacecraft that happens to be in their way — at a velocity of 56 kilometres per second. For context, the recent January Quadrantids have a more sedate atmospheric impact velocity of 41 kilometres a second.

The unfolding 2014 drama of “Mars versus the Comet” will definitely be worth keeping an eye on… more to come!

January 27, 2014December 23, 2015 by David Dickinson

How to See Planet Mercury at its Best in 2014

Looking west on January 31st 30 minutes after sunset. (Created using Stellarium).

There’s an often told anecdote that astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus never spied Mercury. And while this tale is almost certainly apocryphal, it does speak to just how elusive the innermost planet of our solar system really is.

Never seen Mercury for yourself? This final week of January offers a good time to try, as Mercury reaches greatest elongation east of the Sun on Friday, January 31^st.

This will offer northern hemisphere viewers one on the best chances to spot the fleeting world low to the west immediately after local sunset. And although we get on average six apparitions of Mercury per year – three each in the dawn and dusk – all apparitions aren’t created equal.

The approximate moment of greatest elongation occurs on January 31^st at 10:00 UT / 5:00 AM EST, when Mercury is 18.4 degrees east of the Sun. This is only 0.5 degrees shy of the smallest elongation for Mercury that can occur, as the planet reaches perihelion just three days later on February 3^rd at 0.3075 Astronomical Units (AUs) from the Sun. The last time this was surpassed was the evening elongation of February 16^th, 2013^th, and the next time it’ll be topped is October 16^th, 2015 at just 18.1 degrees from the Sun.

Path of Mercury from January 27th to February 12th. (Created using Starry Night). — Path of Mercury from January 27th to February 12th as seen from latitude 30 degrees north. (Created using Starry Night Education Software).

And though this elongation is closer than usual, this also works in the Mercury-spotter’s favor. At greatest elongation, Mercury will present a 50% illuminated 7 arc second disk, readily apparent in a small telescope. But a also means that Mercury will appear almost a full magnitude brighter than it does when it reaches greatest elongation near aphelion, as it last did on March 31^st of last year, and will do again on March 14^th of this year.

Mercury will shine at magnitude -0.4 low towards the west into this coming weekend. We managed to pick up Mercury with binoculars on January 16th and have since managed to start tracking the planet unaided since January 18th.

Mercury also has another factor going for it, in terms of the angle of the evening ecliptic. Following ahead of the Sun, Mercury occupies a space that the Sun will trace up its apparent path along the ecliptic as it begins its long slow crawl northward towards the Vernal Equinox on March 20th. This means that Mercury is almost perpendicular above the western horizon at dusk and is currently getting a maximum boost above the atmospheric murk.

Mercury also gets joined by a razor thin waxing crescent Moon just over 24 hours past New sliding by it on the evening of Friday, January 31^st. Look for the Moon five degrees to the right of Mercury on the 31^st. The Moon will be a much easier catch on the February 1^st when its 10 degrees above Mercury. And can you spy the +1 magnitude star Fomalhaut in the constellation Piscis Austrinus just 20 degrees to the south of Mercury?

The orientation of the Moon and Mercury on the evening of February 1st. Credit: Stellarium.

And speaking of the Moon, this week’s New Moon is the second of the month, a feat that repeats in March 2014 and leaves the month of February “New Moon-less…” such an occurrence in either instance is informally known as a Black Moon.

Orbiting the Sun once every 88 days, Mercury completes about 4.15 circuits of the Sun for every Earth year. From our Earthbound vantage point, however, Mercury seems to only orbit the Sun 3.15 times a year. Thus 6 elongations (3 in the dusk and 3 in the dawn) will occur every year, through 7 can occur, as last happened in 2011 and will occur again next year in 2015.

Mercury (to the lower left) and the Moon on August 15th, 2012. (Photo by author).

After this weekend, Mercury will resume its plunge towards the horizon through early February. Mercury will begin retrograde (westward) apparent motion against the starry background on February 6th before resuming direct (eastward motion) on February 27th. And although astrologers may find that “Mercury in retrograde” is a convenient “blame magnet,” they’re also falling prey to a logical fallacy known as retrofitting, as Mercury spends a longer fraction of time than any other planet “in retrograde” at about 20%!

From there, Mercury heads towards inferior conjunction between the Earth and the Sun on Saturday, February 15^th, passing just 3.7 degrees north of the solar disk. You can catch Mercury entering into the field of view of the Solar Heliospheric Observatory’s (SOHO) LASCO C3 camera from February 12th to February 18th.

And although Mercury misses this time, we’re not that far away from the next transit of Mercury across the face of the Sun on May 9^th, 2016.

Up for more? An even tougher challenge is to attempt to spot Mercury… in the daytime. We’ve noted this possibility before as Mercury reaches maximum elongation from the Sun while still in the negative magnitude range. Of course, you want to physically block the Sun out of view, and don’t even try sweeping the sky near the Sun visually with binoculars or a telescope! You’ll need a clear, blue sky for maximum contrast and a polarizing filter may help in your quest… but this should be possible under exceptional conditions.

Good luck, and be sure to send those Mercury pics in to Universe Today!

January 24, 2014December 23, 2015 by David Dickinson

Nearby Brown Dwarf Captured in a Direct Image

A direct image of a brown dwarf companion (arrowed) taken at the Keck Observatory. (Credit: Crepp et al. 2014 APJ).

