What's Up? The Space Place

November Skies Planets grace the evening and morning sky this month. There are several skywatching events this month that will allow Space Place’ers to get out and enjoy the sky, including one that I will be participating in. Join me at George Mason University Observatory on Monday, November 1st at 7:00 p.m. Check here for more details and weather status http://physics.gmu.edu/~hgeller/observing.html . Tune into NASA for the scheduled last launch of Space Shuttle Discovery on the 3rd and the rendezvous of the Deep Impact/EPOXI spacecraft with Comet Hartley on the 4th. You can follow these missions at http://www.nasa.gov/ . Skywatching Highlights Mercury moves low into the western sky during the first week of November and by the end of the month it is still pretty low to the horizon. Brilliant Venus begins to grace the morning sky in the east before dawn as the month begins. Venus will start out low in the east-southeast early in the month but will climb higher each day. Because...

Hey Space Placers! The past two days have really reminded us of the power of Mother Nature.The planet had a 7.7 magnitude earthquake, causing a tsunami; there was also a volcano blowing its top; the lowest barometric pressure ever recorded in the U.S. occurred yesterday and the weather in the midwest yesterday was the worst in 70 years. I have told my students that we exist on this planet only because the climate and geology of the planet allow it. Change the geological or climatological conditions that exist today and there will be a possible impact on humanity. Civilization really has a pretty narrow band of conditions in which it can survive, let alone thrive. Humans have to realize that we live in a very special place and time on this planet. It can change at any moment - comet/asteroid impact, super volcano eruption, climate change. Some day perhaps humanity will appreciate the gift we have in this planet..... Sky Guy in Beautiful VA

Hey Space Placers! This week will be an excellent one to view the International Space Station (ISS)  if the skies are clear. Check out this website and provide your location to get accurate sighting times: http://www.heavens-above.com/  You can also see when Hubble Space Telescope and the Space Shuttle (when on orbit) pass your way. Another feature to look at is "Iridium Flares". These big comm satellites have huge solar panels which catch the Sun's rays and "flare" into brilliance for a few seconds. They are quite stunning when they occur and can be a 100x brighter than Venus! Be sure to check the site out and set it up for your observing location. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! I apologize if this is seemingly too basic, but a number of students and the public were not aware of the following. When we look up at the night sky we see two basic type of objects - stars and solar system objects. The stars we see, just like the Sun, are visible because they are producing light and energy by the process of nuclear fusion. Nuclear fission, which is what powers our reactors and nuclear bombs, makes energy by breaking apart atoms. In nuclear fusion, the temperature and pressure at the core of a star is significant enough to fuse hyrogen atoms (and others) together and thereby make new elements plus energy. All of the solar system objects except for meteors, are visible because they are reflecting sunlight off of their surfaces. Regarding meteors, we do not see the actual meteoroid body but rather the ionized trail in the atmosphere caused by the tremendous heat of entering the Earth's atmopshere. The planets, their moons as well a...

Hey Space Placers! Make sure you get outside tonight and check the Full Moon. Because it is the first Full Moon after the Harvest Moon it is traditionally known as the Hunter's Moon. The name comes from the fields being harvested and therefore bare which would make it easy for hunters by the light of a brilliant Full Moon to hunt game. This was in a time when farmers and others would try to get fresh game for dinner. Also, check out my on air interview with WTOP radio about yesterday's lunar news: http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=92&sid=595567&page=1 I hope to have a pic for you. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Fellow Space Placers! The Moon is my favorite object and place in the Universe. I have been captured by its' beauty and potential utility for the human race for many decades. I grew up during Apollo and participated in several amateur lunar observing projects back in the late 60's. It remains my favorite observing and photography object. In June 2009 I wrote a feature article for Sky and Telescope Magazine on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission that was launched that month to the Moon. This two-for-one mission was unique in that two separate spacecraft were launched with the same launch vehicle, an Atlas V, and were headed for the same destination - the Moon. LCROSS was designed to shepherd the spent Centaur upper stage to the Moon and direct it to slam into a pre-selected lunar crater at one of the lunar poles. The idea was to kick up enough lunar regolith (soil) from deep within the perpetual dar...

