Pluto's solar system in a 2012 artist's conception. P4 and P5 are now called Kerberos and Styx, respectively. Credit: NASA/John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
It looks like Vulcan was not the logical choice for the International Astronomical Union when it came to naming Pluto’s new moons.
The internationally recognized body for astronomy names selected Kerberos and Styx as the new names for Plutonian moons P4 and P5, respectively. While these names were popular in a public vote last year concerning Pluto’s new moons, Vulcan — the overwhelming favorite, and backed by none other than Star Trek‘s Captain Kirk (William Shatner) — was not selected.
The Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) said Vulcan, which was first popularized in the 1960s as the home world of Star Trek character Spock, was considered.
“The IAU gave serious consideration to this name, which happens to be shared by the Roman god of volcanoes. However, because that name has already been used in astronomy, and because the Roman god is not closely associated with Pluto, this proposal was rejected,” a release stated.
Vulcan received the support of William Shatner, pictured here in his Star Trek role as Captain James Kirk. Credit: Paramount
There will be more about Styx and Kerberos in this SETI-hosted Google Hangout, which will be held live starting at noon Eastern (4 p.m. GMT).
Kerberos is a three-headed dog in Greek mythology and Styx a mythological river that is the boundary between the living world and that of the dead. These are fitting names given Pluto’s other moons: Charon, Nix and Hydra, all of which meet the IAU’s rules to name them after Greek and Roman underworld personas.
We’ll get a closer look at these strange new worlds in 2015, when the New Horizons spacecraft skims through the Pluto system. There may be other, tiny moons lurking around the dwarf planet that New Horizons could find.
Do you feel the IAU made the right choice? It’s not the first time it waded into tricky waters concerning Pluto; some in the public still complain today about the decision to demote Pluto to dwarf planet status in 2006.
Solar apparent size- perihelion versus aphelion 2012.
This 4th of July weekend brings us one more reason to celebrate. On July 5th at approximately 11:00 AM EDT/15:00 UT, our fair planet Earth reaches aphelion, or its farthest point from the Sun at 1.0167 Astronomical Units (A.U.s) or 152,096,000 kilometres distant.
Though it may not seem it to northern hemisphere residents sizzling in the summer heat, we’re currently 3.3% farther from the Sun than our 147,098,290 kilometre (0.9833 A.U.) approach made in early January.
We thought it would be a fun project to capture this change. A common cry heard from denier circles as to scientific facts is “yeah, but have you ever SEEN it?” and in the case of the variation in distance between the Sun and the Earth from aphelion to perihelion, we can report that we have!
We typically observe the Sun in white light and hydrogen alpha using a standard rig and a Coronado Personal Solar Telescope on every clear day. We have two filtered rigs for white light- a glass Orion filter for our 8-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain, and a homemade Baader solar filter for our DSLR. We prefer the DSLR rig for ease of deployment. We’ve described in a previous post how to make a safe and effective solar observing rig using Baader solar film.
Our primary solar imaging rig. A Nikon D60 DSLR with a 400mm lens + a 2x teleconverter and Baader solar filter. Very easy to employ!
We’ve been imaging the Sun daily for a few years as part of our effort to make a home-brewed “solar rotation and activity movie” of the entire solar cycle. We recently realized that we’ve imaged Sol very near aphelion and perihelion on previous years with this same fixed rig, and decided to check and see if we caught the apparent size variation of our nearest star. And sure enough, comparing the sizes of the two disks revealed a tiny but consistent variation.
It’s a common misconception that the seasons are due to our distance from the Sun. The insolation due to the 23.4° tilt of the rotational axis of the Earth is the dominant driving factor behind the seasons. (Don’t they still teach this in grade school? You’d be surprised at the things I’ve heard!) In the current epoch, a January perihelion and a July aphelion results in milder climatic summers in the northern hemisphere and more severe summers in the southern. The current difference in solar isolation between hemispheres due to eccentricity of Earth’s orbit is 6.8%.
