Space Weather News for Dec. 24, 2011
http://spaceweather.com
Astronauts onboard the International Space Station have seen sungrazing Comet
Lovejoy from Earth orbit. ISS commander Dan Burbank describes the comet's
green-glowing tail as "the most amazing thing I have ever seen in space." Video
from the ISS and updated images from Earth are highlighted on today's edition of
Spaceweather.com.
You are subscribed to the Space Weather mailing list, a free service of
Spaceweather.com.
New subscribers may sign up for free space weather alerts at
http://spaceweather.com/services/ .
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Below is a link to the Dawn spacecraft's website at NASA:
http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/journal_12_30_11.asp
Below are some excerpts from the article. It is a bit long but very interesting
about the details of navigating the orbit around the protoplanet Vesta. It's an
incredibel read about what we know about celestial mechanics and those who
control the spacecraft from such great distances.
"Dear Indawnmitables,
Dawn concludes 2011 more than 40 thousand times nearer to Vesta than it began
the year. Now at its lowest altitude of the mission, the bold
adventurer is conducting its most detailed exploration of this alien
world and continuing to make thrilling new discoveries."
....
"Navigators use their best knowledge of the many forces acting on Dawn to chart
an orbital course for it. The forces can be traced to three principal sources:
gravity, light, and Dawn itself."
....
"Dawn is 210 kilometers (130 miles) from Vesta. It is also 2.79 AU (418 million
kilometers or 260 million miles) from Earth, or 1045 times as far as the moon
and 2.84 times as far as the sun today. Radio signals, traveling at the
universal limit of the speed of light, take 46 minutes to make the round trip."
Here is the January Dawn Journal update. The full article is here:
http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/journal_01_27_12.asp
A short quote from the journal:--
"Dawn Journal
Dr. Marc Rayman
January 27, 2012
Dear Asdawnished Readers,
Dawn is scrutinizing Vesta from its low-altitude mapping orbit (LAMO),
circling the rocky world five and a half times a day. The spacecraft is healthy
and continuing its intensive campaign to reveal the astonishing nature of this
body in the mysterious depths of the main asteroid belt."
--- In skyscrapers_rias@yahoogroups.com, "Starman" <bob_napier@...> wrote:
>
> Below is a link to the Dawn spacecraft's website at NASA:
>
> http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/journal_12_30_11.asp
>
> Below are some excerpts from the article. It is a bit long but very
interesting about the details of navigating the orbit around the protoplanet
Vesta. It's an incredibel read about what we know about celestial mechanics and
those who control the spacecraft from such great distances.
>
>
> "Dear Indawnmitables,
>
> Dawn concludes 2011 more than 40 thousand times nearer to Vesta than it began
the year. Now at its lowest altitude of the mission, the bold
> adventurer is conducting its most detailed exploration of this alien
> world and continuing to make thrilling new discoveries."
>
> ....
>
> "Navigators use their best knowledge of the many forces acting on Dawn to
chart an orbital course for it. The forces can be traced to three principal
sources: gravity, light, and Dawn itself."
>
> ....
>
> "Dawn is 210 kilometers (130 miles) from Vesta. It is also 2.79 AU (418
million kilometers or 260 million miles) from Earth, or 1045 times as far as the
moon and 2.84 times as far as the sun today. Radio signals, traveling at the
universal limit of the speed of light, take 46 minutes to make the round trip."
>
My goodness but this is a quiet group. Did the sun fail to shine in Scituate?
A friend and I ran a small public event on the Barrington town hall lawn. Since
there were events at Frosty Drew, Ladd and Seagrave we limited the publicity to
the Barrington/Warren papers and still drew between 50 and 100 visitors.
I drove across town in a bit of falling mist, and set up at 5:30 under a grey
sky. But a patch of blue showed up from about 6:09 to 6:25 or so, and many did
get to view through two filtered binoculars or the sun funnel I'd rigged on my
guidescope.
My friend George posted pix and a video on the ASSNE public access website:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=2822495220005#!/ASSNE1
There sure was a lot of cloud going around. My contacts at Wheaton and BU were
socked in, but ASSNE friends to the east had about 10 minutes of clear sky.
Anyone else luck out with the cloud?
Pete Peterson
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/32/full/
"Hubble Discovers a Fifth Moon Orbiting Pluto
News Release Number:* STScI-2012-32
July 11, 2012
A team of astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is reporting
the discovery of another moon orbiting the icy dwarf planet Pluto.
The moon is estimated to be irregular in shape and 6 to 15 miles across.
It is in a 58,000-mile-diameter circular orbit around Pluto that is assumed to
be co-planar with the other satellites in the system."
To read the full article, go to:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/32/full/
The links below show and describe how the New Horizons spacecraft will fly by
the planet Pluto in 2015 and by many other Kuiper Belt Objects in the months to
follow.
* Visit the New Horizons Kuiper Belt Fly-Through
<https://vimeo.com/alexhp/newhorizons>
* Read more about the latest New Horizons post-Pluto encounter plans
<http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/overview/piPerspective.php>
Required viewing is
http://eyes.nasa.gov
And I am sure many of you saw it on the TV coverage. One can only say wow
after seeing this tool in operation.
Bob
On Aug 6, 2012 2:07 PM, "Starman" <bob_napier@...> wrote:
> **
>
>
> After a journey of about 250 million miles through the solar system, the
> Curiosity rover lands safely on Mars. Details of this alien spacecraft from
> Earth and its final destination on the surface of Mars
> can be found on the links below.
