“We are, you and I, at least one of the ways that the Universe knows itself.” – Bill Nye
Did you manage to (or choose to) watch the much-anticipated debate between Science Guy Bill Nye and Ken Ham on the “merits” of Creationism on Feb. 4? While clearly nothing more than a publicity event cooked up by Ham to fund his Creation Museum in Kentucky (yes, I’m afraid that’s actually a thing here in America) Nye felt it to be in his — as well as the country’s — best interest to stand up and defend science and its methods in the face of unapologetic fundamentalist denial.
The video above, just released by John D. Boswell — aka melodysheep, creator of the excellent Symphony of Science series — takes some of Bill’s statements during the debate and puts them to music and images of our fascinating world.
Felix Baumgartner about to step out of his pressurized capsule on October 14, 2012 (Credit: Red Bull)
Remember BASE jumper Felix Baumgartner’s incredible freefall from the “edge of space” in October 2012? The highly anticipated (and highly publicized) Red Bull-sponsored stunt was watched live by viewers around the world (including me — it was very cool!) and set new records for highest jump, fastest freefall, and highest balloon-powered human flight. That day Baumgartner even broke the long-standing record held by his mentor Col. Joe Kittinger, who jumped from 102,800 feet in August 1960… and with seven GoPro Hero2 cameras mounted to Felix’s high-tech suit and helmet, you can see what he saw during every one of the 127,852 feet that he fell down to Earth.
(That’s ah, over 24 miles/39 km. *Gulp.*)
The video above was released today by GoPro, and is a more polished and edited version than the one released by Red Bull this past October. Check it out above, or for full vertigo-inducing* freefall effect watch it in fullscreen HD on YouTube. *Consider yourself warned!
An aurora behind a building storm. From the timelapse 'Huelux.' Credit and copyright: Randy Halverson.
Regular readers of Universe Today will be well-acquainted with the photography and timelapse work of Randy Halverson. He’s just released his latest timelapse and in a word, it is breathtaking. Aurora, thunderstorms — sometimes both at once — and, of course, stunning views of the night sky.
Randy shot the footage during April-November 2013 in South Dakota, Wyoming and Utah. “The weather in 2013 made it difficult for me to get some of the shots I wanted,” Randy said on Vimeo. “There were many times I planned to shoot the Milky Way or Aurora, and the clouds would roll in. But that also allowed me to get more night storm timelapse than I have any other year.”
He added that the aurora sometimes appeared without warning. In the video, be on the lookout for slow and fast moving satellites, quick meteors and slower moving airplanes. “The meteors are hard to see in timelapse, but you may see a quick flash because they only last one frame,” he said. “If you see a light moving across the sky, it is either an airplane or satellite, not a meteor.”
Sit back, put this on full screen and full sound and take a well-deserved break from your day!
Thanks once more to Randy Halverson for continuing to share his handiwork! Find out more about this timelapse at Randy’s website, Dakotalapse.
An artist concept of the Philae lander on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Credit: Astrium - E. Viktor/ESA
The European Space Agency asked for help in waking up the Rosetta spacecraft from 31 months of deep-space hibernation, and sponsored a fun video contest. The votes are in and the winning video comes from the 1,002 children of the Ellinogermaniki Agogi Primary School in Greece. Not only is the video heartwarming, but original music was composed using a “3/2 time signature symbolizing the five gravity assists that Rosetta got from the Earth and Mars. Theme ends with a perfect 5th (interval ratio 3:2) symbolizing Jupiter (5th planet), Rosetta’s ultimate orbit point.”
Wow.
There were 218 entries and 75,000 people voted. Entries came in from notables like Chris Hadfield, Bill Nye, and singer Tasmin Archer.
“We were truly impressed by the effort that all of you put into your videos, from getting your pets, friends and families involved and constructing fantastic model Rosetta spacecraft,”ESA said, “to storyboarding brilliant stop-motion animations with Lego, and writing entire songs and choreographing dance routines for dozens or even hundreds of passionate Rosetta fans.”
