Nice Morning Conjunction

When I was outside trying to image the LCROSS impact this morning, I couldn’t help but noticing that we have three planets fairly close together in the morning sky, Venus, Saturn and Mercury.  Mercury is the lowest of the three, Venus is the highest and Saturn is in the middle, all in a fairly nice line.  They will be nice for the next few days.  Here is what you will see tomorrow morning (map for 5:30 am in Tucson…click to embiggen).

Over the next couple of days, Saturn will get progressively closer to Venus until they are right next to each other on October 13th.  This should be a spectacular conjunction and I will be luck enough to be in Bryce Canyon.  Yeah, I am thinking pictures!

Quick Crescent Moon Pics

From a little star party on the west side tonight.

Lots of Earthshine on the crescent Moon.  I flashed the foreground to illuminate it…only have a built in flash.  Might be my next investment: external flash.

A Night @Kitt Peak

I just got back from out Project Astro workshop night at Kitt Peak.  Spend most of the evening showing teachers objects through the Galileoscope including Jupiter, Mizar, M4, M7, M8, M13 and M31.  Not a bad collection for a little scope.

I did manage a couple of night shots.  Couldn’t resist getting the Milky Way over one of the domes on Kitt Peak.I also took a shot toward Tucson of the lights.  Remember Tucson has good lighting ordinances so note the lack of upward directed lighting,  You still get some light…hey, there are a lot of people down there!

Good night…another day of the workshop tomorrow!

Return of the Hubble…

You might recall a few months ago there was a highly publicized Space Shuttle mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.  With the exception of an image of the recent impact on Jupiter, Hubble has been quiet.  Too quiet.

When new cameras are installed, it takes time to power everything up, test it, take calibration images, tweak your image processing routines, etc.  But the wait is finally over.

Hubble released a whole slew of new images today.  Let’s take a peek.

That is Eta Carina…well, actually only a small part of the system imaged by the new Wide Field Camera 3 (yes, there was a 1 and 2). Eta Carina is a spectacular, mysterious nearby system.  Right now we think there are two stars. One of them is huge…over 100 times the mass of our Sun.  They are surrounded by this gas and dust.  The large star erupted spectacularly in 1841 and was the second brightest star in the sky by 1843 in spite of being about 8,000 light years away (for reference, Sirius, the brightest star in sky right now, is about 8.5 light years away).  I only embedded a small image here…check it out in hires.

Now let’s move on to Omega Centauri.

Again, you will want to look at hires versions.  This is only a small section of Omega Centauri which is the largest globular cluster in the Milky Way containing millions of stars. I will wait while you count them (don’t worry, there are only 100,000 or so in this image).

Hubble is back and better than ever.  Be sure to check out the other images released today.

Galileoscope Segment on KUAT

Our local pubic television station had a five minute segment on Arizona Illustrated this week.  I am not on camera, but I was the “set designer” for the segments that took place at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory.   If you look close, you can see my Saturn pic I took through the Galileoscope on one of the computer screens in the background.  You also get a glimpse of Photon Engineering, the firm that did most of the optical design.

Unfortunately, KUAT’s embedding code doesn’t work on WordPress, so you can watch it by clicking here.

Enjoy.

Jupiter Goes Solo

Jupiter is famous for its four bright Galilean Moons.  These are visible through any amateur telescope.  You can watch them move and change positions over the course of a few hours with even a modest telescope (such as the Galileoscope, hint, hint).

You don’t always see all four Moons, however.  Sometimes they pass in front Jupiter or behind it.  It’s fairly common for Jupiter to have three or even two visible Moons.  A few times each century, however, all of the Moons either pass in front of Jupiter or behind it at the same time.  Tonight is one of those times.  From 12:43am EDT  to 2:29am EDT (a more civilized 9:43pm PDT to 11:29 PDT) all four of Jupiter’s Moons will be gone leaving a strangely naked planet.  I have been observing Jupiter for decades and never seen this (I have seen it with only one Moon which was strange enough).  You can check out an animation of what you will see with a telescope tonight or use Sky and Telescope’s Jupiter’s Moon’s Utility to find out what you will see at any given moment.

