The brief partial lunar eclipse on Ari 25, 2013 captured over Israel. Credit and copyright: Gadi Eidelheit.
The lunar eclipse on April 25 was described by astrophotographer Gadi Eidelheit as “the greatest, slightest eclipse I ever saw!” The brief and small eclipse saw just 1.47% of the lunar limb nicked by the dark umbra or shadow from the Earth. It was visible from eastern Europe and Africa across the Middle East eastward to southeast Asia and western Australia. Here are a few more shots, including a serendipitous shot of an airplane flying through the eclipse!
Airliner flies through partial eclipse! On April 25, 2013, around 10:10 PM local time, the partial Lunar eclipse was at its maximum. The Moon only traveled 1,3% into the central Earth shadow (umbra). The event was visible from Europe, Asia and Australia. Canon EOS 600D on 130 mm (f/7,1) triplet Apo-refractor settings: 1/200 exposure at ISO 100. Credit and copyright: Philip Corneille – FRAS (Belgium).The small, shallow eclipse on April 25, 2013. Credit and copyright: Andrei Juravle.Partially eclipsed Moon rising over Brixton in the UK on April 25, 2013. Credit and copyright: Owen Llewellyn.Eclipsed Moon on April 25, 2013 over the UK. Credit and copyright: Sculptor Lil on Flickr.The eclipsed Moon, with Saturn showing as a bright point of light on the left, as seen over Königswinter, Germany. Credit and copyright: Daniel Fischer.The mini lunar eclipse on April 25, 2013 as seen from Bruges, Belgium. Credit and copyright: Cochuyt Joeri.A ‘before’ and ‘during’ comparison picture of the partial lunar eclipse on the 25th of April 2013. The photo on the left (‘before’) was taken at about 20h00 CAT and the photo on the right (‘during’) was taken around 22h06 CAT. Credit and copyright: Hein Oosthuyzen, Johannesburg, South Africa.Partial Lunar Eclipse on April 25, 2013. Credit and copyright: Henna Khan.
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This is beyond awesome. Use your mouse wheel or the + and – buttons on this incredible interactive view of the Moon to zoom in; use your mouse to let the image take you where you want to go. Click on the button in the lower right to go full screen and you’ll feel like you are in lunar orbit.
If that title seems like an obvious statement to you, it’s ok… it seems pretty obvious to me too. But there are those who have been suggesting — for quite some time, actually — that earthquakes can be triggered or strengthened by solar activity; that, in fact, exceptionally powerful solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and other outpourings from our home star can cause the planet’s crust to shift, shake, and shudder.
Except that that’s simply not true — at least, not according to a recent study by researchers from the USGS.
“Recently there’s been a lot of interest in this subject from the popular press, probably because of a couple of larger and very devastating earthquakes. This motivated us to investigate for ourselves whether or not it was true.”
– Jeffrey Love, USGS Research Geophysicist
Even when an earthquake may have been found to occur on the same day as increased solar activity, at other times during even stronger quakes the Sun may have been relatively quiet, and vice versa.
Damage in Anchorage from an earthquake on March 27, 1964. Solar activity at the time was unexceptional. (U.S. Army photo)
“There have been some earthquakes like the 9.5 magnitude Chile quake in 1960 where, sure enough, there were more sunspots and more geomagnetic activity than on average,” said Dr. Love. “But then for the Alaska earthquake in 1964 everything was lower than normal. There’s no obvious pattern between solar activity and seismicity, so our results were inconclusive.”
Basically, even though our planet orbits within the Sun’s outer atmosphere and we are subject to the space weather it creates — and there’s still a lot to be learned about that — observations do not indicate any connection between sunspots, flares, and CMEs and the shifting of our planet’s crust (regardless of what some may like to suggest.)
“It’s natural for scientists to want to see relationships between things,” said Love. “Of course, that doesn’t mean that a relationship actually exists!”
The team’s findings were published in the March 16, 2013 online edition of Geophysical Research Letters.
