Posted on by Jason Major

STEREO Spots a CME Soaring Into Space

Press “play.” Say “wow.”

The enormous eruption of a solar prominence and resulting coronal mass ejection (CME) back on August 31 that was captured in amazing HD by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory was also spotted by the Sun-flanking STEREO-B spacecraft, which observed the gigantic gout of solar material soaring away from the Sun.

This video shows the eruption as it passes across the fields of view of several of STEREO-B’s cameras over the course of 48 hours.

According to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, “while CMEs are routinely seen in the Heliographic Imager (HI) telescopes, it’s very rare for prominences to stay visible for so long. The HI1 field of view ranges from 4 to 24 degrees away from the Sun. To get a sense of scale, we know the Sun is roughly 860,000 miles wide — and look how far the prominence holds together. And this CME is so bright it initially saturates the COR1 telescope.”

The bright spot in the red (COR2) field of view is the planet Venus.

Coronal mass ejections are huge bubbles of gas bounded by magnetic field lines that are ejected from the Sun over the course of several minutes — sometimes even hours. If they are directed toward Earth, the cloud of charged solar particles can interact with our magnetosphere and cause anything from increased auroral activity to radio interference to failure of sensitive electromagnetic equipment.

Particularly long filaments like the one that caused the August 31 CME have been known to collapse with explosive results when they hit the stellar surface.

The CME did not travel directly toward Earth but did connect with Earth’s magnetosphere with a glancing blow, causing bright aurorae to appear around the upper latitudes on the night of September 3.

Image: NASA/STEREO/GSFC

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Possible Subterranean Life Means More Exoplanets Could Harbor Life

Artistic representations of the only known planets around other stars (exoplanets) with any possibility to support life as we know it. Credit: Planetary Habitability Laboratory, University of Puerto Rico, Arecibo.

Artistic representation of the current five known potential habitable worlds. Will this list broaden under a new habitability model? Credit: The Planetary Habitability Laboratory (PHL)

When we think of life on other planets, we tend to imagine things (microbes, plant life and yes, humanoids) that exist on the surface. But Earth’s biosphere doesn’t stop at the planet’s surface, and neither would life on another world, says a new study that expands the so-called ‘Goldilocks Zone’ to include the possibility of subterranean habitable zones. This new model of habitability could vastly increase where we could expect to find life, as well as potentially increasing the number of habitable exoplanets.

We know that a large fraction of the Earth’s biomass is dwelling down below, and recently microbiologists discovered bacterial life, 1.4 kilometers below the sea floor in the North Atlantic, deeper in the Earth’s crust than ever before. This and other drilling projects have brought up evidence of hearty microbes thriving in deep rock sediments. Some derive energy from chemical reactions in rocks and others feed on organic seepage from life on the surface. But most life requires at least some form of water.

“Life ‘as we know it’ requires liquid water,” said Sean McMahon, a PhD student from the University of Aberdeen’s (Scotland) School of Geosciences. “Traditionally, planets have been considered ‘habitable’ if they are in the ‘Goldilocks zone’. They need to be not too close to their sun but also not too far away for liquid water to persist, rather than boiling or freezing, on the surface. However, we now know that many micro-organisms—perhaps half of all living things on Earth—reside deep in the rocky crust of the planet, not on the surface.”

Location in the night sky of the stars with potential habitable exoplanets (red circles). There are two in Gliese 581. Click the image for larger version. CREDIT: PHL @ UPR Arecibo and Jim Cornmell.

While suns warm planet surfaces, there’ also heat from the planets’ interiors. Crust temperature increases with depth so planets that are too cold for liquid water on the surface may be sufficiently warm underground to support life.

“We have developed a new model to show how ‘Goldilocks zones’ can be calculated for underground water and hence life,” McMahon said. “Our model shows that habitable planets could be much more widespread than previously thought.”

In the past, the Goldilocks zone has really been determined by a circumstellar habitable zone (CHZ), which is a range of distances from a star, and depending on the star’s characteristics, the zone varies. The consensus has been that planets that form from Earth-like materials within a star’s CHZ are able to maintain liquid water on their surfaces.
But McMahon and his professor, John Parnell, also from Aberdeen University who is leading the study now are introducing a new term: subsurface-habitability zone (SSHZ). This denote the range of distances from a star within which planets are habitable at any depth below their surfaces up to a certain maximum, for example, they mentioned a “SSHZ for 2 km depth”, within which planets can support liquid water 2 km or less underground.