The top ten vote-getting videos were transmitted out to Rosetta via one of ESA’s deep-space tracking stations, and the top two video creators are invited to the control center in Darmstadt, Germany for when the Philae lander attempts landing on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko in November 2014 after latching on with a harpoon. The second, equal award was given to Józef Dobrowolski, aged 17 student from Ostroleka, Poland, who is from the III Secondary School. He worked on his video himself, and he’s passionate about astronomy and started his hobby with observing the Perseid meteor shower:
You can see all ten winning videos here, or see a mashup of submitted videos, below.
As you’ve probably seen, we’ve been releasing our Guide to Space videos on Universe Today for the last 9 months or so. We’ve been using YouTube, but lots of people have asked for a downloadable, podcastesque version that they can download automatically to their portable device.
We’ve gone ahead and fulfilled your request, uploading all our videos to archive.org, and then made the podcast feeds available for subscription or though iTunes. We’ve got a full video feed and then a full audio feed, so you can get the shows you want, how you want them.
Currently, we’ve only put up the shorter Guide to Space videos, but once we feel this is under control, we’ll add the other shows, like the Weekly Space Hangout and the Virtual Star Party. We’re going to try implementing categories, so you only download the shows you want.
Jupiter as imaged by Michael Phillips on July 25th, 2009.
Jupiter is a happening place in the solar system. While bashful Mars only puts on a good show once every two year opposition period, and inner worlds such as Mercury and Venus yield no surface details to backyard observers at all, the cloud tops of Jupiter display a wealth of changing detail in even modest backyard telescopes.
And this month is a great time to start observing Jupiter, as the largest planet in our solar system just passed opposition on January 5th. Recently, veteran astrophotographer Michael Phillips amazed us here at Universe Today once again with a stunning time-lapse sequence of Jupiter and its moons Ganymede and Io. Now, he’s outdone himself with a new full rotation compilation of the gas giant planet.
The capture is simply mesmerizing to sit and watch. At 9.9 hours, Jupiter has the fastest rotational period of any planet in our solar system. In fact, with Jupiter currently visible low to the east at sunset, it’s possible to follow it through one rotation in the span of a single long January winter night.
We caught up with Michael recently and asked him about this amazing capture. The sequence was actually accomplished over the span of five successive evenings. This made it challenging to stitch together using a sophisticated program known as WINJupos.
“While this is possible on a long winter night when it is darker longer, I typically find it easier to do over multiple nights than one long sleepless night,” Michael told Universe Today. “If you wait too many days between observations, the features will change significantly, and then two nights will not match up clearly. The seams that result from using multiple nights are tricky to stick together. I created multiple non-overlapping seams and tried to blend them out against one another as layers in my image editing software. The result is smoother, but not quite the same as a single observation.”
A 14” f/4.5 Newtonian reflecting telescope was used for the captures. “Similar weather conditions and camera settings help quite a bit to make the multiple nights’ segments match up better,” Michael noted. “Keeping the same settings, using the same location away from my house in the corner of the yard (to reduce local atmospheric turbulence) night after night gives consistent results after removing the variability of the weather.”
Planetary photography also requires special considerations prior to imaging, such as getting Jupiter high enough in the sky and at specific longitudes to get full coverage in the rotation sequence.
“I try to consider the local weather patterns and atmospheric stability (seeing), but in reality, I pushed myself to get out as much and often as I could,” Michael told Universe Today. “Typically, I try to wait until Jupiter is at the highest in the sky, as the result is looking through less atmosphere and thus more stable conditions. Sometimes, the planets jiggle around and you just want to scream ‘SIT STILL!’ Basically around the time of opposition I go out as often as it’s clear, as those are opportunities that you don’t get back again until next year.”
Jupiter reaches opposition just over once every 13 months, moving roughly one constellation eastward each time. 2013 was an “oppositionless” year for Jupiter, which won’t occur again until 2025. Michael also notes that from his observing location at 35 degrees north latitude, Jupiter currently peaks at an altitude of 77 degrees above the horizon when it transits the local meridian. “I wasn’t going to squander it waiting for perfect conditions!”
