Armstrong Appreciation Asteroid Hunt

The unique and renowned, Neil Armstrong will be remembered on Sept 13 in a number of official NASA led events.

His family encouraged us to look at the moon and give it a wink and think of Armstrong's great contribution to the space exploration program over decades - not just that one small step.

In the spirit of that iTelescope.Net will be holding its very first ever Google+ Hangout On Air, where we will (weather permitting) photograph the Asteroid (6469) 1982 PC Armstrong as a tribute to the great man. We will also create a "word cloud" in Wordle based on all your comments based on the attributes of the man.

So help us celebrate the life of a truly great "pioneer" - there you go, there's our first word.

Place your "one word description" for our word cloud in the comments below or underneath the video stream on Youtube. Also the direct link to the Videostream is here

2012 QG42 - Coming past a planet near you!

This shouldn't be unusual, but it is a little bit!

Whilst it is not unusual for a sizeable asteroid to wander past outside the lunar orbit, it is very unusual for something that big to wander past only 17 days after it was discovered!!!

Yes, on the evening of 26/27 August the Catalina Sky Survey picked up 2012 QG42, and follow up confirmation observations confirmed a close approach of just over 7 Lunar distances on Sept 14th. Whilst we like to think that over 95% of objects this size have been found, as someone asked me recently "that's 95% of how many?". "How do you know how many are out there to find 95% of?". Thats largely a statiscal projection based on the size distribution and frequency of discovery.

Asteroids can be easily missed if the are in a busy field of background starts, zip through during the full moon when the survey, or artifacts in the photos mask their position.

Well, 2012 QG42 was picked up this time, and it currently the subject of study by the Arecibo and Goldstone Radar observatories.

After a really busy week at work I was sitting outside the Thai takeaway dinner restaurant and logged on to find the weather had finally broken and logged onto iT11 with my iPhone and grabbed the One line element from the MPC and bingo I was up and running, collected our dinner and went home to wait for the images to download.

I took 30 x 20 sec images which resolved the asteroid beautifully. Its currently travelling pretty slowly but will get up to a pacey 45 arcsecs per minute next week. However, its actually at its brightest in the next couple of days.

All 30 positions have now been reported to MPC.

K12Q42G C2012 09 07.41990 23 07 07.03 -05 30 34.5 13.4 R H06

K12Q42G C2012 09 07.42046 23 07 06.60 -05 30 32.3 13.5 R H06

K12Q42G C2012 09 07.42102 23 07 06.19 -05 30 29.7 13.4 R H06

K12Q42G C2012 09 07.42156 23 07 05.80 -05 30 27.3 13.4 R H06

K12Q42G C2012 09 07.42212 23 07 05.38 -05 30 24.9 13.4 R H06

K12Q42G C2012 09 07.42267 23 07 04.98 -05 30 22.5 13.5 R H06

K12Q42G C2012 09 07.42323 23 07 04.57 -05 30 20.2 13.5 R H06

K12Q42G C2012 09 07.42378 23 07 04.15 -05 30 17.6 13.4 R H06

K12Q42G C2012 09 07.42433 23 07 03.76 -05 30 15.1 13.4 R H06

K12Q42G C2012 09 07.42488 23 07 03.34 -05 30 12.7 13.4 R H06

K12Q42G C2012 09 07.42544 23 07 02.93 -05 30 10.2 13.5 R H06

K12Q42G C2012 09 07.42604 23 07 02.49 -05 30 07.7 13.4 R H06

K12Q42G C2012 09 07.42660 23 07 02.09 -05 30 05.3 13.4 R H06

K12Q42G C2012 09 07.42716 23 07 01.66 -05 30 02.8 13.4 R H06

K12Q42G C2012 09 07.42772 23 07 01.25 -05 30 00.3 13.5 R H06

K12Q42G C2012 09 07.42828 23 07 00.85 -05 29 57.8 13.4 R H06

K12Q42G C2012 09 07.42883 23 07 00.45 -05 29 55.4 13.4 R H06

K12Q42G C2012 09 07.42939 23 07 00.03 -05 29 52.9 13.4 R H06

K12Q42G C2012 09 07.42994 23 06 59.62 -05 29 50.7 13.4 R H06

K12Q42G C2012 09 07.43049 23 06 59.22 -05 29 47.9 13.4 R H06

K12Q42G C2012 09 07.43104 23 06 58.82 -05 29 45.4 13.4 R H06

K12Q42G C2012 09 07.43160 23 06 58.41 -05 29 43.2 13.4 R H06

K12Q42G C2012 09 07.43215 23 06 58.00 -05 29 40.7 13.4 R H06

K12Q42G C2012 09 07.43271 23 06 57.61 -05 29 38.5 13.5 R H06

K12Q42G C2012 09 07.43326 23 06 57.18 -05 29 36.1 13.4 R H06

K12Q42G C2012 09 07.43381 23 06 56.79 -05 29 33.6 13.4 R H06

K12Q42G C2012 09 07.43436 23 06 56.37 -05 29 31.1 13.4 R H06

K12Q42G C2012 09 07.43492 23 06 55.96 -05 29 28.3 13.4 R H06

K12Q42G C2012 09 07.43547 23 06 55.57 -05 29 26.1 13.4 R H06

K12Q42G C2012 09 07.43603 23 06 55.15 -05 29 23.5 13.4 R H06

The above video is of the first 10 frames and shows the movement against the background stars.

Enjoy!!!!

Citizen Science - Astronomy 3.0

Citizen Science is the engagement and leverage of the broader community, who have an interest in science, to accomplish tasks, build community, for outreach, education and research.