If this notion catches on – which it should – it will have exoplanet hunters recalculating the amount of potentially habitable worlds.

The research was presented at the annual British Science Festival in Aberdeen.

Source: University of Aberdeen

See also: The Habitable Exoplanets Catalogue from the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Could Dust Devils Create Methane in Mars’ Atmosphere?

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Methane on Mars has long perplexed scientists; the short-lived gas has been measured in surprising quantities in Mars’ atmosphere over several seasons, sometimes in fairly large plumes. Scientists have taken this to be evidence of Mars being an ‘active’ planet, either geologically or biologically. But a group of researchers from Mexico have come up with a different – and rather unexpected – source of methane: dust storms and dust devils.

“We propose a new production mechanism for methane based on the effect of electrical discharges over iced surfaces,” reports a paper published in Geophysical Research letters, written by a team led by Arturo Robledo-Martinez from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Azcapotzalco, Mexico.

“The discharges, caused by electrification of dust devils and sand storms, ionize gaseous CO2 and water molecules and their byproducts recombine to produce methane.”

Graph from the paper Electrical discharges as a possible source of methane on Mars: Lab simulation, Geophys. Res. Lett., 39, L17202, doi:10.1029/2012GL053255.

In a laboratory simulation, they showed that that pulsed electrical discharges over ice samples in a synthetic Martian atmosphere produced about 1.41×1016 molecules of methane per joule of applied energy. The results of the electrical discharge experiment were compared with photolysis induced with UV laser radiation and it was found that both produce methane, although the efficiency of photolysis is one-third of that of the discharge.

The scientists don’t rule out that methane may indeed come from other sources as well, but the way that dust devils and storms can quickly form means they can also quickly generate methane. “The present mechanism may be acting in parallel with other proposed sources but its main advantage is that it can generate methane very quickly and thus explain the generation of plumes,” the team writes.

Methane has been observed in Mars’ atmosphere since 1999, but in 2009, scientists studying the atmosphere of Mars over several Martian years with telescopes here on Earth announced they had found three regions of active release of methane over areas that had evidence of ancient ground ice or flowing water.

They observed and mapped multiple plumes of methane on Mars, one of which released about 19,000 metric tons of methane. The plumes were emitted during the warmer seasons — spring and summer — which is also when dust devils tend to form.

Methane on Mars is enticing because it only lasts a few hundred years in Mars’ atmosphere, meaning it has to be continually replaced. And in the back of everyone’s minds has been the possibility of some sort of Martian life producing it.

“Methane is quickly destroyed in the Martian atmosphere in a variety of ways, so our discovery of substantial plumes of methane … indicates some ongoing process is releasing the gas,” said Dr. Michael Mumma of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md in 2009. “At northern mid-summer, methane is released at a rate comparable to that of the massive hydrocarbon seep at Coal Oil Point in Santa Barbara, Calif.”

The researchers in 2009 thought that the methane was being released from Mars’ interior, perhaps because the permafrost blocking cracks and fissures vaporized, allowing methane to seep into the Martian air.

The unknown has been where the methane has been coming from; if it is being released from the interior, it could be produced by either geologic processes such as serpentinization, a simple water/rock reaction or biologic processes of microbes (or something bigger) releasing methane as a waste product.

But if dust devils and dust storms can also produce methane, the mystery becomes a little more mundane.

The new research by the team from Mexico also mentioned fissures in the surface, but for a different reason, saying that the electric field of dust devils is amplified by the topology of the soil: “The electrical field produced by a dust devil can not only overcome the weak dielectric strength of the Martian atmosphere, but also penetrate into cracks on the soil and so reach the ice lying at the bottom, with added strength, due to the topography of the terrain,” the team wrote.

At a concentration of about 10 to 50 parts per billion by volume, methane is still a trace element in the Martian atmosphere, and indeed the sharp variations in its concentration that have been observed have been difficult to explain. Hopefully the research teams can coordinate follow-up observations of methane production during the dust devil and dust storm seasons on Mars.