In fact, Jupiter is currently in a region in the astronomical constellation of Gemini that will be occupied by the Sun in just over five months time during the June Solstice. Currently at a declination of around 22 degrees 45’ north, Jupiter won’t appear this high in the northern sky near opposition again until 2026.
It’s also amazing to consider the kind of results that backyard observers like Michael Phillips are now routinely accomplishing. It’s an interesting exercise to compare Michael’s capture side-by-side with a sequence captured by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft during its 2006 flyby of Jupiter:
Both sequences capture a wealth of detail, including the enormous Great Red Spot, the Northern and Southern Equatorial Belts, and numerous white spots and smaller swirls and eddies in the Jovian atmosphere.
To date, six spacecraft (Pioneer 10 and 11, Voyagers 1 and 2, New Horizons and Cassini) have made flybys of Jupiter, and one, Galileo, orbited the planet until its demise in 2003. Juno is the next in this legacy, and will be inserted into orbit around Jupiter in July 2016.
Now is the time to get out and observe and image Jupiter and its moons, as it moves higher into the sky on successive evenings towards eastern quadrature on April 1st, 2014.
Congrats to Michael Phillips on an amazing sequence!
Some of the most amazing celestial sights are hidden from our view in the daytime sky. Or are they? We recently challenged readers to try and follow the planet Venus through inferior conjunction as it passed between the Earth and the Sun on January 11th. Unlike the previous pass on June 6th, 2012 when Venus made its last transit of the Sun for the 21st century, the 2014 solar conjunction offered an outstanding chance to trace Venus’s path just five degrees from the Sun from the dusk and into the dawn sky.
Expert astrophotographers Shahrin Ahmad based in Sri Damansara, Malaysia and Paul Stewart observing from New Zealand took up that daily challenge as Venus neared the limb of the Sun, with amazing results. Now, Shahrin has also produced an amazing time-lapse sequence of Venus passing through inferior conjunction.
You can actually see the illuminated “horns” of Venus as they thin, extend, and rotate around the limb as the planet passes the Sun.
And it’s what’s more incredible is that the capture was completed in the daytime. But such a feat isn’t for the unskilled. Shahrin told Universe Today of the special safety precautions he had to take to acquire Venus so close to the Sun:
“Since Venus was getting closer each day towards conjunction, I found it far too dangerous to find visually, either using the main telescope or the finderscope.”
Instead, Shahrin relies on computerized software named Cartes du Ciel to drive his Skywatcher EQ6 mount and pinpoint Venus in the daytime sky.
“The sky in Kuala Lumpur is never clear from here, thus it rarely appears dark blue, making it almost impossible to spot Venus visually, especially when it is less than 10 degrees from the Sun.”
Shahrin elaborated further on his special solar safety precautions:
“I always start with all covers in place and the solar filter on the main telescope. I will slew the telescope to the Sun, make some slight repositioning adjustments, and then synchronize the telescope to the new position. After ensuring the Sun is visible and centered on the computer screen, I slew to Venus. Once the mount has stopped in position, I remove the solar filter and replace it with a makeshift cardboard extender mounted on the existing dew-shield. This ensures that any direct sunlight is totally blocked from entering the optics.”
Shahrin notes that 90% of the time, Venus with appear on the computer screen after aligning. Otherwise, a brief spiral search of the field will slide it into view.
Shahrin observes from his ShahGazer Observatory, a roll-off-roof observatory just outside of Kuala Lumpur. He used the Skywatcher 120ED refractor pictured for the captures, with a 2x Barlow lens to achieve a focal length of 1800mm. Shahrin’s main camera is a QHY CCD IMG132e, and the rig is mounted on a Skywatcher EQ6.
A closeup of Sharin’s barlow and camera rig. Credit: Shahrin Ahmad.
“The experience of being able to track Venus approaching inferior conjunction over the Sun afterwards is exhilarating,” Shahrin told Universe Today. “It felt like watching and waiting for a total eclipse of the Sun, but in slow motion!”
Shahrin also counts himself lucky to have had a string of clear days leading up to and after inferior conjunction.