Narrow-angle camera image of Titan from Cassini (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)
In this image acquired on January 5, Cassini’s near-infrared vision pierced Titan’s opaque clouds to get a glimpse of the dark dune fields across a region called Senkyo.
The vast sea of dunes is composed of solid hydrocarbon particles that have precipitated out of Titan’s atmosphere. Also visible over Titan’s southern pole are the rising clouds of the recently-formed polar vortex.
For a closer look at Titan’s dunes (and to find out what the name Senkyo means) keep reading…
In the image above north on Titan is up and rotated 18 degrees to the right. It was taken using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 938 nanometers.
The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 750,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) from Titan.
Titan’s hydrocarbon dunes are found across the moon in a wide swath within 30 degrees of the equator and are each about a kilometer wide and tens to hundreds of kilometers long… and in some cases stand over 100 meters tall. (Source: Astronomy Now.)
Radar image of Titan’s dunes acquired on Jan. 13, 2007. This view is 160 kilometers (100 miles) high by 150 kilometers (90 miles) wide. (NASA/JPL)
Observations of the dunes with Cassini and ESA’s Huygens probe during its descent onto Titan’s surface have shown that the moon experiences seasonally-shifting equatorial winds during equinoxes, similar to what occurs over the Indian Ocean between monsoon seasons.
The name Senkyo refers to the Japanese realm of serenity and freedom from wordly cares and death… in line with the IAU convention of naming albedo features on Titan after mythological enchanted places.
Click here for an earlier view of Senkyo, and follow the Cassini mission here.
Color-composite of Titan made from raw Cassini images acquired on April 13, 2013 (added 4/17) NASA/JPL/SSI. Composite by J. Major.
Reprocessed Galileo image of Europa's frozen surface by Ted Stryk (NASA/JPL/Ted Stryk)
According to research by NASA astronomers using the next-generation optics of the 10-meter Keck II telescope, Jupiter’s ice-encrusted moon Europa has hydrogen peroxide across much of the surface of its leading hemisphere, a compound that could potentially provide energy for life if it has found its way into the moon’s subsurface ocean.
“Europa has the liquid water and elements, and we think that compounds like peroxide might be an important part of the energy requirement,” said JPL scientist Kevin Hand, the paper’s lead author. “The availability of oxidants like peroxide on Earth was a critical part of the rise of complex, multicellular life.”
The paper, co-authored by Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, analyzed data in the near-infrared range of light from Europa using the Keck II Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, over four nights in September 2011. The highest concentration of peroxide found was on the side of Europa that always leads in its orbit around Jupiter, with a peroxide abundance of 0.12 percent relative to water. (For perspective, this is roughly 20 times more diluted than the hydrogen peroxide mixture available at drug stores.) The concentration of peroxide in Europa’s ice then drops off to nearly zero on the hemisphere of Europa that faces backward in its orbit.
Hydrogen peroxide was first detected on Europa by NASA’s Galileo mission, which explored the Jupiter system from 1995 to 2003, but Galileo observations were of a limited region. The new Keck data show that peroxide is widespread across much of the surface of Europa, and the highest concentrations are reached in regions where Europa’s ice is nearly pure water with very little sulfur contamination.
This color composite view combines violet, green, and infrared images of Europa acquired by Galileo in 1997 for a view of the moon in natural color (left) and in enhanced color (right). Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
The peroxide is created by the intense radiation processing of Europa’s surface ice that comes from the moon’s location within Jupiter’s strong magnetic field.
“The Galileo measurements gave us tantalizing hints of what might be happening all over the surface of Europa, and we’ve now been able to quantify that with our Keck telescope observations,” Brown said. “What we still don’t know is how the surface and the ocean mix, which would provide a mechanism for any life to use the peroxide.”
The scientists think hydrogen peroxide is an important factor for the habitability of the global liquid water ocean under Europa’s icy crust because hydrogen peroxide decays to oxygen when mixed into liquid water. “At Europa, abundant compounds like peroxide could help to satisfy the chemical energy requirement needed for life within the ocean, if the peroxide is mixed into the ocean,” said Hand.