Read the team’s abstract.

Read our article from 2009 about Mars Methane.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Carnival of Space #266

This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by Gadi Eidelheit at his Transit of Venus blog.

Click here to read Carnival of Space #266

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.

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Virtual Star Party for Sep. 9, 2012 – Neptune and Uranus Edition

After a brief hiatus, we’re back with our Virtual Star Parties, broadcasting our view of the night sky into a live Google+ Hangout. Last night was a special occasion, as astronomer Mike Phillips broadcast our first view of the planet Neptune. And then, just to show off, he found Uranus too. It was amazing to see those objects in our hangout for the first time. We’re now just waiting for Mercury to complete the whole set. Who will be the first to show us Mercury?

Astronomers: Cory Schmitz, Mike Phillips, John Kramer

Commentators: Gary Gonella, Pamela Gay, Scott Lewis, Emily Lakdawalla

Want to watch a Virtual Star Party in person? I’ve already posted the Event for next week on Google+. You can join the event there and add it to your calendar, so you’ll get a notification of when we’re about to go live.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

An Awesome View of Curiosity’s Tummy

Curiosity’s underside as imaged by the MAHLI camera. Credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS; image editing by Astro0.

One of Curiosity’s amazing color cameras, the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) that is mounted on the turret at the end of the MSL robotic arm, is now officially in action, with its dust cover removed over the weekend. The first picture it sent back to Earth was of the soil in its field of view (see below). That’s great, as the camera’s purpose is to acquire close-up images of materials on the Martian surface—rocks, fine particles and even frost. But then engineers commanded the camera to take a look at Curiosity’s underbelly – the rover’s ‘tummy’ so to speak. And the views are awesome, especially when some of the image wizards at UnmannedSpaceflight stitched a few of the images together to put together a mosaic of the entire view of the rover’s underside. This image was put together by Astro0 at UMSF. Click the image to see a larger version on his website.

The first image to come from Curiosity’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) with the dust cap off. Credit: NASA/MSL-Caltech

MAHLI, built by Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS) will be used to help characterize the geology of the site investigated by MSL, and it will be used to document the materials being examined by MSL’s geochemical and mineralogical experiments.

You can see the “raw images” at the MSL website, the images that are just being beamed back from the rover, and see more at UnmannedSpaceflight; Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Blog also has some images she has put together from MAHLI’s views of Curiosity’s underside.

Here’s a picture of the camera itself:

The Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera head. The knife is 88.9 mm (3.5 inches) long. Image credit: Malin Space Science Systems

MAHLI is the equivalent of a 2 Megapixel camera. Because MAHLI can focus at infinity, in addition to being able to get microscopic views of surface materials MAHLI can also be used for other purposes, including inspection of areas on the rover or imaging the local landscape — as the images here attest.

MAHLI can also acquire multiple images of the same feature at different focus positions; additionally look upcoming for 3-D views of selected targets from this camera, since it is located on the robotic arm, it will be relatively easy to move the camera to take two images of the same object from different positions.

Learn more about MAHLI at the Malin Space Science Systems website.

Posted on by Jason Major

Clay Deposits Don’t Prove Existence of Ancient Martian Lakes

HiRISE image of branching features in the floor of Antoniadi Crater thought to contain clay material. (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

In the hunt for evidence of a warmer, wetter past on Mars, clay deposits have been viewed as good indications that stable liquid water existed on its surface for some time — perhaps even long enough to allow life to develop. But new research conducted here on Earth shows that some clays don’t necessarily need lakes of liquid water to form. Instead they can be the result of volcanic activity, which is not nearly so hospitable to life.

A research team led by Alain Meunier of the Université de Poitiers in France studied lavas containing iron and magnesium — similar to ancient clays identified on the surface of Mars — in the French Polynesian atoll of Moruroa. The team’s findings show that the same types of clay outcrops can be caused by the solidifying of water-rich magma in a volcanic environment, and don’t require Earthlike aquatic conditions at all.

The results also correlate to the deuterium-to-hydrogen (D/H) ratio within clays found in Martian meteorites.

