SPACEOBSERVERS.NET

12/11/2014

APOD: Philae Attempts Comet Nucleus Landing (2014 Nov 12)
Image Credit: ESA
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap141112.html

Explanation: Today humanity will make its first attempt to land a probe on the nucleus of a comet. As the day progresses, the Philae (fee-LAY) lander will separate from the Rosetta spacecraft and head down to the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Since the texture of the comet's surface is unknown and its surface gravity is surely low, Philae will then attempt to harpoon itself down, something that has never been done before. Featured here is an artist's illustration of dishwasher-sized Philae as it might look on Comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko's surface, along with explanation balloons detailing onboard scientific instruments. Many people on a blue planet across the Solar System will be eagerly awaiting news and updates. Whether Philae actually lands, whether it lands on a smooth patch, whether the harpoons take hold, and how far the robotic lander sinks into the surface should all become known as events unfold today.

http://www.esa.int

Starship Asterisk* • APOD Discussion Page
http://asterisk.apod.com/discuss_apod.php?date=141112

12/11/2014

Watch European Space Agency's Rosetta webcast on Livestream.com. Live webcast from ESA mission control, when Europe's Rosetta spacecraft dispatches the Philae lander to make the first-ever touchdown on a comet. Official hashtag:

12/11/2014

Good morning, for the big day of Rosetta Mission and ... getting towards ! Lander experts currently on ESA TV stage at our Space Operations Centre ! cc German Aerospace Center, DLR CNES Airbus www.esa.int/rosetta

15/10/2014

Next 19 Oct. 2014, we will see an extremely rare event: comet C/2013 A1 will pass extremely close to planet Mars, about 140.000 km from the center of the planet. At Virtual Telescope we will track this unusual couple around the time of the close approach, sharing images live, through our web TV, wit…

10/10/2014

Celebrate the Lunar Eclipse by reading this Haiku by Bob Eklund and photo by Paul Morgan. Enjoy!
Lunar Eclipse, October 2014

How bright the full moon!
Coming out of her eclipse,
Unhurt by shadow.

22/08/2014

Think photo opportunity at dawn on August 23, as the waning crescent moon swings close to the brilliant planets Venus and Jupiter as darkness ebbs to morning twilight.

22/08/2014

The Venus Express probe wrapped up its "aerobraking" move and entered a new, higher orbit late last month. It will continue to study Venus for several more months and then, as its fuel runs out, dip back into the planet's atmosphere for good.

21/08/2014

The solar system coalesced from a huge cloud of dust and gas that was isolated from the rest of the Milky Way galaxy for up to 30 million years before the sun's birth, a new study published online today (Aug. 7) in the journal Science suggests.

19/08/2014

APOD: Jupiter and Venus from Earth (2014 Aug 17)
Image Credit: Marek Nikodem (PPSAE)
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140817.html

Explanation: It was visible around the world. The sunset conjunction of Jupiter and Venus in 2012 was visible almost no matter where you lived on Earth. Anyone on the planet with a clear western horizon at sunset could see them. Pictured above in 2012, a creative photographer traveled away from the town lights of Szubin, Poland to image a near closest approach of the two planets. The bright planets were separated only by three degrees and his daughter striking a humorous pose. A faint red sunset still glowed in the background. Early tomorrow (Monday) morning, the two planets will pass even closer -- only 0.2 degrees apart as visible from some locations -- just before sunrise.

http://www.ozma.astronomia.pl/

Starship Asterisk* • APOD Discussion Page
http://asterisk.apod.com/discuss_apod.php?date=140817

16/07/2014

16/07/2014

APOD: The Moon Eclipses Saturn (2014 Jul 16)
Image Credit & Copyright: Carlos Di Nallo
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140716.html