Shahrin’s capture of Venus 5 degrees from the Sun just 8 hours before inferior conjunction may also be a record. That’s a closer apparent separation than our visual sighting of Venus 7 hours and 45 minutes after inferior conjunction on January 16th 1998 as seen from North Pole Alaska, when the planet passed 5.5 degrees from the limb of the Sun.
“I’ve also noticed that in some of the photos, we can see a slight ‘glint’ of sunshine on part of Venus’ atmosphere,” Shahrin noted to Universe Today. “(This sighting) was actually confirmed by the RASC Edmonton Centre in Canada via their Twitter feed.”
An amazing capture, indeed. Venus is now back in the realm of visibility for us mere mortal backyard observers low in the dawn sky, shining at a brilliant magnitude -4.3. Expect it to vault up in a hurry for northern hemisphere observers as the favorable angle of the ecliptic will give it a boost in the dawn. Venus is also headed towards a spectacular 0.2 degree conjunction with Jupiter this summer on August 18th: expect UFO sightings to rise correspondingly. The Indian Army even briefly mistook the pair for Chinese spy drones early last year.
The waning crescent Moon approaches Venus on the morning of January 28th, 2014. Created using Stellarium.
Venus will spend most of 2014 in the dawn sky and is headed for superior conjunction on October 25th, 2014. Venus spent a similar span in the dawn for the majority 2006, and will do so again in 2022. It’s all part of the 8-year cycle of Venus, a span over which apparitions of the planet roughly repeat. And the next shot we’ll have at inferior conjunction? That’ll be on August 15th, 2015 for favoring the southern hemisphere and March 25th, 2017 once again favoring the northern, when the planet very nearly passes as far from the Sun as it can appear at inferior conjunction at 8 degrees.
Congrats to Shahrin on his amazing capture!
-Follow the stargazing adventures of Sharin Ahmad on Google+ and as @shahgazer on Twitter
It’s no mystery that the planets, moons, asteroids, etc. in the Solar System are arranged in a more-or-less flat, plate-like alignment in their orbits around the Sun.* But why is that? In a three-dimensional Universe, why should anything have a particular alignment at all? In yet another entertaining video from the folks at MinutePhysics, we see the reason behind this seemingly coincidental feature of our Solar System — and, for that matter, pretty much all planetary systems that have so far been discovered (not to mention planetary ring systems, accretion disks, many galaxies… well, you get the idea.) Check it out above.
In the early pre-dawn hours on December 19, 2013, with a rumble and a roar, a Soyuz rocket blazed through the clouds above the jungle-lined coast of French Guiana, ferrying ESA’s long-awaited Gaia spacecraft into orbit and beginning its mission to map the stars of the Milky Way. The fascinating time-lapse video above from ESA shows the Gaia spacecraft inside the clean room unfurling like a flower during its sunshield deployment test, the transfer of the Soyuz from the assembly building to the pad, and then its ultimate fiery liftoff.
That’s a lot going on in two minutes! But once nestled safely in its L2 orbit 1.5 million kilometers out, Gaia will have over five years to complete its work… read more here.
Credit: ESA–S. Corvaja, M. Pedoussaut, 2013. Source: ESA
The night sky over Pyramid Lake in Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada. Credit and copyright: Jack Fusco.
One of our favorite photographers, Jack Fusco, recently visited Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada, one of the worlds largest dark sky preserves. He went there on behalf of Travel Alberta, during the annual Night Sky Festival. “I was lucky enough to have two clear nights to explore and shoot as many photos as possible to create a short timelapse while there,” Jack told us via email. “In the end, I took over 2,000 photos at locations such as Lake Annette, Athabasca Glacier, Pyramid Lake, and many others. Out of all the places I’ve traveled in search for dark skies, Jasper definitely offered some of the best views I’ve ever seen. The sky in the Columbia Icefield area was unlike any I had witnessed before.”
Jack added that it was great to be around so many people that were excited about astronomy and preserving the night sky, and he’s already looking forward to going again in 2014, and astronaut Chris Hadfield is already lined up as a guest.
If you’re rushing about for the holidays, take a few minutes to enjoy a brief respite with this lovely timelapse. You can see more images and videos at Jack’s website.