Read: Life from Mars Could Have Polluted Earth

“To crystallize, clays need water but not necessarily liquid water,” said Alain Meunier to the Agençe France-Presse (AFP). “Consequently, they cannot be used to prove that the planet was habitable or not during its early history.”

Additionally, the clay deposits found on Mars can be several hundred meters thick, which seems to be more indicative of upwelling magma than interactions with water.

“[This] new hypothesis proposes that the minerals instead formed during brief periods of magmatic degassing, diminishing the prospects for signs of life in these settings,” wrote Brian Hynek from the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Colorado, in response to the paper by Meunier et al. which was published in the September 9 edition of the journal Nature Geoscience.

This does not necessarily mean that all Martian clays weren’t formed in the presence of water, however. Gale Crater — where NASA’s Curiosity rover is now exploring — could very well have been the site of a Martian lake, billions of years in the past. Clays found there could have been created by water.

Read: Take a Trip to Explore Gale Crater

According to Bethany Ehlmann of the California Institute of Technology, co-author of the study, “there are particular characteristics of texture” to clays formed under different conditions, and “Gale is a different flavor of Mars.”

Perhaps Curiosity will yet discover if Gale’s original flavor was more cool and wet than hot and spicy.

Read more on New Scientist and Cosmos Magazine.

Inset image: Moruroa Atoll (NASA) 

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Weekly SkyWatcher’s Forecast: September 10-16, 2012

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! With very little Moon to contend with this week, it will be a great time to take on some challenging studies like the Helix Nebula, Saturn Nebula, Stephen’s Quintet and more. It’s time to get out your big telescope and head for some dark skies… Because this week isn’t for the beginner! Whenever you’re ready, I’ll see you out back…

Monday, September 10 – Today is the birthday of James E. Keeler. Born in 1857, the American Keeler was a pioneer in the field of spectroscopy and astrophysics. In 1895, Keeler proved that different areas in Saturn’s rings rotate at different velocities. This clearly showed that Saturn’s rings were not solid, but were instead a collection of smaller particles in independent orbits.

Now, let’s head on to Capricornus and drop about four finger-widths south of its northeastern most star – Delta – and have a look at M30 (Right Ascension: 21 : 40.4 – Declination: -23 : 11). Discovered in 1764 by Charles Messier, binocular observers will spot this small, but attractive, globular cluster easily in the same field with star 41. For telescopic observers, you will find a dense core region and many chains of resolvable stars in this 40,000 light year distant object. Power up!

Let’s get some more practice in Capricornus, and take on a more challenging target with confidence. Locate the centermost bright star in the northern half of the constellation – Theta – because we’re headed for the “Saturn Nebula”.

Three finger-widths north of Theta you will see dimmer Nu, and only one finger-width west is NGC 7009 (Right Ascension: 21 : 04.2 – Declination: -11 : 22). Nicknamed the “Saturn Nebula”, this wonderful blue planetary is around 8th magnitude and achievable in small scopes and large binoculars. Even at moderate magnification, you will see the elliptical shape which gave rise to its moniker. With larger scopes, those “ring like” projections become even clearer, making this challenging object well worth the hunt. You can do it!

Tuesday, September 11 –Today celebrates the birthday of Sir James Jeans. Born in 1877, English-born Jeans was an astronomical theoretician. During the beginning of the 20th century, Jeans worked out the fundamentals of the process of gravitational collapse. This was an important contribution to the understanding of the formation of solar systems, stars, and galaxies.

So, are we ready to try for the “Helix”?

Located in a sparsely populated area of the sky, this intriguing target is about a fist width due northwest of bright Formalhaut and about a fingerwidth west of Upsilon Aquarii. While the NGC 7293 (Right Ascension: 22 : 29.6 – Declination: -20 : 48) is also a planetary nebula, its entirely different than most… It’s a very large and more faded edition of the M57! On a clear, dark night it can be spotted with binoculars since it spans almost one quarter a degree of sky. Using a telescope, stay at lowest power and widest field, because it is so large. It you have an OIII filter, this faded “ring” becomes a braided treat!

Wednesday, September 12 – Today in 1959, the USSR’s Luna 2 scored a mark as it became the first manmade object to hit the moon. The successful mission landed in the Paulus Putredinus area. Today also celebrates the 1966 Gemini 11 launch.