A recent find announced by astronomers may go a long ways towards understanding a crucial “missing link” between planets and stars.

The team, led by Friemann Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of Notre Dame’s Justin R. Crepp, recently released an image of a brown dwarf companion to a star 98 light years or 30 parsecs distant. This discovery marks the first time that a T-dwarf orbiting a Sun-like star with known radial velocity acceleration measurement has been directly imaged.

Located in the constellation Eridanus, the object weighs in at about 52 Jupiter masses, and orbits a 0.95 Sol mass star 51 Astronomical Units (AUs) distant once every 320-1900 years. Note that this wide discrepancy stems from the fact that even though we’ve been following the object for some 17 years since 1996, we’ve yet to ascertain whether we’ve caught it near apastron or periastron yet: we just haven’t been watching it long enough.

The T-dwarf, known as HD 19467 B, may become a benchmark in the study of sub-stellar mass objects that span the often murky bridge between true stars shining via nuclear fusion and ordinary high mass planets.

Brown dwarfs are classified as spectral classes M, L, T, and Y and are generally quoted as having a mass of between 13 to 80 Jupiters. Brown dwarfs utilize a portion of the proton-proton chain fusion reaction to create energy, known as deuterium burning. Low mass red dwarf stars have a mass range of 80 to 628 Jupiters or 0.75% to 60% the mass of our Sun. The Sun has just over 1,000 times Jupiter’s mass.

Researchers used data from the TaRgeting bENchmark-objects with Doppler Spectroscopy (TRENDS) high-contrast imaging survey, and backed it up with more precise measurements courtesy of the Keck observatory’s High-Resolution Echelle Spectrometer or HIRES instrument.

An artist's conception of a T-type brown dwarf. (Credit: Tyrogthekreeper under a Wikimedia Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license). — An artist’s conception of a T-type brown dwarf. (Credit: Tyrogthekreeper under a Wikimedia Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license).

TRENDS uses adaptive optics, which relies on precise flexing the telescope mirror several thousands of times a second to compensate for the blurring effects of the atmosphere. Brown dwarfs shine mainly in the infrared, and objects such as HD 19467 B are hard to discern due to their close proximity to their host star. In this particular instance, for example, HD 19467 B was over 10,000 times fainter than its primary star, and located only a little over an arc second away.

“This object is old and cold and will ultimately garner much attention as one of the most well-studied and scrutinized brown dwarfs detected to date,” Crepp said in a recent Keck observatory press release. “With continued follow-up observations, we can use it as a laboratory to test theoretical atmospheric models. Eventually we want to directly image and acquire the spectrum of Earth-like planets. Then, from the spectrum, we should be able to tell what the planet is made of, what its mass is, radius, age, etc… basically all of its relevant properties.

Discovery of an Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting in a star’s habitable zone is currently the “holy grail” of exoplanet science. Direct observation also allows us to pin down those key factors, as well as obtain a spectrum of an exoplanet, where detection techniques such as radial velocity analysis only allow us to peg an upper mass limit on the unseen companion object.

This also means that several exoplanet candidates in the current tally of 1074 known worlds beyond our solar system also push into the lower end of the mass limit for substellar objects, and may in fact be low mass brown dwarfs as well.

Another key player in the discovery was the Near-Infrared Camera (second generation) or NIRC2. This camera works in concert with the adaptive optics system on the Keck II telescope to achieve images in the near infrared with a better resolution than Hubble at optical wavelengths, perfect for brown dwarf hunting. NIRC2 is most well known for its analysis of stellar regions near the supermassive black hole at the core of our galaxy, and has obtained some outstanding images of objects in our solar system as well.

The hexagonal primary mirror of the Keck II telescope. (Credit: SiOwl. A Wikimedia Commons image under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported liscense). — The hexagonal primary mirror of the Keck II telescope. (Credit: SiOwl. A Wikimedia Commons image under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license).

What is the significance of the find? Free floating “rogue” brown dwarfs have been directly imaged before, such as the pair named WISE J104915.57-531906 which are 6.5 light years distant and were spotted last year. A lone 6.5 Jupiter mass exoplanet PSO J318.5-22 was also found last year by the PanSTARRS survey searching for brown dwarfs.

“This is the first directly imaged T-dwarf (very cold brown dwarf) for which we have dynamical information independent of its brightness and spectrum,” team lead researcher Justin Crepp told Universe Today.

Analysis of brown dwarfs is significant to exoplanet science as well.

“They serve as an essential link between our understanding of stars and planets,” Mr. Crepp said. “The colder, the better.”

And just as there has been a controversy over the past decade concerning “planethood” at the low end of the mass scale, we could easily see the debate applied to the higher end range, as objects are discovered that blur the line… perhaps, by the 23^rd century, we’ll finally have a Star Trek-esque classifications scheme in place so that we can make statements such as “Captain, we’ve entered orbit around an M-class planet…”

Something that’s always been fascinating in terms of red and brown dwarf stars is also the possibility that a solitary brown dwarf closer to our solar system than Alpha Centauri could have thus far escaped detection. And no, Nibiru conspiracy theorists need not apply. Mr. Crepp notes that while possible, such an object is unlikely to have escaped detection by infrared surveys such as WISE. But what a discovery that’d be!