AstroSwanny's

Carnival of Space 236 - Feb 10 2012

2012-02-10T21:32:00.021+11:00

Welcome to Carnival of Space 236!

What a webisode we have for you this week. Its been a busy week, so lets see if we can drag you away from your social media and blogs for a few minutes to check out what's going on in your community - Space and Astronomy.

Next Big Future explores propulsion systems this week. The key to Spacex reusable rockets, at least for the first stage. Its all about the price per pound, for the Falcon Heavy, that would mean a price per pound to orbit of less than $500."

Other alternatives include a water-electrolysis propulsion system for 3U CubeSats is proposed that could fill the gap in the available propulsion systems at this scale

NASA has a nuclear-propulsion project with a budget of US$3 million.

The Lithium Lorentz Force Accelerator (LiLFA) as one of the most promising candidates for planetary exploration and heavy payload orbit raising missions. It can have an exhaust velocity of 50 km/second and a thrust density of 100,000 newtons per square meter

In an interview with Sander Olson, fission propulsion advocate Tabitha Smith argues that fission rockets could be rapidly developed and become the enabling technology for opening up the solar system for human exploration. Tabitha is in charge of the Bifrost project.

The Cosmic Log
found skywatchers on Earth oohed and ahhed over the northern lights that were sparked by January's solar activity, but a new crop of videos makes it clear that the astronauts on the International Space Station had the best seats in the house.

Commercial space ventures are taking small steps toward giant achievements ranging from suborbital space flights to trips around the moon.

After struggling through some legal glitches, skydiver Felix Baumgartner and his team say they're back on track for a 120,000-foot jump that will break a record that's stood for 52 years and blaze a trail for future space adventurers.

Simostronomy reports that 88 years after it was initially discovered, Hubble's 1923 nova in the Andromeda galaxy has erupted again, making it one of a rare class of recurrent novae.

Discovery News takes us through a spaghetti diagram. OK, so it's not real spaghetti -- it's a computer visualization of the complex magnetic field that creates Earth's magnetosphere -- but it sure looks tangled.

Guest contributor Pat Galea discusses how a starship may transmit signals across the light-years between the stars.

The Urban Astronomer checks in on JAXA's announcement that they will be launching a successor to the embattled Hayabusa probe, with the same mission goals but hopefully using more reliable technology!

Emma from We're all in the Gutter outlines her plan for improving the popular TV show MasterChef with a technique commonly used in astronomy.

Links Through Space launches to the Moon which has been in all facet's of culture through out all the Civilisations on Earth and there is no doubt that it affects us in a way or another. Here is a documentary of the BBC that let us see how the Moon is so important to us in so many ways.

Gadi Eidelheit from the Venus Transit blog, describes why the moon brightness is so variable during a lunar month.

Vintage Space grabs a brush and describes a brief history of the paint scheme of space race rockets inspired by my recent introduction to the world of model building.

The Chandra Team are no "flash in the pan" a long term contributor to COS, report on a new study suggests mysterious X-ray flares caught by Chandra may be asteroids falling into the Milky Way's giant black hole.

Announcing the reboot of a long defunct blog: the Astronomy Word of the Week (AstroWoW). Starting with the letter 'A', this week's entry is brought to you by the word 'aberration'.

Starry Critters reports on Sea monsters, birds and mystic mountains hiding in this highly detailed infrared image of the star-making Carina Nebula from ESO’s Very Large Telescope.

For the A-Z of all things space ZME Science looks at the longest drought on record - 600 million years on Mars. Others have been playing with water droplets on the International space station. Water droplets orbiting a knitting needle - take a look!

Armagh Planetarium brings us the legend - centuries ago a Chinese official named Wan Hu attempted to visit the Moon. His spacecraft was a large wicker chair to which were fastened 47 large rockets. His underlings rushed forward to light the fuses then retreated. A moment later there was a mighty bang and flash accompanied by thick clouds of smoke. When the smoke had cleared, Wan Hu was gone without a trace. This story is repeated time and time again but is it true?

Finally here at AARTScope (below also) I cover one of the southern beauties that many of you eclipse hunters, planning a pilgrimage to Australia for the Solar Eclipse in November, will want to take a look at. The ESO released last week a new image of the Gabriela Mistral Nebula NGC 3324.

The Carnival of Space is a community of interest blog carnival bringing together the best and brightest Astronomy & Space Blogs at a single point in space and time (commonly referred to as a web address) each week. Previous episodes can be found here. If you run an astronomy or space science blog you can contact carnivalofspace @ gmail.com to be added to the editorial circulation list.

[Photo credits listed in the relevant articles]

The Southern Mystery of the Mistral

2012-02-06T21:26:00.009+11:00

Image Credit: ESO

Everyone loves a mystery, and this mystery involves star formation and the Nobel Prize winning Chilean Poet, Verschatse. When you look at this image, and the one below, NGC 3324 looks like mysterious cave, luring you closer to come in and have a look around.

One of the interesting aspects of astronomy is the distribution of the world's telescopes, many of which (along with the broader population of the planet) are northern hemisphere based. So the people of Chile were well qualified to play the "what does it look like" game and noticed that the dusty edge bore a stark resemblance to the profile of the Chilean Poet Daniel Verschatse and the name of the "Gabriela Mistral Nebula" seemed appropriate.

The stunning star forming region around Eta Carina is where NGC 3324 can be found - not far from the southern cross. For those from the north, especially those honored guests visiting us in November for the Solar eclipse, this stunning video will assist you to get your bearings.

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Video Credit: ESO/Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org)/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Music: John Dyson (from the album Moonwind)

The European Southern Observatory has just released a new image of NGC 3324. Utilizing the power of the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory (Chile), it reveals many dark features in NGC 3324.

The ESO describes this stunning region of Star formation as follows:

"Dust grains in these regions block out the light from the background glowing gas, creating shadowy, filigree features that add another layer of evocative structure to the rich vista."

[Not sure who wrote that but some Chilean wine company should sign them up to write their wine labels]

The ESO continues ....

"NGC 3324 is located in the southern constellation of Carina (The Keel, part of Jason’s ship the Argo) roughly 7500 light-years from Earth. It is on the northern outskirts of the chaotic environment of the Carina Nebula, which has been sculpted by many other pockets of star formation. A rich deposit of gas and dust in the NGC 3324 region fuelled a burst of starbirth there several millions of years ago and led to the creation of several hefty and very hot stars that are prominent in the new picture.

Stellar winds and intense radiation from these young stars have blown open a hollow in the surrounding gas and dust. This is most in evidence as the wall of material seen to the centre right of this image. The ultraviolet radiation from the hot young stars knocks electrons out of hydrogen atoms, which are then recaptured, leading to a characteristic crimson-coloured glow as the electrons cascade through the energy levels, showing the extent of the local diffuse gas. Other colours come from other elements, with the characteristic glow from doubly ionised oxygen making the central parts appear greenish-yellow".

NGC 3324, because of its proximity deep in the southern skies, has not been widely photographed by astronomers. Australian amateurs have previously turned their attention to this stunning target with long duration stacked exposures. Perhaps the finest example is Brad Moore's study of the Gabriel Mistral Nebula. Brad is the MD of iTelescope.net and is regularly sought after as a speaker for his astrophotography and remote telescope management skills.

Brad's image consists of 36 Hours of exposure time in narrowband - 8Hrs Oiii, 19Hrs Ha & 9Hrs Sii color mapped to RGB. It is a testament to the fact that so long as you have the field of view even a 12.5 inch amateur scope can pull in the photons if you are patient enough.
Image Credit: Gabriela Mistral Nebula - Brad Moore

What a beautiful part of the universe - it doesn't take a Nobel Prize to know that's a cave I'd love to hide in!

The year 2012 marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the European Southern Observatory (ESO). ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive astronomical observatory. It is supported by 15 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor.

433 Eros at Opposition - Share the love!

2012-02-01T17:22:00.008+11:00

There is a great Citizen science initiative going on with calculation of the "Parallax View" of 433 Eros at opposition from different places on earth to help re-measure the size of the solar system.

See Dr Pamela Gay's new Cosmoquest website for details.

Also you can submit your own measurements (similar to the above) here.

Image 1: 433 Eros from Nerpio in Spain at 02:58 UTC.

Sadly Spain and New Mexico are so far apart there is a bit more than parallax at work here....the second image is from Observatory H06 some 4 hours later, and Eros has also moved in those 4 hrs. The data is still useful as the calculations for the project will take that into account.

Note the plate scale is different due to the different focal lengths and plate scale of the two telescopes. Also I have rotated the New Mexico image 90 degrees to make the position angle of the image roughly the same.
Image 2: 433 Eros from New Mexico at 06:07 UTC.

More planets than stars in our Milky Way!

2012-01-10T18:50:00.015+11:00

Artwork: ESO/M. Kornmesser

When you look at the night sky, from your favorite camping spot [dark sky site], its always amazing to see the myriad of stars painting the night sky.

According to a study released in the journal Nature tomorrow, there are actually more planets than stars in the Milky Way, our home galaxy. Come again? - That's right the ratio of planets to stars is thought to be greater than 1.

Most readers would be aware that the Kepler space mission has detected over 1600 exoplanet candidates so far, but over the past 16 years, astronomers have detected more than 700 (other) confirmed exoplanets and have started to probe the spectra and atmospheres of these worlds. While studying the properties of individual exoplanets is undeniably valuable, a much more basic question remains: how commonplace are planets in the Milky Way?

Arnaud Cassan (Institut dʼAstrophysique de Paris), lead author of the Nature paper, explains: "We have searched for evidence for exoplanets in six years of microlensing observations. Remarkably, these data show that planets are more common than stars in our galaxy. We also found that lighter planets, such as super-Earths or cool Neptunes, must be more common than heavier ones."

There are three methods for detecting exoplanets: 1)A spectroscopic radial velocity measurement 2)Direct observation of a transit where the planet moves in front of the parent star and 3)Microlensing.

Illustration: WASP 8b transits in a retrograde orbit - ESO/L. Calçada

According to the European Southern Observatory: "Microlensing is a very powerful tool, with the potential to detect exoplanets that could never be found any other way. But a very rare chance alignment of a background and lensing star is required for a microlensing event to be seen at all. And, to spot a planet during an event, an additional chance alignment of the planet’s orbit is also needed".

Illustration: Microlensing lightcurve of EROS-BLG-2000-5 - ESO

So these events are more difficult to detect, but a very valuable detection method.

Jean-Philippe Beaulieu (Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris), leader of the PLANET collaboration [Probing Lensing Anomalies NETwork] adds: "The PLANET collaboration was established to follow up promising microlensing events with a round-the-world network of telescopes located in the southern hemisphere, from Australia and South Africa to Chile. ESO telescopes contributed greatly to these surveys.”

In the six year study the astronomers made three successful detections then combined the information with seven additional detections from earlier work, as well as the huge numbers of non-detections in the six year's worth of data. Non-detections are just as important for the statistical analysis and are much more numerous. The conclusion was that one in six of the stars studied hosts a planet of similar mass to Jupiter, half have Neptune-mass planets and two thirds have super-Earths. The survey was sensitive to planets between 75 million kilometres and 1.5 billion kilometres from their stars. In the Solar System this range would include all the planets from Venus to Saturn and with masses ranging from five times the Earth up to ten times Jupiter.

Artwork: ESO

Combining the results suggests strongly that the average number of planets around a star is greater than one. They are the rule rather than the exception.

This result is consistent with some of the early results already coming out of the Kepler Program where already scientists are finding super earths more common than first thought. One of the core goals of the Kepler program is to determine the number of earth sized planets in our galaxy, so it will be interesting to see, as more data becomes available from Kepler, how these studies compare.

“We used to think that the Earth might be unique in our galaxy. But now it seems that there are literally billions of planets with masses similar to Earth orbiting stars in the Milky Way,” concludes Daniel Kubas, co-lead author of the paper.

Image Credit: La Silla Observatory - ESO/Z. Bardon (www.bardon.cz)

More than half of the data from the PLANET survey used in this study came from the Danish 1.54-metre telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory.

The year 2012 marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the European Southern Observatory (ESO). ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive astronomical observatory.

So.... when you wish upon a star, you can also wish upon "1.n planets" as well ;-)

The calculation of the number of planets in the Milky Way continues!

Acknowledgements:
This research was presented in a paper, “One or more bound planets per Milky Way star from microlensing observations”, by A. Cassan et al., to appear in the 12 January issue of the journal Nature. The team is composed of A. Cassan (Institut dʼAstrophysique de Paris, France [IAP]; ESO), D. Kubas (IAP), J.-P. Beaulieu (IAP), M. Dominik (University of St Andrews, United Kingdom), K. Horne (University of St Andrews), J. Greenhill (University of Tasmania, Australia), J. Wambsganss (Heidelberg University, Germany), J. Menzies (South African Astronomical Observatory), A. Williams (Perth Observatory, Australia), U. G. Jørgensen (Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark), A. Udalski (Warsaw University Observatory, Poland), M. D. Albrow (University of Canterbury, New Zealand), D. P. Bennett (University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, USA), V. Batista (IAP), S. Brillant (ESO), J. A. R. Caldwell (McDonald Observatory, Fort Davis, USA), A. Cole (University of Tasmania), Ch. Coutures (IAP), K. Cook (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, USA), S. Dieters (University of Tasmania), D. Dominis Prester (University of Rijeka, Croatia), J. Donatowicz (Technical University of Vienna, Austria), P. Fouqué (Université de Toulouse, France), K. Hill (University of Tasmania), N. Kains (ESO), S. Kane (NASA Exoplanet Science Institute, Caltech, USA), J.-B. Marquette (IAP), K. R. Pollard (University of Canterbury, New Zealand), K. C. Sahu (STScI, Baltimore, USA), C. Vinter (Niels Bohr Institute), D. Warren (University of Tasmania), B. Watson (University of Tasmania), M. Zub (Heidelberg University), T. Sumi (Nagoya University, Japan), M. K. Szymański (Warsaw University Observatory), M. Kubiak (Warsaw University Observatory), R. Poleski (Warsaw University Observatory), I. Soszynski (Warsaw University Observatory), K. Ulaczyk (Warsaw University Observatory), G. Pietrzyński (Warsaw University Observatory), Ł. Wyrzykowski (Warsaw University Observatory).

LoveJOY to the world - Astronomers get their christmas present!

2011-12-17T12:18:00.005+11:00

Wow!

I have been following this comet for a couple of weeks now, ever since Dec 2nd, when Terry Lovejoy had his confirmation and it was excitedly announced that the humble astronomer from Australia's Gold Coast had become the first observer to discover a comet from a Space Based telescope and an earth based telescope. I'd love to hang that plaque on my wall!

Comet Lovejoy is one of the largest Kreutz class (Sungrazing) comet detected since the SOHO program began, completed perihelion on December 16th and was not expected to survive its passage around the sun at 1.8 Solar radii.

Oooops....no one told Comet Lovejoy it was supposed to conk out near the sun. It has surprised everyone by surviving the close pass and stunning the SOHO team with a birthday present.

As the saying goes "16 and never been kissed" - December the 2nd was the 16th birthday of the SOHO mission and what better way to celebrate than Lovejoy "kissing" the sun and emerging from the other side. Sungrazing comets are so-called because they pass so close to the sun that they rarely survive the passage. Multiple satellite instruments have picked up the comet exiting from behind the sun with its tail gyrating wildly in the solar wind. Latest Lasco instrument photos now show it moving away, still very bright and a partially visible tail that is still mostly obscured by the pixel bleed from the CCD camera.

Comet Lovejoy has lived up to its expectations as being one of the brightest Kreutz Class (Sungrazing) comets of all time.

These images following the passage through the FOV of the LASCO C3 camera and follows the comet's path for 80 hours at approx one hour per half second.

There are three things you really must look at:
1)How long the dust tail persists on the inbound path before is is blown away by the solar wind
2)How the tail swings around after perihelion displaying a prominent Ion Tail (the straight one) that was barely visible before perihelion
3)How prominent the Coma is after perihelion.

There are a number of astronomers scratching their heads today - but generally Lovejoy has followed the basic rules of comets:
1) No two are the same
2) they are highly unpredictable in terms of brightness

Much will be learnt from this one as the space based telescopes have very high resolution images in a variety of spectra.

In the top right hand corner you can also see some meteors apparently emerging from a radiant, the Geminid show is currently in play, but I am unsure if it is this shower that can be seen.

It a little early yet to claim it as a naked eye comet during the Christmas festive season, we hope so, as the world could use a little more Joy ....or LoveJOY ;-) at the moment.

Merry Christmas!

Thanks to the SOHO Team for making the data available.
"The SOHO/LASCO data used here are produced by a consortium of the Naval Research Laboratory (USA), Max-Planck-Institut fuer Aeronomie (Germany), Laboratoire d'Astronomie (France), and the University of Birmingham (UK). SOHO is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA."

Comet Lovejoy's sunny death dive! Strike that - It lives on!

2011-12-16T11:01:00.006+11:00

UPDATE: 2011/12/16 11:00 UTC

Oooops....no one told Comet Lovejoy it was supposed to conk out near the sun. It has surprised everyone by surviving the close pass and stunning the SOHO team with their birthday present.

As the saying goes "16 and never been kissed" December the 2nd was the 16th birthday of the SOHO mission and what better way to celebrate than Lovejoy "kissing" the sun and emerging from the other side. Sungrazing comets are so-called because they pass so close to the sun that they rarely survive the passage. Multiple satellite instruments have picked up the comet exiting from behind the sun with its tail gyrating wildly in the solar wind. Latest Lasco instrument photos now show it moving away, still very bright and a partially visible tail that is still mostly obscured by the pixel bleed from the CCD camera.

Comet Lovejoy has lived up to its expectations of being one of the brightest Kreutz Class (Sungrazing) comets of all time.

Blazing at mag -3 and out of view for all "earthbound" observers, it is expected to cease to exist sometime in the next 12-18 hours as it approaches within 1.8 Solar radii.

This spectacular sequence from the LASCO C3 instrument on the SOHO observatory records the final death plunge. Note the horizontal artifact is due to the brightness of the coma which overloads the well count of the CCD camera causing pixel bleed.

In the highly unlikely event that the comet does make it round the sun it will be even more news worthy!

"The SOHO/LASCO data used here are produced by a consortium of the Naval Research Laboratory (USA), Max-Planck-Institut fuer Aeronomie (Germany), Laboratoire d'Astronomie (France), and the University of Birmingham (UK). SOHO is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA."

UPDATE: Lovejoy appears to have survived its passage, scientists noting with interest the presence of an Ion Tail in a addition to the dust tail, this has apparently not been seen before in a Kreutz Class comet. SOHO website and NASA having been live blogging and its a little early to know yet if we are going to get a great Christmas comet.

FS Aur is back!

2011-11-04T23:09:00.004+11:00

Well, that highly erratic variable cataclysmic variable star FS Aurigae (FS Aur) is back in season and has not disappointed so far with two great outbursts already.

The quiescent duration between outbursts does seem a bit longer than the previous season - so far, but as we saw in the last northern winter, it was prone to springing a few surprises.

More on this soon, Vitaly has a nice slide deck now which he presented at a conference recently.

Regards
Peter

A picture says a thousand words

2011-10-13T22:18:00.002+11:00

On my way to the AAVSO Centenary Meeting, I took a little side trip....not really much more to add than that!!! After taking more than a thousand images, I finally got to visit my scope.

Carnival of Space 218

2011-10-08T08:49:00.016+11:00

Photo: - Jekert Guapo

Yes its that regular event that comes around once a week which has a webpage hit count that resembles a Cataclysmic Variable Star's light curve....or perhaps a crazy roller coaster.

CARNIVAL OF SPACE!!!! .....and this is a bumper issue.

So Welcome! This week I am live blogging from the AAVSO's Centenary Meeting, celebrating an amazing 100 Years of variable star observations from an incredible organization of dedicated amateur and professional astronomers who have collected and archived 20.7 Million observations (as of yesterday afternoon) since 1911. I cover this event in more depth (below) in my Blog, but just let me share with you this incredible video of the 100 year light curve of SS Cygni.