The orbit of the Earth also currently has one of the lowest eccentricities (how far it deviates for circular) of the planets at 0.0167, or 1.67%. Only Neptune (1%) and Venus (0.68%) are “more circular.”
The orbital eccentricity of the Earth also oscillates over a 413,000 year period between 5.8% (about the same as Saturn) down to 0.5%. We’re currently at the low end of the scale, just below the mean value of 2.8%.
Variation in eccentricity is also coupled with other factors, such as the change in axial obliquity the precession of the line of apsides and the equinoxes to result in what are known as Milankovitch cycles. These variations in extremes play a role in the riddle of climate over hundreds of thousands of years. Climate change deniers like to point out that there are large natural cycles in the records, and they’re right – but in the wrong direction. Note that looking solely at variations in the climate due to Milankovitch cycles, we should be in a cooling trend right now. Against this backdrop, the signal of anthropogenic climate forcing and global dimming of albedo (which also masks warming via cloud cover and reflectivity) becomes even more ominous.
Aphelion can presently fall between July 2nd at 20:00 UT (as it did last in 1960) and July 7th at 00:00 UT as it last did on 2007. The seemingly random variation is due to the position of the Earth with respect to the barycenter of the Earth-Moon system near the time of aphelion. The once every four year reset of the leap year (with the exception of the year 2000!) also plays a lesser role.
Perihelion and aphelion vs the solstices and equinoxes, an exaggerated view. (Wikimedia Commons image under a 3.0 Unported Attribution-Share Alike license. Author Gothika/Doudoudou).
I love observing the Sun any time of year, as its face is constantly changing from day-to-day. There’s also no worrying about light pollution in the solar observing world, though we’ve noticed turbulence aloft (in the form of bad seeing) is an issue later in the day, especially in the summertime. The rotational axis of the Sun is also tipped by about 7.25° relative to the ecliptic, and will present its north pole at maximum tilt towards us on September 8th. And yes, it does seem strange to think in terms of “the north pole of the Sun…”
We’re also approaching the solar maximum through the 2013-2014 time frame, another reason to break out those solar scopes. This current Solar Cycle #24 has been off to a sputtering start, with the Sun active one week, and quiet the next. The last 2009 minimum was the quietest in a century, and there’s speculation that Cycle #25 may be missing all together.
And yes, the Moon also varies in its apparent size throughout its orbit as well, as hyped during last month’s perigee or Super Moon. Keep those posts handy- we’ve got one more Super Moon to endure this month on July 22nd. The New Moon on July 8th at 7:15UT/3:15 AM EDT will occur just 30 hours after apogee, and will hence be the “smallest New Moon” of 2013, with a lot less fanfare. Observers worldwide also have a shot at catching the slender crescent Moon on the evening of July 9th. This lunation and the sighting of the crescent Moon also marks the start of the month of Ramadan on the Muslim calendar.
Be sure to observe the aphelion Sun (with proper protection of course!) It would be uber-cool to see a stitched together animation of the Sun “growing & shrinking” from aphelion to perihelion and back. We could also use a hip Internet-ready meme for the perihelion & aphelion Sun- perhaps a “MiniSol?” A recent pun from Dr Marco Langbroek laid claim to the moniker of “#SuperSun;” in time for next January’s perihelion;
If you could travel from world to world, from star to star, out into the gulfs of intergalactic space, you’d move away from the warmth of the stars into the vast and cold depths of the void.
An artist's conception of a potentially-habitable exomoon. Credit: NASA
The latest exciting undertaking in exoplanet research is the search for exomoons. A team led by Dr. David Kipping at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has jumped at this challenge. After having theoretically proven that detecting an Earth-sized exomoon is possible, the team carried out the first detailed search for an exomoon.
Are you leaning forward on the edge of your seat awaiting the results? Well here you go: the data show no evidence of a moon. That’s simply the luck of the draw. We didn’t discover an exoplanet on our first try either. I believe that this non-detection shows that we’re on the verge of our next greatest discovery.