Even Amateur Astronomers participate in Citizen Science.

My experience in a Citizen Science project (Skywatch FMO Program) in 2004 re-connected me with my love of astronomy after 24 years of corporate life.

So please enjoy my "thank you letter", my story of my experience with Citizen Science and what's up with the world of astronomy today.

On June 10 I delivered this talk to an audience of non-astronomers with an interest in the topic during a "Learning in the Laneway" session in a Melbourne Cafe.

So Citizen Science, Astronomy 3.0, the new normal, and OSIRIS-REx and Cosmoquest were all covered before the camera filled its memory and conked out.

Enjoy!

Astroswanny joins the 1000 club

In Australia, I have a friend who wrote a very famous song called "I made a hundred in the backyard at Mum's".

Its a sporting analogy about the dreams we wish for - in this case as they relate to the game of Cricket, which reaches its height every 4 years when the "Convicts" play the "Ye olde Country" in the ashes.

Not all dreams relate to cricket, ...... so today I was very excited to receive a Certificate recognising 1000 observations of Variable Stars to the AAVSO, which apparently they were gracious enough to send me even though I didn't show up for the meeting in Big Bear California. ;-)

So ..... "I bagged a 1000 in the front yard of our universe" ;-)

Thanks Arne, Mike Simonsen & everyone at the #AAVSO.

Top Ten Tweets after Melbourne/Vic Earthquake

Well did the earth move for you?

Melbourne, Victoria had a 5.5M Earthquake between Moe and Leongatha tonight, the earth has been moving out there for a while now. The Geoscience website listed the earthquake as the strongest in 109 years in Victoria.

Ironically we were watching "Big Bang" theory not long before and one of the daughters came in and said did you feel those vibrations?

Well the earthquake wasn't the half of it: the whacky Aussie sense of humor wasn't far behind - So I bring you the top ten Tweets about the Victorian earthquake.

10) The lame, and over used, (common guys its being going around for over a year) - toppled over garden chair Memed with "we will rebuild"

9) Some helpful people actually supplied a map ;-) However 9th place goes to Coles Supermarkets who tweeted "RT if you were in a Coles Supermarket" - clearly there's a "prices are way down, deeper down" angle going on there somewhere".

8) "We're restaurant staff we were too busy to feel the earthquake" - (but apparently not to busy to tweet about not feeling it)

7) Photo of spilled bottle of red wine on carpet.

6) "The penny just dropped @theage #fairfax #media"

5) "NOT all quiet on the western front @westernbulldogs #footscray"

4) Dog photo Meme "I like the earthquake better when it was an underground movement"

3) Photo of State Library street art in Swanson st -"Entire building swallowed in Melbourne earthquake"

2) "I asked for that Martini STIRRED not shaken"

And wait for it.....yes .....fell on the floor laughing at this one!!!

1) "Millions of dollars of improvement done to Federation Square in Melbourne earthquake"

Follow the madness here: http://trendsmap.com/local/au/melbourne

Sleep well Victoria!

Asteroid 2012 LZ1

Asteroid 2012 LZ1 was discovered by Robert McNaught on the evening of the 12 June 2012. An asteroid moving past earth at 12 lunar distances is not necessarily noteworthy even for a potentially hazardous object (MOID= < 0.05AU).

What was noteworthy is the professional surveys have already found over 90% of objects over 1 klm wide, this one at 500-700m is very large for a new discovery, basically because it is in a highly inclined orbit and was detected at -61 Declination in the southern hemisphere - ie in Robert's favourite comet hunting territory.

What does this mean - basically that it is on a highly inclined orbit, not un-heard of but not common. The inclination is why it would not have been picked up as part of the more than 90% of big asteroids already detected, more commonly along the plane of the solar system.

Transit of Venus - Have a Captain Cook!

And so it was, what a great day. Hundreds of people visited Siding Spring. 13,000 watched it around the world. Despite some backend technical hitches - All were happy. We got all 4 contacts despite having a bit of a close call with weather and having to move the telescope 20 mins before contact 3. The highlight for me was a 12 year old at the eyepiece of the main scope calling contact 4 at 2:43:50 pm Local time - another generation of astronomers is born!

On Wednesday 6th June (Australian time....5th Elsewhere), it is the last chance to observe a transit of Venus in front of the Sun till the year 2117.

Due to the tilt of the orbit of Venus relative to earth of 3.2 degrees, Transits of Venus come in pairs 8 years apart separated by 105 years and 121 years in a 234 year cycle.

Captain James Cook was dispatched by the Royal Society for the transit in 1769 which was observed from Tahiti. Next stop was Terra Australis Incognita where upon he fulfilled the rest of his journey's goals.

The transit of Venus has been a traditional way of measuring the size of the solar system with a number of useful calculations performed by early astronomers. Today thousands of astronomers, amateurs and citizen scientists, will measure the four contact points and report the timings from their location through social media, smart phone apps, and tweets, giving us perhaps the most accurate measurements recorded.

Elsewhere other astronomers will be looking at the spectroscopic analysis of the atmosphere of Venus as it passes in front of the sun and others will use the near full moon as a mirror and measure the changes in the specra of light reflected off the moon.

Many people will be observing and streaming the transit live online, so there is no need to go to far to get your view of the transit.

I should give the standard safety disclaimer: DON'T LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN - unless you have the specialist equipment required to do this.

You can safely enjoy the transit by following the above embedded broadcast of the Transit brought to you live from Siding Spring, thanks to the ANU, AAO and iTelescope.net. You might even see a few familiar faces!

So in the time honored tradition of Aussie rhyming slang - Have a "Captain Cook" at this - he did, so should you!