>
> For more information on the mission, visit:
>
> http://www.nasa.gov/mars
>
> and
>
> http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl
>
> Follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at:
>
> http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity
>
> and
>
> http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity
>
>
>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
"NASA's Dawn Prepares for Trek Toward Dwarf Planet
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
August 30, 2012
PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Dawn spacecraft is on track to become the
first probe to orbit and study two distant solar system destinations, to
help scientists answer questions about the formation of our solar
system. The spacecraft is scheduled to leave the giant asteroid Vesta on
Sept. 4 PDT (Sept. 5 EDT) to start its two-and-a-half-year journey to
the dwarf planet Ceres."
Read more details of Dawn's departure from Vesta here:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-271
The image shown above on the Home page is Comet 168P Hergenrother (as of
11-22-2012). It will be there for a couple of weeks.
COMET 168P HERGENROTHER
Comet 168P Hergenrother is another interesting comet in the evening sky the last
several weeks, and currently about 12 degrees north of the Great Square of
Pegasus. Normally, it would be about magnitude 15 or 16 and not a very
interesting one to observe either visually or with a CCD. What makes this comet
interesting is it suddenly brightened over 5 magnitudes just a few weeks ago and
brought it into the range of visibility with larger binoculars at magnitude 9.5.
When the image here was taken of Hergenrother on October 21, 2012 it was
probably about magnitude 9.5 to 10. It does seen to oscillate in brightness and
now seems to be between magnitude 10 and 11, which is still within visual range
of at least 4 or 5 inch telescopes. My images do show an elongated nuclear
region and slightly bent. Large observatories have detected apparent
"fragments" (up to four at last count) of the nucleus that may account for it's
bright outburst and oscillations.
Continued observations of this comet could be very interesting if further
outbursts occur and until it fades into the western sky.
Virtually all my observations are carried out via an Internet browser connection
to my observatory. Once the observatory control server is started and the
camera and telescope are initialized, all other imaging is remotely over the
Internet connection. Friends and acquaintances from Skyscrapers, and other
clubs, and as far away as Mexico, Hawaii and S. Korea have taken images with my
online remotely accessible observatory.
Bob N., Scituate Observatory
Nov. 22, 2012
Bob's image of Comet 168P Hergenrother prompts me to post my much less
spectacular first image of "next year's great comet". The image was taken two
days earlier than Bob's and it was done at the urging of Bill Gucfa with the
idea that it'd be neat to track the progress of ISON.
Wednesday, 19 Dec 2012 Arrived home around 9:30 tonight and saw a cloudless
transparent sky with a zillion stars. It's been a long day but Comet ISON should
be visible, and I'd promised Bill G that I'd check it out soonest. That'd be
now.
I'm out at 22:07 and powered up and tracking in about ½ hour. There's a 16th
magnitude "star" where ISON should be when viewed thru 30 second exposures. Over
18 minutes the comet's slow 28"/hour apparent motion leaves a short streak in
the stacked processed final image.
http://peterson-web.com/ASSNE/121219isonneg.jpg
At 22:00 hours ISON was low enough to be in turbulent air, and individual frames
were very noisy. Around midnight the seeing had improved significantly and ISON
was a good bit higher. But my subsequent attempt to re-image it failed as cloud
rolled in.
Only time will tell if ISON is "great" or not, but at around 16.3 magnitude it's
not much to look at.
Happy new year All,
Pete Peterson
Wishing Star Observatory
I15
To read the complete summary of NASA's Dawn spacecraft's journey to visit the
minor planet Vesta, see the URL link below. A brief excerpt is below the URL
link. Dawn is a fascinating robotic spacecraft roving our solar system, but
only able to do so because of its unique ion propulsion engine.
http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/journal_01_30_13.asp
"Dawn Journal
Dr. Marc Rayman
January 30, 2013
Dear Dawnt Look Backs,
Its long and daring interplanetary journey continuing smoothly, Dawn is
making good progress in gradually reshaping its orbit around the sun.
Its uniquely efficient ion propulsion system is gently bringing it
closer to its next destination, dwarf planet Ceres, and ever farther
from its previous one, Vesta. Although the robotic explorer's sights are
set firmly ahead, ....."
Bob N.
Comet 2013 A1 discovered in January, 2013 at Siding Spring Observatory in
Australia by Rob McNaught is currently estimated in having a 1 in 600 chance of
impacting the planet Mars in October, 2014. More orbital data will help clarify
the possibility of impact on Mars. If the coma of the comet grows large enough,
it may affect Mars' satellites, Deimos and Phobos, and maybe even the rovers on
the surface of Mars and the orbiting satellite outposts sent from Earth.
More details are on the JPL/NASA web sites below:
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news179.html
and
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-081&rn=news.xml&rst=3713
BLN
Kudos to Bob Horton and Jim Hendrickson for catching PanSTARRS from the glare of
Providence.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151275297361534.1073741825.140998521\
533&type=1
It's possibly as bright as 1st magnitude but the lighting had to make it a huge
challenge. I wouldn't have thought it possible.
Bill Gucfa and I viewed PanSTARRS from a bluff overlooking Hundred Acre Cove in
Barrington on Wednesday night and I'm very much looking forward to seeing his
images. It's a very pretty sight indeed.
Pete Peterson
Send Email