Unfortunately, it looks to be cloudy here in Tucson tonight.  My telescope is sitting at home on the tripod ready to go outside a moment’s notice should we get a break in the clouds.  I hope others have clear skies for this rare event.

Daytime Occultation of Antares

Just noticed that we get daytime occultation of Antares by the Moon on Thursday, August 27th.  It starts at about 4:30pm EDT (1:30pm PDT or MST where I am).  Antares is bright enough you can probably see it during the day with a telescope.  Simply point your telescope at the Moon at little before 4:30pm EDT an look off the Moon’s eastern limb.  You should see the bright star Antares.  It will disappear behind the Moon and reappear about an hour later (looks like about 2:35pm PST in Tucson).  You can find time tables for a variety of cities here.

Unfortunately it looks like the disappearance is not visible from Tucson as the Moon rises just a few minutes too late.  It is tougher to watch the reappearance because you have to look at exactly the right moment (with the disappearance, you can watch the approach so you can see it coming so to speak).  Still, I am not totally deterred.  I have a student who has been doing some imaging work and might look at his class schedule and send him out to set up the telescope with a webcam to see if we can catch!

Black Holes: The Other Side of Infinity Online

I just found out that the planetarium show Black Holes: The Other Side of Infinity is now available on Hulu.  This show takes you through a lot of the science behind black holes with some computer simulations of what would happen if you feel in one.  I know the effect isn’t quite the same on a small computer screen as it is on a big dome with digital projectors, but it is still worth checking out.

Unfortunately, you can’t embed it on WordPress, so check it out here.

George Banks Loves Astronomy Again

I have been traveling a lot and haven’t had time to post.  One of my stops was New York where I got to take in the Broadway production of Mary Poppins.  It is different than the movie, although many of the same themes are present.

One little addition I noticed is Michael, the son, had a small telescope and an interest in astronomy.  At one point George (the father) says, “I used to love astronomy when I was his age…until Ms. Andrews (his nanny) beat it out of me”.

And there is a heapin’ pile of truth there.  The way science is taught in school, portrayed by the media, and even talked about in everyday life pretty much beats the love of science out of people.  When I tell people I majored in physics and work at an observatory, I get all kinds of, “You must be really smart” or “Science is just so hard” comments.  People say this around their children without thinking who soak up these messages that science is something they can’t do.  We really do our best to beat the love of science out of people.

I remember the old Carl Sagan quote, “We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.”  This is truly a recipe for disaster.  The lack of understanding of the scientific process and principles taints debates on many important issues including global warming, stem cell research, genetic engineering, evolution, environmental issues, net neutrality, autism, cancer clusters, and a whole host of other issues.  Misinformation is so readily available on the internet and most people are poorly equipped to evaluate the claims and counter claims.

In the end, after Mary Poppins sets everything right, the family goes outside and looks at the stars.  George spies a shooting star and asks Michael for his telescope to look at it.  Of course, you don’t use a telescope to see a shooting star, but its really Mary Poppins flying away leaving the happy family so I will forgive this little breach of protocol.  May more of us follow George’s footsteps and rediscover our childhood love of science.

Hawaiian Starlight

The Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) produced a video called Hawaiian Starlight for the International Year of Astronomy.  We just had a lunchtime screening of the movie today for observatory employees.

Hawaiian Starlight consists of time lapse photography of the mountain interspersed with images from the heavens. There is no narration at all so this is intended more as a visual treat than a serious educational video.  But is sure is a sweet visual treat!  You can see clouds rolling around the mountain, telescopes tracking stars through the night, sunrises and sunsets, the movement of the stars (sometimes they show you star trails, sometimes not) from many different vantage points around the mountain.  Look closely at some of the time lapse sequences and you can see planes taking off and other planes passing over on trans-Pacific flights.

The video is about 40 minutes long and you can buy it online.  Minor complaint is that they have only done a standard DVD…I think this would look sweet on Bluray.  I applaud them for making the DVD region free (although be sure you get the NTSC or PAL version depending on where you live!)

They don’t have the movie online, but the trailer gives you a nice sample.