Hey Space Placers! Comet Hartley 2 passed Earth today, October 20th, at a distance of 11 million miles. Observer reports indicate that the comet's coma (gaseous envelope) has gotten large but still remains dim. The near full moon interferes with observing the comet but it can be seen with binoculars and telescopes - it all depends on the Moon and local sky conditions of light pollution. If you are familiar with the sky here is a star chart to help you find the comet: http://stardate.org/sites/default/files/mediacenter/comet_hartley_chart_tif_15541.tif It will be tough to see the comet with the Full Moon on Friday, the 22nd. I would recommend trying to look for it when the Moon is out of the sky, and you get a little more time to look before the Moon comes up starting on the 23rd. I will be looking myself if the clouds ever end up clearing out. Let me know if you have any luck. All systems are still GO for the EPOXI-Hartley 2 rendezvous. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! If you see a break in the clouds tonight be sure to look for the almost Full Moon. That big, bright "star"  below it is the planet Jupiter. The two will waltz across the sky and set in the west a few hours before dawn. Enjoy! Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! Wanna' know how many times I have been "clouded out" from an astronomical gotta' see? TOO MANY TIMES, that's how many!!! But the pursuit of the sky goes with the weather (weax as I call it) unless you happen to be a radio astronomer who can observe day and cloudy night. My relief for such times is to make the most of reading or surfin' the astronomical related 'net. I want to give you a list of my astro-faves that I check on a daily basis. Of course my blog is on this list so you know how to get to it ;-) http://www.nasa.gov/     Main NASA site with science and mission updates http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/   Astronomy Picture of the Day is a mainstay classic http://lunarscience.arc.nasa.gov/   for fellow lunatics like me, all things lunar http://climate.jpl.nasa.gov/    global warming DOES EXIST; check this out and see for yourself http://www.skyandtelescope.com/   the grand-daddy of them all when it comes to astronom...

Hey Space Placers, Asteroids have been in the news lately and now one of their icy relatives, Comet Hartley 2, is making a big splash in the astronomical and spaceflight communities – including our very own University of Maryland (UMD). This comet will not be a crowd pleaser as Comet Hale-Bopp was back in the late ‘90’s as it will be barely visible in the night sky. But that doesn’t mean it will not be of immense historical and scientific importance. Comets are the left over debris, along with asteroids, from the formation of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago. These two classes of solar system objects are thought to be related as comets and asteroids can exhibit characteristics indicative of one another. Some asteroids could be "dead" comets in that they have lost all of the volatile and icy material that makes up comets while some comets are covered with significant layers of dust. Just recently two asteroids were found to contain water, a major component of comets...

Hey Fellow Space Placers! If you have any questions or you want to write to me please do so by either leaving a comment or dropping me a line at skyguyinva@gmail.com . I can also make public appearances before school groups or organizations. This Monday, October 18th,  you can join me and George Mason University astronomers at the Observatory at 7:30 p.m. if the sky is clear. Check out this link for more details:  http://today.gmu.edu/53352 . We will have several telescopes available to look at the gibbous Moon, Jupiter and some pretty deep sky objects. GMU expects to have its new 32-inch telescope completed by the end of the year which will be the largest  aperture telescope on a college campus in Virginia and possibly in the U.S. Please join us! Although you don't need a telescope to enjoy the sky, it sure opens up a whole new perspective - literally. It takes time and effort to figure out what type of telescope - if any - you want to buy. But it is a real treas...

Since we have been talking about asteroids the past two days, check this out..... Look at this sci-fi-ish photo: Astronomers think that HST has captured detailed images of what happens when two space rocks (asteroids) collide. The images were taken over a period of time and show the changes occuring within the collision remnant. After some detective work astronomers think the collision occurred early last year and involved a smaller asteroid slamming into a larger one. The discovery photos looked all the world like a comet but HST showed the bizzarre and never before seen "X" pattern which ruled out the object being a comet. The astro-collision took place in the busy solar system byway of the asteroid belt where millions of space rocks orbit the Sun. Such collisions are thought to take place about once a year but this is the first ever photo of such an event. Astronomers will look in on this "X-File" object next year to see how the crash scene is progr...

