Universe Today

June 11, 2014December 23, 2015 by David Dickinson

An Astronomical Eloping: How Rare is a “Friday the 13th Honey Moon?”

The June 2012 "Honey Moon" rising. Photo credit: Stephen Rahn.

Ah, Friday the 13^th. Whether you fear it or it’s just your favorite slasher flick, it’s coming right around the bend later this week. And while it’s pretty much a non-event as far as astronomy is concerned, there’s bound to be some woo in the works, because the June Full Moon — dubbed the “Honey Moon” — falls on the same date.

Well, sort of. We made mention of this month’s Full Moon falling on Friday the 13^th in last week’s post on the occultation of Saturn by Earth’s Moon. We’re not out to alarm any triskaidekaphobics, but we always love the chance to have some fun with calendars in the name of astronomy.

What we’re seeing here is merely the intersection of three cycles of events… and nothing more. These sorts of things can be fun to calculate and can provide a teachable moment, even when that well meaning but often misinformed relative/coworker/stranger on Twitter sends it your way . Hey, some people golf or collect steel pennies, this is our shtick.

A “Friday the 13^th Honey Moon” is basically the subset of: 1. Fridays that fall on the 13^th day of the month (OK, that’s two input parameters, we know) that also 2. Fall in the month of June, and 3. Occur on a Full Moon.

Friday the 13^th occurs from one to three times a calendar year, so you can already see that one will occasionally happen to land on a Full Moon date fairly frequently… but how ‘bout in June? To this end, we compiled this handy listing of “Full Moons that fall on the 13th day of the month” — 15 in all — that occur from 1990 to 2030:

Full Moon's that fell on the 13th from 1990-2030 as reckoned in Universal Time. Only one (March 1998) fell on a Friday the 13th. Chart by author. — Full Moons that fell on the 13th from 1990-2030 as reckoned in Universal Time. Only two (March 1998 and June 2014) fall on a Friday the 13th. Chart by author.

That’s about one every two to three years. But you have to go aaaaall the way back to June 13^th, 1919 to find a Full Moon that fell on a Friday the 13^th in the month of June. This will next occur on June 13^th, 2098.

Of course, this is just an interesting intersection concerning the vagaries and nuances of our Gregorian calendar and the lunar cycle. You could just as easily see significance where there is none in the Full Moon coinciding with the next Superbowl or Academy Awards. Humans love to pick out patterns where often none exist.

(Fun homework assignment: When is the last/next total lunar eclipse that occurs on Friday the 13^th?)

And keep in mind, the instant of the Full Moon this week occurs on Friday at 4:13 UT… this means that from the U.S. Central time zone westward, the Full Moon actually falls on Thursday the 12^th.

The rising Moon just hours before Full on Thursday June 12th. Note Saturn to the upper right. Created using Stellarium.

Fun fact: the 13^th falls on a Friday more than any other day of the month! It’s true… in a span of 400 years following the institution of the Gregorian calendar in 1582, Friday fell on the 13^th a total of 688 times, while Thursday and Saturday the 13^th fell in last place at 684.

But there’s is something else that’s special about the June Full Moon. It also falls closest to the June solstice, marking the start of astronomical northern hemisphere summer and winter in the southern. This means that the Full Moon nearest the June solstice rides at its lowest to the southern horizon for northern hemisphere observers, but is high in the sky for observers south of the equator.

The June 2012 Full Honey (or do you say Strawberry?) Moon. Photo by author.

The June solstice this year falls on Saturday, June 21^st at 10:51 UT /6:51 AM EDT. The Full Moon closest to the June solstice is nearly, but not always, in June… It can occur up to July 6^th, and the last time it fell in July is 2012 and the next is 2015. The July Full Moon is known as the Full Buck Moon.

Our good friends over at Slooh will be webcasting the Full Honey Moon this Friday the starting at 1:30 UT/9:30 PM EDT (Thursday June 12^th) for two hours from its Canary Islands site and the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile observatory near Santiago, Chile. The broadcast will be hosted by Slooh astronomer Geoff Fox, astronomer and author of The Sun’s Heartbeat Bob Berman, and Slooh engineer Paul Cox.