What’s notable to add, on March 26, 2013, the U.S. President signed a bill that would increase the budget for NASA’s planetary science program as well as provide $75 million for the exploration of Europa. Exactly how the funds will be used isn’t clear — perhaps for components on the proposed Europa Clipper mission? — but it’s a step in the right direction for learning more about this increasingly intriguing world. Read more on SETI’s Destination: Europa blog.
One man claims to own the moon. Another promises to create effective lunar habitats. And yet another, a former astronaut, paints pictures of its surface.
Lunarcy! is a movie that chronicles our obsession with the Moon. It’s currently making the rounds at independent theatres, but before long it will be easy to watch it on cable, or even Netflix and Amazon.
The film chronicles the efforts of half a dozen people working, in their own way, to bring the notion of regular Moon exploration closer to reality. There’s Alan Bean, the Apollo 12 moonwalker who now paints scenes of lunar exploration. Or Dennis Hope, who has staked a claim on the entire Moon and has sold plots to interested homesteaders.
At the story’s center, however, is an ordinary man called Christopher Carson who is convinced he could be the first person to colonize the Moon — if he could only obtain enough money. Director Simon Ennis follows his efforts to get funds and awareness, sprinkling the rest of the movie with other lunar-loving people.
Universe Today caught up with Ennis, who answered our questions by e-mail.
1) What was your aim with filming/presenting Lunarcy?
As with any film, the aim is to make something that is entertaining, informative and moving. Something that can capture people’s imagination in some way.
2) Why is the moon so attractive to the people in you interviewed?
They all had different reasons. Some want to live there, some are inspired by it, for Dennis Hope (the man who owns it), he saw a business opportunity. Others are interested in space exploration in general and the Moon seems the most practical first step. Apollo astronaut Alan Bean has been there, so his attraction should be obvious.
3) One of your greatest challenges must have been trying to present some of the characters — people such as Christopher Carson, who has been ignored in his belief that living on the moon is possible — in a way that helps the audience feel understanding for their cause. How did you try to do that?
I don’t think that was much of a challenge actually. I only included subjects in the film who I felt a very strong affinity for, whose goals, quests or projects were ones that caught my imagination and that I could get behind myself. Considering that I felt understanding for the “cause”, I figured that would naturally come through to the audience.
4) A minor theme in Lunarcy! is presenting the moon as a viable place to do business — selling plots of land or colonizing it, for example. We also have companies that are looking to mine asteroids. But often, these plans meet with ridicule, as Newt Gingrich discovered when he promised a moon base. What, in your view, will it take for off-earth private ventures such as these to succeed?
I think they will ultimately succeed when they become financially viable industries. For that to happen, I suspect that some of the billionaire space enthusiasts (e.g. [SpaceX‘s Elon] Musk, [Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson, etc) will have to invest their own funds to get various projects going and to show that they’re not only possible but viable. So far SpaceX seems to be doing just this.
5) What else would you like to add?
Lunarcy! will premiere on EPIX on April 3 and will be available on Netflix and Amazon at the beginning of July.
Saturn's moon Enceladus sprays its salty sea out into space. Those plumes are rich in phosphates. (NASA/JPL/SSI/J. Major)
Thanks to the Cassini mission we’ve known about the jets of icy brine spraying from the south pole of Saturn’s moon Enceladus for about 8 years now, but this week it was revealed at the 44th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference outside Houston, Texas that Enceladus’ jets very likely reach all the way down to the sea — a salty subsurface sea of liquid water that’s thought to lie beneath nearly 10 kilometers of ice.
Enceladus’ jets were first observed by the Cassini spacecraft in 2005. The jets constantly spray fine particles of ice into space which enter orbit around Saturn, creating the hazy, diffuse E ring in which Enceladus resides.
Emanating from deep fissures nicknamed “tiger stripes” that gouge the 512-km (318-mile) -wide moon’s south pole the icy jets — and the stripes — have been repeatedly investigated by Cassini, which has discovered that not only do the ice particles contain salts and organic compounds but also that the stripes are surprisingly warm, measuring at 180 Kelvin (minus 135 degrees Fahrenheit) — over twice as warm as most other regions of the moon.
