Skywatch

[Henry Hawk]

 

[Bo D]

[libby]

Another to watch the sky ....

"...more likely life came to Earth on a Martian meteorite, rather than starting on this planet."

http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news/2013/08/we-may-all-be-martians-new-research-supports-theory-life-started-mars?et_cid=3451376&et_rid=41373174&location=top

Fascinating    ... thought provoking ....

[libby]

NASA ROCKET TO THE MOON AT 11:27 P.M. TONIGHT!

Observe NASA's LADEE launch tonight at 11:27 p.m.
By Blaine Friedlander, Updated: September 6, 2013

Long after tonight's high school football games end, step outside, talk to your neighbors and see NASA's LADEE mission rocket just after it launches from Wallops Island, Va., on the Eastern Shore. This moonshot, sans astronauts, blasts off sometime in a four-minute launch window that starts at 11:27 p.m. Look to the south-southeast, as many people in the greater Washington area should be able to see it with a good view of the horizon.

For Washington and for Wallops Island, the weather is expected to be clear.

LADEE – or the Lunar Atmosphere Dust Environment Explorer – will orbit Earth then cruise to the moon, where it will gather data on the lunar atmosphere and to see whether dust is lofted into moon's sky.

This style rocket – the five-stage Minotaur V – has been in the news before, as you may recall it as a Peacekeeper missile. In its current civilian configuration, by Orbital Sciences Corp., this mission will become the first to launch beyond Earth from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility.

Find a good view of the south-southeastern horizon so you can see above buildings and trees. Apartment balconies, higher ground and parking decks should suffice. Just after launch, the rocket will speed into orbit around the Earth.  For the Washington area, NASA says, expect to see the initial stages about 13 degrees above the horizon.

NASA and Orbital have developed a chart that plots the elevation visibility of East Coast locations for the rocket moving into orbit.

Washington and Baltimore should start seeing the rocket at about 40 seconds after launch. This NASA and Orbital chart plots the "first sighting" for East Coast locations.

The initial flight path of LADEE will be over the Atlantic Ocean, where it will drop its first three stages. You might notice that its trajectory arches and it will appear to drop back toward Earth. Don't worry. You'll be experiencing an optical illusion, as the rocket follows the natural roundness of our own planet's curvature.

From Washington, you will first spot the rocket in the south-southeast and it will move toward the east.  Imagine standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and facing southeast. That puts the Washington Monument on your left. In this graphic, produced at Orbital by Carlos Niederstrasser, you can find your orientation. (Please note: For clarity purposes, the graphic is in daylight. The launch will be in the dark of night.)

This YouTube video from SpaceVidsNet provides an animated explanation of the launch and what happens during the mission's initial stages.

The speeding rocket – barring any clouds – should be visible from eastern North Carolina, Richmond, Va., Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Hartford, Conn., and Boston. It will be harder to see from eastern West Virginia, Pittsburgh, Binghamton, N.Y., Syracuse, N.Y., Montpelier, Vt., Bangor, Maine and Presque Isle, Maine.

But what if your neighbor's huge tree blocks your view or you have to work late? Thanks to social media and the connected world, you have options:

– Tonight, 9:30 p.m.: Live internet coverage begins on NASA TV.

– Tonight, 9:30 – 11:35 p.m.: Pre-launch webcast featuring NASA experts discussing the mission on NASA EDGE.

– Tonight, 10:30 p.m. – 1 a.m.:Live from New York City's Times Square, watch from the Toshiba Vision screen, just underneath the famous New Year's Eve ball.

– Virginia's Eastern Shore: NASA, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and local officials have organized viewing areas at Robert Reed Park, Main Street, Chincoteague, Va., or Beach Road, Chincoteague. Large televisions will show the launch. More information here.

– Saturday, 1 a.m. (approx.): Post-launch news conference on NASA TV.

– Tweeters will be tweeting on Twitter all day. Join the conversation: #NASALADEE

Overview of the LADEE mission, from NASA:


The official NASA LADEE Web site.

© The Washington Post Company

[Locutus]

Did you see it Libby?  I was too far south but it just launched a few minutes ago.

[libby]

Did you see it Libby?  I was too far south but it just launched a few minutes ago.

Hi Locutus. Yes, I saw it -- from my upstairs bedroom window, which faces east. I was watching for it, looked to the left (north) and when I looked back to the right (south), there it was -- very bright and moving fairly quickly across the sky in a slight arc right in front of me. It got a lot brighter and looked bigger right before it disappeared.

[Palehorse]

Hi Locutus. Yes, I saw it -- from my upstairs bedroom window, which faces east. I was watching for it, looked to the left (north) and when I looked back to the right (south), there it was -- very bright and moving fairly quickly across the sky in a slight arc right in front of me. It got a lot brighter and looked bigger right before it disappeared.

AWESOME! 

[libby]

 

[Locutus]

NASA's Comet ISON Observing Campaign website.

http://www.isoncampaign.org/

[libby]

NASA's Comet ISON Observing Campaign website.

http://www.isoncampaign.org/

Something to look forward to. 

