Posted on by Ken Kremer

Dangling Dextre Digs out Docked Dragon Depot prior to Station Departure

Backdropped against a cloudy portion of Earth, Canada’s Dextre robotic "handyman" and Canadarm2 dig out the trunk of SpaceX’s Dragon cargo vessel docked to the ISS after completing a task 225 miles above the home planet. Credit: NASA

To close out their final week aboard the International Space Station, three of the six Expedition 39 crew members are completing their unloading tasks inside the docked commercial SpaceX Dragon cargo freighter and other duties while teams at Mission Control in Houston conduct delicate robotics work outside with dazzling maneuvers of the Dextre robot to remove the last external experiment from the vessels storage truck.

See a dazzling gallery of photos of Dextre dangling outside the docked Dragon depot – above and below.

On Monday, May 5, the robotics team at NASA Mission Control Center at the Johnson Space Center in Houston carefully guided Canada’s Dextre robotic “handyman” attached to the end of the 57-foot long Canadarm2 to basically dig out the final payload item housed in the unpressurized trunk section at the rear of the SpaceX Dragon cargo vessel docked to the ISS.

Dextre stands for “Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator” and was contributed to the station by the Canadian Space Agency. It measures 12 feet tall and is outfitted with a pair of arms and an array of finely detailed tools to carry out intricate and complex tasks that would otherwise require spacewalking astronauts.

The Canadarm2 with Dextre in its grasp conducts external cargo transfers from the SpaceX Dragon resupply ship. Credit: NASA TV
The Canadarm2 with Dextre in its grasp conducts external cargo transfers from the SpaceX Dragon resupply ship. Credit: NASA TV

The massive orbiting outpost was soaring some 225 miles above the home planet as Dextre’s work was in progress to remove the Optical PAyload for Lasercomm Science, or OPALS, from the Dragon’s truck.

The next step is to install OPALS on the Express Logistics Carrier-1 (ELC-1) depot at the end of the station’s port truss on Wednesday.

Monday’s attempt was the second try at grappling OPALS. The initial attempt last Thursday “was unsuccessful due to a problem gripping the payload’s grapple fixture with the Special Purpose Dextrous Manipulator, or Dextre,” NASA reported.

A software patch solved the problem.

Canada’s Dextre manipulator attached to Canadarm2 conducts external cargo transfers from the SpaceX Dragon resupply ship. Credit: NASA TV
Canada’s Dextre manipulator attached to Canadarm2 conducts external cargo transfers from the SpaceX Dragon resupply ship. Credit: NASA TV

Dragon thundered to orbit atop SpaceX’s powerful new Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket on April 18, from Cape Canaveral, Fla.

This unmanned Dragon delivered about 4600 pounds of cargo to the ISS including over 150 science experiments, a pair of hi tech legs for Robonaut 2, a high definition Earth observing imaging camera suite (HDEV), the laser optical communications experiment (OPALS), the VEGGIE lettuce growing experiment as well as essential gear, spare parts, crew provisions, food, clothing and supplies to the six person crews living and working aboard in low Earth orbit, under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract.

OPALS uses laser light instead of radio waves to beam back precisely guided data packages to ground stations. The use of lasers should greatly increase the amount of information transmitted over the same period of time, says NASA.

The science experiments carried aboard Dragon are intended for research to be conducted by the crews of ISS Expeditions 39 and 40.

Robotics teams had already pulled out the other payload item from the truck, namely the HDEV imaging suite. It is already transmitting back breathtaking real time video views of Earth from a quartet of video cameras pointing in different directions mounted on the stations exterior.

The SpaceX CRS-3 mission marks the company’s third resupply mission to the ISS under a $1.6 Billion contract with NASA to deliver 20,000 kg (44,000 pounds) of cargo to the ISS during a dozen Dragon cargo spacecraft flights through 2016.

After spending six months in space, Station Commander Koichi Wakata from Japan as well as NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin will be departing the station in a week aboard their Soyuz TMA-11M spacecraft on May 13 at 6:33 p.m. EDT.

They are scheduled to land some 3.5 hours later in the steppes of Kazakhstan at 9:57 p.m. (7:57 a.m. Kazakh time on May 14). The events will be carried live on NASA TV.

SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon resupply ship launch from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on April 18, 2014. Credit: Jeff Seibert/Wired4Space
SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon resupply ship launch from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on April 18, 2014. Credit: Jeff Seibert/Wired4Space
To prepare for the journey home, the trio also completed fit checks on their Russian Sokol launch and entry suits on Monday.

Meanwhile Dragon is also set to depart the station soon on May 18 for a parachute assisted splashdown and recovery by boats in the Pacific Ocean west of Baja California.

Dragon has been docked to the station since arriving on Easter Sunday morning, April 20.

It was grappled using Canadarm 2 and berthed at the Earth facing port of the Harmony module by Commander Wakata and flight engineer Mastracchio while working at the robotics work station inside the seven windowed domed Cupola module.

For the return trip, the Expedition 39 crew is also loading Dragon with precious science samples collected over many months from the crews research activities as well as trash and no longer needed items.

Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing SpaceX, Orbital Sciences, commercial space, Orion, Chang’e-3, LADEE, Curiosity, Mars rover, MAVEN, MOM and more planetary and human spaceflight news.

Ken Kremer

Posted on by Shannon Hall

Surprise Gamma-Ray Burst Behaves Differently Than Expected

Artist's impression of a gamma-ray burst, showing the two intense beams of relativistic matter emitted by the black hole. To be visible from Earth, the beams must be pointing directly towards us. Credit : NASA/Swift/Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith and John Jones

Roughly once a day the sky is lit up by a mysterious torrent of energy. These events — known as gamma-ray bursts — represent the most powerful explosions in the cosmos, sending out as much energy in a fraction of a second as our Sun will give off during its entire lifespan.

Yet no one has ever witnessed a gamma-ray burst directly. Instead astronomers are left to study their fading light.

New research from an international team of astronomers has discovered a puzzling feature within one Gamma-ray burst, suggesting that these objects may behave differently than previously thought.

These powerful explosions are thought to be triggered when dying stars collapse into jet-spewing black holes. While this stage only lasts a few minutes, its afterglow — slowly fading emission that can be seen at all wavelengths (including visible light) — will last for a few days to weeks. It is from this afterglow that astronomers meticulously try to understand these enigmatic explosions.

The afterglow emission is formed when the jets collide with the material surrounding the dying star. They cause a shockwave, moving at high velocities, in which electrons are being accelerated to tremendous energies. However, this acceleration process is still poorly understood. The key is in detecting the afterglow’s polarization — the fraction of light waves that move with a preferred plane of vibration.

“Different theories for electron acceleration and light emission within the afterglow all predict different levels of linear polarization, but theories all agreed that there should be no circular polarization in visible light,” said lead author Klaas Wiersema in a press release.

“This is where we came in: we decided to test this by carefully measuring both the linear and circular polarization of one afterglow, of GRB 121024A, detected by the Swift satellite.”

Gamma-ray burst 121024A, as seen on the day of burst by ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. Only a week later the source had faded completely. Credit: Dr Klaas Wiersema, University of Leicester, UK and Dr Peter Curran, ICRAR.
Gamma-ray burst 121024A, as seen on the day of the burst by ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. Only a week later the source had faded completely. Image Credit: Dr Klaas Wiersema, University of Leicester, UK and Dr Peter Curran, ICRAR.

And to their surprise, the team detected circular polarization, meaning that the light waves are moving together in a uniform, spiral motion as they travel. The gamma-ray burst was 1000 times more polarized than expected. “It is a very nice example of observations ruling out most of the existing theoretical predictions,” said Wiersema.

The detection shows that current theories need to be re-examined. Scientists expected any circular polarization to be washed out. The radiation of so many electrons travelings billions of light-years would erase any signal. But the new discovery suggests that there could be some sort of order in the way these electrons travel.

Of course the possibility remains that this particular afterglow was simply an oddball and not all afterglows behave like this.

Nonetheless “extreme shocks like the ones in GRB afterglows are great natural laboratories to push our understanding of physics beyond the ranges that can be explored in laboratories,” said Wiersema.

The paper has been published in Nature.

Posted on by Shannon Hall

Are we Ready for Contact?

Credit: José Antonio Peñas/Sinc

A common criticism of science is its quick decision to experiment, without thinking about whether or not it should. While many argue that philosophical implications do not belong within the realm of science, others argue that scientists should absolutely consider the broader implications of their results.