Is there a connection between late spring weddings, the June Full Moon and the modern term “honeymoon”? Well, the rising June Full Moon certainly takes on an amber color for northern hemisphere observers as it rises low through the sultry summer skies. The Moon’s orbit is actually tilted five degrees relative to the ecliptic, which means it alternates from “flat” to “hilly” about every 9 years varying from 18 to 28 degrees relative to the celestial equator. We’re approaching a flat year — known as minimum or minor lunar standstill — in 2015, after which the Moon’s apparent path across the sky will begin to widen once again towards 2024.

The ~9 year variation between major and minor lunar standstill. Credit Wikimedia Commons graphic in the Public Domain.

Bob Berman has this to say about the origin of the term: “Is this Full Moon of June the true origin of the word honeymoon, since it is amber, and since weddings were traditionally held this month? That phrase dates back nearly half a millennium to 1552, but one thing has changed: weddings have shifted, and are now most often held in August or September. The idea back then was that a marriage is like the phases of the Moon, with the Full Moon being analogous to a wedding. Meaning, it’s the happiest and ‘brightest’ time in a relationship.”

It’s also worth noting the June Full Moon was known as the Strawberry Moon to the Algonquin Indians of North America. Huh… and here we thought most weddings were in May.

Whatever the case, you can get out enjoy the rising Full Moon with that significant other this week… and don’t fear the Honey Moon.

June 11, 2014December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

Could Asteroids Solve The Fuel Problem In Space? Planetary Resources Video

A screenshot from Planetary Resources' "The Trillion Dollar Market: Fuel in Space From Asteroids." Credit: Planetary Resources/YouTube (screenshot)

While we as a community love exploring space, we also recognize it can be expensive. Launch costs, manufacturing and keeping a mission going all take money, which is why NASA (for example) runs reviews every couple of years to figure out which ongoing missions are providing the best return.

Planetary Resources — one of the companies that wants to mine asteroids, and is searching for them with NASA — has produced a new video envisioning a solution to that problem: harvesting fuel from asteroids. Leaving the legal concerns aside, the company points out this could be a way of better opening up exploration of the solar system.

“In space one resource above all others is extraordinarily expensive and without cheap access to it, growth is limited…FUEL,” Planetary Resources wrote. “The catalyst for rapid expansion into every frontier in history has been access to cheap, local resources. And in space, access to rocket fuel is currently neither cheap, nor local.

“But on asteroids,” it continued, “abundant quantities of hydrogen and oxygen can be used to create rocket fuel, the same stuff used by the space shuttle. This allows companies like Vivisat fuel spacetugs that will be used to keep satellites in their Geostationary slots, or fuel up your spacecraft before zooming off to Mars. The possibilities are endless!”

Big Thinking: You Create An X-Prize Contest To Solve A Pressing Problem

The X-Prize winning SpaceShip One (credit: Scaled Composites)

Remember the Ansari X-Prize, when there was a race about a decade ago for the first private spaceship to go into space and then return? The result not only saw Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne make it into suborbit, but also launched Virgin Galactic — one of the most talked-about space companies today.

Imagine if you had a burning problem that you wanted to solve. It could be related to space exploration, or astronomy, or climate change, or something else altogether.

In recognition of this, the X-Prize foundation has spun off a new company called HeroX to crowdsource ideas and funding for a prize competition. And Universe Today’s Fraser Cain, who has just joined the organization, wants readers to help him out with the ImagineX challenge! More details below.

“Imagine if a large enough group of people could come together, pool their resources, and issue a challenge that would inspire competitors to solve it,” Fraser wrote on his Google+ page, pointing out the X-Prize organization itself has broadened its scope to contests related to oil cleanup and low-carbon emission vehicles, among others.

“The goal with HeroX is that anyone can come and create a challenge,” he added. “And then anyone can pledge to help fund the prize. And then anyone can compete to solve the challenge and win the prize.”

According to HeroX’s ImagineX website, these are the broad guidelines:

Addresses a problem that people want solved
Is important to a large number of people
Is solvable
Engages people in discussing, competing and solving the challenge
Provides all the required information for a challenge to run on HeroX.com

Submissions will be judged on quality of submission, crowd engagement and influence and crowd appeal, and you can read more detailed guidelines here. Think carefully about your idea and when you’re ready, be sure to contribute before the deadline of Sept. 1, 2014. Winners will receive a cool $10,000.

For more information, read up on ImagineX here.

