Red Moon, Red Mars. Top - Dec 21, 2010 Lunar Eclipse photos of the Red Moon taken near Princeton, NJ on an exquisitely clear night with a 250 mm lens and 1 sec exposure. Credit: Ken Kremer. Bottom Left: Red Mars from the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: NASA. Right: Red Mars through a telescope in 2010 from The Plantation in Florida (not to scale). Credit: Ernie Rossi
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In this season of Christmas tidings, many of us were blessed to witness the eerie Red Moon of the total lunar eclipse a few nights ago on Dec. 21. Here in “bonechilling” New Jersey, it was miraculously crystal clear the entire night from the beginning around 1:30 a.m. EST to the end – about three and one half hours later at around 5 a.m.
UPDATE: Check out more readers “Red Moon, Red Planet” astropix contributions below !
The eclipse occurred as the moon passed through the Earth’s inner dark shadow, or umbra and changed dramatically to varying shades of red, orange and brown.
Lunar Eclipse 12-21-2010 from The Plantation in Florida. Credit: Ernie RossiDuring totality – when the moon was completely immersed in the umbral shadow for about 72 minutes – the red moon changed from a faint red glow to a brilliant crimson red. At times it appeared to be blood red and as though the surface was stirring and oozing droplets of warm and viscous blood. It was surreal and looked to me as though it had been magically and majestically painted up into the night sky.
Well all this redness hanging in the sky during totality caused me to ponder Mars – the Red Planet – especially with the avalanche of good news streaming back lately.
And the wispy white light at near total eclipse harkened to the Martian polar ice caps.
Mars at Opposition in 2003 from New Jersey. 3.5 in Questar 0.1 seconds. Credit: Robert Vanderbei
Bright red Mars at Opposition in 2003 - The year that Spirit and Opportunity launched.
So please send your telescopic shots and descriptions of the Red Planet and/or the Red Moon and I’ll post them here. Email kremerken at yahoo dot com or post as comments to add here.
Lunar Eclipse from New Jersey 12-21-2010. Credit: Robert Vanderbei
Despite the shadow the moon does not completely disappear. The red moon’s glow was caused by sunlight refracted through the earth’s atmosphere and cast upon the lunar surface. The hue varies depending on a variety of atmospheric conditions and can be intensified by floating clouds of volcanic ash and dust. The recent volcanic eruptions at Mount Merapi in Indonesia in October and at Mount Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland last April sent massive plumes of particles skyward which may have influenced the thrilling event.
Red Moon, Red Planet. One day we’ll journey there and back again.
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Send me your astropix of Red Moon and/or Red Mars to post here:
Check out these gorgeous views of Mars in January 2010 from Efrain Morales Rivera at the Jaicoa Observatory in Aquadilla, Puerto Rico Efrain writes; On this session (01/21/10) on Mars of this years apparition many details could be seen for its size. Image at left at closest to Earth and at the limb (L) Mount Olympus largest volcano in our system, Image at right (01/27/10) closest to the Sun. Credit: Efrain Morales Rivera, Jaicoa Observatory, Aquadilla, Puerto Rico
From Robert Vanderbei of Amateur Astronomers Association Of Princeton in New Jersey; A Lunar Eclipse Montage ! Just ahead of the monster blizzard which struck the northeast Corridor of the US on Dec 26.
Dec. 21, 2010 Lunar Eclipse Montage as imaged from New Jersey. Credit: Robert Vanderbei
Some pictures of the eclipse put together as a composite from beginning to totality by Russell King of Willingboro Astronomical Society, New Jersey.
All pictures were taken with my Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi from my home in Neptune, New Jersey. I used my Canon 75 to 300MM lens and shot all exposures at 300MM. Camera was set on a fixed photo tripod. The pictures range from 1/2500 second at full moon to 1 second during totality. Images were processed in Photoshop 2 and Ulead. Credit: Russell King. http://www.rddnj.com
A traditional galaxy evolution model has it that you start with spiral galaxies – which might grow in size through digesting smaller dwarf galaxies – but otherwise retain their spiral form relatively undisturbed. It is only when these galaxies collide with another of similar size that you first get an irregular ‘train-wreck’ form, which eventually settles into a featureless elliptical form – full of stars following random orbital paths rather than moving in the same narrow orbital plane that we see in the flattened galactic disk of a spiral galaxy.
The concept of secular galaxy evolution challenges this notion – where ‘secular’ means separate or isolated. Theories of secular evolution propose that galaxies naturally evolve along the Hubble sequence (from spiral to elliptical), without merging or collisions necessarily driving changes in their form.
While it’s clear that galaxies do collide – and then generate many irregular galaxy forms we can observe – it is conceivable that the shape of an isolated spiral galaxy could evolve towards a more amorphously-shaped elliptical galaxy if they possess a mechanism to transfer angular momentum outwards.