The reasons for searching for exomoons are abundant. “Exomoons may be frequent, habitable abodes for life and so far we know next to nothing about the underlying frequency of such objects in the cosmos,” Dr. Kipping told Universe Today. “They also play an important role in the habitability of those planets which they orbit, for example the Moon is thought to stabilize the axial tilt of the Earth and so too the climate.”
The project titled “The Hunt of Exomoons with Kepler,” more commonly known as HEK, was formed with these reasons in mind. As such, the HEK project will search for exomoons that are likely to be habitable.
The first target is Kepler-22b – the first transiting exoplanet to have been detected in the habitable zone of its host star. At 2.4 Earth radii, it is too large to be considered an Earth-analog, but it could easily have an Earth-sized moon
There are currently two methods in which we may detect exomoons.
1.) Dynamic effects – the exomoon tugs the planet, which causes deviations in the times and durations of the host planet’s transits. This is similar to the radial velocity technique for detecting exoplanets.
2.) Transit effects – the exomoon may transit the star immediately before or just after the planet does. This will cause an added dip in the observed light. See this video for a great demonstration. This is similar to the light curve technique for detecting exoplanets.
The team modeled the initial transit light curves of Kepler-22b. They then injected an Earth-sized moon into the system in order to analyze the effects. While this caused clear variations in the light curve, such variations had to be above the level of noise.
As such, they also injected noise in the light curves, which mirrors that of the Kepler data. In the end, the variations in a star’s light curve due to the presence of an exomoon are much higher than the noise. The team is able to recover the correct answer with extremely high confidence.
Here Kipping et al. presents injected moon fits. As an example, the upper left-hand figure shows an exoplanet transit, with a moon transiting as well. Here the moon transits first, causing the light to be blocked, then the planet follows, causing more of the light to be blocked. Source: Kipping et al. 2013
The real data does not show deviations like the previous figure does. This non-detection implies that there is no moon with a mass greater than 0.54 times the mass of the Earth. While there is no Earth-analog in this system, there may be a smaller undetectable moon.
I asked Dr. Kipping about our chances of success in other systems. His answer: “That depends upon nature herself!” We have no idea how regularly nature produces moons in other solar systems. “There is nothing more exciting than working on a project where the answer is wholly unknown.”
But remember: two decades ago we were unsure if nature regularly produced planets. We have since observed them in abundance. I have to believe that with 168 moons in our solar system alone, we’re likely to find them in other systems. We’re on the verge of the next greatest discovery. So stay tuned because I promise I’ll be writing about it when it happens.
At 2:38 UTC Tuesday morning (local time) a Russian Proton-M heavy lift rocket carrying three GLONASS navigation/positioning satellites exploded shortly after lifting off from the pad at Baikonur Cosmodrome. The event was captured on a live Russian news feed, seen above.
No word yet on whether there were any injuries or not according to NASASpaceflight.com, no casualties have been reported but the Proton rocket debris may have landed near another pad used by ILS (International Launch Services) — a U.S./Russian joint venture for commercial launches.
According to Anatoly Zak at RussianSpaceWeb.com, “since the emergency cutoff of the first stage engines is blocked during the first 42 seconds of the flight to ensure that the rocket clears the launch complex, the vehicle continued flying with its propulsion system firing practically until the impact on the ground.”
Reminder: space travel is (still) hard.
Update: Watch another view of the failed launch below:
Saturn's rings. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.
It’s been 9 years (to the day, in fact) since the Cassini spacecraft first entered orbit around Saturn and ever since it has been sending a steady stream of incredible images from the ringed planet back to Earth, bridging the 900-million-mile distance with countlesswonders and groundbreaking discoveries. The views Cassini has provided us of Saturn and its family of moons are unparalleled and unprecedented, but something one could remain in want of is the element of motion: Cassini’s cameras are designed to capture still images, not true video, and thus most of our best views of Saturn are static shots.