June 10, 2014December 23, 2015 by Ken Kremer

Engineers Start Stacking Operations for Maiden Launch of NASA’s Orion Deep Space Test Capsule

The Orion crew module for Exploration Flight Test-1 is shown in the Final Assembly and System Testing (FAST) Cell, positioned over the service module just prior to mating the two sections together. Credit: NASA/Rad Sinyak
Story updated[/caption]

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL- Engineers have begun stacking operations for NASA’s maiden Orion deep space test capsule at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) achieving a major milestone leading to its first blastoff from the Florida Space Coast less than six months from today.

The excitement is mounting as final assembly of NASA’s Orion crew vehicle into its launch configuration started on Monday, June 9, inside the Operations and Checkout (O&C) Facility at Kennedy.

Orion will eventually carry humans to destinations far beyond low Earth orbit on new voyages of scientific discovery in our solar system.

“Orion is the next step in our journey of exploration,” said NASA Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot at a recent KSC media briefing.

“This mission is a stepping stone on NASA’s journey to Mars. The EFT-1 mission is so important to NASA.”

Orion is slated to launch on its inaugural unmanned test flight in December 2014 atop the mammoth, triple barreled United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV Heavy rocket.

The main elements of the Orion spacecraft stack include the crew module (CM), service module (SM) and the launch abort system (LAS).

On Monday, technicians from Orion’s prime contractor Lockheed Martin began aligning and stacking the crew module on top of the already completed service module in the Final Assembly and System Testing (FAST) Cell in the O & C facility at KSC.

“Ballast weights were added to ensure that the crew module’s center of gravity can achieve the appropriate entry and descent performance and also ensure that the vehicle lands in the correct orientation to reduce structural impact loads,” according to Lockheed Martin.

Engineers will remain busy throughout this week continuing to work at a 24/7 pace to get Orion ready for the December liftoff.

Orion heat shield attached to the bottom of the capsule by engineers during assembly work inside the Operations and Checkout High Bay facility at KSC. Credit: NASA

The next steps involve completing the power and fluid umbilical connections between the CM and SM and firmly bolting the two modules together inside the FAST cell.

Orion crew capsule, Service Module and 6 ton Launch Abort System (LAS) mock up stack inside the transfer aisle of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. Service module at bottom. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com

An exhaustive series of electrical, avionic and radio frequency tests will follow. The team will then conduct final systems checks to confirm readiness for flight.

The LAS will then be stacked on top. The entire stack will then be rolled out to the launch pad for integration with the Delta IV Heavy rocket.

The CM/SM stacking operation was able to move forward following the successful attachment of the world’s largest heat shield onto the bottom of the CM in late May. Read my prior story – here.

“Now that we’re getting so close to launch, the spacecraft completion work is visible every day,” said Mark Geyer, NASA’s Orion Program manager in a statement.

“Orion’s flight test will provide us with important data that will help us test out systems and further refine the design so we can safely send humans far into the solar system to uncover new scientific discoveries on future missions.”

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and science chief Astronaut John Grunsfeld discuss NASA’s human spaceflight initiatives backdropped by the service module for the Orion crew capsule being assembled at the Kennedy Space Center. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com

Orion is NASA’s next generation human rated vehicle now under development to replace the now retired space shuttle. The state-of-the-art spacecraft will carry America’s astronauts on voyages venturing farther into deep space than ever before – past the Moon to Asteroids, Mars and Beyond!

No humans have flown beyond low Earth orbit in more than four decades since Apollo 17, NASA’s final moon landing mission launched in December 1972.

The two-orbit, four- hour EFT-1 flight will lift the Orion spacecraft and its attached second stage to an orbital altitude of 3,600 miles, about 15 times higher than the International Space Station (ISS) – and farther than any human spacecraft has journeyed in 40 years.

One of the primary goals of NASA’s eagerly anticipated Orion EFT-1 uncrewed test flight is to test the efficacy of the heat shield in protecting the vehicle – and future human astronauts – from excruciating temperatures reaching 4000 degrees Fahrenheit (2200 C) during scorching re-entry heating.

At the conclusion of the EFT-1 flight, the detached Orion capsule plunges back and re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere at 20,000 MPH (32,000 kilometers per hour).

“That’s about 80% of the reentry speed experienced by the Apollo capsule after returning from the Apollo moon landing missions,” Scott Wilson, NASA’s Orion Manager of Production Operations at KSC, told me during an interview at KSC.