The flattened disk shape of standard spiral galaxy results from spin – presumably acquired during its initial formation. Spin will naturally cause an aggregated mass to adopt a disk shape – much as pizza dough spun in the air will form a disk. Conservation of angular momentum requires that the disk shape will be sustained indefinitely unless the galaxy can somehow lose its spin. This might happen through a collision – or otherwise by transferring mass, and hence angular momentum, outwards. This is analogous to spinning skaters who fling their arms outwards to slow their spin.
Density waves may be significant here. The spiral arms commonly visible in galactic disks are not static structures, but rather density waves which cause a temporary bunching together of orbiting stars. These density waves may be the result of orbital resonances generated amongst the individual stars of the disk.
Left: Density waves may emerge from gravitational resonances generated by the alignment of stars
It has been suggested that a density wave represents a collisionless shock which has a damping effect on the spin of the disk. However, since the disk is only braking upon itself, angular momentum still has to be conserved within this isolated system.
A galactic disk has a corotation radius – a point where stars rotate at the same orbital velocity as the density wave (i.e. a perceived spiral arm) rotate. Within this radius, stars move faster than the density wave – while outside the radius, stars move slower than the density wave.
This may account for the spiral shape of the density wave – as well as offering a mechanism for the outward transfer of angular momentum. Within the radius of corotation, stars are giving up angular momentum to the density wave as they push through it – and hence push the wave forward. Outside the radius of corotation, the density wave is dragging through a field of slower moving stars – giving up angular momentum to them as it does so.
The result is that the outer stars are flung further outwards to regions where they could adopt more random orbits – rather than being forced to conform to the mean orbital plane of the galaxy. In this way, a tightly-bound rapidly spinning spiral galaxy could gradually evolve towards a more amorphous elliptical shape.
Here’s this week’s Where In The Universe Challenge. Take a look and see if you can name where in the Universe this image is from. Give yourself extra points if you can name the spacecraft, telescope or instrument responsible for the image. We provide the image today, but won’t reveal the answer until tomorrow. This gives you a chance to mull over the image and provide your answer/guess in the comment section. And please, no links or extensive explanations of what you think this is — give everyone the chance to guess.
UPDATE: Answer now posted below!
This is the Moon, specifically the big rock in the middle is a close-up of a 320 meter block of ejecta in Tycho crater covered by a veneer of impact melt. The image was taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera earlier in 2010.
Tycho crater is one of the most visible features on the near side of the Moon, and its ray system extends far and wide. So much so that the Apollo 17 astronauts sampled its ejecta, over ,2000 km away from the crater! That is amazing!
Williams astronomer Jay Pasachoff during the partial phase of the March 29, 2006 solar eclipse. Photo by Anna Tsykalova.
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Some of the world will be able to greet the first part of the new year with a solar eclipse. On the morning of Tuesday, January 4, 2011, an eclipse of the Sun will be widely visible across Europe and as far east as India. The eclipse won’t be visible in North and South America, however. Jay Pasachoff of Williams College in the US is the Chair of the International Astronomical Union’s Working Group on Eclipses, and says that even at a maximum, this eclipse will be only partial, with some of the Sun always visible. Because the Sun is too bright to look at safely, Pasachoff stresses that special solar filters or projection methods should always be used to protect the eyes.
Pasachoff will be in Tel Aviv to view the eclipse, and since partial eclipses are usually not very scientifically useful, he is looking forward to just enjoying the eclipse instead of scrambling to set up various scientific equipment.
“Partial eclipses are fun, and much more relaxing for a total-eclipse scientist like me, since the pressure on me is low and nothing happens too fast,” he told Universe Today. “Seeing a partial or other solar eclipse happen right on time, to the second, can be inspirational to students to study hard so that they, too, can understand the Universe.”
This will be Pasachoff’s 52nd solar eclipse.
Radio astronomers do find partial eclipses useful, as with a radio telescope, or in the ultraviolet or x-rays from spacecraft, scientists can use the timing of when solar active regions are covered and uncovered to study the structure of solar storms in better detail than is otherwise possible, Pasachoff said.
For this eclipse, people in Western Europe will find the Sun already eclipsed as the day begins, with the eclipse lasting about 80 minutes more. On January 4, the Moon will gradually cover the Sun, over a period of about 3 hours. At maximum, the eclipse will be at the horizon at sunrise in England, with 75% of the Sun’s diameter covered, and then gradually emerge over the next hour and 20 minutes. In Paris or Berlin, 80% of the Sun will be covered near sunrise. Farther east, the Sun will be a bit higher in the sky at maximum, 22° high with 67% covered in Athens. In Israel and Egypt, the Sun will be 33° high with over 55% coverage at maximum.