NASA NEO Graphic showing the path of 2010 TD54 With additional observations the path of today's (Oct 12th) close flyby of mini-asteroid 2010 TD54 was refined. Singapore was the area where closest approach took place at 6:50 a.m. EDT. The space rock passed at a distance of 27, 960 miles above the surface of our planet. 2010 TD54 was discovered on October 9th at 3:55 a.m. EDT) during a routine sky patrol by a telescope of the NASA-sponsored Catalina Sky Survey north of Tucson, Arizona. NASA has several telescopes dedicated to finding Nearth Earth Objects (NEO's) that could pose a threat to our planet.   Although this space rock did not pose a threat to our planet, it still carried quite a punch. If it had entered our atmosphere it would have probably disintegrated into pieces that might have survived to become meteorites. It also could have exploded high in the atmosphere with the force of a small nuclear detonation or the equivalent of tens of thousands of ton...

Hey Space Placers, By the time you probably read this we will have had a close, and I mean CLOSE, flyby of a 10 meter or so asteroid - a space rock. Named 2010 TD54 this chunk of debris left over from the formation of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago will whiz by between 33,000 and 40,000 miles above our planet at 6:14 a.m. EDT, October 12th. 2010 TD54 was discovered by astronomers just a few days ago while on telescopic sky patrol looking for rocks just like this that could pose an impact threat. Fortunately this asteroid will miss us completely. A 10 meter or 33-foot spacerock would probably survive entry into our atmosphere and make a heck of a fireball in the sky. In all likelihood an object that size would breakup into fragments that would impact the Earth as meteorites. Based on whether this was an iron or stone asteroid would determine how big the surviving fragments would be.... and what kind of damage they would cause. This space rock's fragments could possibly c...

Hey Space Placers! The sky will be clear tonight and I am getting my 10-inch Takahashi Mewlon telescope out. I will be observing and hopefully photographing Jupiter, Comet Hartley and a few other items of interest. If any pics turn out I will share. Do you have a telescope? Do you want to get one? Share your telescope and or what you want to get. Sky Guy in Va

A good friend and colleague of mine sent me the following question: "I have always been fascinated with "Space' and questions such as "Where does the Universe begin and where does it end?" Any comment? Here is what I sent back to him and I thought I would share it with you: Yeah, space is something else and it challenges us. Beyond the "big questions" it is so beautiful and peaceful to enjoy. The questions you ask are indeed "big" and I will try to give you a simple answer. Our current best theory is that the Universe is 13.7 billion years old - having been created in an event we call the "Big Bang" - the moment in which all space and time erupted from literally out of nothing. Was there anything before the Big Bang? Some say this is a non-sensical question as the Big Bang created everything from a single event....others pursue the question on a purely mathematical basis. The end of the Universe is a vexing question as we are s...

Hey Space Placers! Want to know "What's Up" for October?????? Check out all the sky and Earth-based happenings for the month at my WTOP column, http://www.wtop.com/?nid=421.

Look up - safely ;-) - to enjoy the night sky. Skywatching in its simplest form is what human beings have been doing since they first stood erect eons ago. They would have huddled together at night for warmth and safety. In a sky free of light pollution thousands of what we know to be stars would have been visible. And our own Miky Way Galaxy would have been quite a sight to them. They didn't know what it was they were seeing but the same astronomical objects we see today, so did they. The sky of then is not significantly different from our sky of now except for light pollution in metrpolitan areas. Did they wonder at night by moonlight? What did they think of when they saw the source of light and warmth disappear and the dark and cool begin to prevail? Solar and lunar eclipses, meteor showers, fireballs and bright comets must have been either wondrous or terrifying to our ancestors.  Today we have the luxury of knowledge about the Universe and nigh...

Dear Reader, This is my first post for my very own blog! I am sharing with you, future readers, what I hope I will accomplish - open a link between you and I so we can share the Universe together. You have questions, I will hopefully have the answers. News about NASA missions, things happening in the day and night sky, my own sky pics, will all be here. The Universe is ours to enjoy and explore! Clear Skies! Greg