That’s where filmmaker Stephen van Vuuren and his current project, “In Saturn’s Rings,” comes in.
An award-winning filmmaker, musician, and photographer (and self-confessed übergeek) from South Africa, Stephen van Vuuren has spent the last several years compiling hundreds of thousands of images acquired by Cassini — as well as other exploration spacecraft — into a single high-definition feature film, one that will allow viewers to experience the beauty, grandeur, and reality of the Solar System like never before.
“In Saturn’s Rings” (formerly “Outside In”) is slated for release in IMAX theaters, planetariums, and museums in the spring of 2014 — and the first official teaser trailer is below, released today. Check it out (or visit the YouTube page to watch in original, eye-melting 4k high-resolution):
“‘In Saturn’s Rings’ is a film that’s both personal and universal, experimental and sincere, science and spirit , non-narrative and documentary. The goal is to use large screen imagery, synchronized to powerful but moving music, to create an experience for those who see it, hear it and feel it.”
– “In Saturn’s Rings” official website
This is one film that I’ll be eagerly looking forward to over the next few months, without a doubt!
Read more on van Vuuren’s official film site here, and check out a full minute of film footage (originally released in 2011) on Vimeo here. Also, you can keep up with updates on the movie’s Twitter and Facebook pages.
Technicians work on mockups of the Orion crew capsule, Service Module and 6 ton Launch Abort System (LAS) to simulate critical assembly techniques inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida for the EFT-1 mission due to liftoff in September 2014. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – NASA is picking up the pace of assembly operations for the Orion capsule, America’s next crew vehicle destined to carry US astronauts to Asteroids, the Moon, Mars and Beyond.
Just over a year from now in September 2014, NASA will launch Orion on its first test flight, an unpiloted mission dubbed EFT-1.
At NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, expert work crews are already hard at work building a myriad of Orion’s key components, insuring the spacecraft takes shape for an on time liftoff.
Orion crew capsule, Service Module and 6 ton Launch Abort System (LAS) stack inside the transfer aisle of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. Powerful quartet of LAS abort motors will fire in case of launch emergency to save astronauts lives. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.comUniverse Today is reporting on NASA’s progress and I took an exclusive behind the scenes tour inside KSC facilities to check on Orion’s progress.
In 2014 Orion will blast off to Earth orbit atop a mammoth Delta IV Heavy booster, the most powerful booster in America’s rocket fleet following the retirement of NASA’s Space Shuttle orbiters in 2011.
On later flights Orion will blast off on the gargantuan Space Launch System (SLS), the world’s most powerful rocket which is simultaneously under development by NASA.
At the very top of the Orion launch stack sits the Launch Abort System (LAS) – a critically important component to ensure crew safety, bolted above the crew module.
In case of an emergency situation, the LAS is designed to ignite within milliseconds to rapidly propel the astronauts inside the crew module away from the rocket and save the astronauts lives.
The LAS is one of the five primary components of the flight test vehicle for the EFT-1 mission.
Astronaut hatch swung open on Orion capsule mock up joined to base of Launch Abort System (LAS) emergency escape tower. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
Prior to any launch from the Kennedy Space Center, all the rocket components are painstakingly attached piece by piece.
Final assembly for EFT-1 takes place inside the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB).
To get a head start on assembly with the launch date relentlessly approaching, technicians have been practicing lifting and stacking techniques for several months inside the VAB transfer aisle using the 6 ton LAS pathfinder replica and mock ups of the Orion crew and service modules.
This 175 ton hook and crane system used to maneuver the Orion crew capsule, Service Module and Launch Abort System (LAS) components inside the Vehicle Assembly Building the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
Conducting the practice sessions now with high fidelity replicas serves multiple purposes, including anticipating and solving problems now before the real equipment arrives, as well as to keep the teams proficient between the years long launch gap between the finale of the Space Shuttle program and the start up of the Orion/SLS deep space exploration program.