The most important thing, Pasachoff said, is to view an eclipse safely.
“Whenever the ordinary Sun is visible, even only part of it, you should not stare at it,” he said. “Special solar filters are available cheaply, or dense welders’ glass will do. Another method of seeing that the Sun is eclipsed is to punch a hole a few millimeters across in a piece of cardboard and hold it up to the Sun while you face away from the Sun and see the Sun’s image projected on the ground or onto another piece of cardboard. This method is called projection with a pinhole camera. It is rare that haze or clouds are sufficient to reduce the Sun’s intensity enough that one can see a partially covered Sun safely.”
2011 is unusual in that it has only four partial solar eclipses, for all of which the darkest part of the Moon’s shadow passes off the Earth’s surface. In 2012, an annular eclipse in which the Moon’s disk is a little too small to cover the entire Sun will pass from Japan over the Pacific to California and farther into the U.S. on May 20. On November 14, 2012, a total solar eclipse, in which it becomes dark as twilight, will start in northeastern Australia and cross a broad swath of the South Pacific.
A sketch of the Dec. 21st lunar eclipse by Ted Judah.
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What do you do if you’re watching the lunar eclipse but don’t have your camera? Make a sketch, just like the astronomers of old. Amateur astronomer Ted Judah from California enjoyed the eclipse, but since he was away on a trip with his family and “there was no room for my astrophotography equipment in the car,” he said, Ted resorted to drawing what he witnessed. Lovely.
Below is another artistic view of the eclipse, although taken by a camera.
A unique view of the lunar eclipse by Tavi Greiner.
Tavi Greiner took this image from her yard in Shallotte, North Carolina. Her description: “The darkened sky beneath Totality’s copper Moon reveals Orion to the left and Pleiades to the right.” See more of her images at “A Sky Full of Stars.”
The Long Journey to Santa Maria: This collage of two maps and a new close up panorama of Santa Maria crater (bottom right) shows the route traversed by the Opportunity Mars rover during her nearly 7 year long overland expedition across the Meridiani Planum region of Mars. Opportunity arrived at the rim of Santa Maria Crater on Dec. 16, 2010 on Sol 2451. The rover has been on a crater tour since landing inside Eagle crater on Jan. 3, 2004. During her more than 26 km long journey she made numerous scientific discoveries along the way at Endurance and Victoria Craters. The rovers next destination is Endurance Crater - some 22 km wide - to investigate water bearing minerals at Cape York and Cape Tribulation which she will reach sometime in 2011. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell, Marco Di Lorenzo, Kenneth Kremer
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The Opportunity rover is now sending back a plethora of awesome views of Santa Maria Crater since just arriving at the western edge of the crater on Dec. 15 (Sol 2450). This intermediate stop on the rovers 19 km long journey from Victoria Crater to giant Endeavour Crater looks to be well worth the trip and affords another fine feather in the science teams cap.
Santa Maria appears to be “relatively unweathered and fresh”, according to Ray Arvidson, of Washington University in St. Louis. Arvidson is the deputy principal investigator for the Spirit and Opportunity rovers. A bounty of boulders and rocks from the ejecta ring the rim. The crater is roughly 90 meters in diameter with an estimated depth between 9 to 14 meters. It is somewhat oval in shape, not perfectly circular.
Opportunity looks back to the long road to Santa Maria
After initially driving to a distance of about five meters from the rim on Dec. 16 (Sol 2451), Opportunity has now carefully crawled even nearer to the precipice of the craters steep cliffs. At each spot the rover snaps a series of panoramic images to document the site scientifically and esthetically and plan the next sols drive.
The team back on Earth – and millions of kilometers away – must tread with extreme caution as Opportunity creeps ever closer to the edge lest she fall off a cliff. Whereas the cameras revealed a dramatic gaping hole on Dec. 16, Opportunity is now positioned close enough to point her cameras directly at the steep walled cliffs and towards the sand dunes at the crater floor crater unveiling another stunningly gorgeous Martian vista.
Compare the panoramas from Sols 2451 and 2454 above and below as Opportunity pulled up to the rim in stages and began exploring the crater environment from different vantage points.
