If you missed it live, here’s the replay of this week’s Space Hangout. And don’t forget, on Friday, Feb. 17 at 18:00 UTC (1 pm EST, 10 am PST) I’ll be interviewing astronomer and Pluto killer (@Plutokiller) Mike Brown. To watch the Hangout on Air, circle Fraser on Google+ and watch his feed for the link to the Hangout. There you can join in on the conversation and post your questions for Mike by posting comments on the feed.
If you aren’t on Google+, you can also watch it live on the CosmoQuest Hangouts page, where there is also a place to post comments and questions. And we’ll also try to have a live feed on Universe Today. Just look for a video player in the upper right hand corner of the site and click the ‘play’ button. If you can’t watch live, we’ll post a recording of the Hangout later on UT, just like the one above.
Who knew there were so many moving parts to operate a telescope? This is a great behind the scenes video of what really takes place up at the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. About 125 people work full-time at the Keck Observatory to operate the two ten-meter telescopes. The intricate fine-tuning and elaborate attention to detail is amazing. “Keeping those telescopes on-sky every night is the summit crew of the Operations Department. This video is dedicated to the guys of the Keck daycrew who make it possible,” wrote Keck engineer Andrew Cooper, who compiled this unique and must-watch video. He details the techniques he used at his Vimeo page for this video.
Randy Halverson has released a new timelapse video of the night sky shot at the White River in central South Dakota during September and October 2011. There are also some shots from Arches National Park in Utah, and Canyon of the Ancients area of Colorado during June 2011.
Aurora Borealis over Western Canada from the ISS Expedition 30 crew. Credit: NASA
Video Caption: Up the East Coast of North America. Credit: NASA
The North American continent is literally set ablaze in a confluence of Auroral and Manmade light captured in spectacular new videos snapped by the astronauts serving aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
The Expedition 30 crew has recently filmed lengthy sequences of images that are among the most stunning ever taken by astronauts flying in orbit some 240 miles (385 kilometers) over the United States and Canada.
[/caption]
Teams working at the Crew Earth Observations center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas have assembled hundreds of individual still images taken onboard the ISS into a series of amazing videos.
Two videos collected here focus on the East and West coasts of North America and show the path traveled by the station from the crew’s perspective as they photographed the light emitted by hundreds of millions of humans living below and the brilliant light of the Aurora Borealis shining above them.
Night time Panorama of US East Coast from the ISS
Astronauts captured this stunning nighttime panorama of the major cities along the East Coast of the United States on Jan. 29. Credit: NASA
Now the NASA team has assembled the entire sequence of images taken on January 29, 2012 from 05:33:11 to 05:48:10 GMT into a video -see above.
The orbital pass runs from Central America just southwest of Mexico and continues to the North Atlantic Ocean, northeast of Newfoundland. It begins by looking over Central America towards the Gulf of Mexico and the southeastern United States. As the ISS travels northeast over the gulf, some southeastern United States cities can be distinguished, like New Orleans, Mobile, Jacksonville, and Atlanta. Continuing up the east coast, some northeastern states, like Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City stand out brightly along the coastline. The Aurora Borealis shines in the background as the pass finishes near Newfoundland
The 2nd video is titled “Across Southwest Canada at Night”
This sequence of shots was taken January 25, 2012 from 12:34:11 to 12:36:28 GMT, on a pass from near the border of British Columbia, Canada and Washington state, near Vancouver Island, to southern Alberta, near Calgary.
The main focus of this video is the Aurora Borealis over Canada, which appears very near the ISS during this short and exciting video.
And don’t forget the fabulous ISS shots of Comet Lovejoy taken in December 2011 by Expedition 30 Commander Dan Burbank.
Comet Lovejoy on 22 Dec. 2011 from the International Space Station. Comet Lovejoy is visible near Earth’s horizon in this nighttime image photographed by NASA astronaut Dan Burbank, Expedition 30 commander, onboard the International Space Station on Dec. 22, 2011. Credit: NASA/Dan Burbank
For an otherworldly and eerie perspective, click here to see what a Manmade artifact on the surface of Mars looks like as seen from Mars Orbit – also taken just a few days ago on Jan. 29, 2012, but this time by a robot in place of a human !
It was history in the making: Our first live interview via a Google+ Hangout On Air! We talked with Mars rover driver Scott Maxwell, and he told us about the plans for the Opportunity rover’s upcoming winter, we took a look back at the 8 years of the MER on Mars, and looked ahead to the Curiosity (MSL) rover mission, set to land in August this year. Thanks again to Scott for being a wonderful first live interviewee!
To watch these interviews live, circle Fraser and watch his feed for updates. If you’re not on Google+, you can still watch these episodes live. Today, we were able to have a live feed on the main page of Universe Today while the interview was taking place (it was on the upper right hand corner). But you can also visit the Cosmoquest Hangouts page and you’ll see them when they happen.
And I’ve got great news: Next Friday, February 17, we’ll have our second live interview with astronomer Mike Brown from Caltech. The interview will take place at 18:00 UT (1 pm EST, 12 noon CST, 10 am PST).
Normally plasma from the Sun either shoots off into space or loops back on the Sun’s surface. But the Solar Dynamics Observatory captured some plasma that couldn’t make up its mind. Here, darker, cooler plasma slid and shifted back and forth above the Sun’s surface for 30 hours on February 7-8, 2012. The view is shown in extreme ultraviolet light. As a backdrop, an active region just rotating into view shows bright plasma gyrating into streams — normally how the plasma behaves. SDO scientists say the darker particles are being pulled back and forth by competing magnetic forces, tracking along strands of magnetic field lines.
