A mosaic of five different shots of the quarter Moon as it set over Marina di Pisa, Tuscany, Italy on July 15, 2013. Credit and copyright: Giuseppe Petricca.
When I looked out my south-facing window last night, I saw a gorgeous quarter Moon high in the sky. Giuseppe Petricca from Marina di Pisa, Tuscany, Italy took a longer look and created this beautiful composition of five different shots of the Moon on July 15, 2013, revealing how the appearance of the Moon changes as it sinks lower in the sky.
“These are the colours that our natural satellite assumes thanks to the Rayleigh Scattering in Earth’s atmosphere,” Guiseppe said via email. He noted that in his image, colors of the single shots are not digitally altered (except with a light Sharpness Mask to enhance the surface details.)
Guiseppe used a Nikon P90 bridge digital camera, at ISO 100, and used various but limited exposition times (trying to maintain a short medium exposition range in seconds, he said. His mosaic composed with Photoshop.
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Mu Cephei (arrowed) in the constellation Cepheus the King. (Photo & graphic by author).
Quick, what’s the reddest star visible to the naked eye?
Depending on your sky conditions, your answer may well be this week’s astronomical highlight.
Mu Cephei, also known as Herschel’s Garnet Star, is a ruddy gem in the constellation Cepheus near the Cygnus/Lacerta border. A variable star ranging in brightness by a factor of about three-fold from magnitudes 5.0 to 3.7, Mu Cephei is low to the northeast for mid-northern latitude observers in July at dusk, and will be progressively higher as summer wears on. Continue reading “Seeing Red: Hunting Herschel’s Garnet Star”
An artist's conception of Reaction Engines' Skylon spacecraft. Credit: Reaction Engines
Air-breathing rocket engine. Need we say more?
The technology, which sounds straight out of a science-fiction movie, has enough reality to it for the United Kingdom government to offer $90.62 million (£60 million), in stages, to a company looking to develop the engine.
The money will go to Oxfordshire-based Reaction Engines, which we’ve seen on Universe Today before. They’re also developing an unpiloted and reusable spacecraft called Skylon, which is intended for low Earth orbit after leaving the planet from a conventional runway.
Skylon isn’t flight-ready yet, but so far the project did pass a United Kingdom Space Agency technical assessment. If completed, the UK Space Agency says Skylon is just one of many vehicles that could use this engine, which is called Sabre.
“The unique engine is designed to extract the oxygen it needs for low atmosphere flight from the air itself, paving the way for a new generation of spaceplanes which would be lighter, reusable and able to take off and launch from conventional airport runways,” the agency stated.
The money, stated Reaction Engines founder Alan Bond, will fund “the next phase in the development of its engine and heat management technology.” More specifically, this is what the company plans to use the funds for:
– Engine technical design work;
– Improving lightweight heat exchanger technology and manufacturing;
– Performing wind tunnel and flight testing of engine components;
– Doing a “ground demonstration” of the engine.
If all stays to schedule, Reaction Engines expects a Sabre prototype will be ready in 2017, with flight tests commencing in 2020.
A cutaway view of the proposed Sabre engine, which is being developed by Oxfordshire-based Reaction Engines. Credit: Reaction Engines
The major goal of Sabre is to use hot air entering the engine to obtain the required oxygen for operations, rather than carrying the gas separately on board. The engine is supposed to switch to a “rocket mode” at 26,000 feet in altitude.
“This advantage enables a spaceplane to fly lighter from the outset and to make a single leap to orbit, rather than using and dumping propellant stages on the ascent – as is the case with current expendable rockets,” the UK Space Agency stated.
Reaction Engines promises Skylon would give “reliable access to space” through carrying payloads of up to 15 tonnes, but at only 2% of the cost of more conventional launch vehicles — namely, rockets. It remains to be seen if they will achieve that cost goal, but the funding is welcome news nonetheless for the company.
ISS Astronauts had to scramble to get Luca Parmitano out of his spacesuit after water leaked inside the suit, covering his face. Via NASA TV.
Today’s spacewalk at the International Space Station was cut short due to a water leak inside astronaut Luca Parmitano’s spacesuit. At one point, there was so much water inside Parmitano’s ears and around his face that he couldn’t hear or speak to communicate with the other astronauts. “Squeeze my hand if you’re fine,” fellow EVA member Chris Cassidy said to Parmitano.