Delicate maneuvers like lifting, rolling, rotating, stacking, gimballing and more of heavy components requiring precision placements is very demanding and takes extensive practice to master.
There is no margin for error. Human lives hang in the balance.
Technicians at work practicing de-stacking operations with full size mockups of the Orion capsule and Launch Abort System components inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: NASA/Jim Grossmann
The same dedicated crews that assembled NASA’s Space Shuttles inside the VAB for 3 decades are assembling Orion. And they are using the same equipment.
“The breakover, taking the LAS from horizontal to vertical, is not as easy as it sometimes seems, but the VAB guys are exceptional, they are really good at what they do so they really didn’t have a problem,” says Douglas Lenhardt, who is overseeing the Orion mock-up and operations planning for the Ground Systems Development and Operations program, or GSDO.
Simulations with computer models are extremely helpful, but real life situations can be another matter.
“Real-life, things don’t always work perfectly and that’s why it really does help having a physical model,” says Lenhardt.
One day our astronauts will climb through an Orion hatch like this for America’s ‘Return to the Moon’ – following in the eternal footsteps of Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.
Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
During the unmanned Orion EFT-1 mission, the capsule will fly on a two orbit test flight to an altitude of 3,600 miles above Earth’s surface, farther than any human spacecraft has gone in 40 years.
Swirling aurora over Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Credit and copyright: Colin Chatfield/ Chatfield Photography.
I was personally so pumped to have seen the Aurora Borealis over the weekend in Central Minnesota! It was a beautiful display of a green and white glow with high, towering, bright spires. Unfortunately, I was in the car at the time, and I definitely need to upgrade my camera to be able to take images of the aurora. But lucky for us, astrophotographers from both hemispheres captured gorgeous shots of the Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis.
According to SpaceWeather.com, the Earth passed through a region of south-pointing magnetism in the solar wind on June 28, “and the encounter set off one of the finest geomagnetic storms of the current solar cycle.”
This shot from Colin Chatfield shows the awesome auroral scenes over Saskatchewan.
The northern lights on June 28/29, 2013 as seen from the Wintering Hills WInd Farm near Drumheller, Alberta. Credit and copyright: Alan Dyer/Amazing Sky Photography.
James Stone from Opossum Bay, Tasmania captured this video of the Aurora Australis:
Screenshot of the Moon rising over Cape Town, South Africa. Credit: Bruno Letarte.
Can you get good astrophotography shots from within a city? Astrophotographer Bruno Letarte has proved you can capture stunning shots of both city and night sky and turn them into a beautiful timelapse. Last fall we featured a timelapse by Bruno taken at the dark sky site of the South African Large Telescope (SALT), but he said his latest project of shooting among the city lights was a “real learning experience.”
“It was a completely different challenge, much trickier than shooting a perfect dark sky, where you find your optimal exposure time and stick to it for everything,” Bruno told Universe Today via email. “Different objects and different focal lengths, lights in the foreground, moving cars, etc. Many sequences had to be decided on the spot with no time to really think it through.”
He captured various objects (Moon, Sun, planets, comets) either rising or setting against a nice city landscape — with light pollution and all – and all taken with an entry level enthusiast camera.
“It was a real learning experience for me to shoot in these various conditions. It’s also an invitation to the general public to look up in their night sky to see what’s up there, even in a city,” Bruno added. “And for the amateur photographer out there, I’ve included the tech details and comments for each sequences with a few seconds of flashing text.”
The dark lines in this image point to the Herschel Space Telescope, which was imaged on June 27, 2013 as it was moving away from its mission orbit around L2 to a heliocentric parking orbit, after the spacecraft was decommissioned. Credit and copyright: Nick Howes and Ernesto Guido, using Faulkes Telescope North in Haleakala, Hawaii.