Now, neuro-psychologist Gabriel G. de la Torre from the University of Cádiz is questioning whether or not astronomers, who have previously only looked for signs of extraterrestrial life, should actively send messages from Earth.

The idea that we might not be alone in the universe has been around since at least the fifth century B.C., when the Greek philosopher Democritus posited innumerable worlds, none of which were devoid of life.

With the founding of NASA and other space agencies in the 20th century, human beings began to explore the solar system and actively search for alien life. The most ambitious search began in 1960, when astronomer Frank Drake pointed a radio telescope at two stars similar to our Sun and listened for a signature of intelligence.

Drake’s work inspired the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project, an initiative that began in the 70s with funding from NASA, but has now evolved toward the collaboration of millions of Internet users for the processing of data from the Arecibo Observatory.

But then there is “Active SETI — also known as METI (Messaging to Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) — which is the attempt to send messages to potential ETs via radio signals. Some astrophysicists, such as Stephen Hawking, have already warned against the risk this implies for humanity. It would favor the arrival of beings with more advanced technology and unknown intentions.

So “can such a decision be taken on behalf of the whole planet?” asked De la Torre. “What would happen if it was successful and ‘someone’ received our signal? Are we prepared for this type of contact?”

To answer these questions, De la Torre surveyed 116 American, Italian and Spanish university students. The questionnaire assessed their knowledge of astronomy, their religious beliefs, and their beliefs on the likelihood of contact with extraterrestrial intelligent life.

The results indicate that as a species, humanity is still not ready to actively contact a supposed extraterrestrial civilization. The students lacked awareness on many astronomical aspects, despite the enormous progress of science and technology. It also revealed that they lack preparation and would instead rely on political and religious figures.

De la Torre encourages SETI researchers to look for alternative strategies until society can better prepare itself. “This pilot study demonstrates that the knowledge of the general public of a certain education level about the cosmos and our place within it is still poor,” said De la Torre. “Therefore, a cosmic awareness must be further promoted – where our mind is increasingly conscious of the global reality that surrounds us – using the best tool available to us: education.”

The paper has been published in the journal Acta Astronautica.

Posted on by Bob King

“Tea, Earl Grey, Hot”… How Scientists Replicated a Mars Meteorite

The 'Block Island' meteorite reproduced in plastic at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech


Captain Picard orders tea

“Tea, Earl Grey, hot.” Who doesn’t remember that famous command by Captain Picard’s of TV’s “Star Trek: The Next Generation”? While no one’s yet invented a replicator that can brew a cup of tea out of thin air, scientists have taken in step in that direction by creating an amazing replica of a Martian meteorite using a 3D printer.

Without the fuss and expense of a sample retrieving mission to Mars, NASA scientists now have a realistic, true to life facsimile of the ‘Block Island’ meteorite discovered by the Opportunity Rover in 2009. Block Island, an iron-nickel meteorite similar to those found at Meteor Crater in Arizona, is the largest meteorite found on the Red Planet.

The real Block Island, the largest meteorite yet found on Mars, photographed by Opportunity's panoramic camera.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell
The real Block Island, the largest meteorite yet found on Mars, photographed by Opportunity’s panoramic camera.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell

Measuring about two feet (60 cm) across, it’s about the size of picnic cooler and weighs an estimated 1,000 pounds. The replica’s made of plastic – you could tote it around like a … picnic cooler.

Analysis of Block Island’s composition using the rover’s alpha particle X-ray spectrometer confirmed that it’s rich in iron and nickel. Scientists based the design of the plastic meteorite on detailed measurements and stereo images taken by Opportunity’s panoramic camera.

Get out your red-blue plastic glasses to get a look at Block Island in stereo. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Get out your red-blue plastic glasses to get a look at Block Island in stereo. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The rover made a 360-degree study of the meteorite five years ago taking measurements and many stereo images. But because Opportunity couldn’t see every square inch of the rock, the missing data created holes in the computer model, making it a poor candidate for 3D printing.