Tonight let’s take the time to hunt down an often overlooked globular cluster – M56. Located roughly midway between Beta Cygni and Gamma Lyrae (RA 19 15 35.50 Dec +30 11 04.2), this class X globular was discovered by Charles Messier in 1779 on the same night he discovered a comet, and was later resolved by Herschel. At magnitude 8 and small in size, it’s a tough call for a beginner with binoculars, but is a very fine telescopic object. With a general distance of 33,000 light-years, this globular resolves well with larger scopes, but doesn’t show as much more than a faint, round area with small aperture. However, the beauty of the chains of stars in the field makes it quite worth the visit!

While you’re there, look carefully: M56 is one of the very few objects for which the photometry of its variable stars was studied strictly with amateur telescopes. While one bright variable star had been known previously to exist, up to a dozen more have recently been discovered. Of those, six had their variability periods determined using CCD photography and telescopes just like yours!

Thursday, September 13 – Today in 1922, the highest air temperature ever recorded at the surface of the Earth occurred. The measurement was taken in Libya and burned in at a blistering 136F (58C), but did you know that the temperatures in the sunlight on the Moon double that? If you thought the surface of the Moon was a bit too warm for comfort, then know surface temperatures on the closest planet to the Sun can reach up to 800F (427C) at the equator during the day! As odd as it may sound, even that close to the Sun – Mercury could very well have ice deposits hidden below the surface at its poles.

Tonight we’ll move on to Aquila and look at the hot central star of an interesting planetary nebula – NGC 6804 (Right Ascension: 19 : 31.6 – Declination: +09 : 13). You’ll find it almost 4 degrees due west of Altair. Discovered by Herschel and classed as open cluster H VI.38, it wasn’t until Pease took a closer look that its planetary nature was discovered. Interacting with clouds of interstellar dust and gases, NGC 6804 is a planetary in decline, with its outer shell around magnitude 12 and the central star at about magnitude 13. While only larger telescopes will get a glimpse of the central, it’s one of the hottest objects in space – with temperatures around 30,000K!

If that’s not “hot” enough for you, then take a look straight overhead at brilliant star Vega. It is a “Sirian type” star and with a surface temperature of about 9200 degrees Kelvin, it’s twice as hot as our own Sun. At around 27 light years away, our entire solar system is moving towards Vega at a speed of 12 miles per second, but don’t worry… It will take us another 450,000 years to get there. If we were to arrive tonight, we’d find that Vega is around 3 times larger than Sol and that it also has a 10th magnitude companion that can often be resolved in mid-sized scopes. It’s one of the first stars to ever be photographed. Back in 1850, that simple star – Vega – took and exposure time of 100 seconds through a 15? scope. How times have changed!

Friday, September 14 – Tonight’s destination is not an easy one, but if you have a 6? or larger scope, you’ll fall in love a first sight! Let’s head for Eta Pegasi and slightly more than 4 degrees north/northeast for NGC 7331 (Right Ascension: 22 : 37.1 – Declination: +34 : 25).

This beautiful, 10th magnitude, tilted spiral galaxy is very much how our own Milky Way would appear if we could travel 50 million light years away and look back. Very similar in both structure to ourselves and the “Great Andromeda”, this particular galaxy gains more and more interest as scope size increases – yet it can be spotted with larger binoculars. At around 8? in aperture, a bright core appears and the beginnings of wispy arms. In the 10? to 12? range, spiral patterns begin to emerge and with good seeing conditions, you can see “patchiness” in structure as nebulous areas are revealed and the western half is deeply outlined with a dark dustlane. But hang on… Because the best is yet to come!

Saturday, September 15 – In 1991 the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) was launched from Space Shuttle Discovery. The successful mission lasted well beyond its life expectancy – sending back critical information about our ever-changing environment. After 14 years and 78,000 orbits, UARS remains a scientific triumph.

If you’re up early, why not check out Mars? While the red planet is visible, it’s also rather small at the moment, with an apparent diameter of less than .5”. Can you still spot some surface details?

