Lots of astronomy stories have been published in the past week, and I've been rather busy trying to keep track of them all. The best things about these stories, and about astronomy in general, are the pictures. They can tell so much and most of them look beautiful. So, I've rounded up a bunch of the amazing pictures published in the past week or so, and will probably give a short paragraph about them:
Lets start with the star that changed the Universe. The Hubble telescope viewed this variable star that actually resides in another galaxy, our neighbor, Andromeda. Before this star was discovered, the fuzzy patches of galaxies were just called nebula, and thought to be just gas inside our own galaxy. Edwin Hubble (the Hubble telescopes namesake) changed all that in 1923, discovering that these nebula were indeed other galaxies, and used this variable star to determine that they were millions of light years away. You can read the historic story here.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
NASA released these amazing raw images taken by Cassini of Saturn's moons Titan and Enceladus. These images, haven't been processed or colorized yet, but absolutely blow my mind. A couple of the highlights can be seen here, while the full set is over here.
Probably the most distant object ever seen, for now. This is a gamma ray burst, known as GRB 090429B. I made a post about GRBs awhile ago. If you want to know more about the science behind how this sort of stuff is determined, Bad Astronomy has got you covered. And here is the original story with a link to the paper.
WISE, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, was turned off awhile ago, but the work still goes on. NASA released a gallery of nine spiral galaxy images taken by WISE. For more info on each galaxy, check out the NASA release. (There is also a really huge version of the image, which is drool inducing.)
Docked Endeavour at ISS through a fish-eye lens. Image Credit: NASA
Photos from the last space shuttle spacewalk, it also marked the formal completion of the U.S. segment of the International Space Station. You can go through the entire photo set here.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Toledo
This graphic illustrates a stellar fountain of crystal rain, beginning with a Spitzer picture of the star in question, and ending with an artist's concept of what the crystal "rain" might look like. The full article is here.
So, as a few of your may have noticed blogger has been an annoyance, being down most of the past two days. I can understand that, updates need to be done, but something seems to have gone terribly wrong with the entire thing.
As it stands now, I lost my Endeavour Launch Update article, I hope that it may be returned... If not, know that Space Shuttle Endeavour is set to have it's final launch at 8:56 a.m. EDT on Monday, May 16. Everything is on course and repairs to the Shuttle's heater system that caused the initial delay have been fixed. After this flight it will go into retirement and be displayed at the California Science Center.
The launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis has been pushed back to mid-July.
The argument can be made of why retire the shuttles and so forth. Their need for retirement is made obvious by this delay and the previous delays and the all but certain delay of Atlantis. These shuttles are falling apart, they are old, they need replacement. This process was started under the Bush administration, but even in the Clinton administration doubts were beginning to be raised.
As for why there isn't a replacement on hand, it is an unfortunate bureaucratic side effect. There was a plan, the Constellation program that was to design and build new Ares rockets and the Orion space capsule (akin to the Apollo capsule, but larger and more up to date). The program was severely over budget and bogged down by bureaucratic red tape and political pressure. One of the first things the Obama administration pushed was a complete overhaul which rightly cancelled the Constellation program. But rather than throw the baby out with the bath water, the Orion capsule is still being developed and the work on the Ares rockets is being used in further rocket developments. All in all, it's sad that things got off track, but we are hopefully on the right track right now.
So with that cleared up, I have been busy with blogger being down. First, I have been elected to the Board of Directors for the Harford Country Astronomical Society. After only a short year of being with them I have thoroughly enjoyed my experience with them, as I am sure they appreciate my help. Now I get to have some input on the direction of the club as far as outreach events and observing and astrophotography. I am pretty excited and hope to do good for the club, even though every organization has its internal issues and debates.
Next, earlier this week I finally got the piece for my telescope that allowed my camera to be in a position so that it would take focused shots. You may remember about a month ago, I published my first set of (blurry) pictures along with a video of the Moon. Well, I got a new video (below) and a new moon shot(above), as well as a shot of Saturn. Thinks look a lot better being able to focus correctly. Plus I figured some things out with Windows Live Movie Maker that made the video better.
I still have some things to learn. The moon is a fairly easy target, but Saturn was tricky. My telescope doesn't track to well either. I pretty much had to take a video of Saturn and pluck out the best frame for the image I have below. I also need to find the right camera settings for taking images of planets, as it was hard to just get Saturn to resolve an image. (The blue has is from atmosphere, it was slightly cloudy.)
I think that about wraps things up. I am hoping to get better and this and share more of my own images with you in future. The HCAS observatory is off limits due to construction of the next few months, so I probably won't have much in the way of deep sky objects to share, so hopefully this will do.
With my schedule out of whack from Blogger issues, I am trying to consider what I am going to be doing over the next week. Monday will most definitely be devoted to the hopeful shuttle launch, Tuesday another Astro-Lesson, and Wednesday or Thursday will hopefully see my 100th blog post!