And by the way, tomorrow is SDO’s 2nd anniversary! It launched two years ago on February 11, 2010. Happy anniversary, SDO and thanks for all the great videos and data so far! We wish you many more!
What do things sound like out in the cosmos? Of course, sound waves can’t travel through the vacuum of space; however, electromagnetic waves can. These electromagnetic waves can be recorded by devices called spectrographs on many of the world’s most powerful telescopes. Astronomer Paul Francis from the Australian National University has used some of these recordings and converted them into sound by reducing their frequency 1.75 trillion times to make them audible, as the original frequencies are too high to be heard by the human ear.
“This allows us to listen to many parts of the universe for the first time,” Francis wrote on his website. “We can hear the song of a comet, the chimes of stars being born or dying, the choir of a quasar eating the heart of a galaxy, and much more.” Continue reading “What Does a Nebula Sound Like?”
SpaceX test-fires its SuperDraco engine that powers the manned Dragon spacecraft launch escape system critical for Astronaut safety during launch to orbit. Credit: SpaceX
[/caption]
Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) has test fired a prototype of its new SuperDraco engine that will be critical to saving the lives of astronauts flying aboard a manned Dragon spacecraft soaring to orbit in the event of an in-flight emergency.
The successful full-duration, full-thrust firing of the new SuperDraco engine prototype was completed at the company’s Rocket Development Facility in McGregor, Texas. The SuperDraco is a key component of the launch abort system of the Dragon spacecraft that must fire in a split second to insure crew safety during launch and the entire ascent to orbit.
The Dragon spacecraft is SpaceX’s entry into NASA’s commercial crew development program – known as CCDEV2 – that seeks to develop a commercial ‘space taxi’ to launch human crews to low Earth orbit and the International Space Station (ISS).
The engine fired for 5 seconds during the test, which is the same length of time the engines need to burn during an actual emergency abort to safely thrust the astronauts away.
Nine months ago NASA awarded $75 million to SpaceX to design and test the Dragon’s launch abort system . The SuperDraco firing was the ninth of ten milestones that are to be completed by SpaceX by around May 2012 and that were stipulated and funded by a Space Act Agreement (SAA) with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP).
“SpaceX and all our industry partners are being extremely innovative in their approaches to developing commercial transportation capabilities,” said Commercial Crew Program Manager Ed Mango in a NASA statement. “We are happy that our investment in SpaceX was met with success in the firing of its new engine.”
Dragon will launch atop the Falcon 9 rocket, also developed by SpaceX.
SpaceX test-fires its SuperDraco engine that will eventually power the manned Dragon spacecrafts launch escape system critical for Astronaut safety during launch to orbit. Credit: SpaceX
“Eight SuperDracos will be built into the sidewalls of the Dragon spacecraft, producing up to 120,000 pounds of axial thrust to quickly carry astronauts to safety should an emergency occur during launch,” said Elon Musk, SpaceX chief executive officer and chief technology officer in a statement. “Those engines will have the ability to deep throttle, providing astronauts with precise control and enormous power.”
“Crews will have the unprecedented ability to escape from danger at any point during the launch because the launch abort engines are integrated into the side walls of the vehicle,” Musk said. “With eight SuperDracos, if any one engine fails the abort still can be carried out successfully.”
SuperDraco engines will power the launch escape system of SpaceX’s Dragon. Eight SuperDraco engines built into the side walls of the Dragon spacecraft will produce up to 120,000 pounds of axial thrust to carry astronauts to safety should an emergency occur during launch. Credit: SpaceX
SpaceX is one of four commercial firms working to develop a new human rated spacecraft with NASA funding. The other firms vying for a commercial crew contract are Boeing, Sierra Nevada and Blue Origin.
“SuperDraco engines represent the best of cutting edge technology,” says Musk. “These engines will power a revolutionarylaunch escape system that will make Dragon the safest spacecraft in history and enable it to land propulsively on Earth or another planet with pinpoint accuracy.”
The privately developed space taxi’s will eventually revive the capability to ferry American astronauts to and from the ISS that was totally lost when NASA’s Space Shuttle orbiters were forcibly retired before a replacement crew vehicle was ready to launch.
Because the US Congress slashed NASA’s commercial crew development funding by more than 50% -over $400 million – the first launch of a commercial space taxi is likely to be delayed several more years to about 2017. Until that time, all American astronauts must hitch a ride to the ISS aboard Russian Soyuz capsules.
This week the Russian manned space program suffered the latest in a string of failures when when technicians performing a crucial test mistakenly over pressurized and damaged the descent module of the next manned Soyuz vehicle set to fly to the ISS in late March, thereby forcing about a 45 day delay to the launch of the next manned Soyuz from Kazakhstan.
Here’s a blast from the past: 54 years ago on January 31, 1958, Explorer 1 was the first satellite sent into space by the United States. The U.S. Army Ballistic Missile Agency was directed to launch a satellite following the Soviet Union’s successful Sputnik 1 launch on October 4, 1957. The 13-kg (30-pound) Explorerer satellite was launched by 3-stage Redstone missile. This newsreel footage also includes a famous scene where Werner von Braun and scientist James Van Allen lift a model of the satellite triumphantly above their heads. Continue reading “Newsreel Footage of Explorer 1”
The Earth-directed solar storm we alerted readers to this week has hit, with reports of auroral activity in Russia, Denmark, Scotland, England, and Norway. Helge Mortensen from Tromvik, Norway captured this stunning video. According to Spaceweather.com, the coronal mass ejection (CME) hit Earth’s magnetic field at 0617 UT on Jan. 22nd.
There’s also a live aurora webcam you can watch via this link