A trio of parachutes will then unfurl to slow Orion down for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

The EFT-1 mission will provide engineers with critical data about Orion’s heat shield, flight systems and capabilities to validate designs of the spacecraft, inform design decisions, validate existing computer models and guide new approaches to space systems development. All these measurements will aid in reducing the risks and costs of subsequent Orion flights before it begins carrying humans to new destinations in the solar system.

“We will test the heat shield, the separation of the fairing and exercise over 50% of the eventual software and electronic systems inside the Orion spacecraft. We will also test the recovery systems coming back into the Pacific Ocean,” said Lightfoot.

“Orion EFT-1 is really exciting as the first step on the path of humans to Mars,” said Lightfoot. “It’s a stepping stone to get to Mars.”

“We will test the capsule with a reentry velocity of about 85% of what to expect on returning [astronauts] from Mars.”

Two of the three United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV heavy boosters for NASA’s upcoming Orion Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) mission were unveiled during a media event inside the Horizontal Integration Facility at Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on March 17, 2014. Credit: Ken Kremer - kenkremer.com — Two of the three United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV heavy boosters for NASA’s upcoming Orion Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) mission were unveiled during a media event inside the Horizontal Integration Facility at Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on March 17, 2014. Credit: Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com

Concurrently, new American-made private crewed spaceships are under development by SpaceX, Boeing and Sierra Nevada – with funding from NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP) – to restore US capability to ferry US astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) and back to Earth by late 2017.

Read my exclusive new interview with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden explaining the importance of getting Commercial Crew online to expand our reach into space- here.

Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing Orion, Orbital Sciences, SpaceX, commercial space, Curiosity, Mars rover, MAVEN, MOM and more planetary and human spaceflight news.

Ken Kremer

June 10, 2014December 23, 2015 by Jason Major

Curiosity Captures Mercury from Mars

Image of the Sun as seen from Mars by Curiosity. Mercury is the circled dark spot.

NASA’s Curiosity rover may be busy exploring the rugged and rocky interior of Gale Crater, but it does get a chance to skygaze on occasion. And while looking at the Sun on June 3, 2014 (mission Sol 649) the rover’s Mastcam spotted another member of our Solar System: tiny Mercury, flitting across the Sun’s face.

Silhouetted against the bright disk of the Sun, Mercury barely appears as a hazy blur in the filtered Mastcam images. But it was moving relatively quickly during the transit, passing the darker smudges of two Earth-sized sunspots over the course of several hours.

It’s the first time Mercury has ever been imaged from Mars, and also the first time we’ve observed a planet transiting our Sun from another world besides our own.

Watch an animation of the transit below:

Animated blink comparison showing Mercury's movement across the Sun — Animated 1-hour interval blink comparison showing Mercury’s movement across the Sun

Because the sunspots move along with the rotation of the Sun (and the Sun rotates once avery 25 days around its equator) Mercury makes a fast pass as it travels along on one of its 88-day-long years.

Watch an HD version of the event here.

In reality this was no chance spotting, but rather a carefully calculated observation using the Mastcam’s right 100mm telephoto lens and neutral density filter, which is used to routinely image the Sun in order to measure the dustiness of the Martian atmosphere.

“This is a nod to the relevance of planetary transits to the history of astronomy on Earth. Observations of Venus transits were used to measure the size of the solar system, and Mercury transits were used to measure the size of the sun.”

– Mark Lemmon, Texas A&M University, member of the Mastcan science team

The next chance for Curiosity to spot Mercury will come in April 2015 and, if the rover is still operating by then — perhaps with some upgrades by future human visitors? — it may capture Earth similarly passing across the Sun in November of 2084.

Source: NASA/JPL

Image/animation credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Texas A&M

June 10, 2014December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

The Sun Pops Off Two X-Class Solar Flares in One Day

A solar flare bursts off the left limb of the sun in this image captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory on June 10, 2014, at 7:41 a.m. EDT. This is classified as an X2.2 flare, shown in a blend of two wavelengths of light: 171 and 131 angstroms, colorized in gold and red, respectively. Image Credit: NASA/SDO/Goddard/Wiessinger.

In only a little over an hour, the Sun released two X-class solar flares today. The first occurred at 11:42 UTC (7:42 a.m. EDT) and the second blasted out at 12:52 UTC (8:52 a.m. EDT) on June 10, 2014. According to SpaceWeather.com, forecasters were expecting an X-class flare today, but not two…and certainly not from region of the Sun where the flares originated. Solar scientists have been keeping an eye on sunspot regions AR2080 and AR2085, especially since they are now directly facing Earth, and those two sunspots have ‘delta-class’ magnetic fields that harbor energy for X-flares.