Explanation: What happened to half of Saturn? Nothing other than Earth's Moon getting in the way. As pictured above on the far right, Saturn is partly eclipsed by a dark edge of a Moon itself only partly illuminated by the Sun. This year the orbits of the Moon and Saturn have led to an unusually high number of alignments of the ringed giant behind Earth's largest satellite. Technically termed an occultation, the above image captured one such photogenic juxtaposition from Buenos Aires, Argentina that occurred early last week. Visible to the unaided eye but best viewed with binoculars, there are still four more eclipses of Saturn by our Moon left in 2014. The next one will be on August 4 and visible from Australia, while the one after will occur on August 31 and be visible from western Africa at night but simultaneously from much of eastern North America during the day.

http://carlosdn-alfacentauri.blogspot.com.ar/

Starship Asterisk* • APOD Discussion Page
http://asterisk.apod.com/discuss_apod.php?date=140716

12/07/2014

APOD: SN 1006 Supernova Remnant (2014 Jul 12)
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Zolt Levay (STScI)
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140712.html

Explanation: A new star, likely the brightest supernova in recorded human history, lit up planet Earth's sky in the year 1006 AD. The expanding debris cloud from the stellar explosion, found in the southerly constellation of Lupus, still puts on a cosmic light show across the electromagnetic spectrum. In fact, this composite view includes X-ray data in blue from the Chandra Observatory, optical data in yellowish hues, and radio image data in red. Now known as the SN 1006 supernova remnant, the debris cloud appears to be about 60 light-years across and is understood to represent the remains of a white dwarf star. Part of a binary star system, the compact white dwarf gradually captured material from its companion star. The buildup in mass finally triggered a thermonuclear explosion that destroyed the dwarf star. Because the distance to the supernova remnant is about 7,000 light-years, that explosion actually happened 7,000 years before the light reached Earth in 1006. Shockwaves in the remnant accelerate particles to extreme energies and are thought to be a source of the mysterious cosmic rays.

http://www.nasa.gov/
http://www.spacetelescope.org/
http://www.stsci.edu/

Starship Asterisk* • APOD Discussion Page
http://asterisk.apod.com/discuss_apod.php?date=140712



http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2008/sn1006c/

Image Credit: X-ray (blue): NASA/CXC/Rutgers/G.Cassam-Chenaï, J.Hughes et al.; Radio (red): NRAO/AUI/NSF/GBT/VLA/Dyer, Maddalena & Cornwell; Optical (orange/yellow): Middlebury College/F.Winkler, NOAO/AURA/NSF/CTIO Schmidt & DSS

29/06/2014

One of the most beautiful sights in the heavens is the view of our own Milky Way from the inside.

29/06/2014

The new photos offer a new look at the Eagle nebula in infrared and X-ray light.

09/06/2014

A newly discovered asteroid nicknamed 'The Beast' will zip safely by Earth on Sunday (June 8). You can get a sneak preview of the 1,100-foot asteroid flyby today, June 5, in a Slooh community observatory webcast.

08/06/2014

NASA's next Curiosity-class rover blends old and new approaches to innovative tech.

08/06/2014

Astronomen haben in dieser Woche eine erweiterte Version des bekannten Hubble Ultra Deep Field vorgestellt. Bei Deep-Field-Aufnahmen wird ein kleiner Bereich am Himmel über einen lange Zeitraum anvisiert, so dass auch noch entfernte und sehr lichtschwache Galaxien sichtbar werden. Das Ultra Deep Fie…

04/06/2014

Mercury, Jupiter, Mars and Saturn are up at nightfall in early June. A fifth planet, Venus, rises in the east as darkness gives way to dawn. Charts, pics, info here.