[libby]

NASA's Voyager 1 Goes Interstellar!  If you want to find out how really insignificant we are and why people turn to religion, read on:

From today's Washington Post

After 36 years, Voyager 1 goes interstellar

By Joel Achenbach, Published: September 12, 2013

The tireless Voyager I spacecraft, launched in the disco era and now more than 11 billion miles from Earth, has become the first man-made object to enter interstellar space, scientists said Thursday. Interstellar space, scientists now know with certainty, is dense with particles, and the place is literally hissing. Or maybe you could say it's whistling in the dark.

"It's almost a pure tone. Like middle C. But slightly varying, like your piano is not quite tuned right," said Donald Gurnett, a University of Iowa physicist who has been working on the Voyager mission most of his adult life.

Gurnett is the lead author of a paper published Thursday in the journal Science that provides what seems to be the final, incontrovertible evidence that NASA's Voyager I has crossed into a realm where no spacecraft has gone before.

Scientists have long thought that there would be a boundary out there, somewhere, where the million-mile-per-hour "solar wind" of particles would give way abruptly to cooler, denser interstellar space, permeated by charged particles from around the galaxy.

That boundary, called the heliopause, turns out to be 11.3 billion miles from the sun, according to Voyager's instruments and Gurnett's calculations.

Beyond the boundary, space is — perhaps counterintuitively — much denser with particles. There are 80,000 particles per cubic meter in the region where Voyager I is now, Gurnett said.

The sun's hot ejecta — a plasma of charged particles — forms a vast bubble, known as the heliosphere. In the outer regions of the heliosphere, the particles are relatively few and far between, with just 1,000 particles per square meter in some regions, Gurnett said. But the heliosphere has an edge. Voyager I's epochal crossing of the boundary, into the cooler, denser plasma, took place on Aug. 25, 2012, according to the new report.

This confirms earlier findings, published in three papers in Sciencein June, that Voyager I on that date in August 2012 had experienced a sudden drop in solar radiation and a spike in cosmic particles coming from all around the galaxy.

But the earlier data from the spacecraft had been somewhat ambiguous. The spacecraft continued to pick up magnetic signals that suggested it was still within the sun's magnetic field. Ed Stone, the chief scientist for Voyager, suggested that Voyager I was flying through a transitional zone.

Now, however, scientists have a new set of measurements thanks in large part to a solar flare. On March 17, 2012, the sun ejected a huge mass of particles, and when those solar particles arrived at Voyager more than a year later, on April 9, they triggered oscillations in the charged particles of matter — the plasma — surrounding the spacecraft.

From the frequency of those oscillations — essentially the sound of space itself — the scientists could interpret the density of the plasma. That density, much higher than anything registered before in the outer solar system, offered compelling evidence that Voyager I had, in fact, entered the interstellar zone.

"For the first time we've actually measured the density of the plasma," Stone said. He said he's convinced by the new data that his spacecraft has fully penetrated interstellar space.

"It's great. This is exploration. This is wonderful," said Stone, who has overseen the Voyager project since the early 1970s.

The two Voyager spacecraft were launched in 1977. Voyager I flew by Jupiter and Saturn, the gravity of which helped slingshot the spacecraft toward the outer reaches of the solar system. Voyager I is now traveling at 38,000 miles per hour relative to the sun.

Voyager II flew near Jupiter and Saturn and then went on to pass by Uranus and Neptune. It is not quite as far from the sun as its sister spacecraft.

Although Voyager I is now in interstellar space, it hasn't technically left the solar system. That's because of the Oort cloud — a region of comets in orbit around the sun.

"We'll get to the inner edge of the Oort cloud in about 300 years," Stone said. "Of course the spacecraft will not still be transmitting then."

The spacecraft draws power from the radioactive decay of Plutonium 238, and Stone thinks the dwindling power supply will force engineers to start turning off instruments in 2020. Voyager I probably will go dark by 2025.

Stone said the spacecraft will pass through the far side of the Oort cloud in about 30,000 years.

Libby: 

Related stories: NASA's mission improbable: A space agency with a proud past faces a rocky road ahead Voyager 1 just left the solar system using less computing power than your iPhone Voyager 1 finds that edge of solar system isn't as defined as scientists once thought.

© The Washington Post Company

[Locutus]

And V-ger will return looking for its creator in a few thousand years. 

[Locutus]

As an aside from this conversation, I thought Pioneer 10 and 11 had already escaped the heliopause thus making them the first to leave the solar system if that's what the definition of 'leaving the solar system' is. 

I'll have to research that later. 

[libby]

Well, let me know what you find. I read your question early this morning and thought about it on and off all day. I am so glad you made that comment, for it helped get my mind off some things I'm involved in that are sometimes    and onto a subject that fascinates me.

The astronomy text definition of the solar system used to be simpler: "The sun, its planets, and the asteroids and comets that, like the planets, orbit the sun." 

As for how far the Pioneers, 10 and 11, got before being shut down, as far as I can tell from doing some looking here and there, they provided valuable information about the outer planets of our solar system, but did not reach the heliopause boundary before the mission was shut down.

[Locutus]

Well I think I've found some answers.