Panoramic view of Santa Maria Crater taken by Opportunity Mars rover about 5 meters from the rim on Dec 16, 2010 on Sol 2451. CRISM results suggest water bearing materials are located at the southeastern edge of the rim located roughly at the center of this image. Portions of distant Endeavour Crater are faintly visible as bumps on the horizon in the background. The northern and eastern rims are located from left to center. Cape Tribulation is to the right. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell, Kenneth Kremer, Marco Di LorenzoThe complete panoramic view of Santa Maria Crater taken by Opportunity Mars rover about 5 meters from the rim on Dec 16, 2010 on Sol 2451. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell, Jan van DrielPeering into Santa Maria Crater. Opportunity drove closer to within 5 meters of the rim and snapped this gorgeous panoramic vista unveiling the whole interior on Sols 2453 & 2354. Note the steep walls and sand dunes on the floor. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell, James CanvinPanoramic view revealing interior steep cliffs and sand dunes of Santa Maria Crater was taken within 5 meters of the rim on Sol 2454. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell, Marco Di Lorenzo, Kenneth Kremer
The rover handlers are highly adept at precisely maneuvering the 175 kg vehicle back and forth inside the danger zone at crater rims. After all Opportunity has been on a crater tour for her entire 7 year extended mission to the red planet and controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have honed their driving techniques at countless locales both treacherous and dazzling, especially about the precipitous 50 meter cliff drops at Victoria Crater.
High priority activity on the west side of Santa Maria includes collecting the first pair in a series of long-baseline, high resolution stereo panoramas which will be used to create a digital elevation map in 3 D, according to Guy Webster, the Public Affairs Officer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., which manages the Mars Rover mission for NASA.
The newly assembled crater maps – see the first mosaics herein – will be scrutinized and utilized for planning the best locations to visit during the upcoming multi-week science campaign. .
JPL engineers will move Opportunity in a counterclockwise direction around the rim from the Sol 2450 approach point.
“One last drive before the Christmas break will take us ~ 20m away to a lookout point, to set us up for another drive next week,” tweeted JPL Rover driver Scott Maxwell. “Last weekend’s drive around Santa Maria took us to this gorgeous new outlook. It’s grand here.”
“There are no plans to enter the crater.” Webster confirmed to me. There is no reason to take a risk when Opportunity is so close to those phyllosilicate clays at Endeavour which formed in water and have never before been directly analyzed on the Martian surface.
“Fisheye view of Santa Maria from the front hazcam camera with robotic arm instruments and two wheels. The RAT science drill is pointing to the left. . Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell
The current plan calls for Opportunity to stay at Santa Maria through the upcoming Solar conjunction which starts in late January and ends in mid-February,” Webster stated.
The rover will remain stationary during that period and conduct a lengthy focused investigation of a specific spot using the instruments on the robotic arm – which include a rock drill, microscope and spectrometers.
“We will use the ‘no-new-commanding’ time of conjunction for a long-integration assessment of the composition of a selected target,” added Webster.
“The team plans to use Opportunity’s RAT- or Rock Abrasion Tool – on a target at Santa Maria,” says rover project manager John Callas of JPL. The RAT is a high tech device that uses a grinding wheel to cut into martian rocks and has performed far beyond expectation. The diamond embedded abrader teeth still have some life left, and the team wants to save some abrasion capability for the Endeavour rim targets.
Orbital Observations at Santa Maria Crater. Opportunity arrived at the western rim of Santa Maria Crater, some 90 meters wide, on Dec. 16, 2010. Researchers are using data collected by a powerful mineral mapping spectrometer (CRISM) aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to direct the route which Opportunity is traversing on Mars during the long term journey to Endeavour crater. Spectral observations recorded by CRISM indicates the presence of water-bearing sulfate minerals at the location shown by the red dot on the southeast rim crater whereas the crater floor at the blue dot does not. This image was taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera also on MRO. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by Chris Dann over at Weird Warp.
Click here to read Carnival of Space #181.
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, let Fraser know if you can be a host, and he’ll schedule you into the calendar.
The Opportunity rover’s latest accomplishments? Cinematographer. Two new movies created by images taken by the long-lasting rover show a blue-tinted Martian sunset, while another clip shows the Mars’ moon Phobos passing in front of the sun. “These visualizations of an alien sunset show what it must have looked like for Opportunity, in a way we rarely get to see, with motion,” said rover science team member Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University. Dust particles make the Martian sky appear reddish and create a bluish glow around the sun. Continue reading “Rover Captures Sunset, Eclipse on Mars”
Richardson Crater Dunes, Partially Defrosted. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
A new batch of images has been released by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissaince Orbiter and –as usual — they are stunning. In the image above, there is a lot going on! Numerous dust devil tracks have left their criss-crossing marks on the dune field found in Richardson Crater. The dunes are covered by seasonal carbon dioxide frost, which has only partially defrosted, although the image was acquired late in Mars’ southern spring. There are channels carved into the ground and HiRISE scientists says the could have been created by blocks of carbon dioxide ice (dry ice) slide down the slope and sublimate (evaporate directly from solid to gas). Wouldn’t that be fun to be there and watch happen!
See more of the “coolest” and latest Mars images from HiRISE below:
