Global Star Party April 2nd

Live Jupiter special!

It was a beautiful night in Melbourne, then about 10:30 just half an hour before "go-live" the clouds came from nowhere. Fortunately they didn't hang around for long - it must have been a moment of climatological rebellion with the impending ending of daylight saving several hours later.

It was a little bit sad that the Great Red Spot had already transited before we got to air - but I did get some great footage of it before the clouds swept in. By the time we were on air the clouds had cleared and we continued on with the "boring side of Jupiter".

I have been in a number of virtual events usually with my DSLR plugged directly into the laptop and screen sharing the Cannon EOS utility and using live view. The best method of course is a astronomy camera in a web cam setup. On this occasion I tried something a little different. Using the iPhone 6 and an eyepiece adapter, a 25mm eyepiece and the 645 App I was able to take some of the light of Jupiter out (its usually too bright to see any detail on the disk) by taking the ISO to 32 and setting the exposure time to 1/100 of a sec and the through the lens view adjusts to a "what you see is what you get" view. Then sharing that back to my MacBook using reflection, I was able to then screen share the Reflection App into the Google Plus Hangout. Pretty cool!

14inch Smart Dobbie>Barlow>25mm Plossl Eyepiece>Smart Phone Telescope Adapter>645 Pro [Application]>ISO 32 & 1/100 Settings>Reflector to MacBookAir>Reflector Screen record.

An excellent result, but more essentially here, what astronomy can we do with using equipment that we already have or that's relatively inexpensive, but easily accessible.

Thanks to the Global Star Party for hosting me on the show!

Periodic Comet P/2016 BA14 (PANSTARRS)

Discovered recently by the PANSTARRS survey, P/2016 BA14 will set a record for the third closest approaching comet of all time on March 24th. It will brighten from its current magnitude of 18 to about Mag 13. Sadly, it will pass outside Earth's orbit so there shouldn't be any meteor shower activity as the tail (what there is of it - not much as you can see) will be pointing away from us from what I can tell from the orbit diagram.

What I find most fascinating about this object, is that it crosses the plane of the solar system, very near earth, almost at its perihelion. Also of interest is the periodic comet 252P/Linear which has a very similar orbit. The super sleuth astronomer detectives will be onto that, I'm sure. Of course I'm not qualified to comment on such things, but I'm thinking .... Hhhmm ...If two asteroids departed the plane of the solar system from a point "near Earth", did something happen to them if they were both there at the same time. Yes I know, we are talking comets here and comets normally come from the Oort Cloud at any angle, but its really interesting to contemplate. Am I allowed to call "dibs" for a future PHD that I may get around to doing one day ;-)

That's why science is so much fun, you get to ask questions like that and go and work it out.

Tonight's data:
COD Q62
OBS P. B. Lake
NET PPMXL
PK16B14A C2016 03 03.43620 05 51 24.42 -34 16 10.7 18.4 N Q62
PK16B14A C2016 03 03.43801 05 51 24.54 -34 16 08.7 18.3 N Q62
PK16B14A C2016 03 03.43976 05 51 24.62 -34 16 06.7 18.5 N Q62
PK16B14A C2016 03 03.44150 05 51 24.72 -34 16 04.9 18.4 N Q62
PK16B14A C2016 03 03.44324 05 51 24.83 -34 16 02.8 18.2 N Q62
PK16B14A C2016 03 03.44498 05 51 24.95 -34 16 01.1 18.3 N Q62
PK16B14A C2016 03 03.44672 05 51 25.05 -34 15 58.9 18.2 N Q62
PK16B14A C2016 03 03.44860 05 51 25.15 -34 15 56.9 18.3 N Q62
PK16B14A C2016 03 03.45035 05 51 25.26 -34 15 55.1 18.3 N Q62
PK16B14A C2016 03 03.45209 05 51 25.35 -34 15 53.2 18.2 N Q62
PK16B14A C2016 03 03.45383 05 51 25.47 -34 15 51.0 18.3 N Q62
PK16B14A C2016 03 03.45557 05 51 25.57 -34 15 49.2 18.4 N Q62

Looking forward to a nice telescopic show late in the month whilst we are at NACAA.

Global Star Party - Feb 14th

The Spectre of the iPhone Spectroscope

UPDATE: Feb 27th 2016 I have got them calibrated now. The iPhone6 version calibration is still a bit rough. Lining up on the Helium Lines seems to produce the best results. The camera response is markedly different for the iPhone over the Cannon 550D. Now that I know what we are looking at here, next time I image I can make sure I get the image in a bit better focus. I have also found a way to reduce camera shake by delaying the shutter open until 3 secs after you press the shutter button. Whilst you can see visually the same lines, when extracted using Visual Spec the camera response seems a bit different.

UPDATE: Feb 22nd 2016 Well here is the comparison - again I am still very new at this and am still learning how to properly calibrate the specturm.

Colour, the final frontier. Of course if you want to be a "real astronomer" the visible spectrum is only a small part of the story. Much of our knowledge of astronomy comes from spectra and radio astronomy.

At the 2014 NACAA Conference I was drooling over Ken Harrison's amazing Spectroscopes after his talk and made the comment, it would seem so unfair to buy one off the shelf without going through the pain [Learning Experience] of trying to build one myself. So true to my word I had a go at the basic process of "getting colour".

I wasn't too concerned at this stage about quality, just some rational experimentation with the process to gain a deeper understanding. So I went off to the local hardware and bought a few bits and pieces and broke up a cd (carefully) and peeled the film back. At this stage it was unclear to me whether Barry Manilow CDs or Justin Beiber CDs would provide the best high or low resolution diffraction grating. Carefully pulling apart a three blade razor and using two of them to create a slit, challenged my dexterity. After tinkering away for a couple of sessions over a few weeks, I managed to come up with this monstrosity. Splits the light, can see colour, but probably absolutely useless for real science, but fun to play with and demonstrates the principle of a spectroscope well.

The first place to start this journey is with Ken Harrison's book Astronomical Spectroscopy for Amateurs. It is well written but looks quite daunting when you first pick it up. However if you work through it bit by bit, its a great book with everything you need to know.

Feeling a little more confident, I invested in the next logical step - a Star Analyser 100. This is the entry level standard for beginners, and produces fine results as we'll see.

After passing it around the family to have a look at the cool effects looking at the ceiling lights, I lost the plot and departed from Ken's careful, meticulously presented steps, with the outrageous thought - I wonder how this baby would go on an iPhone! I am constantly amazing at STEM events and star parties how the "younglings" immediately are so amazed by what they see through the eyepiece they want to whip out the smartphone and take an image home with them.

Surely it couldn't possibly work. After all the iPhone 6 sensor is only 4.8mm by 3.6mm, it has a focal length of 29mm and is f2.2. But its an 8M pixel camera (said my evil twin subconscious), your Fingerlakes PL11000M is only 11M pixels so its only 3000 less pixels, how bad could it be....hang-on whats the pixel size ...ah 1.5um versus 9um, interesting. So the sensor is 3264 x 2448, interesting ..... iPhones do take good photos......on a sunny day.....not in the night sky. This went on for a while!

So in the end there was nothing else to do but try it, and learn from your spectacular mistakes!

The next problem was how do I keep the shutter of the iPhone open for long enough to take star photos on a guided telescope - this is not the moon, a great iPhone target normally, but with the standard phone settings thats all the iPhone seemed good for. So channeling my teenagers I thought, there must be an app for that. To my amazement I could not only find one, there was a choice of several apps and 645 Pro could even do it with an Kodak Ektrachrome 64 film "feel to it". NOTE: to those born after the 90's, can you imagine only getting 36 images on one roll of film and not being able "to delete the bad ones" until after you had paid $25 and sent it off to the developers and had it returned to your letter box. In those days the lens ONLY pointed away from you - THE HORROR! Anyway I digress. 645 Pro basically turns your iPhone into a simulated DSLR and enters the workflow of the photography before any JPEG compression. You can set ISO and shutter speed, bracket exposures do all sorts of things that you can do on a DSLR.