What was supposed to be a 6-7 hour spacewalk lasted only 1 hour and 32 minutes after the leak occurred.
If you don’t think a little water could be a problem inside a spacesuit, recall how Chris Hadfield showed how water clung to his eyes in a simulated “cry,” or continued to cling to a washcloth even though it was being wrung out (see video below). The water inside Parmitano’s helmet literally surrounded and clung to his face and head.
“He looks miserable, but is OK,” the crew told Mission Control after they quickly removed Parmitano’s helmet and toweled off his face and head.
NASA TV said the cause of the leak in the helmet was “not readily identifiable,” but Parmitano appeared to be examining the drink bag that was inside his helmet shortly after the two astronauts got inside and were removed from their suits. However, just a short time later, Cassidy told Mission Control that Parmitano said the “water tasted really funny,” so it was likely not from the drink bag, and was perhaps the iodinated water from the crew’s liquid-cooled undergarments. But Cassidy also said Parmitano’s torso was essentially dry, and that the source of water seemed to be around the back of his head.
Close-up look inside the ‘EMU’ spacesuit worn on spacewalks showing the area where Luca Parmitano first felt the water leak. Via astronaut Doug Wheelock (@Astro_Wheels) on Twitter
NASA is still investigating the source of the leak, and will have followup discussions and medical conferences with the astronauts to find out more and to make sure Parmitano is OK.
The two astronauts were going to continue tasks from last week’s EVA: routing power and data cables for a new Russian laboratory module scheduled to be launched to the ISS late this year or early 2014. They also were going to reposition a wireless camera antenna on the station’s power truss and replace a camera on the external deck of the Japanese Kibo lab module.
But the spacewalkers only completed one task before the leak became a problem. This was the second shortest spacewalk on record; on June 24, 2004, pressure problem in Mike Fincke’s spacesuit prompted an abbreviated 14-minute EVA. ISS Astronauts gather in the Quest airlock after water leaked inside Luca Parmitano’s spacesuit. Via NASA TV.
The @SpaceShuttleAlmanac Twitter feed may have provided the best analogy of what Parmitano was experiencing during the leak: “Imagine having a fishbowl on your head with a half a litre of water sticking to your face, ears and nose. Then imagine you can’t take the fishbowl off your head for a minimum of 20 minutes, feel the panic?”
This was the 171st EVA for station construction and maintenance. NASA said nothing critical to station will be affected as a result of cutting the space walk short. Likely another EVA will be scheduled for the tasks.
NASA will be holding a news conference later today to provide more information.
And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to [email protected], and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out, sign up to be a host. Send an email to the above address.
Last week, astronaut Karen Nyberg shared via video how she washes her long hair in space. Since about 1.5 million people have watched it, NASA decided to give equal time to the bald guy in space, Luca Parmitano. As I stated last week, obviously, Parmitano uses a different method than Nyberg. Note it takes about 3 minutes for Nyberg to wash her hair, while it takes Parmitano less than a minute.
The Pacific Ring of Fire, a strong of volcanic . Credit:
The Pacific Ring of Fire wraps around the Pacific Ocean, including countries like Japan, Canada, New Zealand and Chile. And the inhabitants within those countries are prone to… oh… killer earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis. Let’s chat about the history of this region and the kinds of risks they face.
And the podcast is also available as a video, as Fraser and Pamela now record Astronomy Cast as part of a Google+ Hangout (usually recorded every Monday at 3 pm Eastern Time):
This composite Hubble Space Telescope picture shows the location of a newly discovered moon, designated S/2004 N 1, orbiting the giant planet Neptune, nearly 4.8 billion km (3 billion miles) from Earth. Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Showalter (SETI Institute).
It took sharp and patient eyes, but researcher Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute has found a tiny moon orbiting Neptune that’s never been seen before. Showalter used archival data from the Hubble Space Telescope to find the moon, designated S/2004 N 1, which is estimated to be no more than 19 km (12 miles) across, making it the smallest known moon in the Neptunian system. This is the 14th known moon of Neptune.
S/2004 N 1 is so small and dim that it is roughly 100 million times fainter than the faintest star that can be seen with the naked eye, NASA said. Even Voyager 2 –which flew past Neptune in 1989 to survey planet’s system of moons and rings – didn’t catch a view of this moon, even though data from Voyager 2 revealed several other moons.