Where the jets are getting their supply of liquid water has been a question scientists have puzzled over for years. Is friction caused by tidal stresses heating the insides of the stripes, which melts the ice and shoots it upwards? Or do the fissures actually extend all the way down through Enceladus’ crust to a subsurface ocean of liquid water, and through tidal pressure pull vapor and ice up to the surface?
“Baghdad Sulcus,” one of many tiger stripe fissures on Enceladus (NASA/JPL/SSI)
Researchers are now confident that the latter is the case.
In a presentation at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference titled “How the Jets, Heat and Tidal Stresses across the South Polar Terrain of Enceladus Are Related” (see the PDF here) Cassini scientists note that the amount of heating due to tidal stress seen along Enceladus’ tiger stripes isn’t nearly enough to cause the full spectrum of heating observed, and the “hot spots” that have been seen don’t correlate with the type of heating caused by shear friction.
Instead, the researchers believe that heat energy is being carried upwards along with the pressurized water vapor from the subsurface sea, warming the areas around individual vents as well as serving to keep their channels open.
With 98 individual jets observed so far on Enceladus’ south polar terrain and surface heating corresponding to each one, this scenario, for lack of a better term… seems legit.
What this means is that not only does a moon of Saturn have a considerable subsurface ocean of liquid water with a heat source and Earthlike salinity (and also a bit of fizz) but also that it’s spraying that ocean, that potentially habitable environment, out into local space where it can be studied relatively easily — making Enceladus a very intriguing target for future exploration.
“To touch the jets of Enceladus is to touch the most accessible salty, organic-rich, extraterrestrial body of water and, hence, habitable zone, in our solar system.”
– Cassini imaging team leader Carolyn Porco et al.
Enceladus is actively spraying its habitable zone out into space (NASA/JPL/SSI)
Research notes via C. Porco, D. DiNino, F. Nimmo, CICLOPS, Space Science Institute at Boulder, CO, and Earth and Planetary Sciences at UC Santa Cruz, CA.
Top image: color-composite of Enceladus made from raw Cassini images acquired in 2010. The moon is lit by reflected light from Saturn while the jets are backlit by the Sun.
Before and after the GRAIL twins impacts on the Moon December 17, 2012. The LROC Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) directors were able to resolve the impact sites on February 28, 2013, revealing both to be about 5 meters in diameter. Upper panels show the area before the impact; lower panels after the impact. Arrows point to crater locations. LROC NAC observations M186085512R, M186078336L, M1116736474R and M1116736474L. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University.
On December 17, 2012, the GRAIL mission came to an end, and the two washing machine-sized spacecraft performed a flying finale with a planned formation-flying double impact into the southern face of 2.5-kilometer- (1.5-mile-) tall mountain on a crater rim near the Moon’s north pole. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has now imaged the impact sites, which show evidence of the crashes.
But surprisingly, these impacts were not what was expected, says the LRO and GRAIL teams. The ejecta around both craters is dark. Usually, ejecta from craters is lighter in color – with a higher reflectance – than the regolith on surface.
“I expected the ejecta to be bright,” said LROC PI Mark Robinson at a press conference from the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference today, “because everybody knows impact rays on the Moon are bright. We are speculating it could be from hydrocarbons from the spacecraft.”
GRAIL A site seen before and after the impact event. Crater center is located at 75.609°N, 333.407°E/ Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University.
Typically ejecta from craters is brighter, since subsurface regolith tends to have a higher reflectance. The lunar regolith on the surface tends to be darker because of its exposure to the vacuum of space, cosmic radiation, solar wind bombardment, and micrometeorite impacts. Slowly over time, these processes tend to darken the surface soil.
Robinson said the hydrocarbons could have come from fuel left in the fuel lines (JPL estimated a quarter to half a kilogram of fuel may have remained in the spacecraft – so, not very much) or from the spacecraft itself, which is made out of carbon material.