With my trusty new app, my camera adapter, my star analyser, a 25mm eyepiece, I was ready for action.

I started on Canopus, after the bright star align was completed, but was more interested in Betelgeuse. After slewing and removing the eyepiece and inserting my newly built contraption, I was sure it was the world's first ultra-low resolution Spectroscope. A quick google search showed I was in fact two years behind the times. However to my amazement I had colour and with some detail, I got "lines" as well. I messed around trying different settings and moved over to Betelgeuse and took some more and put the 2 x barlow in front of the Cannon 550D and tried that for comparison purposes. (See image - top of page)

As an experienced "normal" (although I know you are wondering by now how "normal" that is) astrophotographer I was keen not to overexpose the image - Hmmmm - I have no idea what the well depth of an iPhone sensor is, lets just take as many as we can and see how we go.

I must say the results amazed me. Punching the air in victory, my evil sub-conscious dredged up an "I am invincible" [from the Bond film Golden Eye].

By now it was approaching midnight, and quietly tiptoeing around my back yard I packed up the telescope and headed inside. Damn ... I was so excited, I forgot to change the camera settings to save in dRAW/TIFF - back to the drawing board! Well at least I have some nice completely useless JPGs, but what an exercise that was, one I know I will be able to use again and again.

Asteroid 2016 BE Virtual Impactor for now in 2053

UPDATE 31/1/2016: The 2053 pass has been eliminated as a risk. There are still 5 virtual impacts from 2076 - 2111. These will also likely be removed as the precision of the orbit is improved.

Tonight, tracking potential virtual impactor Asteroid 2016 BE. Its a 79m wide Asteroid discovered on Jan 16th by the Catalina Sky Survey(703).

78 positions have so far been reported from 18 different observatories, including both H06 and I89, the iTelescope.net observatories. I managed to grab another 3 positions tonight. The asteroid is starting to speed up (in terms of relative velocity against the background stars) and tonight is moving quite quickly at 19 Arcsecs per minute. As a result of the fairly bright magnitude and the fast speed, you need to take as short an exposure time as possible. However the full moon is still pretty bright I had to use 30 sec images which means the asteroid is still slightly streaked. I have used a stacking technique to make sure my residuals are still reasonably good (given it is travelling at fairly high speed).

So what actually is a "Virtual Impactor". As asteroids are tracked the length of the recorded "arc" increases - now 10 days for 2016 BE. Of course the level of precision for future positions of the asteroid increases the longer the "known arc" and therefore the ability to determine future positions of the asteroid improves as the "zone of uncertainty" reduces. As long as the "zone of uncertainty" overlaps the earth's future orbit position, the object is listed as a virtual impactor for that pass. This happens from time to time without much concern, because as the precision of the orbit improves with more observations, the object usually drops out of the risk table quite quickly.

Whilst the asteroid will make a moderately close pass in the first week of February at 5.7 Lunar distances, its important to understand that the "virtual impact" currently listed in the Sentry Risk Table is for the 3rd February 2053 .... NOT ON THIS PASS!!!! As you would expect the "zone of uncertainty" for 2053 is much large than the "zone of uncertainty" for next week. So it will take many further observations before it is (most likely) removed from the risk table. Its current risk table score of Torino-0 just means that at this point the chance of a collision in 2053 has not been able to be eliminated at this stage.

Measured position:

K16B00E KC2016 01 28.46044 12 04 01.15 +65 50 49.0 16.9 R H06

K16B00E KC2016 01 28.46319 12 04 09.44 +65 49 54.8 17.3 R H06

K16B00E KC2016 01 28.46604 12 04 18.01 +65 48 58.7 17.4 R H06

Asteroid 2015 TB145 (PHA) close and bright flyby Oct 31

UPDATE: Oct 31st, 2015. Live coverage of Asteroid 2015 TB145.

Image Credit: P.Lake 10 Sec image from U69 T24 - travelling at 115 arc"/m at PA 35.4 07:00 UT (Available for media use with attribution to this blog)

Compare the two images - Above a 10 sec image, Below a two minute image which was stacked for movement of the asteroid.

UPDATE: Oct 31st, 2015 - From the NASA Press release this morning the amazing radar images have shown a dark dead comet,(and I am not making this up) looks not unlike a skull. The radar run went well getting down to a resolution of 7 meters per pixel. Its interesting those depressed areas are likely impact craters or collapsed areas from which the jets emerged when the comet was active. Recent studies of 67P by Rosetta have shown collapsed areas on Comet 67P where jets seem to originate from. This comet has been long dead, some studies have already been done to check for past meteor showers originating from its orbit - see the post on the SETI Institute Blog. Also from the press realease: "NASA values the work of numerous highly skilled amateur astronomers, whose accurate observational data helps improve asteroid orbits....". I hope to have more images tonight (weather permitting) - stay tuned.

Image credit: NAIC-Arecibo/NSF

UPDATE: Oct 27th, 2015 - Great set of images last night in the pre-dawn sky from New Mexico. The asteroid has brightened to Mag 15.8 and its apparent speed across the sky is starting to increase as it gets closer. [Also I should probably point out the faint halo you may be able to see is due to the strong moonlight reflecting off some dust on the primary mirror - the full moon was only 36 degrees away]

UPDATE: Oct 24th, 2015 - Finally got some images. The asteroid has brightened considerably to Mag 16.8/9 ish. No signs of cometary activity at this point. Its moving at 0.39arc"/m in a 120 sec image (so 0.78arc" in the image)and the pixel plate scale is 0.53 arc"/pixel so you can see a hint of softness on the trailing side. Definitly no cometary activity though - that's as close as I can go to getting it as sharp as you can get it.

Image Credit: P.Lake 2015 TB145 9x120 secs on the 0.7m Burnell, Cannon, Leavitt Telescope (BCL) T27 at Q62, SSO.

UPDATE: Oct 22nd, 2015 - Getting frustrated, the observatory has been closed due to bad weather for 4 nights.

UPDATE: Oct 17th, 2015 - NASA have updated details of the planned radar runs and expect to be able to get images with a resolution of 2 meters per pixel, they expect it to be the best radar run of the year. Also one other interesting aspect is the Tisserand parameter has been calculated at 2.937 which is just lower than the theoretical "boundary" (of 3.0) between Asteroid and Jupiter Family Comets. The other target of a radar run on 29th is 2009 FD, a well studied Apollo Asteroid, has a Tisserand parameter of 5.295. The seeing was a bit poor on the 14th so the image wasn't strong enough. The relative speed (across the camera chip) will slow to only 0.17 arc"/min on the 19th so I'll be able to stack the images really deep and get a good look at it. If the seeing is better tonight we might even get some more detail. I did look a bit fuzzy the other night but as you can see in the video the satellite that trailed through was very fuzzy as well - so I'm not reading to much into that at the moment.

Image/Video Credit: 2015 TB145 from H06, 12 x 180 sec exp stacked 4x3, 0.5m Planewave October 14th - P.Lake

A couple of times a year, the asteroid surveys throw up a surprise, with a large asteroid approaching very close to the Earth, with little advance notice. After last week's blog post about the Blogsphere overeacting to an Asteroid that astronomers knew about for 15 years passing at 65 Lunar Distances (LD), the "surprise" of course had to happen this week.

This will be an interesting two weeks, as Asteroid 2015 TB145 will cruise by Earth just outside 1 Lunar distance (1.3 LD). The asteroid is a target of the Arecibo Observatory (that big antenna that rose out of the lake in the majestic James Bond scene), and to get some really great radar tracking and detailed images, the ephemeris and position of the asteroid needs very high precision.

To give you an idea of the type of imaging to be obtained (see below), a similar situation occured last year for 2014 HQ124. These were some of the best radar images ever recorded, and some of my data was used to refine the orbit for targeting on that occasion.

Image Credit: Asteroid 2014 HQ124 Radar images from Goldstone - NASA/JPL

This asteroid is twice as big (between 290 and 650 meters diameter - most astronomers are calling it about 480m) and twice as close as 2014 HQ124, so you can only imagine how good the images should be. Professional Observatories and amateur astronomers will be tracking it closely to improve the precision of the orbit as it approaches.

I was quite chuffed when tracking 2014 HQ124 that my light curve had a few bumps in it and I made the call it was "not round" which was subsequently confirmed by the radar images.

So who knows what the next two weeks will turn up? What we know at this stage is that is going to be quite bright and could be visible in binoculars. Also its speed is very fast, but its moving slowly across the images at the moment as you can see, because of the angle its approaching us at. As it makes its close approach its going to do a nice "flyby" of the Crab Nebula M1 for Northern Hemisphere viewers on Oct 29th/30th Ian Musgrave has details on his blog shortly.

So stay tuned, I'll be following it closely and providing some regular updates.

Australian Science Week - its a wrap!

Science week this year went to a whole new level in Australia. Following the lead from Prof Ian Chubb's STEM Strategy white paper, people really rolled their sleeves up and exceeded all expectations - and claimed two world records!

On Aug 12th, I was in Canberra for work and snuck out in the evening to catch the Science in the Pub sponsored by the ANU and the Australian - American co-operation through the US Embassy. The session was led by Prof Brian Schmidt (ANU), Dr Alan Duffy (Swinburne) and Glen Nagle (CSIRO/ANTF). An amazing session debriefing all the latest data from the NASA New Horizons, Pluto mission. If you had told planetary scientists only 6 weeks ago there was frozen nitrogen glaciers filling in old craters on Pluto, it would have been beyond their wildest dreams, yet that is exactly what they have found.

Friday 21st Aug The ANU/RSAA Stargazing night smashed two world record's for single-site and multiple-site observers with telescopes observing the night sky for 10 consecutive minutes. We were all a bit nervous about the weather, but the clouds cleared out just in time to ensure the night was a great success and everyone had a great time observing some fantastic sights through the larger telescopes. 76 people from the school community and nearby residents came out for one of the many local Melbourne sites at Norwood Secondary College in Ringwood. My trusty 14inch dobbie (dobsonian) was a hit, with people stunned and amazed looking at individual craters on the moons and counting the moons of Saturn which could be seen beyond the glare of the magnificent rings.

Mt Stromlo observatory in Canberra smashed the single-site Guinness Book of Record with a massive turnout of 1800 observers. The tally for the multi-site is still being finalized but was believed to have been over 10,000 people around the country. Once official it should easily eclipse the previous record of 3006 set in April 2013 in Mexico. Go Aussie!

Saturday 22nd Aug was a great night as well. The Scienceworks' Festival of Astronomy and Light opened up Scienceworks into the evening and I took the dobbie along again as one of the astronomers providing telescopes for viewing by the general public. Its amazing to watch kids who have never seen a telescope before walk up to one and try and work out which end/lens/mirror to look through. All are completely amazed at whats going on with all the lens and mirrors and when they see a crater on the moon as big as Tasmania it just blows them away. I have often described Astronomy as the "cupid's arrow of science", because of the emotional impact on people the first time they see the rings of Saturn or the craters of the moon. [That's original you have to quote me ;-) ]

As a veteran of many starparties it takes a bit to impress me, however I was not to be disappointed ........ a WORKING Tile from the Murchison Array had me fan-boying with selfies. It was sitting there on the grass collecting signals from the universe quite happily. Some 128 of these tiles currently form the Murchison Array, and will be a key part of the Square Kilometer Array that will put Australia at the forefront Astronomy research. If your dream is to win the nobel prize for Astrophysicis - Get into astronomy, go to the ANU or Curtain Uni in WA, and get onto the SKA (once built) and start data mining!!!!

Image: Selfie with "Popup Radio Telescope" - one tile of the Murchison Array actually working at Scienceworks.

What better way to wind up the week on 23rd Aug with some actual science supporting NASA's OSIRIS-REx Mission working with University of Arizona's Citizen Science Project - Target Asteroids. Laneway Learning, a novel idea that started as a way to increase traffic to a little coffee shop called the Little Mule Cafe (in a dead end laneway), has now gone global due to its outstanding success. Laneway Learning run eccentric little classes on just about anything to promote community engagement and sharing of ideas. I have run three "Asteroid Hunting" classes and become a regular at their Sunday Science Spectacular during Science Week.

Over a couple of hours about 10-20 people helped classify and record the photometry of asteroid Magellan, an analog of asteroid Bennu, the target of the 2018 OSIRIS-REx NASA New Horizons Mission. Asteroid Bennu is a carbonaceous asteroid and 3rd on the Sentry Risk Table that requires careful watching by amateur and professional astronomers alike. Bennu is a 492m asteroid that (at this stage) will pass at about 1/3 the distance to the moon in 2182. Saving the lives of your great grandchildren on a Sunday afternoon during science week - what could be better than that!

This is a photo of my little booth at Captain Melville's for the Sunday Science Spectacular.

All in all a great effort, thanks to Norwwod Secondary College, Mount Burnett Observatory, Scienceworks, Captain Melville's and Laneway Learning for putting up with me enthusiastically waving my arms about and carting large telescopes, screens and computers around.

Asteroid (357439) 2004 BL86 close approach on Australia Day

UPDATE: 09:30pm Local Time. The weather is not good, the sky has cleared but the Humidity is up to 88% from 87% in the past 10 mins. So the observatory can't open yet!!! Need a nice gust of drier air from the south ;-)

Its been a big month for comets but today all eyes turn to the monster asteroid (357439) 2004 BL86 which makes its closest approach to earth this decade.

Its not every day you get a binocular visible asteroid streak across the night sky. 2004 BL86 has been approaching from the south and has been tracked this week at -71 degrees declination where it was Magnitude 17 and will brighten tonight and in the early morning to magnitude 9 as it passes near Jupiter and Sirius.

I captured the approaching asteroid for the OSIRIS-REx Target Asteroids Mission and collected some astrometry and photometry on Jan 19th.

120 Sec image on T27 at 0.53 arsec/pixel Jan 19th 2015 (c) P.Lake

Again on the 25th of January, one day out, you can see that it is speeding up and travelling very fast with reference to the background stars. You can see the asteroid streaked in this 30 sec image.

30 Sec image on T12 at 3.5 arcsecs/pixel Jan 25th 2015 (c) P.Lake

I will be obtaining further data tonight (weather permitting) just before its closest approach at 3 lunar distances. It will be travelling at 160 arcsecs per minute at closest approach around 2am. I won't be up that late. I will upload an animation of the footage compiled into a nice video of its approach.

Asteroid 2014 RC Live coverage

Update: Three pane comparision of "relative" speed across the CCD.

Update 1430 UT (12:40 am Local time) I am off to bed now as the weather is closing in. The scope will grab a few more images around the closest approach at which time it will be a long streak right across the image. I'll have some more images and some mosaics and video uploaded tomorrow. Thanks for following the action.

Update 13:35 - Starting to motor now ..... 191 arcsecs per minute. Starting to brighten up now as well. Next shot at 14:00 UT or Midnight local time, where it will be absolutely flying at 214 arsecs per minute.

Update 12:45 UT Travelling at 177 Arcsecs per minute now. Including Animation!

Update 11:30UT (09:30pm Local) Really starting to pick up speed now travelling at 97 arcsecs per minute. I'll have an animation of this one shortly and a video eventually. Check back regularly as I am updating the images quickly now each 30-40 mins.

Update 10:35UT - Another 30 Sec image you can see the "streak" of the 30 seconds of movement getting longer as it covers more sky in each 30 sec frame. Travelling here at 87 Arcsecs per minute.

Update 10PM local time: Here is the first image, this is about 2 hours back now. I'll punch them out a little quicker now. This was at 10:00 UT or 8:pm Local time. You can see the moon is seriously messing with this image but we still managed to get it. There was some thin cloud drifting through as well. More soon.

Update: 09:30pm Local time 11:29 UT. It Looks like daylight under that nearly full moon at Siding Spring. The telescope I am using is front right in this image. Its going to be a tough get only 20 degrees away from the full moon.

Asteroid 2014 RC was discovered on the 31st of August by the Catalina Sky Survey and the Panstarrs Survey on consequtive nights. The Minor Planet center took a day or so to collate the observations and confirm they were the same object, publishing the MPEC 2014 R26 on September 3rd.

It was clear from the outset that this 15-26m object was going to make a very close pass, and tonight as Daniel Ricciardo lines up on the grid in the Italian Grand Prix, the asteroid will make a very close pass at 40,000 klms over Australia and New Zealand. It is thought to be about the same size as the Chelyabinsk meteorite.

Its Father's Day here and I have had a great day, and all the teenagers have retreated to work on their STEM elements of their education. So whilst Daniel Ricciardo battles it out with the William's boys I'll be drive another advanced piece of technology, targeting something travelling MUCH, MUCH, FASTER!!!!

The first set of images are in an will be posted shortly.

The aim is to show the rapid "apparent acceleration" as it whizzes past earth. Of course the speed of the asteroid doesn't change, just its apparent relative velocity appears to increase as it passes (like watching a car travelling at 100 klms per hour approach from a distance)

Carnival of Space 365

WELCOME to Carnival of Space 365. A weekly round-up of Space and Astronomy Blogs that is in its 365 Week. Thats a whole year of weeks! What a week its been, with the Rosetta Probe getting ready for its "Philae Mignon" with Comet 67P. (See what I did there ... huh ...huh) Watching too many cooking shows? Should be doing more science!

OK ... I know its not going to wrap it in bacon.... lets move on.

Astronomy is going off this week, lots of stuff happening!

Dr. Paul Spudis comments on Buzz Aldrin's case for the immediate adoption of a new national goal in space – a human mission to Mars.

The Lunar PLanetary Institute covers a new study in Nature that describes the effects of asteroid bombardment on the early Earth

We take a close look at the surface of Mercury with PlanetMappers as the MESSENGER Spacecraft makes its closest approach to the planet so far.

Also from the team at Cosmoquest - What's the forecast for this year's Perseid Meteor shower, and how can you contribute to citizen science and observations of meteors and fireballs?

Perhaps at this point I can put in a little plug for the brilliant the new App "Fireballs in the Sky" developed by the team at Curtin University. You can measure and report meteors and bolides with your phone as they happen.

Spacewriter talks about "Telescopes to Tanzania", a project of Astronomers Without Borders. There is alot of great work going on in Africa with astronomy right now!

Carolyn Collins Petersen, space/astronomy expert at About.com, takes a look at a few of the many excellent space and astronomy education resources available to educators and outreach professionals.

NASA announced the winners of the high stakes science instrument competition to fly aboard the Mars 2020 rover at a briefing held today, Thursday, July 31, at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Scientists analyzing the reams of data from NASA’s Cassini orbiter at Saturn have discovered 101 geysers erupting from the intriguing icy moon Enceladus and that the spewing material of liquid water likely originates from an underground sea located beneath the tiny moons ice shell, according to newly published research.

Success and validation that aligns with what is believed about EmDrive means powerful mainly static thrust. It would be an alternative way to achieve effects that would mimic antigravity. It would enable super efficient planes, better flying cars, and cloud city like applications in a full expression of a mature EmDrive. In the nearer term it would be better satellite propulsion. A US scientist, Guido Fetta, has built his own propellant-less microwave thruster, and managed to persuade Nasa to test it out. The test results were presented on July 30 at the 50th Joint Propulsion Conference in Cleveland, Ohio. Astonishingly enough, they are positive. Read all about it here including similar experiments in China ......

Next Big Future also reports on producing black light power using Hydrinos.

See what happens when two passions collide. A crafty spacer explores an idea and lives to tell the tale!

I think she nailed it!! - Editor

A look at the density perturbations in the early universe from which galaxies and others structures formed, with a visual explanation of the effect of gravity on these perturbations.

Thanks for joining us this week at the AARTScope Blog where we keep creating the sense of anticipation and discovery that keeps people asking questions. I'll leave you with my image of the Saturn Occultation last night!

So that about wraps it up for this weeks Carnival of Space. For image Credits see the original blogs. 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.

Comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko - First amateur images 2014

As the European Space Agency's Rosetta Mission ramps up in a busy week of astronomy, Observatory W96 and Observers A. Maury, J.-G Bosch, J.-F. Soulier were the first amateurs to report positions of 69P (this apparition) to the MPC. Amateur images of Comet 67P have also been acquired by the Professional-Amateur Collaboration in Astronomy (PACA) for comet 67P led by Dr Padma Yanamandra-Fisher in partnership with Amateur Astronmers. The PACA group uses social media to connect amateur and professional astronomers to provide observation follow-up, monitoring and collaboration on science missions.

Comet 67P is about to be visited by the Rosetta Probe and ESA released their first photos, 2 weeks ago, of the comet starting to come to life as it heads on in towards the sun. The Rosetta mission is to follow the comet round the sun during the part of its orbit where the ices and dusts begin to discharge and form the tail. In november 2014, Rosetta will deliver a landed named Philae that will touch down on the nucleus of the comet to sample the particles as they become active.

Pictured here at a very faint magnitude 21.2 you can see Comet 67P, and the position of the Rosetta spacecraft is also marked (even though it is way too faint to see). ESA this week began a number of engine burns to slow the spacecraft as it approaches the comet.

The star field is quite crowded, and one of the most interesting parts of the video is the amount of "traffic" in this part of the sky. There were about 6 clearly identifiable asteroids in the full field of view, I have labelled a couple of the closer ones for reference. One asteroid in the field of view caught my eye as it seemed to dip in brightness, so it has been noted for further follow up as it approaches opposition in July.

Capturing the comet at such a faint magnitude required a deep "stacking" of images to account for the movement of the comet. "Stacking" is a process used to add a number of images together to improve the signal to noise ratio of the target. The comet was travelling so slowly relative to our point of view that I was able to resolve it with 12x300 second images. These images were then stacked in three groups of 4 at the movement of the comet - 0.16arc"/min at a position angle of 226 degrees. My images were quickly followed up by Rolando Ligustri, Bacci Paolo Backman. The astrometry (positional information) was included in MPEC 2014-K54

Previously in 2012, amateurs using the the Faulkes Telescopes had photographed 67P at aphelion (its furtherest point from the sun), also a remarkable effort!. In January 2014 the large telescopes in Chile, European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the Very Large Telescope (VLT) recovered 67P and have been following it regularly, this was the first occasion that amateurs had obtained images on this apparition.

For more information about the program check out the Year of Southern Comets article at iTelescop.net. PACA has a Facebook and Flikr group for members and a website under construction, it is open to any amateur astronomers who have their own telescope, are familiar with photometry and astrometry, are members of iTelescope.net, or have access to other telescope facilities and are prepared to work as a team on the science effort.

The Rosetta Spacecraft was named after the Rosetta Stone which assisted historians and archeologists decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphs, scientists hope that in the same way the data gathered will assist in our understanding of the early solar system.