I finally got a clear night last night, and it couldn't have happened at a better time. I got some pretty good shots of a great full moon, and even a short video. I still have some kinks to figure out, but it's a learning process.
I've learned a good bit though, mostly what I still don't know and need to do. Number one is that the focusing is just a hair off, unfortunately the focal length is outside the range I can adjust to. Fixing that requires a $20 adapter piece, for a little ring of plastic.
Next, I am pretty bad at setting up my scope for tracking, so these pics are just quick still shots. When you have good tracking it is possible to stack images for more clarity and detail. I can also mess with contrast, exposure, brightness, gamma and all that other great stuff.
The Moon also happened to pass in front of a tree earlier in the night, making all sorts of fun trying to focus around.
The actual camera software has some neat (and kinda unnecessary but still cool) features. Messing around with it I really liked the TV mode (above) and inverted (below).
And now the actual footage of the moon that I shot. I had the telescope standing still and just let the Moon pass in front of the lens. I think it came out pretty well:
Sorry, there is no sound. Maybe in the future!
I tried to also get some shots of Saturn, it was near the Moon and easy to find in the night sky. I could visually see it with my eye piece, but the camera wasn't sensitive enough with all the light from the full moon and suburban life. So hopefully one day, if it's nice out on the new moon, it would be worth a shot.
BTW, this months full moon is known as the Full Pink Moon. It gets its name from moss pink, one of the first spring flowers to bloom. I think lately though, cherry blossoms have stolen the thunder, especially around here, the Cherry Blossom Festival is a big deal in DC and I definitely recommend it if you ever get the chance. Anyways, above is a hastily edited photo with Paint.Net, a great free photo editing software.
And in case you are wondering, I used my Meade ETX-80AC telescope,
a moon filter, and the Orion StarShoot Solar System Color Imaging Camera IV.
Well, I was hoping to have some shots from my telescope camera for you by now. Unfortunately there hasn't been a clear night yet since I got it. I have it all set up and ready to go though. Tonight looks like it might be clear enough, so I might give it a shot.
Also, tonight I am giving my presentation at the Harford County Astronomical Society on Life in the Universe. I am a bit excited, but unsure of exactly how large a crowd this will be. This will probably be the largest single crowd I have addressed in awhile where I am the focus. It should go well, and hopefully someone will either record it or take pictures that will be put online.
I don't have a lot of time for a major update today since I have to get ready. Kind of unfortunate, I also miss out on playing Frisbee and kickball with some friends. But I have been thinking of other idea's for future posts. There are no shortage of great astronomy topic to covered, but this weekend I might think about doing something more related to the Life in the Universe presentation. Probably looking at some extreme lifeforms (known as extremophiles).
So that's it for today. A more personal touch and not a lot of sciency info. Hope everyone has a good Thursday night!
EDIT: I'm back now, unfortunately by the time I got up to present I totally forgot about recording it. Oh well, I'll fill in on it later. Right now my internet is down, so not going to say much, its a pain to update from my phone. I think I am going to try to take some pictures of tis beautiful full moon though.
On Sunday, in between writing the two halves of the moon list, I went up to the Harford Community College Observatory. This is where the Harford County Astronomical Society is based, a small dirt road, some way into the woods next to a community college in Maryland. Anyways, we have a pretty decent set up with a mount and telescope, and a small group of us from the club (five in total) decided to try some imaging.
Eskimo Nebula. NGC 2392. HCAS.
We aren't the best group at it in the club, but we figured what the hey, worth a shot. It was a learning experience. Our targets were NGC 3242 (the Ghost of Jupiter) and NGC 2392 (the Eskimo Nebula). Both are planetary nebula, meaning they are created by shells of gas being ejected from stars late in their life.
Ghost of Jupiter Nebula. NGC 3242. HCAS.
These images are unfiltered and just stacked together by one of the guys in the club. They pale in comparison to Hubble images of these objects, but I'm proud to have helped take them none the less. I also ordered my first and own telescope camera as a bit of a late birthday present, an Orion StarShoot IV. So, hopefully I'll be posting more of my own images soon.
First Image Ever Obtained From Mercury Orbit. NASA.
In other news, yesterday NASA released the First Image Ever Obtained from Mercury Orbit. Taken by the MESSENGER spacecraft, confirmation that this has been a truly successful mission. Today they went ahead and released some 1,500 images that MESSENGER has already taken in just the few days it has been there! Universe Today has a good run through of some of the best ones, check it out.
One last, sadder piece of news, pictures have been released of the Space Shuttle Discovery's transition into retirement. The shuttle is to disassembled and cleaned to be made ready for public display. Click here for the pictures.
12:00 PM
Astronomy Pirate
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