Its Carnival Time!

Super Novae Buffet!

After the past month's supernova excitement, Laura Chomiuk discusses how Pan-STARRS is shedding light on a new, ultra-luminous type of supernova.

Gianluigi at Doc Madhatten Blog traces the history of supernova research. Starting from the supernovae of Brahe and Galilei, to describe the importance of the supernovae in astronomy research and to tell the Nobel Prize in Physics 2011.
On a side note congratulations to my fellow Australian Brian Schmidt (and Riess & Perlmutter) for the recognition this week from the Nobel committee. Aussie, Aussie Aussie!!!.....ah sorry you have probably heard that too many times in all the wrong places already.

On the same topic - the Minute Physics Channel Guest narrator Sean Carroll of Caltech describes dark energy and the acceleration of the universe, the discovery of which was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics on October 4th.

Space Mission Update!

Riofrio Space Time Blog reports on the October 4 anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, an event that affected humanity in ways too numerous to count. Replicas of Sputnik hang in museums like the National Air and Space Museum. At San Francisco's Beat Museum we hear a fascinating tale, that pieces of Sputnik may have been recovered.

At the Weirdwarp Blog - Space Expedition Curacao plans to fly space tourists on sub-orbital trips starting in 2014 at about half the price of Virgin Galactic. Check the safety instructions on the card in the back of the seat here.

Last week, scientists announced findings based on data from the SPICAM spectrometer onboard ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft. Ray Sander's on Universe Today Blog discusses the findings reported in Science by Maltagliati et al (2011), reveal that the Martian atmosphere is super-saturated with water vapor.

Beyond Apollo Blog discusses what self-sufficiency in outer space might look like. In a paper presented in October 1989 at the 40th Congress of the International Astronautical Federation, two veteran space scientists proposed a 10-year program aimed at establishing a self-sufficient science outpost that would serve as testbed for space settlements.

The Urban Astronomer reports on data released by NEOWISE shows that there are fewer mid-sized asteroids in near-Earth orbit than we perviously thought. This means that the risk of a city-busting impact are lower than we thought. Not that that's any reason to become complacent!

With gold at record prices, find your own nuggets and dig for gold in the Chandra archive.

Over at BigThink.com Dr. Kaku addresses a question posed by Steven Lee Spall: Can we build a space elevator?

Space Coalition is running a competition - Dream about space? Make a video and enter to win an iPad 2. The Coalition for Space Exploration is hosting this video/blogging contest.

Vintage Space looks at what really killed the Dyna-Soar: a brief history covering its roots, life, and eventual cancellation. That might be a different Dinosaur to what you're thinking ;-)

Finally in Mission Update a call to action from Habitation Intention explaining how the Apollo age was not the age we where most tempted to quit space exploration, but now is.

Telescopes!
ALMA is up and running!
Image: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/W. Garnier (ALMA)

Weird Warp opens our coverage of a new telescope starting to look at the universe. ALMA is the most powerful millimetre/submillimetre wavelength telescope in the world. These are longer wavelengths roughly about 1000 times longer than visible light wavelengths. Using these wavelengths ALMA allows astronomers to study really cold objects in the universe such as dense clouds of cosmic dust and gas from which stars and planets form as well as distant objects in the early universe.

ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO). Visible light image: the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope

Discovery News also covers the first image from the ALMA array.

Bente from Planet Bye also features a number of the first light images.

Credit: NRAO/AUI and J. Hibbard

Armagh Planet visits the Paranal site of European Southern Observatory. Well, if you have ever seen James Bond movie Quantum of Solace then you will have seen a glimpse of this amazing facility! If it’s good enough for Bond, then it must be quite a place, Armagh Planet updates us on exactly what it is, where it is, and what work is done there! (A LOT!)

Solar System(s)!
Next Big Future looks at possible causes of CMEs including whether a comet may have caused a coronal mass ejection. This also relates to an article form Jan,2010 at nextbigfuture which examined the future threat of man made solar explosions causing a super massive coronal mass ejection.

Smaller Questions examines Kepler trends and finds it turns out, Earth-sized planets in habitable zones around low-mass stars are not as rare as Kepler initially led astronomers to believe (not Kepler the guy--he's dead--but Kepler the exoplanet-scouting satellite).

Astronomy Media!
The Space Show: welcomes Dr. David Whitehouse of the UK, the world’s most cited science journalist, to the show to discuss science and space journalism, space policy in the UK, the U.S. and much more.

PortaltotheUniverse is where the whole space community comes together in one place; connect your blogs now for live feeds of your blogs into the Astronomy Community.

Big Think discusses career opportunities in the 21st Century. In this video, Musk describes how he has come to recognize opportunities as an entrepreneur in the space industry, which is one of the core skills necessary for success in the 21st century.

So that is it for Carnival 218! Thanks for dropping by AARTSCOPE where our mission is to - "create the sense of anticipation and discovery that keeps us asking questions".

I leave you with my unique, personal tribute to the AAVSO's 100 years of service to the Astronomy Community!

The Carnival of Space is a community of interest blog carnival bringing together the best and brightest Astronomy & Space Blogs at a single point in space and time (commonly referred to as a web address) each week. Previous episodes can be found here. If you run an astronomy or space science blog you can contact carnivalofspace @ gmail.com to be added to the editorial circulation list.

For a guide on how to prepare an episode of Carnival of Space Habitation Intention has produced a GDoc as a template guide.

AAVSO Centenary Meeting

2011-10-07T05:31:00.007+11:00

Legacy, what is it, the heritage you create for those that follow may well be one way of looking at it. The AAVSO's legacy and history is legendary. Today I met with some of those legends, and heros of the AAVSO for the first time, although I have worked with a number of them for a few years already without having ever met them.

The first day of the AAVSO meeting kicked of with the official opening of the new headquarters, and the dedication of the Thomas and Anna Faye Williams archives and Dorrit Hoffleit conference room. What an amazing day!

The ribbon cutting ceremony used a large pair of scissors that were specially made to cut up the original star charts by hand after they were printed.

I heard stories from Charles Scovil who described the first star charts hand drawn on transparent linen with India Ink before being etched by a unique process that involved cynide and would surely not be legal today......amazing. We are talking pre-Xerox days.

Photo: Gerry Samolyk showed off some of his original charts

Charles Alcock from the Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics gave a fascinating keynote on the history and the future of Variable Star Astronomy, where he posed the question are all stars variable if your SNR is good enough?

Perhaps that question will be answered by those who dig up the 50 Year Time Capsule that we prepared for burial. Yes, thats right a copy of the book Advancing Variable Star Astronomy was signed by all attendees with some even writing down messages for their kids. A number of the leaders of the AAVSO wrote personal reflections and questions we posed to see if they have been answered by the next generation of AAVSO members who will open the time capsule in the October meeting 2061.

By far the highlight for me was the 100 year light curve of SS Cygni that circled the walls of the Dorrit Hoffleit Conference room. Incredible - the worlds longest lightcurve with 100 years of observations.

No birthday would be complete without cake and ice cream, and so we caught up, shared stories, met our heros, and compared notes on different observing campaigns.

HAPPY 100th Birthday AAVSO !!!!!!

Become part of the next century's activity and join the AAVSO today!

100 Years of Astronomy - Congrats AAVSO!!!

2011-09-28T22:34:00.004+10:00

This is my personal tribute to the AAVSO, the legacy of an incredible organization, the history and the membership.

Happy 100th Anniversary - See you in Woburn!

Yes we are coming to America.....

Transient Nova in Scorpius

2011-09-10T09:58:00.020+10:00

There was a bit of excitement this week when John Seach set up his camera gear and identified a Transient at magnitude of 9.8 on September 6.37 UT at 16:36:43 -41:32:46 and the AAVSO fired out an Alert.

The notification was posted on the CBAT (Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams) Transient Object Confirmation Page

However, it quickly became apparent that the Japanese researcher Nakamura also posted a Transient event at 16 36 44.40 -41 32 34.0 (about 12 pixels away) and noted that the accuracy residuals were within 30" (arcsecs).

Southern observers starved of attention with all the excitement around "northern hemisphere only" SN 2011fe, were quickly on the job. With Ernesto Guido, Nick Howes and Giovanni Sostero on the Faulkes Telescope and Seiichiro Kiyota on Global-Rent-a-scope's G9 telescope between them they confirmed the "halfway mark" at 16:36:44 -41:32:37. By about 10pm (local)Sept 07 there was quite a flurry of telescope activity, and I grabbed some photos and data as well and recorded the object at 10.4 in the V Johnson filter.

All subsequent data has been tied to Nakamura's CBAT telegram and a formal announcement is being constructed. [Formal Release Sun 11 Sept 09:07 UTC - a very detailed document, the object is to be reported as Nova Sco 2011 No. 2 in all observations to AAVSO]

(Note: not all of the above are southern observers ;-) but they visit so frequently we give them honorary southern hemisphere citizenship)

So we have a bright transient in the Southern Hemisphere for all those who are missing out on SN 2011fe action in the north.

The weather itself has been a bit transient so I was unable to get additional data on the 8th. The AAVSO are collating reports and working with CBAT and will post some details shortly.

Preliminary analysis suggests that it is a typical Fe II type Nova. Its important to note that Fe here refers to the presence of strong Fe Lines in the spectra and has nothing to do with the naming convention of the recent Supernova 2011fe.

Still its nice to have our own "Fe" to chase in the southern hemisphere.

Type Fe II Nova's are associated with sudden interstellar reddening.

Stars and Stripes - Supernova and Comet Garradd

2011-09-02T22:21:00.010+10:00

Two of the great great favorites of amateur astronomers are Comets and Supernova, Both are stunning all this week, with Garradd and 2011fe now both in reach of binoculars and small telescopes.

In a very busy week, I managed to nab a couple of shots of Comet Garradd and run them through Maxim DL and Photoshop.

A pretty good result, promising to be the best comet of the year.

You can follow some regular updates over at GRAS.

Its also been an amazing week in M101 with a Supernova on the 23rd now pushing magnitude 10.5 and nearing its maxima, the rate of brightening seems to have slowed, I'm expecting it will top out around 10.3m.

This was the shot in the V Johnson filter today with the data submitted to the AAVSO. Over 600 observations from 73 observers now make up the most remarkable light curve ever thanks to the early detection by the Palomar Transient Factory.

M101 is only visible from the Northern Hemisphere, so you'll have to enjoy SN2011fe from here.

Latest Aircraft Contrail Meteor Hoax, Cusco, Peru

2011-08-27T22:13:00.013+10:00

CBS is carrying footage of a supposed Meteor streaking across the skies of Cusco, Peru.

Its great footage, but its not a meteor and its not setting fire to the forests in Peru as is being suggested by other sites.

Its all about angles and perspectives, and reflected sunlight.

Contrails are created by aircraft traveling at cruising altitude and causing the moisture in the atmosphere to condense into a denser state, whereby the light reflects off them, lighting them up where they can be seen for many miles.

We have all seen them, but at dawn and dusk the angle of the sun is very low and this is when they light up and look like what you see in this footage.

Lets pay some credit here, it is really interesting footage and very spectacular, but its a jumbo jet.

Hohmann Transfer website regularly collects images of illuminated contrails and I made my own contribution to their collection back in 2005.

In this photo below you can see three such contrails in the one photo. I was fly fishing at dusk about 30-40 klms east of the main flight path between Brisbane and Melbourne.

As someone who has personally seen a bolide travel across 30% the entire sky and cross the horizon line in less than five seconds, any thing that you can photograph for that long that hasn't moved much is traveling pretty slowly (by comparison).

So thanks for the great footage, but lets not get too over excited.

The Lion King!

2011-08-10T20:23:00.003+10:00

Image Credit: Oleg Maliy/ESO
Just waiting for an Elton John sound track, this 35 million light year distant galaxy, is the best of the pride....... in the constellation Leo. See I was getting around to the Lion thing....or should I say king.

At 50 lights years across NGC 3521 is quite bright but was not included in Messier's list, even though it was the same brightness as others included in his list compiled in the 1700s.

Oleg Maliy, who participated ESO’s Hidden Treasures 2010 competition, selected the data from the FORS1 instrument on ESO’s VLT at the Paranal Observatory in Chile that were used to create this dramatic image. Exposures taken through three different filters that passed blue light (coloured blue), yellow/green light (coloured green), and near-infrared light (coloured red) have been combined to make this picture. The total exposure times were 300 seconds per filter. Oleg’s image of NGC 3521 was a highly ranked entry in the competition, which attracted almost 100 entries.

Image Credit: Iztok Boncina/ESO

The most distinctive features of the bright galaxy NGC 3521 are its long spiral arms that are dotted with star-forming regions and interspersed with veins of dust. The arms are rather irregular and patchy, making NGC 3521 a typical example of a flocculent spiral galaxy. These galaxies have “fluffy” spiral arms that contrast with the sweeping arms of grand-design spirals such as the famous Whirlpool galaxy or M 51.

Image Credit: ESO/H.Zodet

This view of the FORS1 astronomical instrument, installed at the Cassegrain focus of UT1. It was mounted in September 1998 and has since produced a long series of excellent observations, both images and spectra. Some of these have resulted in spectacular views of astronomical objects, cf., e.g., ESO Press Photos eso9846 and ESO Press Photos eso9857. The second FORS1 commissioning phase was carried out in late December 1998.

ESO's innovation in providing access to archival photos for amateurs has been a feature of their brilliant outreach program, that makes them, today, the Lion Kings.

ESO, the European Southern Observatory, is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive astronomical observatory. It is supported by 15 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world’s most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes.

Comet Garradd - Color Photo

2011-08-04T23:53:00.004+10:00

So here it is, its taken a few nights to process the color data, I was a little hard on the processing on my last attempt. It takes time to do a good quality color photo, and get the colors right and the stars nice as well. I am pretty happy with this ...but its left me thinking I really should have gone to the advanced imaging conference on the Gold Coast a couple of weekends back.

Here is another picture of the "spectrum"....well kind of....its the RGB image stacked for the stars -with the comet moving. It consists of 6x120 sec images in each color.

Enjoy.....Garradd will be around for a while yet and will be a real treat!

And finally the movie version.

Clear Skies!
Peter

Comet Garradd

2011-08-02T23:50:00.005+10:00

Here is today's photo of Comet Garradd. This shot is 20 Min exposure in the luminance channel and is most interesting as its passing a very tiny galaxy, and looks a pretty picture!

Finally the weather cleared and I got the nice color data I was after. The comet is moving quite swiftly at the moment and working up a stunning full color image is pretty hard work.

Garradd Lights Up!

2011-07-24T14:25:00.007+10:00

Comet Garradd C/2009 P1 is making nice progress towards its perihelion (closest approach to the sun) on Dec 23rd. Its a lovely comet and should brighten further of the coming months and has the best chance of becoming our next "naked eye" comet. I hope to have some better images soon.

It had a nice little double tail going about a week ago, but that seems to have swung away from us a little. My attempt to get a nice full color version was foiled by cloud knocking out the blue channel on the 24th, so I added some shorter luminance into the Blue channel. [Below]

This image, is 600sec Red, 600 secs Green and 360 secs Lum ....with comets you kind of need to get it all in one night to match it up with the background stars. I am playing with a new technique to process the stars and the comet seperately in two different layers and this can be quite tricky....and when you are missing the blue channel - I'll reset and try again another night.

However for now the image is stacked for movement of the comet against the background stars, which appear in each color channel. Comet Garradd is currently around magnitude 8.5 (according to other observers, as I haven't done any photometery on it).

UPDATE:29th July.

I finally got back to try and grab the blue channel that I missed the other night.
You actually have to start again, as the stars of course, will be in a different place. The Weather foiled me again so I jumped on board our Scope in Nerpio Spain, G17, and grabbed another color run. Here I have 40 Mins of RGB stacked for movement of the comet. G17 also has a tighter FOV so the Coma is larger here.

Image: Comet Garradd from Nerpio, Spain. 29th July 2011. (c)P.Lake

Now, thats where the fun really starts. Once you have good color you have to then create a superb image by seperating out the background stars from the Comet itself. So you do two stacks 1) a color combine in Maxim DL stacked for the coma of the comet and 2) another color combine stack of the same frames but stacked to the stars (with the comet trailed.

Then you use Photoshop>Filter>Noise>Dust and scratches (increase the Pixels to suit) and remove the trailed stars from the Comet Stack, Then use Photoshop>Select>color range to pick out (only) the Stars (and the Comet Coma) and copy to another layer, erase the Coma then add the two separate layers back together. I put the Stars on top (as they are the only thing in that layer, the comet next in its starless sky and then add a solid black background underneath and back the the opacity of the comet layer off by about 5-8% just to soften it up a little, and assist the layers to blend.

If you have done well you should have a stunning comet, and individual star colors that give real depth to the photo.

Its an amazing result, you can then treat each layer with curves and levels to make sure you have it just right.

Enjoy!

You can take your own photo here.

Fiction comes to life, as Dawn approaches orbit around Vesta

2011-07-16T10:35:00.007+10:00

Image Credit: Gregory J. Whiffen JPL

I'm not sure what is more impressive - the scientific feat, or the sense of humor with which it has been carried out.

This excellent (and funny) video outlines the development of the Dawn mission control center and the use of an Ion Drive in the mission, and where the Ion drives first ....ah... connects with our scientific cultural heritage. [Star Trek Movies]
The actual concept of ion propulsion was first put to paper in 1911 by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky with Harold Kaufman testing the first prototype drive in 1959 after decades of research. Ion Drives have been used in a number of recent missions including Deep Space 1 and Hayabusa.

Image Credit: NASA JPL Dawn Mission

Chief Engineer Marc Rayman like all good Trekkies keeps a "ship's log". On July 13th Dawn was about 23,000 kilometers (14,000 miles) from Vesta, and approaching it at 37 meters per second (83 mph). Dawn remains on course as it continues ion thrusting to reach its first science orbit this weekend.

The Dawn spacecraft, on its way to Vesta then Ceres, will be the first spacecraft to enter an orbit around a main belt asteroid, it carries a scientific payload, with four experiments.

- Framing camera for guidance
- Infrared and visual spectrometer
- Gamma ray and Neutron spectrometer
- Gravity science

Mission controllers are looking for return of the following data:

1) Images of Vesta and Ceres in three colors and black and white

2) Full surface with mapping spectrometer in three bands, 0.35 to 0.9 micron, 0.8 to 2.5 micron and 2.4 to 5.0 micron

3) Neutron and gamma ray spectra to produce maps of the surface elemental composition of each asteroid, including the abundance of major rock-forming elements (O, Mg, Al, Si, Ca, Ti, and Fe), trace elements (Gd and Sm), long-lived radioactive elements (K, Th, and U), and light elements such as H, C, and N, which are the major constituents of ices.

4) Radio tracking to determine mass, gravity field, principal axes, rotational axis and moments of inertia.

Scientists hope to learn about the makeup and composition of main belt asteroids, study their elements, identify any metals, trace elements and ice.

Recently main belt asteroid Scheila exhibited a brief cometary outburst (photos here) providing further possible evidence that some asteroids could carry significant amounts of ice.

The ten Kilogram GRaND - Gamma Ray and Neutron Spectrograph, perhaps the most complex of the instruments, will detect what radiates off the asteroid as it is hit by cosmic waves. The Mission "Splat Diagram" explains the different forms of radiation that are emitted and how this is captured by the instrument.

Based on the data the mission controllers hope to learn more about how the asteroids in the belt were formed.

Image: Data control interface for Ion Drive.

The data could also be also very useful, it we ever decide to paint an asteroid in an attempt to divert its path over a number of years. It would be good to know which color to use, and any additives. ;-)

Congratulations once again to the NASA JPL team.

UPDATE: July 16. Dawn has successfully entered orbit around Vesta.

Comet C/2009 P1 Garrad

2011-07-15T16:42:00.004+10:00

Comet Garrad C/2009 P1 photographed today moving trough Pisces and Aquarius. It should be a real treat after the full moon passes.

