The six Expedition 34 crew members aboard the International Space Station will be watching from above as people around the world ring in the new year. Commander Kevin Ford and Flight Engineers Chris Hadfield and Tom Marshburn sent this video greeting for their best wishes for a happy 2013. Because the ISS travels around the Earth every hour and a half, the crew will have ample opportunity to celebrate the arrival of 2013 all day long.
“It’s New Years, so we’re waving at the whole world, and looking hard for fireworks as the clocks sequence through 12:00,” Hadfield Tweeted earlier today.
Below you can see a video from NASA TV, looking back at events at NASA in 2012:
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.
LROC view looking obliquely of the south rim of Aristarchus from the west (NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University)
Flying over at an altitude of 135 km, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this lovely oblique view of the crater Aristarchus, looking down at the 40-km (25-mile) -wide crater’s southern rim from the west.
The broad flank of Aristarchus’ 300-meter (980-foot) central peak and surrounding hills can be seen at left, casting lengthening shadows in the setting sun.
Named after the Greek astronomer who first proposed a controversial heliocentric model for the Solar System in the 3rd century BCE, Aristarchus is a prominent crater located near the Moon’s northwestern limb within the geologically-diverse Oceanus Procellarum — the “Ocean of Storms.” Surrounded by rays of bright ejecta that extend down its stepped rim, the floor of Aristarchus drops 3.7 km (2.3 miles) below the surrounding lunar landscape.
The bright material seen in the ejecta streaks seems to echo the patterns of light and dark material lining the slopes of Aristarchus’ central peak, suggesting that they may be the made of similar material.
Detail of the 4.5-km-long central peak of Aristarchus (NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University)
The impact that created Aristarchus an estimated 450 million years ago excavated subsurface material, melting and spraying it tens of kilometers over the surrounding plateau. It’s thought that the central peak is likely composed of the same stuff, dredged up by the impact and frozen in place.
Future lunar explorers, should they ever visit this region, would be able to collect samples from the base of the central peak and compare them to samples from the bright rays to see if they match up, allowing researchers to learn about the composition of the material underlying the plateau from rocks scattered conveniently around the surface… this is the beauty of such (relatively) recent craters! The digging’s already been done for us.
Aurora over Komagfjord, Norway (northern end of Scandinavia, 70°N). Credit and Copyright: Thierry Legault. Used by permission
One of our favorite astrophotographers, Thierry Legault from France, took a trip to Finland and Norway so he could see and photograph the Northern Lights for the first time. Socked in with clouds in Finland, Thierry traveled to the Alta region in Norway to find clear skies. “We were rewarded with incredible auroras,” he said via Skype. “At moments, the auroras moved like curtains in the wind, too fast to be photographed!”
See below for a stunning video compilation of two nights of observing the Northern Lights over the Kamagfjord in Norway, as well as more gorgeous images of aurora and a view of the fjord in the “twilight” of midday, since there was no sunrise that far north for several days in December.
Aurora and clouds over Komagfjord in Norway, December 2012. Credit and Copyright: Thierry Legault. Used by permission.
Stunning aurora Komagfjord in Norway, December 2012. Credit and copyright: Thierry Legault. Used by permission.
Fisheye view of the aurora in Norway, December 2012. Credit and copyright: Thierry Legault. Used by permission
Komagfjord at midday (no sunrise in December). Credit and copyright: Thierry Legault. Used by perission
While this was Thierry’s first-ever view of the Aurora Borealis, we can expect this won’t be his last. “I am becoming addicted,” he said, “just like with eclipses!”
The Moon and Jupiter above the dishes in Canberra, Australia. Credit: Carlos Orue.
The full Moon today is considered a bonus for 2012, since it is the 13th full Moon of the year. But this full Moon has also been a bonus in the sense that we’re getting several nights in a row of nearly full Moons. According to Universe Today’s Phases of the Moon App, the face of the Moon on the night of the 25th was 96% illuminated; on the 26th it was 99% illuminated; the night of the 27th/morning of the 28th was the full Moon, (officially, the Moon was most full at 10:21 UTC (4:21 EST this morning), and tonight, the 28th, the face of the Moon is again 99% illuminated. And if you’re enjoying a wintery landscape like I currently am, the brilliance of the Moonlight on snow is bright enough to keep you awake at night.
Enjoy some great astrophotos submitted for photographers around the world of the bonus — and final — full Moon of 2012.
The last full Moon of 2012 — the Full Cold Moon, as seen from the James C. Veen Observatory near Lowell, Michigan. Credit: Kevin on Flickr.
The last full moon of the year as seen from the Middle Eastern Technical University Physics department in Ankara, Turkey. Credit: Nükleer Kedi
Closeup of Tycho Crater on Dec. 23, 2012. Credit: Fred Locklear
Closeup of the Moon on Dec. 26, 2012. Credit: César Cantú
Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group or send us your images by email (this means you’re giving us permission to post them). Please explain what’s in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.
Photographer Teoh Hui Chieh from Malaysia created a beautiful timelapse of the night sky in Northern Thailand, and she was excited to see the North Star. “Polaris may be very common for people like you in the northern hemisphere,” she said via email, “but to us at the equator, it’s something that we don’t see everyday.”