But the active region on the Sun that actually produced the flares was AR2087, which just appeared “around the corner” on the southeastern limb of the Sun. The first flare was a X2.2-flare and the second was an X1.5-flare.

See the image of #2 below from the Solar Dynamics Observatory:

The second X-class flare of June 10, 2014, appears as a bright flash on the left side of this image from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. This image shows light in the 193-angstrom wavelength, which is typically colorized in yellow. It was captured at 8:55 a.m EDT, just after the flare peaked. Image Credit: NASA/SDO.

Solar flares are explosions on the Sun that release energy, light and high speed particles into space, and the biggest flares are known as X-class.

Here's the view from @ESA/@NASA SOHO/LASCO C2 of the CME resulting from the big X-class flare earlier today pic.twitter.com/KYU2uHwdxO

— Sungrazer Comets (@SungrazerComets) June 10, 2014

Here are some recent astrophotos of the Sun taken by members of Universe Today’s Flickr group:

The Sun in white light on June 10, 2014. Taken with a William Optics 70mm refractor fitted with a Thousand Oaks solar filter, 2 x Barlow and Canon 1100D. Credit and copyright: Mary Spicer.

The full solar disk in hydrogen alpha on June 10, 2014. Credit and copyright: John Brady.

A look at the Sun from the UK on June 9, 2014. Prime focus single shot in whitelight, Canon 600D attached to Maksutov 127mm telescope fitted with homemade Baader Solarfilm filter. Credit and copyright: Sarah and Simon Fisher.

Solar flares are classified on a system that divides solar flares according to their strength. The smallest ones are A-class (near background levels), followed by B, C, M and X. Similar to the Richter scale for earthquakes, each letter represents a 10-fold increase in energy output. So an X is ten times an M and 100 times a C. Within each letter class there is a finer scale from 1 to 9.

Here’s NASA’s video guide to X-Class flares:

NASA says these flares are often associated with solar magnetic storms known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs). The number of solar flares increases approximately every 11 years. Watch this video below about why solar scientists think the solar maximum is happening now:

Read more on today’s flares from NASA.

June 10, 2014December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

Surprise! The Earth And Moon May Be 60 Million Years Older Than We Thought

Distance Between the Earth and Moon — The Earth rising over the Moon's surface, as seen by the Apollo 8 mission. Credit: NASA

Wondering why a new research team says the Earth and the Moon is 60 million years older than previously believed? Well, it’s a gas. It has to do with the proportion of different gas types that have stuck around since the Earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago.

Since Earth had no solid surface at the time, traditional geology doesn’t really work — there’s no rock layers to examine, for example. So while the geologists caution we’ll likely never know for sure when the Earth came together, a new dating method for the gases show it was earlier than believed, they said.

To back up a step, the leading theory for how the Moon formed is that a Mars-sized object smashed into our planet, created a chain of debris, and over a long time gradually came together and formed the Moon. There’s been a flurry of news on this event in recent days. Different science groups have found evidence of the crash in Earth and Moon materials, and said it could explain why the Moon’s far side is so rugged compared to the near side.

For this study, Guillaume Avice and Bernard Marty (who are both geochemists from the University of Lorraine in Nancy, France) examined xenon gas in quartz found in Australia (previously believed to be 2.7 billion years old) and South Africa (3.4 billion years old).

64% illuminated waning gibbous Moon on August 26, 2013. Credit and copyright: Themagster3 on Flickr.

“Recalibrating dating techniques using the ancient gas allowed them to refine the estimate of when the Earth began to form,” stated the Goldschmidt Geochemistry Conference in Sacramento, California, where this was presented today (June 10). “This allows them to calculate that the Moon-forming impact is around 60 million years (+/- 20 m. y.) older than had been thought.”

This also affects calculations concerning when the Earth’s atmosphere formed. Since the atmosphere could not have stuck around after the big crash, this means that the previous estimate of 100 million years after the solar system’s formation wouldn’t work. So if the Earth and the Moon are 60 million years older, the Earth’s atmosphere formed about 40 million years after the solar system’s formation.

It’ll be interesting to see if other scientists agree with the analysis.