Tonight return to the NGC 7331 with all the aperture you have. What we are about to look at is truly a challenge and requires dark skies, optimal position and excellent conditions. Now breathe the scope about one half a degree south/southwest and behold one of the most famous galaxy clusters in the night.
In 1877, French astronomer – Edouard Stephan was using the first telescope designed with a reflection coated mirror when he discovered something a bit more with the NGC 7331. He found a group of nearby galaxies! This faint gathering of five is better known as “Stephan’s Quintet” and its members are no further apart than our own Milky Way galaxy.

Visually in a large scope, these members are all rather faint, but their proximity is what makes them such a curiosity. The Quintet is made up of five galaxies numbered NGC 7317, 7318, 7318A, 7318B, 7319 and the largest is 7320 (Right Ascension: 22 : 36.1 – Declination: +33 : 57). Even with a 12.5? telescope, this author has never seen them as much more than tiny, barely there objects that look like ghosts of rice grains on a dinner plate. So why bother?

What our backyard equipment can never reveal is what else exists within this area – more than 100 star clusters and several dwarf galaxies. Some 100 million years ago, the galaxies collided and left long streamers of their materials which created star forming regions of their own, and this tidal pull keeps them connected. The stars within the galaxies themselves are nearly a billion years old, but between them lay much younger ones. Although we cannot see them, you can make out the soft sheen of the galactic nucleii of our interacting group.

Enjoy their faint mystery!

Sunday, September 16 – It’s New Moon! For those of you who have waited on the weekend to enjoy dark skies, then let’s add another awesome galaxy to the collection. Tonight set your sights towards Alpha Pegasi and drop due south less than 5 degrees to pick up NGC 7479 (Right Ascension: 23 : 04.9 – Declination: +12 : 19).

Discovered by William Herschel in 1784. this tantalizing 11 magnitude barred spiral galaxy has had a supernova in its nucleus as recently as 1990. While the 16th magnitude event is no longer visible, smaller telescopes will easily pick out bright core and elongation of the central bar. Larger aperture will find this one a real treat as the spiral arms curl both over and under the central structure, resembling a ballet dancer “en pointe”. Congratulations! You’ve just observed Caldwell 44.

Until next week? Wishing you clear skies!

Written by Tammy Plotner. NGC 7009 Image Credit: NOAO/AURA/NSF

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

An Inside Look at Curiosity’s Inner Workings

NASA’s Curiosity rover raised robotic arm with drill pointed skyward while exploring Vera Rubin Ridge at the base of Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater - backdropped by distant crater rim. This navcam camera mosaic was stitched from raw images taken on Sol 1833, Oct. 2, 2017 and colorized. Credit: NASA/JPL/Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com/Marco Di Lorenzo

What makes a rover rove? At the very basic level, it comes down to gears, and all the gears have to made very precisely: there’s no going to Mars to fix anything that doesn’t move just right. This video shows how a gear company in Rockford, Illinois made all the gears for the Curiosity rover — created from titanium — putting in extra hours and effort to get everything just right (they also made the gears for the Mars Exploration Rovers).

It also subtly emphasizes how the money spent on space exploration isn’t just stuffed into a rocket and blasted into space. Almost all of Curiosity’s parts were made from different companies in 33 states in the US; the rest came from companies in partner countries, all which employs hundreds, if not thousands, of people.

You have to bet that every person who created or touched any of the parts — big or small — on Curiosity were just as jazzed as the cheering team at JPL when the rover landed successfully. And that Curiosity is working so well and roving around in Gale Crater has to be a a great feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction, too.
Continue reading “An Inside Look at Curiosity’s Inner Workings”

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Beautiful Timelapse: Purely Pacific Northwest

Here’s a wonderful new timelapse from photographer John Ecklund, a photographer from Portland, Oregon. He captures incredible views of the Milky Way over Crater Lake, Mount Hood, Mount St. Helens, the Painted Hills and more, even nabbing a few meteors and a pass of the International Space Station.

“I choose to shoot locations that appeal to the way I would like to interpret the story of time,” says Ecklund. “Here in the Pacific Northwest, there are endless opportunities to document the magnificence of the world around us. I have discovered that when time is the storyteller, a special kind of truth emerges.”
Continue reading “Beautiful Timelapse: Purely Pacific Northwest”