Last summer, scientists got around that problem by filling in the missing data and building small scale models of Block Island. To build the life-sized rock, they created depth meshes of the meteorite’s surface from six positions, then combined them into a three-dimensional digital model, according to researcher Kris Capraro of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Researcher Kris Capraro (second from left) adds the finishing touches of realistic color to a model of the "Block Island" meteorite.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Researcher Kris Capraro (second from left) adds the finishing touches of realistic color to a model of the “Block Island” meteorite.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The printer built the meteorite from ABS plastic, the same material used in Lego bricks, with cord the width of the plastic line in your weed-whacker. One small problem remained before the replica could be executed – it was too big to fit in the printer’s building space. So researchers broke up the computer model of the meteorite into 11 sections. Printing took 305 hours and 36 minutes.

Researchers created each of 11 pieces in the 3D printer and glued them together to build the true-size model. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Researchers created each of 11 pieces in the 3D printer and glued them together to build the true-size model. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The sections were assembled and then painted to match the real rock. Said Capraro: “it’s the next best thing to bringing back real Martian rock samples back to Earth.”

Scientists hope someday to use 3D printing to not only replicate more Mars rocks but terrains across the solar system.

Posted on by Shannon Hall

The Rise of Carbon Dioxide in a Single Video

Screenshot from the video showing the variations in the amount of CO2 in Earth atmosphere for the last 800,000 years.

I’m always amazed by the power of data visualization. In this case a video shrinks the rising levels of carbon dioxide over the course of 800,000 years to just under two minutes.

The motivation is simple: April set a carbon dioxide milestone by averaging 400 parts per million for the entire month. That’s uncharted territory over the course of human history.

The levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are monitored from a site atop Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano, where they have been measured continuously since 1958. Previous to this date scientists measure ice cores, which contain air bubbles and therefore snapshots of carbon dioxide levels.

This animation from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences makes clear that while there have been some variations over time, the current rise is unparalleled by geological scales.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution CO2 levels stayed roughly around 280 ppm. But then with the kickstart of carbon emissions, levels were driven exponentially higher. They soared past 350 ppm — the level scientist James Hansen said was the safe upper limit of CO2 — in October 1989.

The first measurement in excess of 400 ppm was made on May 9, 2013. This year, the level rose above that mark two months earlier, and has remained above 400 ppm steadily since the beginning of April. Levels will peak in May and then drop back down throughout the summer months as trees and plants soak up some CO2.

Once the northern hemisphere spins into fall, the instrument on Mauna Loa will again read higher CO2 levels. Next year will probably see an even earlier onset of levels above 400 ppm. It likely won’t be long before levels never drop lower than 400 ppm, even throughout the summer months.

Also, today the U.S. Global Change Research Program released a report that has been five years in the making, providing an overview of observed and projected climate change. It’s a lengthy document, but you can see an overview here. In sum, the report shows how the world is already experiencing the effects of climate change and the impacts are playing out before our eyes.

“We’ve seen a lot in the last five years,” said Andrew Rosenberg of the Union of Concerned Scientists, one of the lead authors on the report’s oceans chapter, in a press release from The Daily Climate. “So what we’ve tried to do is be quite comprehensive on what our observations have been, as opposed to just modeling projections.”

“Five years ago, ocean acidification and species movement was already happening, but the observational record wasn’t as clear,” Rosenberg said. “Now it really is quite clear. It’s not theory-based or model-based.”

Global temperatures measured by decades since the 1880's. The period from 2001-2012 was the warmest on record globally. Every year was warmer than the 1990s average. Credit: U.S. Global Change Research Program.
Global temperatures measured by decades since the 1880’s. The period from 2001-2012 was the warmest on record globally. Every year was warmer than the 1990s average. Credit: U.S. Global Change Research Program.

This report is unique in that it not only includes data from scientists, but also has input from local groups and industries facing climate impacts. Corn producers in Iowa, oyster growers in Washington, and maple syrup producers in Vermont are all experiencing climate-related issues. So, too, are coastal planners in Florida, water managers in the Southwest, and Native Peoples on tribal lands from Louisiana to Alaska.

Human beings are already being impacted by climate change.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Dashcams, Tweets Show Bright Daytime Fireball Over Ontario, Canada on May 4

The likely trajectory of the fireball seen on May 4, 2014 over parts of Ontario Canada. Graphic courtesy American Meteor Society.