This is a single 300 sec image I took with a Clear filter on GRAS' 17 Inch Planewave in Spain.

Garrad promises to be one of the best of the comets of the year, and already is brighter than Comet Elenin which is not currently visible to northern hemisphere viewers.

Blondes in Space!

2011-07-04T22:49:00.017+10:00

Image: The APEX Telescope, Chajnantor, Chile. Credit: J. Vieira/APEX (MPIfR/ESO/OSO)

I am going to have so much fun with this, and as a blogger, my role is to make the science "fun and engaging" for a whole new generation of non-sciency people!

I could have gone with any of:-

Blondes in Space!
Hair Salon at the end of the universe!
So long and thanks for all the perms!
The hairdresser's guide to the galaxy!

Photo Credit: Newfreephotos.com

Ah.....where do I start.

Reece Witherspoon in Legally Blonde, showed us how important it was, - you can win lawsuits with a good knowledge of haircare products.

Australian cricketers know they are about to loose the Ashes when the English cricketers start spending more money on hydrogen peroxide - yes those blonde tips. There is a mathematical relationship between confidence and expenditure on hydrogen peroxide.

However, life on this planet depends not just on a good stylist, hydrogen peroxide also plays a key role in the chemistry of water and ozone in our planet’s atmosphere. Ozone protects us from harmful radiation, but can fluctuate in our upper atmosphere and this chemistry is widely studied here on earth. So want about Space - is it out there?

Submillimetre astronomy is a relatively unexplored frontier in astronomy and reveals a Universe that cannot be seen in the more familiar visible or infrared light. It is ideal for studying the "cold Universe": light at these wavelengths shines from vast cold clouds in interstellar space, at temperatures only a few tens of degrees above absolute zero.

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) today announced that astronomers had detected Hydrogen Peroxide - H2O2 in a gas cloud in our own galaxy, near the naked eye star, Rho Ophiuchi in Ophiuchus. This is a beautiful area of the night sky instantly recognizable by keen astro-photographers.

Image Credit: ESO/S. Guisard (www.eso.org/~sguisard)

How did they do that - flux capacitor hooked up to a hair dryer?

An international team of astronomers made the discovery with the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment telescope (APEX), situated on the 5000-metre-high Chajnantor plateau in the Chilean Andes. They observed a region in our galaxy close to the star Rho Ophiuchi, about 400 light-years away. The region contains very cold (around -250 degrees Celsius), dense clouds of cosmic gas and dust, in which new stars are being born. The clouds are mostly made of hydrogen, but contain traces of other chemicals, and are prime targets for astronomers hunting for molecules in space. Telescopes such as APEX, which make observations of light at millimetre- and submillimetre-wavelengths, are ideal for detecting the signals from these molecules.

Image Credits: ESO, IAU and Sky & Telescope

Now that is one serious telescope, APEX is a collaboration between the Max-Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR), the Onsala Space Observatory (OSO) and operated by ESO.

“We were really excited to discover the signatures of hydrogen peroxide with APEX. We knew from laboratory experiments which wavelengths to look for, but the amount of hydrogen peroxide in the cloud is just one molecule for every ten billion hydrogen molecules, so the detection required very careful observations,” says Per Bergman, astronomer at Onsala Space Observatory in Sweden. Bergman is lead author of the study, which is published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

ESO, the European Southern Observatory, is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive astronomical observatory. It is supported by 15 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries.

Hydrogen peroxide is thought to form in space on the surfaces of cosmic dust grains — very fine particles similar to sand and soot — when hydrogen (H) is added to oxygen molecules (O2). A further reaction of the hydrogen peroxide with more hydrogen is one way to produce water (H2O). This new detection of hydrogen peroxide will therefore help astronomers better understand the formation of water in the Universe.

So why all the fuss you ask?

“We don’t understand yet how some of the most important molecules here on Earth are made in space. But our discovery of hydrogen peroxide with APEX seems to be showing us that cosmic dust is the missing ingredient in the process,” says Bérengère Parise, head of the Emmy Noether research group on star formation and astrochemistry at the Max-Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany, and a co-author of the paper.

The new discovery of hydrogen peroxide may also help astronomers understand another interstellar mystery: why oxygen molecules are so hard to find in space. It was only in 2007 that oxygen molecules were first discovered in space, by the satellite Odin.

Congratulations to the international team on another great, exciting discovery, using the ESO/APEX telescope at Chajnantor.

So I'll sign off with - do Astronomer's really have more fun? Absolutely!

KOI 256 Transit

2011-07-03T18:01:00.006+10:00

Tonight's run on KOI 256b.

The target is well place for a good long run targeting the 73 minute transit and a good hour of data each side.

The observation plan from Penultimate on my iPad outlines the key ingress and egress points we are looking for. My friends up at Pulkovo are awaiting my next run with anticipation. I was hoping to get the transit on the 29th, but missed it as the Telescope was fully booked. I forgot to put in a reservation ;-).

So any way we are underway and some early clouds have flitted through but all is looking good now as we get into the business end.

Looks like we got it....now to reduce the data and upload to TRESCA.

Astroswanny.

Carnival of Space - Episode 204

2011-07-02T18:51:00.028+10:00

Welcome to the Carnival of Space where we feature the very best of Space and Astronomy blogs each week. Also, I thought I'd share with you the latest fancy internet widget from Infomous [above]. Check it out, but make sure you come back and read our great line up today, with lots of great Solar System articles, and entries from a number of Continents. As it hosted from Australia this week - lets start in Sydney.

Astropixie this week covers the Astronomy conference in Sydney "Supernovae and their host galaxies". The event was sponsored by the AAO Australian Astronomical Observatory and the CSIRO. Amanda provides overviews of the conference presentations, top of mind was the very recent Supernova in M51 and the methods of observation required after such events.

At the Next Big Future, true to form, Brian covers all the stuff our grandchildren will take for granted. Keith Henson's studies of space-based solar power issues. Henson recently published a proposal to reduce the cost of getting payload to orbit by orders of magnitude . In an interview with Sander Olson, Henson describes using skylon rocket planes to release payloads at high altitudes. Are launch costs of $100 per Kilo possible - Henson thinks so!

NASA Engineer John Chapman has an aneutronic fusion reactor scheme, a commercially available benchtop laser starts the reaction. A beam with energy on the order of 2 x 10^18 watts per square centimeter, pulse frequencies up to 75 megahertz, and wavelengths between 1 and 10 micrometers is aimed at a two-layer, 20-centimeter-diameter target. Each pulse of the laser should generate roughly 100 000 particles. Read the article and find out just how you might generate 1 Megawatt per second.

Moon Express, Inc. (MoonEx) is targeting mining the moon. CTO Barney Pell gave a talk about the vision recently. Sounds like its only a matter of time before we have protesters throwing themselves in front of space tractors. ;-)

Speaking of Moons.....Jupiter is just showing off. The Urban Astronomer reports on the discovery of two more Jovian satellites taking the total to 65! That's enough for whole inter-lunar football league, with enough left over for an Ice Hockey league! I can see it now....the Europa Enforcers! Seriously though, the new moons are S/2010 J1 and S/2010 J2 and are unusual, so you have to visit the blog to find out why.

Still on Moons, Enceladus - now there is a place you could play some serious Icehockey! The Meridiani Journal looks into further evidence that salty oceans exist beneath the surface feeding its famous Geysers.

[Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute]

Onto Mars now, and Vintage Space reports on Robert Zubrin and the Mars Society suggesting that we are more ready to go to Mars now than we were to go to the moon in 1961. A closer look comparing lunar readiness then and Mars readiness now suggests that maybe we aren't.

Enter these co-ordinates into your Stargate: SAO + NASM = FETTSS @ SI, or you can just go to the Chandra Blog for a great report on the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and National Air and Space Museum's "From Earth to the Solar System" - a stunning photographic journey through the solar system. Ameé Salois even discusses iceskating on Europa (See... you thought I was being silly before!).

Photo Credit: Megan Watzke

The Panstarrs Blog covers some of their science strategies. Harvard postdoctoral researcher Darin Ragozzine describes the search for icy bodies in distant reaches of the solar system using Pan-STARRS1.

On a side note to this, the ubiquitous platform for Citizen Science - Zooniverse has added IceHunters to search for a suitable Kuiper Belt object for the New Horizions mission to go to after it passes Pluto. (So if you are bored with the ice at your local rink ..... alright enough on the Ice hockey analogies already!!)

The big news of the week, which made the mainstream media, was the close passage of tiny asteroid 2011 MD which passed at a very close distance of 1.8 earth Radii. Astroblogger provides commentary and discusses some of the images and techniques for capturing the near earth visitor.

Universe Today also covered Asteroid 2011 MD's approach. The article was linked by a number of main stream media houses. Senior Editor Nancy Atkinson also compiled a list of images here as well.

Ian O'Neil writing for the Discovery News asks the "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger question" protesting that he wished that 2011 MD had hit us, yes he's serious. He goes to great lengths to explain why - perhaps then there would be more serious funding from governments to address the problem.

Just in from our Spanish Desk: Vega 0.0 reports on the co-ordinates and skychart for observing Comet Elenin in October. Elenin is now a tough assignment as it is only about 30 degrees above the horizion at sunset.

Indian space entrepreneur, Susmita Mohanty gave a talk on the end of the Shuttle era at the American Center in Mumbai, India. Pradeep's Blog Pradx takes a look at the talk and the response from the Mumbai crowd. Thanks Pradeep, great to get some local news from Mumbai.

Weirdwarp poses the question, "What could an alien civilisation be able to do"? Well, as we have not found any alien civilisations then everything is guesswork based on the laws of physics and our experiences here on earth. This could be completely wrong or it could be completely right or it could be somewhere in between. Only Chris can stack rank an alien civilization!

Cheap Astronomy delivers a podcast, a highly summarized overview of astronomy at the various different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum..

Finally I leave you with my own video of 2011 MD as we wrap up this Solar System oriented webisode of Carnival of Space - 204.

The Carnival of Space is a community of interest blog carnival bringing together the best and brightest Astronomy & Space Blogs at a single point in space and time (commonly referred to as a web address) each week. Previous episodes can be found here. If you run an astronomy or space science blog you can contact carnivalofspace@gmail.com to be added to the editorial circulation list.

Afternoon fog rolling into Melbourne

2011-06-28T16:23:00.003+10:00

I thought I was in San Francisco for a minute.... an afternoon "pea-souper" rolling in.
Amazing.

Peter

Asteroid 2011 MD a VERY close approach

2011-06-26T21:41:00.011+10:00

Its not every day, that an asteroid misses by less than 3-5 earth Radii. Photographed here on Sunday evening 26th, it can be seen streaking across the sky. The photo was taken on a 20 inch telescope in New Mexico controlled by my iPhone.

Its close approach is being followed with great interest, more for honing the skills and techniques of the Minor Planet Center and the network of asteroid hunting Astronomers, rather than because it posses any real danger.

Hi-Def Youtube Version.

It will pass inside the orbit of many of the Geostationary satellites, hopefully with out hitting any of them.

In 2008 an asteroid of similar size, 2008 TC3 slammed into Sudan lighting up the night sky. A team of researchers subsequently recovered over 10 Kilograms of fragments, which further research has found contained some amino acids.

I managed to grab 10 x 120 sec images and put together this short video.

Enjoy!!

Astroswanny.
[Apologies the title says 2001....it should read 2011]

The inevidible draws closer!

2011-06-18T10:31:00.007+10:00

OOooppss.Click Here for latest data.

The Iceland government has been warning europe for some time to prepare for the eventual eruption of Katla volcano under the Myrdalsjokull icecap.

The coming eruption looms ever closer. We'll find out soon if anyone in Europe has been listening.

Caution: This is just one day....it could go on like this for some time.

Remember the onsite Geologists are the only ones who are really qualified to give opinions.

UPDATE: July 18 There was a flood on the 9th July 2011after a harmonic tremor.

Astroswanny.

Lunar Eclipse 15th (16th)AEST June 2011

2011-06-16T04:42:00.012+10:00

And so as the moon sets in Melbourne, the trailing limb is just starting to brighten and the eclipse zone moves on across Asia towards Europe..... I bid you farewell....Have a great day! Thanks for visiting.

Thats a deep eclipse I'm down to ISO6400 and 1/10 of a second now....and its getting "scraggly" when I crop it tight. Can see some stars there now as well.

The eclipse has now entered totality, which will be quite long this morning, as the Moon is passing very close to the center of earths shadow. In Melbourne its only about 25 degrees above the horizion now so we shall get some deeper color as it catches a bit more of the volcanic ash just before dawn.

Wow...Now we are talking!!

The Eclipse is now in full swing as the umbral stage draws to a close.

Seen one lunar eclipse - seen them all? Most certainly not.....every time I ask myself that question, I also ask ..... How many have my kids seen? It always gets me out of bed one more time.

After all, the excitement our kids get from the awesome realization that the shadow of the earth is going to creep across the Moon, is quite infectious, and seeing it through their eyes once more is great.

This year the prospect of seeing it with a lot of volcanic ask (nearby Melbourne) and in the upper atmosphere generally, in both hemispheres makes this one of some extra scientific interest.

So is 4:30am is 2 degrees centigrade and the eclipse has begun.

Live blogging on KOI 256b Transit

2011-06-11T16:26:00.020+10:00

UPDATE #10 13:00 UTC
Data uploaded to TRESCA ETD. All in all a fine nights work. The transit occurred earlier than the prediction as we have previously noticed - Thanks to Eugene at Pulkovo Observatory. One pleasing aspect I managed to lift my DQ from 5 to 4 (Data Quality factor).

The predicted mid-point was 2455723.828 TRESCA modelling of the actual mid-point was 2455723.8167.

Good night! Live Blog Ends.

UPDATE #9 12:30 UTC
Data processed about to upload to TRESCA database.

UPDATE #8 11:10 UTC
The brief sharp dip just after the egress corresponds to the images immediately either side of the Meridian Flip. I'll take those outliers out of the finished data. Sometimes before/after a mid image run meridian flip, the scope will slighly mistrack and takes a minute or two to get back into its rythmn.

UPDATE #7 10:50 UTC
The run on the scope has nearly finshed, only three images to go. I have run the data so far through a rough photometery seq, we can clearly see a beautiful transit. Now for the data processing and upload to TRESCA.

UPDATE #6 10:00 UTC
Riversong enters the fray, after Rory's brave stand ...Riversong is Amy's Daughter (spoiler alert), ah I should have written that first....ah well the timelines have been mixed.... ah back to the important matters at hand the egress has been detected. Note: this is still raw data

UPDATE #5 09:10 UTC
The signal to noise is higher tonight as desired.

UPDATE #4 09:00 UTC
Whilst the actual transit has now passed about 30 mins ago the Data is now coming in from the server. After 40% of the run is completed we can clearly see our little friend has indeed passed in front of the Parent star. I am yet to get a reading on the ingress and mid transit time - Later ;-) once we have some more data.

Update #3 8:30 UTC
For those of you asking how the The "Rockling poached in Lemon Grass, Fennel, Mirin, and white wine turned out? D E L I C I O U S!!! [OK, some of you are starting to suspect this is a shameless plug to drive up traffic on my blog.] Seriously... the world is about to stop as our family seeks answers to Riversong's fixation with Dr Who.

UPDATE #2 07:20 UTC
The predicted ingress was 07:14 UTC so the transit should be well under way. We are about 1/3 into the run as the scope has imaged 30 x 120 sec exposures already. These are yet to start downloading to the VPHOT server but should do so soon.

UPDATE #1 06:30 UTC
The run is underway. We are starting well ahead of the transit time tonight so we have a good stable light curve before the transit. A beautiful night! Looks like the moon is not causing any dramas for us.

It's the weekend, and a long one. Thanks to the celebration of the House of Windsor's most senior stateperson's birthday, which ironically is NOT today, nor in fact on Monday either, however celebrated none the less by those uncooperative convicts shipped out 200 years ago. ;-)

The most important person in the house is writing reports, two are studying and one is 27 chapters into Septimus Heap, which had to be purchased before rapid closures of book stores, because apparently there are too many iPADs and eBook readers in the world.

So I thought what else does one do, well there are 8 Kepler Objects of interest transiting every hour today (not all reachable by me.....but some are). So time to roll up the sleeves and make sure I am pulling my weight!!!

I am on kitchen duty as well, so between poaching (as in a frying pan, not from someones private river) a beautiful fillet of Rockling (white fleshed fish) in Mirin, fennel, dill and white wine, I will be doing a live blog for the next three hours on the transit of KOI 256b.

KOI 256b is a very interesting member of the Kepler Objects of Interest (1235 publically published list of transit candidates from the Kepler Space Telescope). It is a very interesting object as its transit is "somewhat" synchronous with its Minima of the variation of its parent star's brightness.

Its a good target (~17mmag) shallow enough to make you carefully plan your run and exposure times, and has the shortest duration of any of the published transit list. So that makes it interesting as you don't have to sit up half the night / or in my case half the afternoon (ah the joys of remote armchair astronomy).

I booked my reservation on GRAS G11. We'll be doing 100 x 120sec images on the target. I did a run last week (60 sec images) and the signal to noise ratio on the target averaged about 63, which was a bit low, for my liking so today I'll go with 120 Sec exposures.

The Pulkovo Observatory and a couple of other amateurs are following this object and I think we have come across some interesting things, so we are working closely to compare our notes, and increasing our data coverage of this little fellow.

Remember as an amateur astronomer I'm not qualified to say "Why" & "How" things happen, I just confine my comments to "What", and "When". The run is under way and Updates will now occur at the top of the Blog. Thanks for joining us for this special event.

Following in Kepler's Footsteps

2011-06-03T12:43:00.017+10:00

Carnival of Space...Happy 200th episode, webisode, Bi-centenial (no that's years) or as we say in Australia - 200 Gamer!! Congratulations!!!, what a triumph for social media, education outreach for astronomy and all round great fun.

As its the 200th edition, I thought I better pull out all stops and put together a bumper post!

As an amateur astronomer, I consider myself exactly that, amateur, someone who has the passion, the toys, but hasn't got around to the 4 years of study at Swinburne Astronomy. However the contribution from amateur astronomers is still important, as they can do things at their own pace, share their passion, go after targets of opportunity, targets not likely chased by other professional observatories, and assist the real scientists who know how to do the scary math.

So when the Kepler team published an inviting list of 1235 transit candidates, it was only a matter of time before these "private detectives" started poking around.

Anyone can be involved in the Kepler Hunt, and today I'll cover three different levels where each and everyone of you could assist in bagging a transit, and help share the load of the monumental task of following up the data generated by the Kepler research. By Kepler, of course, I am referring to the space telescope named after 17th century astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler, which is currently photographing (continuously) 160,000 stars.

This week, I bagged a transit on one of the 1235 candidates in the publicly released Kepler data. Out of respect for the program, I'll leave the science in its proper place - the TRESCA ETD (Exoplanet Transit Database).

The importance of this is quite interesting as the target has a 6 hour transit, and a thirty day orbit, which means that the transit is only visible to earth based telescopes three times a year.....the next window is in August. The only people likely to pick up what is, lets be honest, probably a fairly low value target, is the amateur community. However ....... data is data!!

Given the number of multiple planet systems and other crazy configurations discovered so far, a single hot Jupiter crossing near the equator every 30 days is possibly - completely boring. However for an Amateur - a real test of skill, patience and sense of accomplishment and involvement in the program.

The challenges of this target were interesting:
1) The transit was 6 hours long, almost impossible to get a complete transit lightcurve - So I focused on the Egress which was well positioned.

2) The depth of the transit was a bit of an unknown - It looked big in the Kepler Data lightcurve in the MAST database.....but as Kepler is a space telescope there is no atmospheric extinction to worry about, they don't use comparison stars and they measure direct flux variation in parts per million - hard to know what that would look like down here. So I took a punt and picked the biggest depth, in the best position I could find on the given night - KOI 189b.

3) There were no AAVSO reference stars in the FOV. In exoplanet research there is much less reliance on cataloged reference stars as the photometry is based more on total flux, compensation for airmass, extinction, and camera noise etc. However basic differential photometery can still produce reasonable results, as my recent run on HAT-P-3b confirmed.