The timelapse was taken over the course of 3 nights: 2 nights on a rooftop in Nan, and 1 night in Doiphukha National Park. It includes a combination of stars moving across sky along with views of the local terrain, along with gorgeous star trails.
“The last night in the National Park, the surrounding area was full of trees, but I was lucky to find a “hole” to capture Polaris,” Chieh said. The Andromeda Galaxy is also visible in the video starting at 1:30 and 2:00.
Rare views of Polaris from northern Thailand. Credit: Teoh Hui Chieh
See more of Chieh’s work at his blog, My Dark Sky.
Captured on camera by astrophotographer Rafael Defavari from his location in São Bernardo do Campo, Brazil, this video shows the Moon passing in front of Jupiter during an occultation event on December 25, 2012. Nice work!
The video plays at 5x actual speed.
Although Jupiter appeared to be “right next to” the Moon on Christmas night from our viewpoint here on Earth, in reality the two worlds were 388 million miles (625 million km) apart. The Moon blocked the view of the giant planet for a full hour and ten minutes.
‘Tis the season for lunar occultations, too… the last one occurred on November 28, and the next will be on January 22, 2013.
See more photos of the Dec. 25 event from viewers in Brazil here.
1/3 the distance from the Sun than Earth, it should be no surprise that a day on Mercury is a real scorcher with temperatures soaring over 400 ºC. But in addition to its solar proximity it also has an extremely slow rotation: a single day on Mercury is 58.6 Earth days long… and you thought your Mondays lasted forever!
To be even more precise, for every 2 Mercury years, 3 Mercury days pass — a 3:2 spin-orbit resonance, caused by the planet’s varying elliptical orbit. (This also makes for some interesting motions of the Sun in Mercury’s sky.)
To illustrate this, UK’s The Open University has published a new video in their 60 Second Adventures in Astronomy series… check it out above (and see more of their excellent and amusing animations here.)
Video: The Open University. Narrated by David Mitchell.
Jane Houston Jones from JPL provides a video preview of the night skies in the first month of the new year. There will be plenty of planetary conjunctions with the Moon: Saturn, Venus, Mars and Jupiter will all be snuggling up with the Moon throughout the month. Jane also suggests using NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System to keep track of where all the different missions are throughout the solar system. If you haven’t yet checked out this amazing site, it is an interactive 3-D “universe” where you can explore the cosmos from your computer. You can fly along with almost any NASA mission, hop on an asteroid, see the entire Solar System moving in real time, or re-live the Mars Curiosity landing. But you have the option of controlling when and where you are. It’s fully addictive!
Could we build a version of the Starship Enterprise over the next 20 years? Credit: BuildTheEnterprise.org
Earlier this year, an engineer who goes by the name of BTE Dan proposed building a full-sized, ion-powered version of a Constitution-Class Enterprise – from the original Star Trek – saying it could be built with current technology and could be completed within 20 years. Now, BTE Dan has started a White House petition — not to build the Enterprise but to just do a feasibility study and conceptual design of the USS Enterprise interplanetary spaceship. As of this writing, the petition has 1,414 signatures of the 25,000 needed by January 21, 2013 to be considered by the Obama administration.
We have within our technological reach the ability to build the 1st generation of the USS Enterprise. It ends up that this ship’s inspiring form is quite functional. This will be Earth’s first gigawatt-class interplanetary spaceship with artificial gravity. The ship can serve as a spaceship, space station, and space port all in one. In total, one thousand crew members & visitors can be on board at once. Few things could collectively inspire people on Earth more than seeing the Enterprise being built in space. And the ship could go on amazing missions, like taking the first humans to Mars while taking along a large load of base-building equipment for constructing the first permanent base there.
BTE Dan told Universe Today earlier this year that what he really is hoping for is to find a segment of scientists and engineers in the space industry to take an active interest and contribute to the ideas on his website, BuildTheEnterprise.org to help move the concept forward.
“I have been getting many offers of help from engineers outside the space industry, and that’s great,” he said via email. “But also what is needed are some experienced space engineers who adopt a can-do attitude about the concept of the Gen1 Enterprise.”
BTE Dan prefers to remain anonymous at this point, and his biggest concern has been that the scientists and engineers at NASA and their space contractors were going to be hostile about the idea, as his first brush with them did not go well.
Diagram of a proposed current generation of a Starship Enterprise. Credit: BuildTheEnterprise.org
“I am an outsider poking around in their sandbox, and human nature is that people don’t like that,” he said, noting that he knows his design may have fatal flaws, but that is why he is looking for assistance.
“There is a lot of waste heat to get rid of, today’s ion propulsions engines need major advances, and perhaps stability problems will be found with the gravity wheel,” he said.
“I really did not expect this at all,” he said at the time. “I did not plan for this level of web traffic!” He has since made upgrades to handle more traffic.
His website is complete with conceptual designs, ship specs, a funding schedule, and almost every other imaginable detail of how the Enterprise could be built. It would be built entirely in space, have a rotating gravity section inside of the saucer, and be similar in size with the same look as the USS Enterprise that we know from Star Trek.
The White House takes petitions on many topics at the “We the People” website and will consider them if they receive 25,000 signatures. Earlier this year, a petition to build a Death Star space station by 2016 received over 32,000 signatures, but so far there has not been an official response about it from the White House.