A rare daylight meteor streaked across the skies over southern Ontario, Canada and the U.S. Northeast during the afternoon of Sunday May 4, 2014, with brightness “rivaling that of the Sun,” said the American Meteor Society. Reports of a bright fireball followed by a loud sonic boom were reported on social media, and several dashcam videos emerged showing the fireball, showing an unusual vertical trajectory.

Experts estimated the space rock that caused the excitement as being about half to one meter in diameter and exploding with a force of 50 tons of TNT energy. Canadian meteor expert Peter Brown, a professor at the University of Western Ontario said in the Winnipeg Free Press that he is confident that the fireball was large enough that some meteorite fragments may have hit the ground. .

Compared to the meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia in February of 2013, that’s quite small. That meteor’s explosion shattered windows and injured 1,000 people.

See more videos, tweets and images below, and you can read a liveblog of the event (with lots of links) by Daniel Fischer (@cosmos4u).

Read more news reports at the American Meteor Society, Globe and Mail, and Global News.

Posted on by Shannon Hall

Unprecedented Images of the Intergalactic Medium

Comparison of Lyman alpha blob observed with Cosmic Web Imager and a simulation of the cosmic web based on theoretical predictions. Credit: Christopher Martin, Robert Hurt - See more at: http://www.caltech.edu/content/intergalactic-medium-unveiled-caltechs-cosmic-web-imager-directly-observes-dim-matter#sthash.3bs0Xl3d.dpuf

An international team of astronomers has taken unprecedented images of intergalactic space — the diffuse and often invisible gas that connects and feeds galaxies throughout the Universe.

Until now, the structure of intergalactic space has mostly been a matter for theoretical speculation. Advanced computer simulations predict that primordial gas from the Big Bang is distributed in a vast cosmic web — a network of filaments that span galaxies and flow between them.

This vast network is impossible to see alone. In the past astronomers have looked at distant quasars — supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies which are rapidly accreting material and shining brightly — to indicate the otherwise invisible matter along their lines of sight.

While distant quasars may reveal the otherwise invisible gas, there’s no information about how that gas is distributed across space. New images, however, from the Cosmic Web Imager are revealing the webs’ filaments directly, allowing them to be seen across space.

The first filaments observed by the Cosmic Web Imager are in the vicinity of two ancient but bright objects: the quasar QSO 1549+19 and a so-called Lyman alpha blob (yes, this is a technical term for a huge concentration of hydrogen gas) in the emerging galaxy cluster SSA22. These objects are bright, lighting up the intervening galactic space and boosting the detectable signal.

Image of quasar (QSO 1549+19) taken with Caltech's Cosmic Web Imager, showing surrounding gas (in blue) and direction of filamentary gas inflow. Credit: Christopher Martin, Robert Hurt - See more at: http://www.caltech.edu/content/intergalactic-medium-unveiled-caltechs-cosmic-web-imager-directly-observes-dim-matter#sthash.3bs0Xl3d.dpuf
Image of quasar (QSO 1549+19) taken with Caltech’s Cosmic Web Imager, showing surrounding gas (in blue) and direction of filamentary gas inflow.
Image Credit: Christopher Martin, Robert Hurt

Both objects date back to two billion years after the Big Bang, in a time of rapid star formation in galaxies. Observations show a narrow filament, about one million light-years across flowing into the quasar, which is likely fueling the growth of the host galaxy.

There are three filaments flowing into the Lyman alpha blob. “I think we’re looking at a giant protogalactic disk,” said lead author Christopher Martin from the California Institute of Technology in a press release. “It’s almost 300,000 light-years in diameter, three times the size of the Milky Way.”

The Cosmic Web Imager on board the Hale 200 inch telescope is a spectrographic imager, taking pictures at many different wavelengths simultaneously. This allows astronomers to learn about objects’ composition, mass and velocity.

“The gaseous filaments and structures we see around the quasar and the Lyman alpha blob are unusually bright,” said Martin. “Our goal is to eventually be able to see the average intergalactic medium everywhere. It’s harder, but we’ll get there.”

Both papers (“Intergalactic Medium Observations with the Cosmic Web Imager: I. The Circum-QSO Medium of QSO 1549+19 and Evidence for a Filamentary Gas Inflow” and “Intergalactic Medium Observations with the Cosmic Web Imager: II. Discovery of Extended, Kinematically-linked Emission around SSA22 Ly-alpha Blob 2”) have been published in the Astrophysical Journal.