4) towards the end of the run, the Moon rose and messed around with my sky glow background values, causing some additional noise in the signal.

All good learnings for the future.

Bagging Transits
The are three levels of involvement in Kepler exoplanet research: Citizen science, Serious Amateur, Guest Observer. (I guess there is a fourth being on the actual Kepler Team).

Zooniverse has teamed up with the Kepler Team to provide yet another element to their hugely popular Citizen Science program, first pioneered by Galaxy Zoo. A veritable army of 429,000 members have an account, some look at the Kepler light curves, classify the star type and use an adjustable rectangular overlay to highlight any observed transits. This is a lot of fun and teaches you a lot about the many different star types and has the mandatory comment, share and chat functions. Every now and then they will throw in a known target and cheer you on for correctly identifying it. In addition to the 80 odd newly discovered transits, hundreds of eclipsing binaries have also been identified.

Join up today and bag a transit yourself!

Serious Amateurs participate in exoplanet research and contribute to the TRESCA ETD. This work was pioneered by legendary amateur Exo-hunter Bruce Gary, who deveolped somewhat of a cult following. Finding it difficult to maintain a growing database of Lightcurves, he teamed up with the Czech Astronomical Society who already had a scalable repository for light curves - and it even deals with the Scary Math for you!!!

Kepler Guest Observer Program is for professional astronomers to submit proposals for new observations that sit outside the core Kepler Mission Goals:

* Provide a statistically significant value for the frequency of Earth-size and larger planets in and near the habitable zone;
* Characterize the size and orbital distributions of such planets;
* Identify correlations between the presence and characteristics of planetary systems with stellar properties of the host star.

The Kepler Team maintain a database of lightcurves in MAST Multimission Archive at Space Telescope Institute. MAST contains all the lightcurves including the "public list" of transit candidates, some of this data is proprietry, and can be made available to guest observers. They publish a list of the 1235 "public targets" that were covered in Boruki et. al. 2011 These are made available for professionals and amateurs alike, to formulate their own research and leverage the wider Astronomy community.

(note: earth sized planets are so tiny their transits are only a few 10,000ths of a magnitude and are out of reach for earth based amateur scopes)

Collaborative efforts like Zooniverse / Planethunters.org is one such example of the broader astronomy community using this data.

For me, my target KOI 189b, was listed as "No Obs" in the comments field, certainly sounded like an invitation ;-)

So here's to the Carnival of Space that keeps driving my interest to new and higher levels of involvement, in the great unanswered questions.

The work pays off, sometimes in very unexpected ways. This FMO flew through the field of view as I was doing some test images mid transit about an hour and a half before I got serious about the Egress. At 600 arcsecs/min its possibly a Geo-Stationary satellite, but a little unusual to say the least.

Happy 200th - Carnival of Space!!!

FMO through the Kepler Field

2011-05-28T17:27:00.004+10:00

Hot damn!

You take 20 images and you find this in the 20th image and it wasn't in the 19th and of course there was no image 21.

Fast moving objects are nearly impossible to measure (in this case don't know which way it was going). You can try cutting it in two with pixel math and taking three points with timings as the start, midpoint and end of the image - but that assumes you know which way it was going.

In this 30 sec image it has moved about 200 Pixels.

Always a possibility it is a satellite but the speed and angle do look ok for a close approaching asteroid.

Bag and Tag!

2011-05-26T23:54:00.004+10:00

Its been a little while since I have chased asteroids, but with the new Focal reducer I thought I'd put in some time as there were 60 confirmations up on the MPC Confirmation page.

I was looking for something around Mag 21 to test the scope out now its F/4.4.

P100ZPJ looked like a good target as it was pretty high in the sky and the last couple of frames I lost as they were moon affected. I did manage to stack 6x300 sec subs into this fine shot. Residuals were good and its between mag 20 and 21. Offically it was supposed to be Mag 21.2 but Spacewatch II got it at mag 20.5 as well at about the same time.

Regards
Peter

Comet Elenin in "oncoming traffic"!!!

2011-05-16T23:21:00.010+10:00

Update 23/5/2011
The moon is now wanning and I have re-visited Elenin on the 23rd to see how it is after the moon has passed through. This color composite image is stacked once to create a star layer, and again for movement of the comet, to get the coma nice and tight. The two layers are combined in photoshop with a feathered cutout in the star layer revealing the Comet layer behind. This is the quick and easy way of good color comet photos, given the comet is still pretty faint. The image is a one hour of RGB in 300sec subs, processed in Maxim DL (stack & combine) and Photoshop(curves and layers). If you look carefully you will see Elenin passing a tiny little distant Galaxy.
Enjoy!

Original Post.
The full moon is not the best time to be imaging comets - but what the hell! I had a focal reducer fitted to the planewave this week taking it down to F/4.4 so I had to shoot something to try it out.

Here is the latest image of comet Elenin, May 16th at 2011-05-16 03:54:21 UTC, this time in color. I was processing the images and noticed a couple of asteroids very close which certainly made it a worthwhile exercise, even if the images were a bit noisy from the full moon.

This image is 5 x 300 secs of each color R/G/B color combined. Each image tracked the movement of Elenin, thus trailing the background stars slightly in each color.

Passing in the opposite directions across the plate are Asteroid Zoya (1793) at Mag 15.9 and (7503)1996 VJ38 which appears to have "crossed" the (apparent) path of Elenin perhaps about 8-10 hours before my images photos were taken.

Also when the moon is bouncing around it will often give extra highlights to dust donuts that flats normally remove when its nice and dark.

Enjoy!
Astroswanny

Comet Elenin

2011-05-03T22:22:00.005+10:00

Here is the latest image of Comet Elenin, trying to sneak past the little blue green planet with out becoming involved in any doomsday conspiracies.

It is expected to be quite a show later in the year, if it survives it's perihelion approach to the sun.

Caught here on May 3rd, its sporting a short tail, at the expected brightness around roughly 13 (I haven't done any specific photometry on it).

Astroswanny

FS Aur Video

2011-03-13T23:54:00.005+11:00

As you all know I have been helping Dr Vitaly Neustroev with his research on FS Aur. This is a very erratic variable star that can vary in magnitude by up to 0.2m over an hour, has a number of interacting periodic cycles, and goes into outburst every 13-15 days.

Whilst this video doesn’t really do justice to all the hardwork and the more subtle variations, it none the less is a bit of fun to show you what we have been looking at.

The timescale is a very rough 1 sec = ~2 days.

Enjoy!!!!

Astroswanny

Carnival of Space 188.

2011-03-11T17:47:00.029+11:00

Image Credit: incasinoout777 at Goodtime webshots (Ferris Wheel in an earthquake).

The inexorable subduction of the pacific plate regularly brings earthquakes to Japan. We often pause briefly to admire the readiness and civil defense response that shows their preparation and courage to deal with such events.

Today the world stops to catch its breath and stand with Japan in the face of this monster earthquake and tsunami. It brings the realization to all of us, the tenuous hold we have on life, on this our "third rock from the sun".

Plate tectonics allow life to exist, brings us our rich volcanic soils, and yet can take life with such savagery that stuns us, and causes us to ponder.

To the people of Japan, and all our friends in the astronomy community in Japan -
我々の思いはあなた達と共にあります

Welcome to this week's Carnival of Space #188.

I am constantly amazed that up to 60-90% of traffic to my own blog comes from mobile devices, in the spirit of that, today I will provide a QR Scan code to each of the Home Pages of our intrepid bloggers. Download your preferred QR Scan code app from your handheld device provider and away you go.

So here we go its Carnival Time!!!!
In keeping with the reflective tone, Steve Tilford's personal tribute on the passing of his friend and mentor Dr Jim Elliot, covers his life, his philosophy and great discoveries (eg. he was on the team that discovered the rings of Uranus). Steve's detailed coverage has collected some thoughts and reflections from other scientists about the legacy Dr Jim has left us all. Read it, and ask yourself the question - what legacy will I leave?

Steve's Astro Corner QR Scan Code.

Vega 0.0 also takes some time to reflect - on pioneer astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm August Argelander's work and covers "método Argelander"(Argelander method) for observing variable stars. This article is in Spanish, which gives you a second reason to try out online translation tools this week.

Vega 0.0 Blog QR Scan Code.

Chandra Blog this week features a stunning image of NGC 4151, a spiral galaxy with an actively growing supermassive black hole at its center. The structure has been dubbed "The Eye of Sauron" by astronomers due to its resemblance to the character in "The Lord of the Rings" movies. The image is a composite of X-ray, Ha and Radio spectrum. Read the amazing story of how this image was compiled.

Chandra Blog's QR Scan Code.

Next Big Future reports this week on Russia's plans for a megawatt nuclear space reactor and using it for space tugs and Mars missions. Brian continues the "powering up" theme with VASIMR's plans for the next 5-10 years and getting up to 1-6 megawatt missions.

Sounds like they'll have enough power budget for blutooth .......everything is better with Blu......(yes, yes we know)[Bigbang Theory].

Brian also updates us on details of the minimag Orion for near term interstellar missions. The full paper is available for free online.

Next Big Future QR Scan Code.

AstroBlogger reports on the post paper forensics of claims that fossil bacteria have been found in a meteorite. It's just magnesium sulfate nanobelts folks.

AstroBlogger QR Scan Code.

TheSpacewriter continues on the meteorite story and takes on the journalistic ethics of those who ran with the meteorite-life story last week and didn't bother to check the facts. Carolyn is much more qualified than I am to say what you can and can't do in 72 point font.

TheSpaceWriter QR Scan Code

At Cheap Astronomy, Steve takes us to places far, far away and talks in one of his well respected podcasts about about dwarf galaxies - large and small.

Cheap Astronomy QR Scan Code.

At WeirdWarp, Chris tries to lift the self esteem of asteroids by suggesting more useful things for them to do than killing dinosaurs. Arriving on an asteroid second after someones been there for a fit-out seems perfectly logical. Think big people!

Maybe we CAN send the telephone sanitizers first. [Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy].

WeirdWarp QR Scan Code

Now you might think that Asteroids have a self esteem problem, but what about Ceres. Astropixie puts Ceres "on the couch" for a session on why Pluto had it coming!! [Warning: contains astronomy terms that might not be suitable for astronomers young enough to not know what a ...hmm ..."two body problem" is"].

Astropixie QR Scancode.

As opposed to being demoted, what if you never made it in the first place? A brown dwarf, about 75 light-years from Earth, has hit a new low. In fact, its temperature is so low that it is about the same temperature as the cup of tea sitting on Ian's desk. Discovery News asks the question: Stellar-Failure or just misunderstood?

DiscoveryNews QR Scan Code.

Nancy, Senior editor of Universe Today features an article on the Catalin Fus image of STS-133 mission to the ISS passing infront of the sun past the currently active sunspot region.

Universe Today QR Scan Code.

So, as we bring the Carnival of Space 188 to a conclusion, mindful of the powerful forces at work on our planet, in our galaxies, and yes even in our failed stars, lets use this time of confronting disaster for personal relfection on the legacies that have been left by others and the ones we might leave.

I leave you with a lovely image of M106 taken by John Nunn this week on my telescope.

Astroswanny's AARTScope Scan Code.

The Carnival of Space is a community of interest blog carnival bringing together the best and brightest Astronomy & Space Blogs at a single point in space and time (commonly referred to as a web address) each week. Previous episodes can be found here. If you run an astronomy or space science blog you can contact carnivalofspace@gmail.com to be added to the editorial circulation list.

Pirates in Space!!!!

2011-02-19T19:31:00.005+11:00

In a week where my son was playing Pirates of the Carribean on Cello in his orchestra, what better thing to do than join Dr Marleen Bryan on her popular “Space Pirates” radio show.

I shared a most enjoyable 45 minutes, on the popular Astronomy.fm radio show covering topics as diverse as Social Media in Astronomy, Variable star photometery, the GRAS telescopes and specifically - variable star FS Aur.

Astronomy FM is a great community numbering several thousand people, and have great podcasts and regular live broadcasts, and great astrophotography competitions.

As an online amateur astronomer, Astronomy.FM is part of the inner circle of great resources available.

If you would like to catch up on the podcast click here.

Peter Lake

Open Season on FS Aur !!!!

2011-01-29T16:26:00.010+11:00

Like duck hunting, Variable Stars have their "Seasons" also. A season being where the variable star in question is in the optimal position for "shooting with CCDs" ie observable for most of the night. FS Aur is a Cataclysmic Variable rising in the early evening, and in the current northern winter, its visable for a good 6-7 hours a night. Thus its "in season".

FS Aur is one of the strangest and complex objects in the extensive variable star family. (See also Steve's excellent article elsewhere in today's Carnival of Space.) It is thought to be a magnetic white dwarf binary CV with a third object acting on it in a circumbinary orbit. (Tovmassian et al., 2010)

Now its in season - astronomers want answers. When they want answers they often leverage the collective effort of the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO), to muscle up some more observations and data.

FS Aur has a number of photometric and spectroscopic cycles going on. On top of this it goes into outburst about every 12-15 days. The outburst period is so short (2-3 days) it has been regularly missed in the past - so this season Dr Neustroev has rallied a special effort. For the first time, members of the AAVSO will map the entire 15 day outburst cycle, several, hopefully a good number of times.

Dr Vitaly Neustroev is the University Researcher (Yliopistotutkija) at the University of Oulu, Finland and he is a key reseacher on FS Aur, working hard to better understand its erratic behaviour. Visit the observing campaign page here, and also follow on (Twitter).

I like following Cataclysmic Variables, after catching Simostronomy fever, and I have been a regular on FS Aur since Dr Neustroev's call to action.

During the past few weeks FS Aur has been dancing away with a little periodic wobble at about 15.9 with the odd subtle change in brightness, then on the 22nd it went really dull to 16.2 then literally within 24-36 hours it popped to Magnitude 14.3 on the 24th, and then grew to about 14.035 throughout the day.

In my image from the 24th, FS Aur can be seen in the Green annulus.

Now take a look at this image on the 22nd. FS Aur can hardly been seen. It is at magnitude 16.2 at its lowest point in its quiescent phase.

So what is going on with FS Aur - Dr Neustroev describes it this way:

“FS Aur is an extremely unusual cataclysmic variable renown for the presence of a variety of uncommon and largely incomprehensible periodic variabilities of brightness and radial velocity. The outlandish peculiarity of FS Aur is the existence of a very coherent photometric period of 205.5 min that exceeds the spectroscopic orbital period of 85.7 minutes by 2.4 times. Such a discrepancy in the photometric and spectroscopic periods is highly unusual for cataclysmic variables.

Based on the short orbital period, FS Aur has been classified as a SU UMa star. Nevertheless, long‐term monitoring of the system by several groups failed to detect any superoutburst in its light curve. The publicly available AAVSO light curve show instead a steady‐cyclic outburst pattern that is more similar to a SS Cyg–type dwarf nova light curve. However, this monitoring reveals an additional, discordant, and very long photometric period of ~900 days. We explain the latter by the result of eccentricity modulation of a close binary orbit induced by the presence of a third body on a circumbinary orbit (Tovmassian et al., 2010).”

So it is indeed a complex beast. This is a little time-series I ran when it was at quiescence.

When variables are in season you can get nice long lightcurves and do time-series analysis and this is very valuable data. Below is the light curve of FS Aur climbing to its peak during the 24th January. The light curve below spans almost continuous/contiguous 6 hours. It is very interesting as it shows quite clearly the erratic nature and massive forces involved in the outburst. (Each measurement is from a 120s image and with a precision of about 0.01-0.03mag.)

I have also submitted some color times-series in BVRI as this is also useful data, more so if I had got it at the peak of the outburst, alas due to weather I missed out. I'll have to wait another 13 days ;-).

Again, about 4hrs of continuous data can only only be gathered "in season".

So this is indeed a fascinating object and could indeed be a new class of object. Only time will tell. AAVSO members are playing an important role in gathering the data to refine the lightcurve. Once the observing campaign is complete we await with interest to see what the astronmers and astrophysicists can tell about what they have learned.

At AARTScope my mission is to "keep creating the sense of anticipation and discovery that keeps scientists asking questions" so if you are an AAVSO member and would like to join the campaign, please do.

Unlike ducks, no variable stars are harmed during "peak season".

FS Aur in quiescence

2011-01-10T22:31:00.002+11:00

Hi, here is my latest data of FS Aur in quiescence - it certainly has a nice little wobble going between 15.9 and 16.1.

This time series taken over 30 minutes with one additional measurement in a second run just before a 42mph wind gust closed the roof ;-(.

[Disclaimer: all data was submitted to AAVSO via standard process - this is just a nice little graphic from VPHOT].

Astroswanny.

What's up with Scheila (596)

2010-12-12T12:30:00.034+11:00

URGENT UPDATE:2011/01/01 08:00 UT - Scheila dusts off tail after Christmas Show.
Scheila's tail appears to have disappeared! I have just emailed Ernesto to see if he is in a position to confirm. Joseph Brimacombe reported on the 30th that Scheila was sporting a nice tail but had to go to 5x1200 sec at f5, so clearly it has faded.

Travelling slighly faster and a little fainter that my last image on the 13th (OK I have been on holidays....slack I know) there is no evidence of a tail in todays image. This image is a stacked image of 6x300 Sec frame stacked for movement of the comet, even when I went to 10x300 sec, still no evidence of the tail.

Peter

UPDATE: 2010/12/23
UA Catalina Sky survey have formally released a statement on (596) Scheila after it's cometary outburst on the 11th (see history below). The statement covers a review of the circumstances of discovery, and for the first time some commentary on the spectra of follow-up observations. The statement suggests that the spectral analysis so far confirms that the outburst produced a dust tail indicating re-activation of a previously dead comet made up of largely carbonaceous material.

UPDATE: 2010/12/13 UT 23:40

As mentioned below here is the 8x300 binned 1x1.

UPDATE: 2010/12/13 UT 23:30
My latest image from 13/12/2010 shows Scheila in pretty much the same configuration as it has been for the past two days.

UPDATE: 2010/12/13 UT 13:30
Latest image on (596) Scheila is going out tonight as an exclusive for Doc Newstein at Ciel et Espace in France As soon as Frank posts it I'll post a link to it here. It is again a 5x300sec image binned 2x2 this time, I'll let you be the judge but I think the tail does look a little longer, but that could be a function of it being a little higher in the sky tonight. I have another 8 frames that I am yet to process binned 1x1 and I am going to put them into a little animation. Bonsoir amis astronomie en France!!!!

UPDATE: 2010/12/13 UT 04:30
Vishnu Reddy has been reviewing some of the historical spectral data for (596) Scheila and believes the spectrum is very similar to the Tagish Lake Meteorite, and consistent with a possible MBC (main belt comet).

UPDATE: 2010/12/13 UT 00:00
Wikipedia entry for Scheila (596) has just been updated with all the articles links prompting a massive traffic surge. I love Revolver Map!

UPDATE: 2010/12/12 UT 23:00
Mike Simonsen has done some research overnight on previous Catalina plates and identified that Scheila (596) started to get a little fuzzy around the 3rd of November. Mike also discusses previous examples of Main Belt Comets that behave as asteroids before springing into life. Mike is the Development Director at the AAVSO and runs Simostronomy Blog and writes for Universe Today.

UPDATE: 2010/12/12 UT 11:00 I have finished the color run....not much more to comment on, other than the subs were probably a little too short to get much more detail. Anyway we'll see what tomorrow brings in the way of commentary from the scientists.

UPDATE: 2010/12/12 UT 09:00 Ernesto is doing another run, and I have just started a 30min colour run now to see what color we can see. In the early preview image there doesn't seem to be much in the red spectrum, but as its only a 120 sec sub...there won't be alot there anyway. [Note: reversing the post order now for easy reading.]

UPDATE: 2010/12/12 UT 07:00
Here is my first image of Scheila (596), It is still very low to the horizion, I'll try for some color later in the evening. The image is quite noisy as it was only about 25 degrees above the horizion - a bit low for quality astrophotography.

It certainly has a good little tail going there.

UPDATE 2010/12/12 05:00 UT
Some good discussion now occuring on the MPML in Yahoo Groups. Some speculation on what may have caused the "tail" to develop. Marshall Eubanks has suggested it will take a little time to determine if it is a cometary outburst or dust raised by an asteroid collision. A "minor" collision should see the dust dissipate in a few weeks, if it is a cometary outburst it should last for a more prelonged period of time. Robert Matson had a quick look at known objects in the vacinity, the nearest object 2006 HV77, according to Robert is not close enough to be in consideration as a likely suspect. Dave Herald has suggested that the chances of two known objects colliding in the asteroid belt is about the same as two objects 100th the thickness of a human hair colliding on a footbal pitch.

But it does happen...... (although in fairness to Dave's math this was an Unknown VS Unknown collision).

Scheila should be visible from New Mexico in about an hour.

UPDATE 2010/12/12 03:00 UT
I should be ableto get some images myself myself once Scheila is above the horizion in New Mexico.

UPDATE 2010/12/12 02:00 UT
So it's official Steve Larson has observed a "spiral like" cometary outburst on Scheila (596) whilst reviewing Catalina Sky Survey photos overnight. This has just been announced in CBET 2583 on the IAU site.

Amateur astronomers are now pouncing on it for for quality images. Ernesto has posted an intial set of photos in his blog. They still seem fairly raw at this stage and I'm sure he will have a stunning processed version available shortly.

Scheila (596) is a main belt asteroid that was discovered in 1906. It is a bright slow moving main belter with a Perihelion of 2.4au (which means it comes nowhere near earth). Scheila is one of the most studied asteroids, regularly tracked for occulations with other stars, much is known about its rotational period and its lightcurve has been extensively studied.

So why is it listed on the Minor Planet's confirmation page with three comments in an hour?

Sailing along at Mag 13 most asteroids that bright get picked up by the surveys pretty quickly and are quickly eliminated as known objects by the hard-working staff and processes at the MPC. Something has prompted a number of quick follow-up observations.

Astronomers doing astrometery on asteroids report RA/DEC co-ordinates with a Universal time stamp from the registered observatory (which identifies LAT/LONG of Observer). The accuracy of the position measurements are called residuals which is an RMS differential to the predicted path. The Minor Planet Center would consider rms 0.2-0.6 arcsec quality data. I myself have had data rejected by MPC (rightly so) with residuals of 4 arcsecs - usually because I have done something stupid, such as reported the time incorrectly.

Asteroids studied since 1906 don't normally show up with dodgy arcsecs residuals, because the sum total of their "arc" in this this case a many opposition highly accurate orbit is well known. (One of the observer comments refered to residuals being a bit higher than expected).

So What's up? If it was "unknown newbie" reporting data perhaps we might dismiss it.

Turning to twitter...the constant source of live action - Ernesto Guido seems animated about something and he has done alot of quality work on asteroid and comet photography and according to his twitter feed he is about to post a most fascinating image. Ernesto does great work on photos of comets, and has photographed a number of outbursts recently.

Perhaps Scheila (596) has had a little global warming and popped an icy tail? Perhaps it has had a "fender bender" with another asteroid.

Hilarious Astronomy Gift Ideas...tis the season to be jolly!

2010-12-11T12:11:00.009+11:00

Hi, some great and hilarious christmas Gift Ideas for the astronomers you love.

Why buy someone a gift card, or give them some cash to go buy what they want when you can show how much you love them by picking a unique, quirky, and funny astronomy related gift.

My personal favourite the Astronomer's beverage warmer! These are great!

Also there is a great range of "Pets are astronomers too". Featuring the very funny "Dogs were in space first" protest label. All dogs like to hunt, when they hunt they point, every astronomer dog needs to point very accurately....just like the master's telescope. SO on those cold nights out with the dog and the telescope imagine having your canine friend turned out in a coat with "pointing error of less than 1.2 Arcsecs", especially if you always wanted a dog called spot! ;-)

For something more serious, there's always the "my favourite glass" gift box to plonk your favourite plossal in. Also there are a great collection of astronomy journals with original artwork on the front (not shameless rip-offs of Hubble shots).

Finally there is as you would expect a full clothing range and the odd hilarious quirky item like the "Asteroid Hunter......not so keen on gathering" licence plates.

So merry christmas to all AARTScope visitors and friends, Grab a Hoodie, a beverage warmer, a coat for your dog and an observation log and have a great astronomy christmas.

M78 Nebula

2010-12-02T22:47:00.003+11:00

M78 what a beauty!!! Well as you can see from my previous posts I am quite taken with M78. I think it would be fair to say its on of the “bluest” things in the night sky.

You can see from my previous post, the difference between a 1hr and a three hour exposure and the difference between a 44K JPG and a somewhat higher quality one (900K).

My image processing (and I consider that I have logged enough hours to be good, but still no where near Russell Croman or Tom Davis’ league)…..is as follows:

Calibrate all images with Darks and flats
Use Kernel filter to remove dark and hot pixels
Combine in color channels
Color combine
Export from Maxim DL as a TIFF
Use Levels and curves in Photoshop, according to the 4 Zone Method (Wodaski/Croman)
Remove any remainin hot pixels with healing brush
Reduce size of image and export to JPG

And the finished product I’m sure you would love to see…

My kids asked me what is it called? I said M78! "Yer dad, but doesn't it have a name like a barn owl nebula or something?" So I checked and no it doesn't have a common name. So lets take a closer look.

Anyway it does look nice......particularly in this wide angle shot that made APOD earlier in the year.

ESO all steamed up about GJ 1214b

2010-12-01T12:39:00.016+11:00

ESO today announced a stunning breakthrough in Spectrophotometery with a world first - analysis of the composition of a "super-Earth" exo-planet's atmosphere,...... and its steamy or hazy.

GJ 1214b is the first "super-Earth" to have its atmosphere analysed by astronomers and possibly water, in the form of steam, is the most likely explanation for what was found in the atmosphere.

In 2007 on Astronomy Cast, Dr Pamela Gay, talking about exo-planet research predicted "we will soon find our own little waterworld just waiting for a b-grade movie to be filmed on it." Well, waterworld it maybe, but this one has alot more steam than an Alfred Hitchcock shower!!!

On the 19th of November 2010 astrophysicists passed a major milestone with the discovery of the 500th exo-planet. An exo-planet is an extrasolar planet that orbits a star outside our own solar system. What are these planets, how do we find them, what are they made up of and how do we understand them?

A super-Earth is a rocky planet of 5-10 earth masses. These are of particular interest to astronomers as their likely orbits can fall in the potentially habitable zone around its parent star, where water could exist as a liquid.

Scientists use three primary methods to find planets around other stars, a radial velocity method, watching for micro-lensing events, and observing transits where the planet interrupts the line of sight causing its host star to dim.

GJ 1214b was discovered in 2009 on the HARPS instrument on ESO's 3.6m telescope in Chile. Initial suspicitions that GJ 1214b's density was too low to be composed only of solid material, therefore being a good candidate for an atmosphere, have now been confirmed by an international team of astronomers using the FORS instrument on the ESO's VLT (very large telescope).
Researchers Jacob Bean (Harvard Smithsonian Center for astrophysics), Eliza Miller-Ricci Kempton (Georg-August-Universitat, Germany) and Derek Homeier (University of California) have co-authored a paper to be published in tomorrow's edition of Nature explaining their detailed research.

"This is the first super-Earth to have its atmosphere analysed. We've reached a real milestone on the road to characterizing these worlds," said Bean.

The team were looking for one of three possible scenarios:

a small rocky planet shrouded in water/steam
an atmosphere of hydrogen obscured by dense high clouds and haze
a mini neptune like planet with a small rocky core and a rich hydrogen atmosphere

The observational method was highly complex and noted that there were no significant features in the specrum between 780 and 1000 nM ruling out the possibility of a rich hydrogen atmosphere.

Astronomer's use spectral analysis to determine the make up of an exo-planet's atmosphere. By monitoring the light of the parent star and looking for absorbtion lines at specific frequencies during the transit of an exo-planet, they compare the normal/reference light of the star for any differences and changes.

"Although we can't yet say exactly what that atmosphere is made of, its an exciting step forward to be able to narrow down the options for such a distant world to either steamy or hazy" said Jacob Bean. "Follow-up observations in longer wavelengths are required to determine which of these atmospheres exists on GJ 1214b".

Photo Credit ESO/L Carcada

AARTScope Blog make over

2010-11-13T13:24:00.005+11:00

Hi all.

I hope you like the new make over featuring the hauntingly beautiful M78 which happens to be a perfect colour match to Planewave's deep blue livery.

So an update and refresh of the website was required.

The new 20inch Planewave CDK is performing magnificently by all reports and recently set a new record of 6 hours use in one night.

Anyway, just a short update.
Astroswanny

BV89381 asteroid = 2010 UJ7

2010-10-30T20:17:00.004+11:00

I am experimenting with some new toys - Camtasia, it is a good tool for recording web sessions and I'm checking it out. (looks pretty good so far).

Here is a video of the session this afternoon doing follow up on a Provisional designation on the MPC's confirmation page. It was very low to the horizion and I was (a bit too) keen to grab it before the moon got up. Enjoy.

Asteroid BV89381

Unfortunately, when I was shooting it, it was still very low in the sky so I could only pick it up in 3x300 Sec which had the asteroid trailing and difficult to get accurate residuals. I ran some 30sec frames for a stack but could not pick it up due to the speed. I'll try tomorrow when its a little higher in the sky before the moon rises. Mind you that won't be easy either as it will be travelling twice as fast.

UPDATE
A couple of other folks jumped on it last night as well and got better data than mine. BV89381 now has a designation 2010 UJ7 at ~27 meter wide asteroid that will pass earth at 0.7 Lunar distances or 0.00085 AU on 2nd Nov.

Hohmann Transfer will be keeping a watchful eye on it along withthe folks at the MPC.

Faster meets further!

2010-10-26T22:14:00.024+11:00

Technology is awesome. It constantly amazes us, the shiny, the newest, the sleekest, the most advanced, the greenest, all point to our fascination to push the boundaries.

Human ingenuity, vision, ideation, all drive each of us in different ways. Passion and emotion often over-ride commonsense and process. Fast cars, expensive toys, remote destinations, are also often the domain of James Bond films.

So trick question.......what do fast cars, great design, astronomy and James Bond films have in common........
P A R A N A L !!!!!

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) tapped into all of these emotions with a unique blend of the fastest and the furtherest, an electric super car and the world's most productive optical telescope - both impressive structures that evoke our emotion and passions.

So some history here for the movie buffs may assist set the scene.

Who could forget the Aricabo Radio Telescope arising out of the "CGI lake" in the James Bond movie Goldfinger, water draining away every where, only to contact a satellite to laser a few cities before being blown to bits by the hero and his beautiful assistant.

Then more recently in Quantum of Solace with Daniel Craig in the lead role - Superspy meets beautiful woman, and on their first date find, yet again, another evil villain holed up in a Telescope control room that must be instantly dispatched with lots of special effects. Is it any wonder that astrophysicists are developing a complex and have to watch "Big Bang Theory" for therapy. Quantum of Solace (a very "sciencey" name) was filmed at ESO's Paranal site.

Daniel Craig described Paranal as "a very special place" and that goes some way to highlighting why you might find a group of telescopes there. The structures of Telescopes are imposing, impressive and unique and provide the essential backdrop for the action scenes in action movies.

Now when we talk about renewable technology, we are not talking about billion dollar telescope sites be blown up on James Bond film sets and then being open for the pressing business of Astrophysics the next day......but Mr Bond does likes his fast cars - now he can have an electric one.

The supercar, has also often drawn the same emotions out of the alpha-male, though this time its not the "racing green color" but racing green endurance. This week the ESO brought them both together for a unique opportunity.

Speed versus distance.

There they were - two pieces of highly advanced technology side by side in all their glory. The worlds fastest ELECTRIC supercar and the most productive ground based observatory. The "renewable" film set and the renewable energy super car. Enough of the parallels and metaphors.....it was just plain gorgeous!!

The ESO team described their exciting day as follows: "The SRZero electric supercar arrived at Paranal on October 27 after touring the Pan-American Highway from Alaska's Prudhoe Bay and on their way to Ushuaia. The Racing Green Endurance (RGE) adventure could not have been complete without a stop at Paranal, where the RGE team had the opportunity to observe the fascinating southern skies under the best conditions and test the supercar’s limits by performing at an altitude of 2600 metres above sea level."

So what's the science angle here. The ESO also today shared some of their finest work "on wheels" with some of the deepest ever images of spiral galaxies taken with the HAWK-I camera on the VLT (very large telescope). These infra-red shots of these very distant spiral galaxies weren't just released to seed inspirational new designs for mag wheels for super cars, they also show the various types and stages of galaxy development. HAWK-I stands for High-Acuity Wide-field K-band Imager and is highly sensitive in the infra-red range.

So this week we saw the best set of wheels on earth and in the heavens. Thanks to the folks at the ESO and their imaginative marketing, drawing our attention to the best of breed technologies, and tapping into our passion for the shiniest, boldest, and contrasting it with the grandest and most majestic.

Photo Credits: ESO/ H.H. Heyer
ESO/ Glenn Arcos & www.racinggreenendurance.com
Source ESO Used with permission.

Congrats Ernesto and Giovanni

2010-09-09T22:36:00.007+10:00

Well folks. G11 has now relaunched with brand new Planewave 20inch CDK.

What an amazing piece of technology. Able to carry effortlessly a 6 kg camera assembly and a 12 position (50mm) filter wheel, it's is a stunning telescope. The Ascension mount is so precise it can handle 300 sec unguided images with great precision.

Daddy hasn't had much time to play with his new toy yet, and a recent change of PCs on the home network means I'm still re-installing image processing software as well.

However not to let the side down Ernesto and Giovanni have claimed the first science credits on the new scope!!!!!

Last night they captured one of the two asteroids that zipped deep inside one lunar distance. In a stunning 4 sequence animated gif file they show 2010 RF12 zipping past the earth at an MOID of 79000 at 6klms per sec.

Both asteroids were fairly small and slightly larger than 2008 TC3 that landed in Sudan in October 2008.

Carnival of Space 158

2010-06-16T01:13:00.022+10:00

[GEO Code personal Welcome]

Its been a while since I hosted the Carnival - No, I haven't been hiding away on a tidally split blue-green planet held together by carbon nano-fibre tree roots. Not wanting to open a "Pandora's box" ;-), I've just been busy. So thanks Fraser for appointing an Australian host for the Carnival in the week Hayabusa touches down in the Australian Desert.
[Image: Flight path of NASA DC-8 Hayabusa re-entry observation mission.]

If you are new here, a “Blog Carnival” is a whistle stop tour of Blogs around a particular community of interest – in this case Astronomy and Space. It features the best and most interesting highlights of this week’s blog posts from the contributors to the carnival. The purpose is to share, develop, encourage and network with those of a similar interest. For back-issues of earlier carnivals click here. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to carnivalofspace@gmail.com, and the next host will link to it.

Its been a big week for Japan with "three from three" in as many days. Ikaros deployed its solar sails, Hayabusa made it all the way to home base and to top things off - Japan had a great win over the powerful Cameroon football team in the World Cup.

This week AARTScope ran a live blog of the Hayabusa return with over 200 visitors dropping by to check-out the live action. So lets start this week with Space Missions.

Space Missions!
Cheap Astronomy among other things, produces high quality Podcasts, and this week Steve Nerlich gives an extensive preview to the return of Hayabusa covering the full seven years of the mission.

Brian Wang from Next Big Future Blog covers the
"inverse origami" of unfolding and deploying the IKAROS solar sail as thin as spider silk.

[Youtube Video from the JAXA Channel]

Bruce Cordell's 21st Century Waves doesn't "drop the ball" by asking "Can the UK Lead the New Space Age?" [For those who hate Football - my last world cup gag].

Aron Sora seeks to create a paradox on Habitation Intention by suggesting we need a reverse doomsday clock tracking how far away we are getting from being a Space fareing society. A bit of thinly veiled activism. I love it!!!

Adam Crowl at Crowlspace does the math on the business case for Space Based Solar Power. The thinking seems to be gather the power in space then transfer and distribute on the ground.

Every organization/industry needs to learn and develop. Part of that journey is having a strong organizational memory. David Portree editor of Beyond Apollo and Beyond Shuttle makes a strong contribution to our organizational memory of space missions by carefully documenting the historical evolution of various space programs. David meticulously traces the decision points and tension between politics and science through out the journey. Some of those decisions sound vaguely familiar and relevent today. This week David covers the evolution of space station design throughout the 60s and 70s, the roadblocks and decision points and challenges along the way. Can you spot how many of the McDonnell concepts have made it through to today's Space Station.

Finally in Weird Sciences, Bruce Leeeowe known for his "theoretical approach to the space dimension and extraterrestrial life", discusses what every mission planner needs to know - the best contingency plan if you should encounter the scenario where your Spaceship's warp drive core is declared irretrievable. Bruce uses known science to push the boundaries of what just, might, be possible.....one day! Bruce also has a post that asks the question - "How old could entities be?"

[Youtube Video: NASA's video of Hayabusa "mothership" and landing pod re-entering the atmosphere]
l
Hayabusa was the highlight of the week and actualy lived up to the expectation, which now brings us to Hard Science.

Hard Science!
Nancy Atkinson, Senior Editor of Universe Today, continues the Japanese theme, discussing some of Shimizu's mega space projects. The Japanese Space community have clearly demonstrated their ability to achieve amazing results......what are they thinking of next?

Paul Gilster's Centauri Dreams Blog covers the amazing latest research on β Pictoris produced by the ESO team. Not sure what is more exciting - the findings or the capabilities of ESO's Very large telescope and the Adonis instrument.

David Bigwood presents a a collection of images from the Lunar Planetary Imager....some great potential screensavers and desktop backgrounds among them.

The Chandra X-Ray team at Harvard celebrate the life and research of Geoffrey Burbidge and the legacy of his research on the enormous energies involved in violent events in gallactic nuclei. They also present a new image of CH Cyg that is fascinating, as it maps color data from three different telescopes to RGB creating an amazing insight into the behavior of CH Cyg.

Social Scene!
Robert Pearlman, Editor of CollectSPACE, puts on a Tuxedo to cover awards ceremony that appointed four new inductees to the US Astronaut's Hall of Fame.

Thanks for joining us for Carnival of Space #158. June 16 2010.

Desktop Guide to Hayabusa Re-Entry

2010-06-11T15:59:00.030+10:00

I'm sure you have all seen those massive rooms with walls of electronic displays like the NASA Flight Control Room. Ever dreamed of being a mission controller and having all that data at your finger tips?

This weekend is a long weekend in Australia and a very special event is occurring! The Hayabusa Spacecraft is returning to its home planet with samples from Asteroid Itokawa. Keeping it all in AsiaPac, JAXA, the emerging Japanese powerhouse of space projects, has selected the Woomera Restricted Area for a landing and recovery zone.

I am watching the whole thing with extra interest as if it overshoots it might land on my telescope! ;-)

Anyway I digress (as usual).

Today I thought I would share with you how to set up your own mission control room so you can watch all the action unfold. TV is boring anyway as its largely re-runs of shows and terrible ads, whereas the internet is a seething mish-mash of live breaking news, particularly since the advent of social networking. So here, step by step, I'll describe how you can set up your own Mission Control Centre.

Special Equipment:
1) Leather recliner
2) 46 " Plasma
3) PC/Computer
4) Wireless Mouse in the USB port

[Seriously, I have actually done a full test plan on this]

What to do with above Equipment:
1) Open 5 windows
2) Window #1: Open Url http://www.trendmaps.com and search on #Hayabusa and or follow @Hayabusa_JAXA for live updates in Twitter. Trendmaps will enable you to see what everyone else is saying in the twitter feeds that include #Hayabusa.
3) Window #2: Open Google Translator for Japanese to english translations (The Aussies are not the only ones excited about Hayabusa).
4) Window #3 Of course you will need the latest updates from my blog http://aartscope.blogspot.com (I am hoping for a live reporter, if I can find one).
5) Window #4 You may want to have the Mission Page up for any updates http://hayabusa.jaxa.jp/e/index.html
6) Window #5 Nasa has flown an entire flight crew to man a DC-8 and attempt to film the re-entry and stream it live Here: http://airborne.seti.org/hayabusa/ Knowing how carefully NASA plan things I'd say the chances are "better than average" there will be something to see.
7) Plug Laptop PC into your large screen/Plasma/LCD/ Brand spanking new LED TV with 3D (Ok now we are going a bit too far).
8) Arrange Windows on screen so you can see them all - re-size the windows to suit.
9) Use wireless mouse to refresh screens that don't feed.
10) Pour glass of preferred beverage and relax and watch the show!!!!!

Re-Entry is at Sun 13th around 23:22 local time (around 1300 UT to 1400 UT should cover most of the action) when the tiny spacecraft will glow at an estimated magnitude of -5 (brighter than Venus) as it passes through about 100Klms up. If you are fortunate enough to be at least 500 kilometers away from the nearest Port Adelaide AFL game, then you may well be in the vicinity of Glendambo, SthAus where it is expected be briefly visible about 30 degrees above the NW Horizion.

Details on the descent can be found here: http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/e/enterp/missions/hayabusa/trj.shtml#new

So there you have it, get yourself a an anime thumbnail photo for your Social Networking Profile, brush up on your Japanese, set up your "Mission Control" screen and enjoy what should be a historic occasion.

LIVE BLOGGING and TWITTER UPDATES from Astroswanny from 1200UT.
http//aartscope.blogspot.com
http://www.twitter.com/astroswanny

Update: 12/6 09:34am Hayabusa_JAXA have posted a lovely photo of the dark australian night (presumably from Woomera) Looks like they are ready to go.

Update: 13/6 09:08 PM T -3 Hrs and counting. This afternoon the JAXA Team announced that Hayabusa would be faintly visible after sunset before the Satellite entered the earths shadow in the Maldives about 6 minutes before re-entry. Satellites are visible in early evening and before sunrise when they are light by the sunlight whilst still being visible in the "night". Details of the observation details in the Maldives - http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/e/topics/2010/hayabusa_obs3.shtml

Update: 13/6 09:27 Welcome everyone to tonight's coverage. In the last hours I have noticed a number of visitors from the US East coast, Japan, Europe (looks like somewhere near France or Spain) and Australian visitors in Melbourne, Perth and possibly the Woomera restricted area, or some really keen nearby desert dwellers ;-)
You can see the visitor on the "Revolvermap" one of my favourite webtools at the top of the page. NASA are yet to open up the server to their live broadcast.

Update: 13/6 09:39 (Local AEST UT +10 - in case you were wondering) Welcome Jakata!
OK then I'm all set - Laptop, iPad and a glass of Verdello and the Soccer on the TV Algeria and Slovenia has just started.

If you want to join the conversation RT @Astroswanny on twitter with #hayabusa_jaxa and #hayabusa

UPDATE: 13/6 09:55 pm - Cool must see Geo Greeting....in a way only Google can!!!
http://www.geogreeting.com/view.html?yGovmywoUrywoUrkIklECka

UPDATE: 13/6 10:00 Hourly update. JAXA reported at 9pm that the lander successfully seperated from the mother ship. Twitter feeds following the action with heavy traffic are #hayabusa and #hayabusa_jaxa. About 1Hr 20mins now till anticipated touchdown.

UPDATE: 13/6 10:21 One hour to go. The Tweetsphere is roaring and there are over 20 concurrent visitors - A special welcome to the folks in a boat off the west coast of Africa!!! (or perhaps there's a tiny island there I can't see) - Just trying to get a fix on the NASA DC-8 You can flight track it here in Google Earth : http://airborne.seti.org/hayabusa/HayabusaFlightTracker.kml

UPDATE: 13/6 10:52PM NASA DC-8 has been airborne for a few hours and is now approaching the observation area.

UPDATE 13/6 11:13PM Hayabusa should be over Indian ocean and visible over Maldives about now. NASA DC-8 making good progress to target area:

UPDATE 13/6 11:22pm Local Any minute now we should see announcement from: http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/home/hayabusa-live/

UPDATE: 13/6 11:42pm Servers all running seriously slowly, can't raise the NASA feed, no offical news yet. Intrepid reporters in Japan having their own Hayabusa parties and streaming via Ustream: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/kalapattar

UPDATE: 11:50pm Looks like the NASA DC-8 made it into position, I couldn't contact the server for the feed, let hope they got what they came for!!!

Update: 11:53pm My Japanese is not good but there is lots of cheering and an photo from the NASA DC-8 it appears, lots of cheering!

UPDATE: 12:04am Our Japanese friends have cracked the champagne and are looking very excited. Thanks for everyone who has visited the blog. Join me early next week when I will be hosting Carnival of Space.

UPDATE: 12:08am ＜6月13日 22時57分（日本時間）発信＞地上からカプセルの発光（火球）を確認しました。これにより、カプセルが大気圏に再突入したことを確認しました。Which if you followed the steps mention above ;-) you would instantly recognize as Re-entry fire ball confirmed!

UPDATE: 12:25am JAXA broadcasting via Ustream and the Live Universe channel have captured the re-entry in spectacular video.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/7634995

Observer reports starting to come in PWB described it as a long slow shooting star in Alice Springs.

12:46 am -SIGNING OFF - Well, no news on the science yet but that is about all we'll hear tonight I guess. First photos of the landing are in and show the spectacular fireball. Thanks to all the new visitors to AARTScope where our mission is to "help create the sense of anticipation and discovery that keeps scientists asking questions". I'll do another round-up when I host Carnival of Space tomorrow. The re-entry was observed as far away as Alice Springs by one of our guests at tonight's Live Blog. Please leave you comments and subscribe to the Blog and the Astroswanny TWITTER feed. Australia opens is world cup campaign in 4 hours so I better get some shut eye. CLEAR SKIES!!!!!

The Data is in on New Zealand's 1st Space Launch

2010-03-27T12:12:00.002+11:00

Rocket Lab's January newsletter carried some details of the first data-set obtained from the Nov launch of their first ATEA-1 rocket conducted at Great Mercury Island.

Mindful of the famous one-liner from Big Bang Theory - ".....and this is why Sweden has no space program", back in November, I blogged about the launch of a sounding rocket to see if that constituted the commencement of New Zealand's space program.

Whilst the world contemplates the implications of the Obama administration's cancellation of the Ares V Constellation program, and we consider the pros and cons of Nation/State Vs Private Sponsorship, I thought it would be timely to see what news there is from New Zealand.

Following the Nov 2009 launch of the ATEA-1 (a bio-fuel, low carbon, patented design, sounding rocket), a commercial fishing boat recovered the stage one booster 17 klms offshore recovering a vast array of data that could be analyzed.

The Rocket Lab team reports - "we are still reviewing the data, but initial findings suggest that the booster was providing the expected thrust levels at launch and showing good, stable combustion for the full burn-time, consuming all available fuel. The recovered booster also confirms clean separation of the second stage. Calculations from the raw data obtained confirm that the vehicle was on course for a nominal trajectory to over 100 kilometres altitude".

The newsletter also provides an interesting insight into the nimble, clever design innovations that are achievable from small private space programs that can clearly tap brilliant skill-sets, respond to the actual needs of the market, and come up with scalable and customizable solutions for an expanding customer base.

In particular they are surprisingly open about the features of their Avionics Flight Computer (SRA) - "The unit is physically incredibly small, fitting within an envelope 50mm diameter x 150mm length. The weight of the unit is a mere 250 grams including batteries. The reduction in size and weight of the unit is critical for improving the performance of sounding rockets such as Ātea-1. The unit is designed and tested to MIL-109-E shock and vibration tests and can handle up to 80°C ambient temperature.

The hardware consists of a low-power 32-bit microcontroller with RS232 output port and auxiliary expansion ports. It has 16-bit data logging capability, with an in-built Inertial Measurement Unit consisting of 3-axis accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers. Onboard GPS is standard and it is designed to interface with a number of telemetry options including the Iridium satellite network."

I resisted the temptation to photoshop in a blue adult molar - in the words of another Sheldonism (Big Bang Theory) "...everything is better with blue-tooth" and that seems like the only thing that is missing. Perhaps in the executive model?

So AARTScope visitors, we await the next installment of the Rocket Labs success story, or as I like to think of it as - the New Zealand Space program. Clearly there is a much greater role for private space programs and sponsors as NASA maintains is game face in its latest Ares quarterly report.

V842 Cen observations to support Hubble Cosmic Origins Spectrograph run

2010-03-18T08:32:00.004+11:00

V842 Cen first came to attention in 1986 as a Nova and follow up studies by Warner/Woudt published in the journal of physics identified it as exhibiting similar behaviour to GW Lib. Thus both these stars are now the subject of Dr Paula Szkody's study using the cosmic origins spectrograph on the HST.

This observation task was somewhat more difficult than last week's effort as the variable star map coverage is somewhat problematic as there are few comparison stars of similar magnitude. However just 7 arcsecs and 20 arcsecs away are two known catalog stars that were selected for comparitive magnitudes. Which effectively places them close to the annulus/skybackground settings of Photometric measurement tools. At 1.22arcsec per pixel on my trusty FLI that's a tight shot!!!! Normal practice is to try and get the annulus to 2-2.5 times the FWHM of the star. So its tight!

Here at least I was able to adjust the annulus and the inner sky radius such that 0323-0709135 was kept away from the target calculation area. (ie between the two)

The image below I have zoomed in a little to illustrate the difficulty of the task.

One surprise was that the catalog star 0323-0709135 seemed to be a little brighter visually than expected. Instructions from AAVSO alert 418 indicated 0323-0709135 was expected to be slightly fainter than its near neighbor 0323-079110 at 14.88.

Either way V842 Cen appears to be 15.43 at my measurement which I submitted to the AAVSO this morning. I suspect the tightness of the shot and 0323-0709135 sneeking into 0323-0709110's sky background may have V842 Cen a little closer to 0323-0709135's magnitude than it actually is - you can see this in the photo.

GW Lib data to support Hubble COS mission

2010-03-07T14:29:00.005+11:00

One of the delights of being an amateur astronomer is being able to assist real scientists with (hopefully) useful data on various targets that they need to keep an eye on prior to observation runs with toys that I can't afford eg the HST.

An alert (Notice#417) went out this week from the AAVSO requesting data on two cataclysmic variable stars to support Dr Paula Szkody's upcoming spectrograph observations on the Cosmic Origins spectrograph on the HST.

GW Lib is a CV that needs to be fainter than Mag 14 when the mission takes place, and it has been known to infrequently outburst.

AAVSO members regularly fly cover and give early warnings on any unexpected events that may affect the mission integrity.

GW Lib is at DEC -25.00.25 so that immediately eliminates a good number of the world's telescopes. Australia has had large monsoonal lows pushing into the interior of Australia and the weather has been pretty ordinary this week as a result.

My choice of a couple of 300 sec images was a little short in duration as the SNR was a bit low with the moon still being at 55%. I was able to confirm that the target was about Mag 15.39 (given the low SNR maybe a little closer to 16) in the Johnson V filter (untransformed).

I'll try again tonight with a little longer exposure.

Peter

UPDATE: 10/03/2010
JD Airmass GW_Lib 147 143 Err SNR
2455265.209 1.11373 15.501 14.422 14.000 0.025 42
2455265.214 1.100 15.421 14.432 13.988 0.031 34
2455265.219 1.08756 15.514 14.422 14.003 0.041 26

Ave 15.479 14.425 13.997 0.032 34

Peter

UPDATE: 11/03/2010
Today I tidied up my Sequence a little, deleting 128 and I added 157 to the comp star list as visually it looked to be the identical magnitude to GW Lib. I also stacked the three images with a median combine to give a much much stronger SNR. With the SNR of a number of the comp stars now being over 100 (preferred) the Magnitude of 147 was almost identical to the chart magnitude listed in AAVSO chart 2084CCS. Comfortable with the improvement in accuracy GW Lib magnitude was measured at 15.629 (Johnson V untransformed).

Note the stronger SNR of the target now at 60 with the comp star's SNR >100.

Seven AAVSO members contributed observations and Dr Paula was pleased to hand the observations to the Hubble space controllers this morning who then gave the go-ahead for tonights UV run on the Cosmic Origins spectrograph.

Congrats to Dr Paula, hope everything goes well tonight! It all starts again on the 14th as the next COS run is on V842 Cen.

Sharpless 292 (SH2-292) Eye of the seagull

2010-02-19T23:02:00.010+11:00

I am working on a image of the Eye of the Seagull - Sharpless 292 (SH2-292).

I chose this subject as it is a great narrowband target with a strong Sii channel, but plenty of Oiii to work with as well. The difficulty in images such as these is managing the Ha channel which can "blast out" the image -I'm sure you are all aware there is a lot of Hydrogen in stars, even if there is not so much in the Nebula.

My Goal here is to go deeper than any other amateur has ever gone before. Tom Davis has set the standard with an absolute masterpiece (its a much wider angle image - 18 hours of exposure), and Davide De Martin has used about 8 hours of imaging from a 1.2m UK Schmidt Telescope - here.

So I'm going to be cruel and tease you a bit here. It all starts with a single frame - a 300 sec Ha image at F3.8 on the 0.4m ASA Astrograph. Not much to see yet, as the 3nM Astrodon filters really cut through and bring out the fine detail in the "iris scan" of the Seagull's eye.

This is the first 5.3 hours of just the Sulphur channel Sii.

The equipment is the AART or as you may know it G11 on Global Rent-a-Scope.
Enjoy for now.....I'll update again soon.

Peter

Update #2 Color building nicely - 12 hours deep now!!!! Need to start managing that Ha channel as the star sizes are bigger than the Sii and Oiii for most stars.

Peter

Update #3
Out to 12.9 Hours now. Over 3.5G of data and 260 individual images! 24 Minutes of RGB added to the Narrowband Channels to tidy up the stars. This zoomed in crop shows the depth that comes with long duration exposures. However I can't give the game away fully yet as the full size version final version will be my entry for David Malin Awards this year.

M42 in Narrowband

2010-02-08T22:49:00.002+11:00

Happy new year all 2010 is already slipping away. Here is my first narrowband image of the Orion nebula. A lovely soft-pastely treatment with a short 30 mins of imaging.

Equipment: GRAS G-11 (AART)
ASA 16 inch Astrograph with CCD FLI PL11002M Class 1 and 3nM Astrodon 50mm filters
30 Mins total of L, Ha, Sii & Oiii

A more serious image than my fun pre-christmas effort. Enjoy.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

2009-12-31T13:28:00.002+11:00

Well, as the international year of astronomy IYA2009 wraps up, I hope its been a good one for you all.

This year seems to have gone so quickly and I guess we all look back at this time of year and think about what we did, didn't do, or could have done better.

This year was ground breaking in a number of ways for me, had some unexpected frustrations, but realised the dream of getting AARTScope established. 2010 will no doubt have its own challenges and I wish everyone the best for the new year, the patience to persevere, the intuition and improvization to excell and the wisdom to pick your battles.

I leave you with the following, my final picture for this year:- A very Christmassy Orion. (Its a fun time of year.....so I have had a bit of fun with this).

Regards
Peter

New Zealand has a Space Program....apparently!

2009-11-30T22:01:00.017+11:00

One late breaking news item that managed to cut though all the media surrounding the political crisis over the Australian Government's climate change bill, was today's rocket launch in New Zealand.

Apparently New Zealand has a space program!

Launch Image - Credit: Peter Beck CEO Rocket Labs

Rocket Lab a private New Zealand company launched one of its own locally designed and built rockets, into sub-orbital flight with a 22 second burn. The rocket dubbed "Manu Karere" which means "bird messenger" lifted off at 2:28pm local time from Great Mercury Island near the Coramandel's in New Zealand's north island.

Mark Rocket, director of the company, who recently became the first New Zealander to book a space tourist flight on Virgin Atlantic, was eccstatic with the launch which went perfectly to plan.

Perhaps New Zealanders have abandoned their fruitless attempts to whack the Australians in cricket and have set the bar a little higher.

The slim 6 metre long rocket is designed to carry small scientific and commercial payloads, and Rocket Labs is currently reaching out to collaborators and investors for future ventures as part of the self-described "dynamic southern hemisphere space industry".

Of particular interest is the, "almost mandatory" these days, carbon footprint assessment and associated green credentials. The ATEA 2 uses only about 14kg Co2 per launch. Equally impressive is the rapid progression from test firing of the Atea 1 booster on October 1st to the launch on Nov 30, this demonstrates a nimble, small, focused operation.

The maximum payload of the ATEA 2 rocket is 70kg suitable for short duration micro-gravity and atmospheric science experiments. To achieve a maximum altitude of 250Klms the payload optimal mass is 25Kgs. Rocket Lab have developed their own hybrid rocket fuel and solid fuel binder. Hybrid 90A is a polymer-based cold castable elastomer developed in conjunction with their program by Technical Director, award winning scientist and CEO Peter Beck. Peter currently hold 5 patents in the US and Europe.

Peter assures me the Kiwis will be 2-1 up when they belt Australia in the Bledisloe Cup (rugby)!

So where to from here, I for one will be following this with interest. Thanks to Mark Rocket for the images from the Rocket Lab website and Peter Beck for the exclusive launch image.

Carnival of Space #128

2009-11-07T21:15:00.017+11:00

Hi, and welcome to this week's Carnival of Space – Edition 128, making a rare stopover in the Southern Hemisphere. Although I am based in Melbourne, Australia, I decided to demonstrate extra-ordinary tolerance and inclusion by actually featuring the historic Sydney Observatory in the banner, which is a bit of a collage today. The Sydney Observatory is at the southern end of the harbour bridge and Luna Park is at the northern end. A great Astronomy/Carnival link. There is a long local history of Melbourne/Sydney jokes and rivalry, so we are putting all that aside today to bring you a truly Australian edition of Carnival of Space.

If you are new here, a “Blog Carnival” is a whistle stop tour of Blogs around a particular community of interest – in this case Astronomy/Space. It features the best and most interesting highlights of this week’s articles from the contributors to the community. The purpose is to share, develop, encourage and network with those of a similar interest. (Its also traditional to blend the themes of Carnival and Space in the banner).

Before we get started, 2009 is the international year of astronomy, and sadly it has gone so quickly and there is only 53 days to go. How have you celebrated? What have you done differently to make the most of “Our Year”? Feel free to complete the following test and score your involvement in this - the international year of astronomy. (If you feel bold enough you could post your score in the comments section of the blog.

I shared my telescope & night sky with children (20 Pts) [ ]
I participated in a cornerstone IYA 2009 project(20 Pts) [ ]
I did a presentation on Astronomy to a group (20 Pts) [ ]
I donated Galileo Scopes to a school/friends/org(20 Pts) [ ]
I went to a star party (20 Pts) [ ]
I logged better than 30 hours on my/a telescope (20 Pts) [ ]
I participated in a research project (20 Pts) [ ]
I reported Astrometric data to IAU/MPC/other (20 Pts) [ ]
I reported Photometric data to AAVSO/other (20 Pts) [ ]
I subscribed to a PodCast/VodCast/RSS/other (20 Pts) [ ]
I wrote an article, blog, podcast or e-learning (20 Pts) [ ]

Ratings >180 – Thought Leader, >140 – Activist, >100 Enthusiast, >60 Participant, <20When’s it on again?
Fear not….. there is still time for you to make it memorable!

So now I’ll get off my soap box…… its Carnival Time!!!! Enjoy! Disclaimer: If there are any real Sheldon's out there, I appologise in advance for my Big Bang Theory jokes.

In the money!
Who has "lifted" the prize money in the various competitions in the race to build, or at least provide proof of concept, for a space ladder? A number of our Bloggers cover this issue off this week with exciting reports from the various competitions. This a very hot topic at the moment and I'll leave our presenters to provide commentary.

Brian Wang at Next Big Future has been a regular on this issue and talks about the Lasermotive team's efforts.Brian also takes a look at another race in Spain to build a Space Hotel.

Cosmiclog also covers off the efforts of the competitors in the Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge and comments on the Space Ladder competitions and discusses other NASA initiatives.

Chuck Black from A Curious Guy takes a look at commercial space satellites.

Ken Murphy at Out of the Cradle rounds up over 50 scholarship and competitions opportunities.

Hard Science!
Chris from Weird Warp takes a look at various forms of space travel being researched and proposed.

e-Astronomy pioneer Phil Plait from Bad Astronomy reviews and comments on the first Hubble image after it's recent "makeover". The stunning image of M83 stellar nursery is worth a look.

The Chandra Blog features a bio on Chandra researcher Leisa Townsley. The Chandra Mission also posted details of research on a Neutron Star that has a carbon atmosphere.

Steinn Sigurðsson from Dynamics of Cats also follows up the Chandra article and explores the implications with an interesting article - Diamond encrusted dragon's egg, perhaps Dr Who's [BBC] diamond planet Midnight is not so far fetched.

Emma from We are all in the Gutter shares a cool movie on Blazars from NASA's Fermi Gamma ray telescope.

Paul from Centauri-Dreams writes about a paper by Claudio Maccone that analyzes the Sun's
gravitational lens not only in terms of imaging distant planets but as
a huge amplifier of radio signals.

A very relevant current topic is addressed by Cheap Astronomy beginning an epic two part podcast on Greenhouse Earth.

Steve's Astro Corner has some great suggestions for some maintenance tasks on your favorite glassware and eyepieces.

Regular contributor Stuart Atkinson from Cumbrian Sky has a great article about the naming of martian meteorites found by the Opportunity and Spirit rovers....its all a bit of a mash-up. I was also struck by the most amazing job title I have ever heard of - "Payload Uplink Lead for the Miniature Thermal Emission Spectrometer" I wonder how you fit that on a business card ;-).

Fun Stuff!
So we begin the fun stuff with Beyond Apollo blog by David Portree and a rather interesting article about calculations for the perfect three planet manned fly-by.

Colony Worlds compares some Trekkie Techie with Lunar mission needs.

Ryan Anderson departs from his usual blog at Martian Chronicles to share an article he wrote for a Science writing competition. Ryan becomes Q for a day and investigates "James Bond" like qualities of future Martian Probes. Ryan invites us to vote for his entry if we feel so inclined. [Why, wouldn't that tamper with the statistical validity of the sample voter pool? I have one thing to say - Sheldon.....its halo night!!.....now where was I?]

Robert Pearlman at the Collect Space blog "roadtests" the Space Station CRV emergency Crew return vehicle in a test with some great photos and a fascinating article.

If you're looking for a Lagrange Point to escape the pull on your space and time, Louise Riofrio, from A Babe in the Universe, does an entertainment review on Max Q a Band playing in a cafe across the road from the Johnson Space centre. Louise also explains the significance of the band's name - we love a blend of Art and Science here at AARTScope.

This past week was Halloween, and I can report that an increasing number of Australians now participate in this annual ritual. Tracy from Tiny Mantras has been having some fun with Solar System costumes in Being Jupiter for a week.

On a more serious note.....
The first moving object that comes anywhere near the Hill Sphere in 2012 is going to send the conspiracy whackos looking for Google Ad revenue into a frenzy on their suddenly authoritative conspiracy sites (Someone hold up the sarcasm sign for Sheldon) ;-). Alice from AstroInfo has some great info about how to talk to your friends about 2012. With the release of the recent "action/disaster" movie, it is a good time to have that conversation with your kids and friends.

At Simostronomy Don't miss Mike Simonsen's touching tribute to the passing of legendary AAVSO member - Dick Wend.

Finally returning to the Observatory theme with which I began, my own blog AARTScope features a tour of the worlds most quirky, amazing and bizarre private observatories - the roll on/off roof edition. Some of these have to be seen to be believed.

Thanks for stopping by........look out for the next episode in about a week. For the "back issues" and future info goto Universe Today - Carnival of Space.

My Top Ten Favourite Private Observatories

2009-11-02T15:09:00.007+11:00

This week I thought I would take you on a tour of some of the world’s most amazing private observatories.

When I was a little boy lying out in the backyard in a sleeping bag counting meteors and dreaming of being an Astronomer, I often pondered what it would be like to have my own observatory. We used to go on camping trips and a number of times travelled via Siding Springs in the beautiful Warrumbungle Ranges near Coonabarrabran in western New South Wales.

Most conversations with my parents and the school career guidance officer ended with the comments …….”you’re not good enough at Maths and there is only one or two astronomers in the country anyway and its not going to be you”. (This was the 70’s) The advice that I took was: “get a good job in electronics/telecommunications and then you’ll have money for your hobbies”.

Since that time I have often been bemused by the contrast between real astronomers dedicating themselves to a lifetime of study and research at great personal sacrifice versus the amateur astronomers who seem to have a limitless supply of disposable income to pour into their passion.

I think this is one of the reasons why the co-operation between amateur and professional astronomers has been so successful. Professionals sourcing research grants to secure scarce precious time on specialist instruments and self funded amateurs doing the grunt work (long hours waiting for something to happen) , follow-up observations and at times pre-work for critical missions.

Ice In Space the amateur astronomy online community even has a Spectroscopy group now, they are doing some wild stuff. I am going to do a separate blog post on this shortly.

So to the Observatories of our eccentric hobbyists, today’s selection is roll-on/ roll-off roof style of construction (I might do a separate post on Domes):

The Top Ten (My favourites) Private Observatories.

The most amazing thing about private observatories is the innovation, individual style and effort that goes into them, and the locations and beautiful settings in which they are located. Many amateurs have gone to great lengths to document the constructions and happily share their obvious skill, and even in some cases their designs and blueprints. So if you want an observatory with pneumatic chairs, pizza ovens, 7.1 surround sound, play swings or somewhere to also park your car – Take the Tour!!!!

Selection criteria: Location, design innovation, aspect, view during the day time.

1) Asian influence, superb design – Ptolemy’s Café Observatory

Ptolemy's Cafe Observatory

2) Size does matter – The Ultimate Private Observatory

For pure engineering skill and the audacity of it all, not to mention the electrical, hydraulic, pneumatic systems, oh yes …and the F5 Tornado proof structure with 7.1 Surround Sound system.

3) Duel Function Radio and Optical Observatory – Tennessee Skynet
Bill and Melinda Lord have created a unique operation leveraging both optical and radio astronomy, great to see couples sharing their interests.

4) Stunning design. Observatorio de la Bollonia

5) Duel Purpose – Dorset Astronomy’s Frome Valley Observatory

Frome Valley Observatory

6) L’Osservatore Ponte Di Legno
I love the planter boxes……No#1 in cuteness factor

7) Most Amusing Name – Cloudbait Observatory

Also some amazing projects!

8) His and Hers – Watzke Astronomy. John and Beth each have their own observatory keeping aperture envy within the family.

9) Close to home, ultimate functionality - Saaletal Observatorium

Saaletal Observatory

10) Of course the best observatory is – your own.

The AART – Australian Amateur Research Telescope

Finally a couple of additional noteworthy mentions:

Star Navigator Observatory – The only one with a wood fire Pizza Oven

South Tamworth Observatory (great Photo)

Pleasant Valley Observatory

Well that is quite a selection it was hard to narrow it down to 10 and I’m sure to have missed a few, feel free to add your own favorites in the comments section below and complete the poll which is better: Roll-on/off or Dome.

NB: all photos served from their original websites

Aussie Round Up

2009-10-31T12:07:00.009+11:00

RESEARCH FUNDING SECURED

For those of you reading this blog on a Laptop via wireless technology, will be interested to know that you would not have been able to do so if it wasn't for astrophysicists looking for the fingerprints of string theory in the aftermath of the big bang......ah sorry that was an episode of "Big Bang Theory".

Seriously.....in 1974 Stephen Hawking suggested that exploding mini black holes could possibly be detected by radio astronomers, so the team at CSIRO (Australian Commonwealth Science and Industry Research Organization) set about researching this over the ensuing years.

Like all good science if you ask enough questions you can end up in an entirely different place. This week Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd awarded the national science prize to Dr John O'Sullivan.

In 1992 John O'Sullivan's team developed a patent that today is the heart of the wireless protocol that ensures that the signals and channels can be separated so that more than one user can use a wireless link. [Check out the interview from Sky News.]

Sky News Interview

The significance of this event is that the Patent was upheld this week and $200M of "Licence Fees" were collected from some of the biggest technology companies, and will be secured for future use of the CSIRO to fund future research.

O'Sullivan stumbled across the discovery by attempting to remove interference so that multiple frequencies could be monitored at the same time, improving the efficiency of their research.

Well done John, congratulations, to you and all the team at the Australian National Telescope. Looks like we can look forward to further great discoveries from the CSIRO.

ICE IN SPACE

The Australian Amateur Astronomers online community "Ice In Space" has just returned from their annual "star party" camping trip. It appears they enjoyed some great weather this year and many great astrophotographs are being processed. This impressive project from one of the founders Mike Salway is quite stunning. Mike is famous/instantly recognizable for blending some terrestrial elements into his photos.

Ice In Space has over 6000 members and has made a strong contribution to Amateur Astronomy, recent contributions from its members include the discovery of Jupiter Impact and the outburst of VX For.

Their first ever publication a stunning coffee table book - 2009 IYA Compendium will be released next week - featuring 80 Stunning photographs and mini bios on the members. I leave you with my modest contribution the Swan Nebula.

Bolide Week
Every since I was a kid I have been fascinated various Meteor showers. Over the years I have often pondered reports of bright bolides in October and these past two years have been no exception. Whilst the Orion meteor shower peaks on October 20/21, there have been some notable recent bolides in early october. The Piscid and Draconid showers occur around this time.

Last year on Oct 7, 2008 TC3, the first ever asteroid detected before it hit the earth, slammed into the Sudan with the flash being detected on carpark security cameras as far away as Egypt. This year on Oct 6 a similar sized object exploded in the upper atmosphere over Indonesia (Australia's nearest neighbor). Nicolas Wethington covered this extensively in Universe Today. It is either an interesting co-incidence or an aspect requiring further research that some of the brightest bolides seem to occur in the early October. Perhaps the most famous the Peekskill meteor seen by an entire football stadium of people.

2008 TC3 October 6th

Indonesia 2009 October 8th

Peekskill 1992 October 9th

Statisticslly over thousands of years there would be one at least one bolide every calendar night. So it remains an interesting aspect worthy of further research whether these Bolides are part of Piscids or Draconids shower or random small solo asteroids.

Variable stars and the discovery process

2009-10-07T22:18:00.016+11:00

The weather has been kind this week allowing a return to varibale star observations. This week I will take a look at the discovery process for new variable stars, as this week I had reason to understand and work through it due to detecting what appears to be a new variable star that has not been previously listed.

Discoveries of variable stars are normally a specific targeted activity, from either a target list of suspected variables in a particular constellation, or by star type researching the characteristics of the variables. Teams of astronomers usually collaborate over many observing sessions to gather data and write up their findings in a science paper that is then published in one of the journals. One such paper was published only this week by Alex Golovin, Kirill Sokolovsky, Natalia Virnina, Javier Lopez Santiago - Three new Variable stars in Indus. The purpose of such papers is to provide data, classification information, star temperatures, period of variability, and assist scientists understand the behaviour, age and characteristics of these stars.

In 1844 the german astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm August Argelander appealed, "I lay these hitherto sorely neglected 30 variable stars most pressingly on the heart of all lovers of the starry heavens" spawning the study of variable stars by professionals and amateurs alike. Over the past 160 years years the list has grown north of 30,000 with another 15000 suspected of being variable. Due to the massive number of variable stars and the limited number of observers, alas many still remain neglected.

Today we know there are two types of variable stars (and I don't mean one of those amusing bumper stickers - those that are and those that aren't). The two types are intrinsic and extrinsic - ie variability within the star and variablily external to the star. The stars then fall into a number of classifications related to the behaviour within these two types.

Observation and studies of variable stars are directed at identifying the characteristics to determine these classifications, and then determine the behaviours of these stars in order to better understand the context of the stars lifecycle.

The Hertzsprung-Russell diagram is the current collective knowlege of stellar lifecycles, individual star types are referenced here but things get more complicated when some of these stars (of different types) orbit around each other and start interacting and exchanging their elements and debris. This can lead to very sudden changes in brightness and evidence of a catalysmic variable. [This is one example of an extrinsic variable. - EDIT Actually whilst that might sound like extrinsic behaviour its still intrinsic as in the case of Dwarf Nova the accretion disk collapses onto the star and then its brightness changes intrinsicly - Thanks Sebastion]

Image courtesy of CSIRO ATF Outreach
Anyway, I am starting to sound as about exciting as a live video broadcast of the visible debris cloud in the LCROSS impact......so I'll return to my story.

One other way discoveries are made is when observers are participating in an observering campaign, and whilst processing data they find something and say ..... "hang on what going on over here". Many discoveries in all disciplines of astronomy are made when you find something a little unexpected whilst observing something else. Even amateur astronomers become curious and just have to know why!!!

This week I found myself in such a situation. Using the great photometrica tool (the poster child for "astronomy cloud services" ie photometric analysis as a webservice) I was processing data on V4743 Sgr a Cataclysmic Variable that last went into outburst in 2002. When I had finished, I hit the "what else is varying in this field" button and was presented with a list of about 40 stars to inspect. I knocked out all the stars that had a double star in the annulus, knocked out all those with a SNR less than 100 and bingo I had three left. All had brightness changes that were much larger than the standard deviation of their comparison stars (first point of interest) and demanded closer inspection. One of those had a small asteroid/or hot pixel drifting past through the annulus and across the sky background....AHHH!!! more stuff to check...... (second point to always check for transient artifacts/objects). Back to my top candidate, a Mag 14 Star, I could see a clear straight line variation of about 0.4 magnitude in just 30 minutes of imaging time (third point of interest), I quickly reviewed some other data of the same field and reprocessed all the data in a different software program - Maxim DL, and bingo! (fourth point of interest....got the same result).

So like any good AAVSO member.....contact your mentor and say "What do I do now"?

The reporting of a variable star discovery is an interesting process, one I was about to learn. Whilst an exciting event for the observer and very satisfying, its not one that leads to Hubble time and NASA press conferences. None-the-less it is scientifically interesting.

The International Variable Star Index is the body that administers this process. There is an 11 step process to enter the data required: Position, all known identifiers in the various star catalogs (2MASS & UCAC3 etc), the magnitude, the amount of variability (Max/Min Mag), variable star type, the period of its variablility, a light curve and a phase diagram. The final data point is any published jounals listing research data on your discovery(example as per Golovin, Sokolovsky, Virnina, Santiago mentioned above).

If you make a report to the variable star index all this information is vital, as to have your discovery reported and confirmed it needs to be varifiable by others, and available for peer review.....thus the onus is on the discoverer to present the data that needs to be reviewed. Over the next couple of nights I collected additional data and prepared my submission. As this was the first time I had been through the process, and being very much in the AMATEUR Astronomy camp, I was very nervous about the process. Its always important to follow the process and accept the feedback that comes from those with much more experience than one's self.

I received back a very helpful email that rejected my submission (for now) due to the fact that I didn't have enough data to produce a full phase diagram and I had suggested that it may be a Cephid Variable due to the short period and hadn't considered that it was a bit too blue to be a Cephid and that it was more likely a RR-AB. The VSX person made some very helpful suggestions about what I should do next - get some more data and produce a full phase diagram and re-submit.

As you can see from my light curve there is nowhere near enough data to create a phase diagram, as my observing runs were of short duration.

So nothing to report yet, other than there is a little variable out there throbbing away with a period of a couple of hours and varying by about 0.9M just waiting for my next visit. Once I have the period length I can then re-submit and rally some other observers for follow up. Again, the most important learning has been that the the period is important as others need to know what to look for, so they can plan their observing campaign.

So in the spirit of Argelander's appeal, at 9pm tonight, I will return and ensure my little variable doesn't end up on a list of "hitherto sorely neglected" variable stars.

UPDATE: 16/10
Still chasing data, missed a couple of nights due to bad weather and now my little star is escaping into the western sky. Here is the Phase Plot I referred to....as you can see this is still a bit out and I need a lot more data. At least you can see what I need here, to calculate the period.

Clear Skies!!

Camped by a billabong.....say what?

2009-10-02T21:22:00.009+10:00

Usually I leave commentary on latest amazing discoveries to others more qualified than myself. However due to the continued heavy spring rains that have south eastern australian grain farmers dancing for joy, and our rivers flowing again, my own observations have been heavily limited this week and I am forced to digress.

A number of blogs and astronomy sites were following with interest the latest images from Cassini of the "northern lake district" on Titan. (Sounds like a suburb that everyone would move to!) I still pinch myself that the Cassini-Huygens Mission has found the most amazing terrain in the solar system outside our own little blue-green home planet.

One particular article in the Astronomy online magazine caught my eye, it featured one of the photos and showed a hi-res strip of the northern rivers and lake, thought by mission scientists to contain flowing liquid methane.

The Hi-Res view shows clear semi-circular, horseshoe shapes in the upper river areas. Again, whilst I am not qualified to comment formally on this.....I could not help thinking, in fact I commented aloud - "they look like billabongs"!!!!

For those of you in the far flung northern hemisphere, who may not be familiar with the term "Billabong" - you may however remember from the Sydney Olympics and the famous Aussie song - "Waltzing Maltilda.....once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong...etc". A billabong is a body of water that is cut off from the main stream of the river when a water course changes direction during a flooding event and finds a different path of least resistance to the sea, carving a new channel that cuts off the older meandering stream - leaving it as an isolated "pond" often in a horse shoe shape.

In Victoria there is a town called Billabong.....camped by such a body of water. The murray river system contains many hundreds of these billabongs.

Again a closer look shows the very distinct patterns caused in the formation of the Billabong. I was struck by the similarities with the "horseshoe shapes" in the riverland areas on Titan.

It will be fascinating to see as the research unfolds, whether the shapes in the riverland areas of the northern polar area of Titan are forged by similar flows, of flooding and drying riverbeds, in the same fashion as our famous Murray River that borders Victoria and New South Wales.

With the current interest of NASA on planetary space exploration, who knows .....one day we may yet be camped by another Billabong......with quite a view.

Disclaimer: Mission contollers as far as I am aware haven't made any comments on what those shapes are - my thoughts are comparitive observations only.

When you wish upon a star

2009-09-26T12:36:00.008+10:00

Welcome. This week has been characterised by some fairly average weather. Those of you tuning into Australia's premier football event around the world this afternoon will see plenty of our famous Melbourne weather on show.

Weather can have an impact on an observing campaign, so there have been some challenges in obtaining some of the data I have been chasing this week. I am getting great positive feedback on the blog - largely because I am blogging on my observations.

So this week, given the weather, I thought it would be good to talk about observation campaigns. This week I have barely jagged a couple of short sessions on
V4743 SGR and some of the surrounding variables in the same field. V4743 Sgr is also referred to as Nova Sgr 2002c making it an object of some interest, given its nova outburst in 2002. Over 200 observers have contributed to the AAVSOs lightcurve.

So what is it that makes an object "interesting"? Clearly a Nova outburst is something that is interesting, as professional astronomers are quick to follow up with highly accurate spectroscopy. The advantage of having amateurs "on their toes" and participating in regular campaigns is that professional astronomers can't afford to have billion dollar telescopes pointed at stars, waiting for years, for something to happen. (The hubble deep field shot is a noteable exception...but a deliberate experiment to look at nothing to see if something WAS there)

A good example of leveraging the skills of amateur astronomers is my data here on QU Sgr. This is a Mira variable star of little or no interest to anyone.....but who knows one day it may be significant or do something. If that ever happened, what would we have to compare it with? So whilst gathering some data on V4743 with my set up which has a fairly large field of view, it is important to grab a couple of readings on any other Variables in the field, as other observers are unlikely to ever go specifically to QU Sgr to collect data.

There are a plethora of variable stars requiring regular observations and a limited number of observers. Today we have the fantastic use of social networking, blogs, forums and membership of organisations such as AAVSO. In this environment connected communities of dedicated amateurs have organised campaigns based on a prioritised list of "interesting objects".

Rod Stubbing who discovered this months outburst of VX For was working through a carefully targeted list of variables that were "in season" ie at an optimal position in the sky for observing. Rod indicated to me it was his first observing session on VX For for the year. So you never know what you will find, and how many other people who are observing.

So I leave you this week with the completely insignificant Mira Variable QU Sgr that noone else has reported on for over 4000 days.

VX For Dwarf Nova Outburst .....update#2

2009-09-16T10:31:00.008+10:00

The variable Star community is alive with excitement after Rod Stubbing an amateur astromomer from Victoria Australia discovered VX For in outburst for the first time since 1990.

After a 19 year spell the Dwarf Nova has moved into outburst. Importantly Rod appears to have caught it before its previous peak of 12.5 in 1990.

I was able to get some photometery on VX For and reported confirming data on Rod's exciting find to the AAVSO.

Mike Simonsen has written an excellent blog on this star with some of the history and the significance of the event. I imagine professional astronomers will be keen to get some spectroscopy on this interesting star in over the next month.

My observations were just a short run last night as the window is fairly tight from about 11:30Pm local time through to about 4:30am. The co-ordinates also restrict viewing to southern observers: RA 03:26:46.9 Dec -34:26:37.0 so our northern friends will have to leverage any access they can get to southern hemiphere scope......its called teamwork! Also Joe at the Center for Backyard Astrophysics is following the story with interest and rallying the troops!

Anyway it promises to be an exciting time as VX For entertains us for the coming weeks. My first light curve showed it right on the 13.0 magnitude observed the previous night by Rod Stubbing. Amateur Observers can post their results to the AAVSO.

Enjoy! I will post any further updates, you can also follow the light curve here as it develops.

Vx For Dwarf Nova outburst

2009-09-16T02:20:00.006+10:00

Great work last night Rod. I jumped on it as soon as it came over the side of the shed and have it in the first image at an average of 12.951 M across the first three images I have downloaded (airmass of 1.5)

I should be able to tighten that up a bit when I process the rest of the run.

Data from my first image....

VX For 12.951 SNR 103

126 12.555 SNR 137
137 13.652 SNR 59

More later....

Firrst three images down:

#TYPE=EXTENDED
#OBSCODE=LPB
#SOFTWARE=Photometrica 3.0
#DELIM=,
#DATE=JD
#NAME,DATE,MAG,MERR,FILT,TRANS,MTYPE,CNAME,CMAG,KNAME,KMAG,AMASS,GROUP,CHART,NOTES
VX For,2455090.09733,12.936,0.011,V,NO,ABS,ENSEMBLE,na,137,13.660,1.55703,na,090915,na
VX For,2455090.09994,12.959,0.010,V,NO,ABS,ENSEMBLE,na,137,13.665,1.53358,na,090915,na
VX For,2455090.10256,12.991,0.011,V,NO,ABS,ENSEMBLE,na,137,13.662,1.51102,na,090915,na

Looks like Rod has bagged a beauty!!!!

Peter

HD Video of M17

2009-09-13T17:13:00.007+10:00

The array of desktop tools available to the home user today is nothing short of amazing. HD Video editing packages, access to media sharing sites like Youtube and social networks, and a market place of over a billion people.

The notion from the 60's of Governments allocating Radio and TV broadcasting licences seems positively ridiculous, compared to today's media rich world.

Anyway, my little contribution for today - A short HD Video tour of the M17 Nebula, following up my earlier post this week.

Of course one of the little quirks of Newtonian astrographs is they view everything upside down. So for those of you still looking for the Swan....try this way up! However my son said "thats not a swan thats a Dingo"! (if the white bit is the gnarling teeth and the black patch the nose then.....ah....yep....there's a dingo in there too, perhaps even a crocodile!!!! Maybe why this fine emission nebula has more than one name.

Enjoy.....Cheers
Peter

Connected Astronomy

2009-09-12T14:54:00.008+10:00

I really enjoyed Fraser and Dr Pamela's AstonomyCast Podcast last week about "Next Level Telescopes" [Episode #150]. It was a fantastic roadmap of information, so I thought I would follow up, and build on that, by doing a little tour video of my own setup.

The advantages of remote, connected astronomy are many:

-No setup and tear down time
-No cold night air on the back of the neck
-No travel to dark sites
-Desktop convenience
-Collaboration, community and access to other highly skilled experts

Disadvantages (opportunities for personal growth)are:
-Its highly technical and very complex
-Can be expensive to do it yourself
-Broadband access can be challenging in remote areas
-WARNING - check you telco's broadband download limits on your Internet Plan

Whilst some of these interfaces are customised/proprietry the bulk of the legwork is done by Maxim DL, TheSky, FocusMax and the telescope controller.

Of course most challeneges can be overcome if you are dealing with people who know what they are doing, and you are prepared to be patient. There is nothing better than setting up a run and then relaxing in the leather recliner with the iPhone in the cup holder as a virtual console to monitor the progress of the run. Even better is setting up an image run in the dead of night whilst you are fast asleep, and downloading the images next day.

Here is my latest Astrophotography image: M17 or the Omega Nebula is not as often photographed as some, but the surrounding star field makes it a lovely composition.

This LRGB photo totaling 90 mins of imaging time 960sLum, 1500sRed, 1500sGreen, 1500sBlue binned 1x1 shows what is achievable.

So with the last word (or should that be letter) on connected astronomy..... ;-)......Enjoy!

Variable by Nature

2009-09-04T22:48:00.006+10:00

Variable star photometery is a key area where amateur astronomers make a significant contribution to Science.

The American Association of Variable Star Observers AAVSO has a large membership of skilled amateurs, great resources, extensive observation records and a great system for marshalling the variable star observers in the objective of creating light curve "memory" for others to build research upon.

Only this week an alert went out to the membership asking for urgent observations on variable star V2105 OPH. Dr Brian Espey from Trinity College Dublin, is anxiously awaiting a window on the Hubble Space Telescope to perform Ultraviolet Spectroscopy.

CCD cameras gather light based on their ADU count and the Quantum Efficiency of the Camera. In order to do accurate photometery you need to carefully select the durationof your exposures to make sure you don't saturate the star, as this destroys the Signal to noise ratio and distorts the ADU count. I don't have any experience in Spectroscopy but I imagine you would have to be just as careful. That's why if you are fortunate enough to be using the Hubble.....you probably don't want any surprises. An appeal to the amateur community therefore becomes essential to help the Scientist prepare for their observation session appropriately.

Variable star observers range from people with good eyesight and a knowledge of the nearby stars (derived from AAVSO's excellent maps and records) through to binocular observers and others with more powerful telescopes, CCD cameras, PEP devices and sophisticated software packages. The process involves determining the Magnitude of a star by comparing its brightness with nearby stars of a known magnitude. Observers then report this magnitude and the data is added to the database for that star.

Dr Espey was able to receive 7 observations with in the first 36 hours by keen amateurs and members of the AAVSO.

Once you gain the basic skills, you can further your skills with increasingy sophisticated tools.

Why do we do it?

Good question, for me the satisfaction of making a measurement and putting it into the database and having someone else on the other side of the world make the same observation and record the same measurement to a high degree of accuracy and precision is amazing and very satisfying. In science it is important to measure accurately, but the ultimate test is having results confirmed by others - ie reproducable data.

Here are some of the recent observations and the tool photometrica that I use to process my results.

The AAVSO report follows a set format (Abreviated below) and contains the measured magnitude and the magnitudes of nearby Check and Comparison stars as well.

#NAME,DATE,MAG,MERR,FILT,TRANS,MTYPE,CNAME,CMAG,KNAME,KMAG,AMASS,GROUP,CHART,NOTES
TY Sgr,2455049.90881,9.626,0.002,V,NO,ABS,ENSEMBLE,na,CD-24 15162,10.414,1.33521,na,090825

A tool such as Photometrica can help you process and format the data, if you are plotting your own light curves.

So join the AAVSO today, learn some new skills, and do some real science!!!

Comet 217P/Linear

2009-08-27T07:37:00.008+10:00

Excited comet watchers have been following with interest the prospects of Comet 217/P - Linear.

Comet hunters have been following it since David Cardenosa from Bootes Observatory in Spain (J05) reported some outbursts on the 22nd.

My Obs from this morning from D90, whilst I was tucked up nicely in bed asleep.....ah the joys of remote astronomy.

217P C2009 08 26.75348 03 49 59.73 -03 11 43.7 14.05R D90
217P C2009 08 26.75433 03 49 59.90 -03 11 45.5 13.78R D90
217P C2009 08 26.75519 03 50 00.16 -03 11 46.0 13.21R D90
217P C2009 08 26.75603 03 50 00.30 -03 11 46.0 13.70R D90

The comet looked a treat at about Mag 10.8 based on nearby catalog stars. It certainly makes a pretty picture passing those two deep sky galaxies.

As you can see its still holding together reasonably well, although does still have a slightly "out of shape" coma.

From the very useful online application Photometrica you can see the 3D shape of the coma.

Closer inspection shows a similar profile to what our Spanish friends observed.

I am still to download all the files, so maybe more later.

Musically reflecting on this, 217P is proving the time honored truth....."breaking up is hard to do."

UPDATE: I have downloaded the rest of the photos and done a 20 x 20 Sec stack.

Dark Skies

2009-08-17T21:57:00.012+10:00

One of the goals of the International Year of Astronomy is to promote the protection of dark skies and limit light pollution where ever possible.

Well here is my little contribution.

Australia has some of the darkest skies in the world, largely because our need for water and trade as a nation dictates that all our large cities are located near ports, which by definition means they need to be close to the wet bit......ie the eastern seaboard and the coast around Perth.

Australia as the driest continent on earth has a great expanse of dry inland air and wonderful dark sky sites.

July 15th 2009

Riverland Dingo Telescope Farm at Moorook D90, the home to the AART, has been selected for this explicit reason. This stunning shot from the all sky camera tonight demonstrates dark skies, the beauty of the Milky way and the "Running Emu" famous in Aboriginal astronomy culture being crossed by a satelite.

August 17th 2009

So in this international year of astronomy lets do our best to protect our dark sky sites.

Good night, clear and DARK skies!!!! Enjoy our little pocket of darkness in these all sky camera photos. Energised and want to take action? You too can make a difference and participate in the IYA2009 Dark Skies Cornerstone project.

FMOs - Fast Moving Asteroids

2009-08-16T10:27:00.008+10:00

Things move along at a fairly fast pace in the space time continuim.

Our little blue green planet moves along around the sun and travels even faster with reference to the cosmic background radiation. So next time someone asks you how fast you can run, you can say "almost as fast as Usain Bolt so long as you use the cosmic background radiation as the reference point not the finish line".

Ah I digress....so what constitutes fast is an interesting discussion you can have for many hours over a glass of red wine.

From the reference point of earth most Asteroids are found in a number of "belts" between the orbit of Mars and Jupiter and of the roughly half a million discovered currently only 1067 occasionally wander into our neighbourhood. These are classified as PHAs and are defined as Asteroids that have a minimum orbital intersect with earth of <0.05 AU (1AU is the distance from the sun to the earth).

The Minor Planet Centre, International Astronomy Union, Spacewatch and NASA JPL lead the charge in identifying and tracking asteroids, after setting a goal in the 1990s to find 90% of the Asteroids larger than 1Klm within 10 years.

Whilst Astronomers from the LINEAR, LONEOS, NEAT, and the Catalina Sky Survey, do the bulk of the legwork in the northern hemisphere, the Uppsala Telescope at Siding Springs in Western New South Wales, bats well above its weight in covering a good portion of the southern sky.

The Telescopes at Moorook D90 are well postioned to do quick follow up work for the professional Astronomers.

Fast moving asteroids are classed as FMOs, which by virtue of their speed usually mean they are fairly close to earth. Most however are relatively harmless as they are usually very small. The fantastic advances in technique honed over the past two decades, and the better technology now available means that asteroids as small as 4 Metres are regularly detected in the surveys.

On the 14th Aug E12-Siding Springs Survey on the Upsala Telescope detected object 2009 PR1 a 42m near earth object which zipped past earth at 7.9 Lunar distances on the 12 August.

The author captured this shot (above) shortly after it was posted on the MPC Confirmation page.

FootNote:
This Blog is posted as a tribute to all those hard working folks in the Asteroid watch programs around the world.

Double barrell action at Moorook

2009-07-31T23:36:00.011+10:00

Well it been a busy week for AARTScope, whilst the weather has not been particularly favourable, the Australian Amateur Research Telescope (AART) & G11 on Global Rent-a-scope was commissioned on the 19th July and has already made a significant contribution.

Global Rent-a-Scope now has two 16inch scopes online at D90 Moorook. Both of these "light cannons" made a significant contribution during the week.

On the 22nd, using G11 (AART) Norm Falla of the UK, not satisfied with England whipping Australia in the cricket, managed to capture Asteroid 2009 OD3, and at time of writing currently has the discovery credit. MPC have not yet issued an MPEC on 2009 OD3.

Then on the 23rd, Kevin Hills using G6 was able to provide confirmation data on Robert McNaught's discovery of asteroid 2009 OB3 as detailed in MPEC-O28.

Its great to see the two new 16inch scopes in action at Global-rent-a-scope performing great science.

So after a busy first week grabbing some nice astrophotos and some great science, I am even more excited about the vision of "Creating the sense of anticipation and discovery that keeps scientists asking questions...".

Update:
Astroswanny was interviewed on Astronomy.FM on August 4th.

2009 OD3 hasnow been linked to previous Objects 1994 PZ35 & 2008 GL16. Congrats Norm on a great recovery on the 7th Opposition since 1994.

The eagle has landed!!!!

2009-07-28T22:02:00.005+10:00

Well its winter and the Milky Way is shinning starkly against the dark Australian skies. The nocturnal eagle soars high in the eastern sky, M16 The famous Eagle Nebula that is, crosses the meridian around 10:30pm this time of year, placing it perfectly for early evening photography.

Hi Res Version

The Eagle Nebula is a well known member of the Messier family and shot to even greater prominence when the Hubble Space Telescope captured breathtaking images that came to be known as the "Pillars of Creation".

My photo is of course no comparison to the one taken with a 94 inch mirror cell in a "school bus" sitting outside earth's atmosphere, but none the less inspiring.

First Light at G11 - AARTScope

2009-07-27T19:40:00.003+10:00

Well here it is. A little later than expected.

Its been a bit cloudy this week, so I have been trying to grab something interesting between the clouds.

This is a very quick LRGB 600sec each, just a color combine in Maxim, and autoscaled JPG output.

Enjoy! Hopefully many more to come.

iPhone goes to the Moon

2009-07-07T22:59:00.006+10:00

Well, its a beautiful crisp night in Melbourne - and by crisp I mean freezing cold, not that motherhood statement currently popular amongst senior management for "Crisp" communications (code for ...."explain it so your boss can understand it!").

Ah....I digress.

On the weekend I spent some time fashioning a Telescope adapter for my new iPhone, just because you can, or it seemed like a good idea at the time. I have to prove to my little 4.5 inch reflector (my first telescope) that its still loved.

So down to the local hardware store to pick up a few bits and pieces I went. I came home with a threaded 1&1/4 inch hose adapter, a rectagular down pipe plastic thingy and some velcro straps....and whacko, 40 minutes later I have an iPhone adapter for my little telescope.

So tonight on a freezing cold, stunning Melbourne evening the full moon came up over the horizon. What a sight it was! No good for Asteroid hunting so a little fun seemed appropriate.

One of the amazing things about the new range of SmartPhone cameras, and in particular, the new iPhone and Flip Mino is the really low F stop. Many of these cameras are as low as F 2.5- F2.7. I suspect this may have something to do with the ability to take photos in smokey nightclubs, but I am not complaining as it does a fine job on the moon.

My Favourites - Top 10 Astrophotographers

2009-07-03T20:11:00.004+10:00

The world of Astrophotography is an amazing blend of passion, knowledge, skills, techniques, and at times, expensive toys. An incredible artistic medium that requires many hours of dedication and refinement of skills.

The human eye, and the atmosphere of our earth dictate the visible elements of the vast expanse above us. The amateur astronomer plays with these elements using filters, long duration exposures, advanced processing techniques and a never ending hunt for the darkest skies; in order to create their masterpieces.

The hubble has taught us much about our universe, but also alot about image processing techniques - since it was launched with a camera that initially created out of focus images.

To most people Maximum Entropy De-convolution sounds like pasta night at the halls of residence at your local university's physics department. Who would have thought it was a simple image processing technique in a popular downloadable software package. All this is second nature to the Astrophotographer.

Today I thought it would be good to take a look at 10 of the best amateur astrophotographers.

Disclaimer: this is a somewhat subjective review and I am happy to take comments on anyone I have missed. I don't pretend to have found them all, and I am sure I have probably missed some noteable people who should be on the list. Perhaps leave a comment and we can refine it over time - Anyway these are my current top 10 favourites.

Criteria: I have tried to select my top 10 based on the quality of the photos and techniques as well as the quality and experience of the websites that serve them up.

#1: Ken Crawford
http://www.imagingdeepsky.com/

Masterful technique - best website

#2 Wolfgang Promper
http://www.astro-pics.com/

Finest Globula ever photographed

#3: Tom Davis
http://tvdavisastropics.com/

Master of the dark Nebulas

#4: Brad Moore
http://www.southern-astro.com.au/

Image used by NASA as an example of the best of earth based photography

#5: Antonio Fernandez
http://www.astrosurf.com/afernandez/

Brilliant narrow band imaging

#6: John Gleason
http://www.celestialimage.com/

Master of HA - Most artistic website

#7: Russell Croman
http://www.rc-astro.com/

Exquistely composed Mosaics

#8: Rainer Sparenberg
http://www.airglow.de/

Best Solar Photography & Terrestrial astro, great website.

#9: Mike Salway
http://www.mikesalway.com.au/

Master of planetary photography/Landscape-astro & service to the amateur community

#10: Mike Sidonio (The world's strongest Astronomer)
http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002

This touching tribute won a David Malin Award - fine treatment of rarely photographed Nebula and Galaxies

So there it is, some of the masters, and their unique craft. I'll sign off now and await the "why didn't you pick me" emails - which I am more than happy to receive. Then perhaps we'll review the list over time.

Appologies once again if I have missed someone who should be on there.

Tom Davis' Latest Masterpiece

2009-06-16T07:03:00.004+10:00

Some artists achieve a rarifed state where their work, due to its style, technique, and composition is instantly recognisable as their creation. Art lovers instantly recognise a Van Gogh or a Monet. In our modern times a Ken Done, Robert Rankin or Peter Lik landscape photograph is instantly recognisable as one of their works.

In the world of astrophotography there is one astrophotographer who's work is instantly recognisable......he is the master of the "coffee stain" dark nebula. Tom Davis today collects yet another APOD - Astronomy Photo of the Day.

Tom has astounded many with his patient, long exposure creations that capture, not the spectacular colours of reflection nebula, but the seemingly bizarre dark brush strokes of dustlanes around stars, clusters and nebula.

Known as dark reflection nebula, much of this dust is sometimes missed in various astrophotography techniques, Davis has made it his own. Whilst the image processing techniques he uses are superb, its also his composition that truly sets him apart and creates the instantly recognisable work.

Congratulations again Tom, long may you set the higher standards for us all to aspire to.

M104 Sombrero Galaxy

2009-06-13T19:57:00.004+10:00

The amazing M104 Sombrero Galaxy. Not sure which is the most amazing aspect, the Galaxy itself, the amazing surrounding sky, or the fact that Vesto Slipher calculated in 1912 that it is traveling away from us at 1000 klms per second.

This 60 mins HA (3nm) shot taken by the author with ASA N16 16" Astrograph with FLI PL11002 class 1.

High res version

www.aartscope.com