GRAIL B site seen before and after impact event. Crater center is located at 75.651°N, 333.168°E. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University.
Additionally, the impact craters’ shapes were not as expected. The impacts formed craters about 5 m (15 ft) in diameter, and there is little ejecta to the south – the direction from which the spacecraft were traveling. “The spacecraft came in at a 1 or 2 degree impact angle,” said Robinson, “so this not a normal impact, as all the ejecta went upstream in the direction of travel.”
“I was expecting to see skid marks, myself,” said GRAIL principal investigator Maria Zuber. She added that she was committed to using every bit of fuel to mapping the gravity field at as low an altitude as possible. “I was determined that we would not end the mission with unused fuel because that would have meant we could mapped it even lower.
LRO Wide Angle Camera (WAC) image of the GRAIL impact area on the south side of the unnamed massif. Credit: NASA/GSFC/ASU.
Robinson said he was skeptical that they could find the impact craters, since the team has yet to find the impact sites of the Apollo ascent stages, which should be much bigger than the GRAIL impacts.
“Finding the impact crater was like finding a needle in haystack,” Robinson said, “as the images are looking at an area that is about 8 km wide and 30 to 40 km tall, and we were looking for something that is a couple of pixels wide.”
Robinson said he spent hours looking for it with no luck, only to see it later when he was on a conference call and was just looking at it out of the corner of his eye.
“It was really fun to find the craters,” he said. LRO did take images in early January, but better images were taken on February 28, 2013.
While LRO’s camera was not able to image the actual impact since it occurred on the night-side of the Moon, the LAMP instrument (Lyman Alpha Mapping Project) on LRO was able to detect the plumes of the impacts.
Kurt Retherford, PI of LAMP said the UV spectrograph was pointed towards the limb of the Moon — and actually looking in the direction of the constellation Orion at the time of the GRAIL impact — to observe the gases coming out of the plumes. They did detect the two impact plumes which clearly showed an excess of emissions from hydrogen atoms. “We were excited to see this detection of atomic hydrogen coming from the impact sites,” Retherford said. “This is our first detection of native hydrogen atoms from the lunar environment.”
This video shows LRO as it flies over the north pole of the Moon, where it has a very good view of the GRAIL impact. The second part is the view from LRO through LAMP’s slit, showing the impact and the resulting plume. The orbits, impact locations, terrain, LAMP field of view, and starfield are accurately rendered.
Retherford said further studies from this will help in determining the processes of how the implantation of solar wind protons on the lunar surface could create the water and hydroxyl that has been recently detected on the lunar surface by other spacecraft and in studies of lunar rocks returned by the Apollo missions.
If you’ve been following Golden Spike Company, you know that the company is planning to launch commercial Lunar exploration missions by 2020.
Last month, Golden Spike announced their Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to raise funds to help generate public interest in their mission. So far people from around the world have contributed to the Golden Spike Indiegogo campaign.
Today, Golden Spike has announced a video submission contest for their supporters. Keep reading to learn how you can participate!
To enter, simply submit your video on why you believe Lunar exploration is important. Golden Spike will accept entries for the first round of the competition until Friday, March 15. All appropriate videos will be uploaded to the Golden Spike Youtube Channel where the public can vote for their favorite via the comments section. The prize for the first round of videos is a lunar rover model (at left).
This shaded relief image shows the Moon's Shackleton Crater, a 21-km-wide crater permanently shadowed crater near the lunar south pole. The crater’s interior structure is shown in false color based on data from NASA's LRO probe. Scientists suspect that there's a lot of water ice hidden in the crater's shadow. Credit: NASA
There are some craters on the Moon that never see the light of day. But that doesn’t stop the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter from shedding new light on some the darkest mysteries on the lunar surface. With its battery of instruments, LRO has been collecting data so that we can learn more about what we can’t see with our eyes or with optical telescopes. The video provides more details, but by studing the Moon, we’ll improve our understanding of the solar system, bringing new discoveries to light.