Source: Goldschmidt Geochemistry Conference

June 10, 2014December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

Mystery Solved? Why There are No Lunar ‘Seas’ On The Far Side Of The Moon

Composite image of the far side of the moon taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2009. Credit: NASA

In these days of daily image releases from Saturn, Mars, the Moon and other spots in the universe, it’s hard to remember just how exciting it was back in the 1950s and 1960s when a few images trickled out to the world at the time. Perhaps one of the biggest early surprises was how jagged and cragged the back side of the moon looked. Where were the lunar “seas” that we are familiar with on the Earth-facing side of the moon?

About 55 years after the first Soviet images of the farside were sent to Earth, a team of researchers led by graduate astrophysics student Arpita Roy (at Penn State University) may have an explanation.

They say it’s due to the violent way that the Moon formed — likely after a Mars-sized object collided with our Earth, creating a sea of debris that gradually coalseced into the Moon we see today. The huge crash and gathering together heated up both our planet and the Moon, but the Moon got cooler first because it was smaller.

Since the Earth was still hot — radiating at more than 2,500 degrees Celsius (4,500 degrees Fahrenheit) — and the Moon very close to the planet, the heat of the Earth had quite the effect. The far side of the Moon cooled down while the near side remained very hot.

“This gradient was important for crustal formation on the moon. The moon’s crust has high concentrations of aluminum and calcium, elements that are very hard to vaporize,” Penn State stated.

Calcium and aluminum are the first elements that “snow out” as rock vapor cools, and they would have remained in the atmosphere on the Moon’s far side. (The near side was too hot.)

“Thousands to millions of years later, these elements combined with silicates in the Moon’s mantle to form plagioclase feldspars, which eventually moved to the surface and formed the Moon’s crust,” Penn State added. “The farside crust had more of these minerals and is thicker.”

The seas themselves were formed after huge meteors crashed into the Moon’s Earth-facing side, rupturing the crust and letting the basaltic lava beneath burst forth. The crust on the far side was too thick for the meteors to penetrate, in most cases, leaving the rugged surface we are familiar with today.

The research was published yesterday (June 9) in Astrophysical Journal Letters. And by the way, there’s been a flurry of news in recent days about the Earth and the Moon’s formation: the “signal” in Earth’s crust and the oxygen signature on the Moon.

Source: Penn State University

June 9, 2014December 30, 2015 by Jason Major

Watch the Northern Lights Dance and Shimmer in “Silent Storms”

Aurorae were once believed to be warring clans of spirit soldiers, the skyward ghosts of virgin women, or the glow of fires burning inside celestial caves. Today we know they’re caused by ions in the atmosphere getting zapped by charged solar particles caught up in Earth’s magnetic field. But the knowledge of what creates aurorae doesn’t make their shimmering dance any less beautiful for those lucky enough to see them. I’ve personally never witnessed an aurora, but photographer Ole Salomonsen has — and he’s created yet another gorgeous time-lapse of the northern lights over his native Scandinavia to share their beauty with the world.

Continue reading “Watch the Northern Lights Dance and Shimmer in “Silent Storms””

June 9, 2014December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

How to Photograph the Night Sky, Even in Light-Polluted Skies: A Tutorial from Justin Ng

Rising Milky Way above Marina Bay Sands in Singapore on April 10, 2014. Credit and copyright: Justin Ng.

We feature A LOT of astrophotos here on Universe Today, and we get many comments about them, too — with some people saying they could NEVER take photos of the night sky because they live in cities, or are too close to street or yard lights or other causes of light pollution.

Now, award-winning astrophotographer Justin Ng from Singapore has created a tutorial for how to photograph the night sky, even in light-polluted area.

“This tutorial shows you how I photograph the Milky Way that’s obscured by the extreme light pollution in Singapore, using photography equipments that you may already have and a workflow that probably works on most versions of Photoshop,” Justin writes, adding that the type of photo processing he uses in Photoshop can be achieved without purchasing additional plugins.

Justin says that taking pictures of the night sky is a way you can “do your part to promote public awareness of astronomy and the importance of preserving the beauty of our night skies through your images. And I am going to show you how you can do just that using photography equipment that you may already have and a workflow that probably works in most versions of Photoshop.”

For this tutorial, you will need some previous knowledge about basic photography and post-processing.

You can access the full tutorial here on Justin’s website.

The rising Milky Way at Sentosa Island in Singapore. Credit and copyright: Justin Ng.

Check out more of his work at his website, on Facebook or G+.