Neptune photographed by Voyager 2. Image credit: NASA/JPL
Showalter was studying the faint arcs, or segments of rings, around Neptune earlier this month.
“The moons and arcs orbit very quickly, so we had to devise a way to follow their motion in order to bring out the details of the system,” he said. “It’s the same reason a sports photographer tracks a running athlete — the athlete stays in focus, but the background blurs.”
The method involved tracking the movement of a white dot that appears over and over again in more than 150 archival Neptune photographs taken by Hubble from 2004 to 2009.
Showalter noticed the white dot about 100,000 km (65,400 miles) from Neptune, located between the orbits of the Neptunian moons Larissa and Proteus. Showalter plotted a circular orbit for the moon, which completes one revolution around Neptune every 23 hours.
Showalter should get the “Eagle Eyes” award for 2013!
It’s a moment that you’ve always dreaded – you stepped away from your hiking buddies to take a photo, but on the way back you slipped down an embankment. Now you’re isolated, you can’t find the trail or your friends, and you’re in unfamiliar woods. You try your phone – no signal. How did people navigate before GPS, anyway? In The Lost Art of Finding Our Way, author John Edward Huth aims to show us just that. In a richly-illustrated 544 pages, Huth tries to illuminate the techniques that let man circumnavigate the globe, long before the first GPS satellite was launched.
The book is divided into roughly two halves, with the first being historical tales and discussions of techniques used by ancient navigators to find their way. The Norse are here, as are Pacific Islanders and European sailors: all have lessons to teach us about our environment, from the way that waves form around a cluster of islands, to how to use a cross-staff to estimate the position of a star on a heaving ship deck. Following this, the second half of the book is more abstract, dealing with factors useful to navigators: like weather prediction, or the factors that create the swell and tides in the ocean.
I found the first half of the book to be the most interesting, as the practical techniques for, say, triangulating your position with only a map and a compass are very interesting to a city-bound boy. The second half was much tougher reading as it is quite dry, often reading like a physics textbook. Descriptions are clear, although I will note that if you were looking for a practical manual to teach you navigation, this book isn’t it. It will, for instance, explain how dip angle and refraction in the atmosphere complicate accurate estimates of the horizon and the elevation of stars—but stop short of pointing you a resource to help correct for these inaccuracies.
It’s perhaps ironic that The Lost Art of Finding Our Way sometimes feels a little directionless. Maybe it’s because the very scope of the book is so large: in the one book, you can find a discussion of how search parties can be most efficient; descriptions of the magnetic field variations across the Earth’s surface, and their causes; speculation as to why many cultures have ‘great flood’ myths; and an explanation of the physics of wind interacting with sails.
Overall, this book is an impressive attempt to give a broad overview of a number of navigation techniques. Unfortunately it is marred by its own ambition, and the result is a book that can at times feel random, aimless and meandering.
Seriously, for all you coffee addicts, this is science. You may recall how astronaut Don Pettit (known as Mr. Fixit in space) invented a Zero-G coffee cup. But there’s an experiment on board the International Space Station called the Capillary Flow Experiment that is delving even further into how liquids behave in space.
Coffee is not the only liquid that behaves quite differently in space as opposed to on Earth. There are things like cryogenic fuels, thermal coolants, water and urine, too. As NASA says, “The behavior of fluids is one of the most un-intuitive things in all of space flight.”
This poses a challenge for engineers designing spacecraft systems that use fluids. “Our intuition is all wrong,” said physics professor Mark Weislogel of Portland State University, who working with the Capillary Flow Experiment. “When it comes to guessing what fluids will do in new systems, we are often in the dark.”
Weislogel and his colleagues are now looking at interior corners on containers and how that affects liquid flow. Just like on Pettit’s Zero-G coffe cup (see video below), if two solid surfaces meet at a narrow-enough angle, fluids in microgravity naturally flow along the joint —no pumping required.
NASA says this capillary effect could be used to guide all kinds of fluids through spacecraft, from cryogenic fuel to recycled waste water. The phenomenon is difficult to study on Earth, where it is damped by gravity, but on the space station large scale corner flows are easy to create and observe.
Who says coffee isn’t like your morning rocket fuel!