A pair of astronomers has proved that we haven’t seen the last of the Herschel Space Observatory! On June 17, 2013, engineers for the Herschel space telescope sent final commands to put the decommissioned observatory into its “graveyard” heliocentric parking orbit, after the liquid helium that cooled the observatory’s instruments was depleted. Now, Nick Howes and Ernesto Guido from the Remanzacco Observatory have used the 2 meter Faulkes Telescope North in Hawaii to take a picture of the infrared observatory as it is moving away from its orbit around the L2 LaGrange Point where it spent the entirety of its mission.
Howes told Universe Today that their observations not only improve future chances of it being seen, but also will help astronomers in that the observatory won’t be mistaken for a new asteroid.
“We saw a potential issue here,” Howes said via email, “as the spacecraft would be in a slow tumble, receding from its stable L2 orbit, subjected to solar radiation pressure. And as ESA’s ground stations were no longer communicating with it, so we wanted to basically check the orbits and make sure that for future science, it was not mistakenly detected as an asteroid.”
The Herschel Telescope was imaged by Nick Howes and Ernesto Guido using Faulkes Telescope North in Haleakala, Hawaii, on June 26, 2013.
When Howes and Guido realized that JPL’s Horizons coordinate system — which generates coordinates for objects in space like Herschel — would be suspending coordinates for the observatory from the end of June, they quickly and urgently used the information they had on Herschel’s movements to make their observations.
“The ephemeris from JPL and the Minor Planet Center varied,” Howes said, “and appeared to show quite different long term positions, so we took the initiative to try to help make sure this orbit was better understood. We knew ESA’s scientists had a pretty good handle on the position, but were perplexed by the variance in the coordinates being generated by the two ephemeris systems”
Radiation pressure and a host of other factors would have and will continue to affect the position of the spacecraft, but with it getting fainter by the day, Howes and Guido made the effort by taking two nights of observations to try and find Herschel as it drifted away from L2.
“Imaging a several metre wide spacecraft at over 2.1 million km from Earth in an orbit that was not quite precise, and a tumbling spacecraft is not an easy task, at the faint magnitudes it theoretically could have been at, ” said Guido, who helps manage the Remanzacco Observatory in Italy. “And while we found what we thought could be it on the first night, our calculations would need to be verified by observing it on a second night to validate that it was indeed Herschel.”
The orbit of Herschel during its mission. Credit: ESA.
Howes, who’d written about Herschel when working in science communications for ESA, contacted several of the mission team via emails, who gave valuable advice on the effects of the final orbital burn.
“We effectively had three possible locations to hunt in,” Howes said, “and luckily, as rain at one of our telescope sites stopped our plans for the third run, and nothing showed up in our first coordinates, we managed to get it in the second set of images, exactly where we thought it could be, with the correct data for its motion, position angle and other orbital characteristics. Ernesto worked on the data reduction for these images, and after about 30 minutes of frantic discussion, said ‘I think I’ve found it.’”
The team have filed their data with the Minor Planet Center, and have worked closely with astronomers at Kitt Peak, who also imaged the Observatory, further refining the observing arc, passing their coordinates even on to astronomers in Chile, with significantly larger telescopes to get even more images of it.
The Faulkes Telescope Project is based at the University of South Wales, and the telescopes are operated by the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network. The telescopes are also used for educational purposes, and schools using the Faulkes Telescope will be able to follow Herschel as she leaves her orbit to wander around the Sun. It will return to our neck of the Solar System around 2027/2028 (astrometry measured by Howes and Guido is factoring in radiation pressure, so the values are approximate), when it will return at around magnitude 21.7.
“We’ve engaged schools in this project as it’s great for learning astrometry, and photometry as well as a fun thing to do, and they’ve also been making animations from our data.”
Howes and Guido hope that the updated information will help others keep an eye on the telescope in the future. “It’s been an exciting week, and we wanted to say thank you to ESA for building such a magnificent telescope,” Howes said. “We just wanted to give it a good send off!”