Posted on by Shannon Hall

NASA Seeks Ideas for Mission to Europa

Jupiter's icy moon: Europa. Image Credit: NASA

Europa — a moon of Jupiter first discovered by Galileo — never ceases to surprise and amaze astronomers and amateurs alike.

Last December astronomers announced water plumes erupting 100 miles high from the moon’s icy south pole. It was the best evidence yet that Europa, heated internally by the powerful tidal forces generated by Jupiter’s gravity, has a deep subsurface ocean. It caused the search for life in the outer solar system to take quite a turn.

Now, NASA has issued a Request for Information (RFI) to science and engineering communities for ideas for a mission to the enigmatic moon. Any ideas need to address fundamental questions about the subsurface ocean and the search for life beyond Earth.

“This is an opportunity to hear from those creative teams that have ideas on how we can achieve the most science at minimum cost,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, in a press release.

The RFI’s focus is for concepts for a mission that costs less than $1 billion.

“Europa is one of the most interesting sites in our solar system in the search for life beyond Earth,” said Grunsfield. “The drive to explore Europa has stimulated not only scientific interest but also the ingenuity of engineers and scientists with innovative concepts.”

The Decadal Survey deemed a mission to Europa as an extremely high priority for scientific pursuits by NASA. It lists five key science objectives that are necessary to improve our understanding of this potentially habitable moon. Primarily, the mission will need to:

— Characterize the extent of the ocean and its relation to the deeper interior

— Characterize the ice shell and any subsurface water, including their heterogeneity, and the nature of surface-ice-ocean exchange

— Determine global surface, compositions and chemistry, especially as related to habitability

— Understand the formation of surface features, including sites of recent or current activity, identify and characterize candidate sites for future detailed exploration

— Understand Europa’s space environment and interaction with the magnetosphere.

Although Europa has been visited by spacecraft and imaged distantly by Hubble, more detailed research is necessary to understand the complexities of this moon and its potential for life. NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, launched in 1989 was the only mission to visit Europa, passing close by the moon fewer than a dozen times.

What are your ideas for a mission to the icy moon? Comment below.

Posted on by David Dickinson

Comet Jacques Brightens: How to See it in May

Comet Jacques as imaged on March 18th, shortly after discovery. Credit: Efrain Morales Rivera.

A recently discovered comet is headed northward and is set to put on one of two fine performances for binocular observers in 2014 starting this week.

Comet C/2014 E2 Jacques was discovered on March 13th 2014 by Cristóvão Jacques, Eduardo Pimentel and João Ribeiro de Barros while observing from the Southern Observatory for Near Earth Asteroids Research (SONEAR) facility located near Oliveira, Brazil.

The comet was just about at +15th magnitude at the time of discovery as it glided across the southern hemisphere constellation of Centaurus.

While a majority of comet discoveries are destined to remain small and faint, Comet Jacques was immediately shown to be something special. Upon discovery of any new comet, the first task is to gain several observations hours or nights apart to accurately gauge its distance and orbit. Are astronomers looking at a small, garden variety comet close up, or a large, active one far away?

In the case of Comet Jacques, it was something in between: a comet about 1.22 Astronomical Units (A.U.s) distant at time of discovery. Comet Jacques is headed towards perihelion 0.66 A.U. from the Sun in early July and will pass 0.56 A.U. from Earth on August 28th.  Follow up observations carried out using the iTelescope at Siding Spring Australia showed a slightly elongated coma about 2 arc minutes across shortly after discovery, and the comet has recently jumped up to magnitude +8 — ahead of the projected light curve — in just the past week.

Starry Night
The path of Comet Jacques, looking west from latitude 30 degree north 45 minutes after sunset. Credit: Starry Night.

We caught our first good look at Comet Jacques last night while setting up for the Virtual Star Party. While +10 magnitude or brighter is usually a pretty good rule of thumb for binocular visibility, we found that the comet was only apparent as a fuzzy smudge viewing it with a 8” Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope using averted vision at low power. Remember, the brightness of a comet is spread out over its apparent surface area, similar to viewing a diffuse nebula. Our first telescopic views of the ill-fated comet ISON as it breeched +10th magnitude were similar. Certainly, a nearby waxing crescent Moon in Gemini last night didn’t help.