04/06/2014

23/05/2014

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/bruce-betts/20140522-one-night-only-a-new-meteor.html

A new meteor shower, the Camelopardalids, will be peaking Friday night/Saturday morning (May 23/24). Especially if you are in North America, you are well positioned to see what may (or may not) be a spectacular show. In either case, scientists will learn about a comet’s history, and you can have a f…

12/05/2014

A planet and its moon align

Even though it may only be a lump of porous rock, Phobos isn’t shy about hogging the limelight in this sequence taken by ESA’s Mars Express. These three images show Phobos, the larger of the two martian moons, darting across the frame in front of Jupiter, visible as the pale dot in the ce…

18/04/2014

officially re-enters space with successful rocket launch

The Russian Soyuz-U rocket carrying EgyptSat-2 launched successfully from Kazakhstan on Wednesday. The Egyptian government hailed the moment as a great achievement and the start of new scientific and technological capabilities for the country.

EgyptSat-2 weighs 1,050 kilograms and was launched on behalf of Egypt's National Authority for remote Sensing and Space Sciences. The satellite is equipped with fixed solar arrays and X-band communications and is expected to be operational for at least 11 years.

The satellite will allow Egypt mapping abilities (for 'spying' and other mapping purposes), environmental monitoring and disaster management capabilities.

[PHOTO: The Soyuz-U rocket carrying EgyptSat-2]

18/04/2014

Throwback Thursday! On April 17, 1967, our Surveyor 3 spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., on a mission to the lunar surface. A little more than two years after it landed on the moon with the goal of paving the way for a future human mission, the Surveyor 3 spacecraft got a visit from Apollo 12 Commander Charles Conrad Jr. and astronaut Alan L. Bean, who snapped this photo on Nov. 20, 1969.

The Apollo 12 Lunar Module, visible in the background at right, landed about 600 feet from Surveyor 3 in the Ocean of Storms. The television camera and several other pieces were taken from Surveyor 3 and brought back to Earth for scientific examination. Here, Conrad examines the Surveyor's TV camera prior to detaching it. Astronaut Richard F. Gordon Jr. remained with the Apollo 12 Command and Service Modules (CSM) in lunar orbit while Conrad and Bean descended in the LM to explore the moon.

Image Credit: NASA

18/04/2014

http://www.nasa.gov/ames/kepler/nasas-kepler-discovers-first-earth-size-planet-in-the-habitable-zone-of-another-star/index.html #.U1Ech1WSySp

Using NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered the first Earth-size planet orbiting a star in the "habitable zone" -- the range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the surface of an orbiting planet.

30/01/2014

Today Black moon = 2nd new moon of the month

Today - January 30, 2014 - gives us the second of two supermoons to occur in a single calendar month. The first supermoon came on January 1.

03/01/2014

Watch the Quadrantid Meteor Shower on Jan. 3/4, one of the year's best meteor shower (for northern hemisphere) but one of the least-known too because of its sharp short peak which happens in often cloudy winter nights. Under dark skies 1 or 2 meteor can appear every minute near the peak, 19:30 UT Jan. 3. The shower radiant reaches high in the morning, best for east Asia this year on Jan. 4 morning (Jan. 3 morning for North America). Elsewhere in the world will see less meteor activity but still worth to watch if you are away from city lights and the sky is clear. More info: www.skyandtelescope.com/community/skyblog/observingblog/Quadrantid-Meteors-Ring-in-2014-237513901.html
www.news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/01/140102-meteor-shower-quadrantids-biggest-science-fireballs-space-2014/
Photo: Northern stars and a Quadrantid meteor from a bizarre natural wonder of Qeshm Island in the Persian Gulf. © Babak Tafreshi, www.twanight.org?ID=3003751

03/01/2014

small asteroid entered earth's atmosphere

This is only the second time that astronomers spotted an asteroid before it struck Earth's atmosphere. It underscores the need to be watching for these objects.

02/01/2014

Sky in January 2014

Stars and Planets in the Night Sky This Month

27/12/2013

http://earthsky.org/space/here-is-the-john-lennon-crater-on-mercury

Truman Capote has a crater on Mercury now, too. So does Enrico Caruso ... and seven other artists, musicians, painters and authors.

28/11/2013