How bright will Comet Jacques get? Current projections call for it to perhaps break naked eye visibility around +6th magnitude after June 1st and reach as bright as +4th magnitude in early July near perihelion. After its first evening act in May and June, Comet Jacques will reemerge in the dawn sky for northern hemisphere observers for Act 2 and trace a path northward paralleling the galactic plane through the star rich fields of Perseus, Cassiopeia, Cepheus and Cygnus in August and September of this year. If our luck holds out, Comet Jacques will remain above 6th magnitude until early September.

Credit JPL
The path of Comet Jacques through the inner solar system. Credit: JPL solar system small body generator.

This comet also created a brief flurry of interest when it was revealed that it will pass just 0.085 AUs or 12,700,000 kilometers from Venus on July 13th, 2014. Though close, this is still 31 times the distance from Earth to the Moon. The only “eyes” that humanity has currently in operation around Venus is ESA’s Venus Express orbiter. During closest approach Comet Jacques will appear just over 3 degrees away from Venus as seen from our Earthly vantage point.

Another comet is also set to photobomb a planet, as Comet A1 Siding Spring passes a nominal distance of 0.0009 A.U.s or 135,000 kilometers from Mars this Fall on October 19th.

Comet Jacques
11 images of Comet Jacques stacked from May 3rd. Credit: Ian Griffin @IanGriffin.

The closest recorded passage of a comet near Earth was Comet  D/1770 L1 Lexell in 1770, which passed us 0.015 A.U.s or 233 million kilometres distant.

Now on to Act 1. May finds Comet Jacques spending most of the month in the long rambling constellation of Monoceros. Currently moving just under 2 degrees a day, Comet Jacques crosses the celestial equator northward this week on May 8th. You’ll note its high orbital inclination of 156.4 degrees as it speeds northward. Comet Jacques has a long orbital period gauged at over 30,000 years — the last time Comet Jacques visited the inner solar system, our ancestors had the Last Glacial Maximum period to look forward to.

Light curve
The projected light curve of comet Jacques with recent observations. Credit: Seiichi Yoshida/aerith.net.

Comet Jacques is currently the brightest comet “with a bullet,” edging out the +9th magnitude comets C/2012 K1 PanSTARRS gilding through Canes Venatici and comet C/2012 X1 LINEAR, currently residing in the constellation of Aquila the Eagle. A great place to keep up with current observations of comets is the Comet Observation Database. We’re also pinging the IAU Minor Planet Center’s quick look page for new discoveries daily.

Here are some highlights to watch out for as Comet Jacques heads towards perihelion. Passages within one degree — twice the size of the Full Moon — near stars brighter than +5th magnitude are noted unless mentioned otherwise:

May 3rd through June 1st
The celestial path of Comet Jacques from May 3rd through June 1st. Credit: Starry Night.

May 8th: Passes the +4.1 magnitude star Delta Monocerotis and crosses north of the celestial equator.

May 10th: Passes planetary nebula NGC 2346.

May 11th: Passes briefly into Canis Minor before reentering the constellation Monoceros.

May 14th: Full Moon occurs, marking the start of a favorable two week period of moonless evenings soon after.

May 24th: Passes the +4.8 magnitude star 17 Monocerotis.

May 28th: New Moon occurs, marking the return of the Moon to early evening skies.

May 29th: Passes the +4.7 magnitude star 15 Monocerotis.

May 30th: Passes the Christmas tree cluster. Photo op!

May 31st: The waxing crescent Moon passes less than 8 degrees from Comet Jacques.

June 1st: Comet Jacques reaches naked eye visibility?

June 6th: Crosses into the constellation Gemini.

June 11th: Crosses into the constellation Taurus.

June 13th: Full Moon occurs.

June 14th: Crosses the galactic plane.

June 21st: Passes into the field of view of SOHO’s LASCO C3 camera.

June 27th: New Moon occurs.

July 2nd: Reaches perihelion at 0.6638 A.U. from the Sun.

July 8th: Crosses north of the ecliptic plane.

July 13th: Passes 0.085 A.U. from Venus.

August 28th: Passes 0.56 A.U. from Earth.

And thus, Comet Jacques joins the parade of fine binocular comets in the 2014 night sky, as the stage is set for Act 2 this fall. And keep in mind, the next “big one” could grace our skies at anytime… more to come!