What's Up? The Space Place

Hey Space Placers! UPDATED Here is my segment on Fox 5 "Good Day DC" 6-30-14 Make sure you get out and see the Milky Way Galaxy this summer! Here are my Milky Way pics from the show" Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! NASA's test vehicle for a new way to land heavier payloads on Mars, the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) - see http://www.whatsupthespaceplace.com/2014/06/holy-x-files-nasa-has-flying-saucer.html   for background - flew today, June 28. The test was a success in many way s but the parachute did not fully deploy as planned.  The test vehicle landed in the Pacific Ocean. NASA will hold a live  telecon on the test Sunday, June 29 at 1 p.m.EDT. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! Summer Milky Way & Lightning Hot Spot G. Redfern Spent a wonderful day yesterday with 22 science teachers from various Virginia school districts. They are taking a two week astronomy course hosted by the University of Virginia (UVA) Astronomy Department with Dr. Edward Murphy and Dr.  Jennifer Maeng as the primary instructors. . The Blue Ridge Earth Science Collaborative , in conjunction with UVA offered ASTR 6340, "Astronomy Concepts in the Classroom" to science teachers who applied and were accepted. The course objective is to give teachers a broad overview of astronomy and a basic  understanding of the universe that we live in, with an emphasis on topics covered in the  Virginia Standards of Learning for grades 4-9. The group was energetic, interactive and asked really good questions. I gave them my lectures on space rocks and the Chesapeake Bay Impact Crater (CBIC). I brought real meteorites for them to see as well as sampl...

Hey Space Placers! As I have said in the past NASA is in the weather and climate business. On July 1, 2014 NASA is scheduled to launch another of its Earth Science satellites, Orbiting Carbon Observatory Two or OCO-2. The first OCO failed to reach orbit so this is the second in the series and that is why it is designated as OCO-2. OCO-2 will orbit Earth and monitor carbon dioxide levels from manmade and natural sources. This of course has major impact on the planet in terms of climate and heating. The launch will be from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Read All About Here . Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! Our nuclear powered lab/rover on Mars, Curiosity, is marking her 1st full Martian Year today, June 24, 2014. What a year it has been for the rover. You can read about it here . Also check out the cool video . And what a selfie: Here's to many more Martian Anniversaries Curiosity!  On to Mount Sharp……. Sky Guy in VA

Hey SPace Placers! UPDATE:  PICS If you are an early riser be SURE to look at the waning crescent Moon and Venus in the eastern sky before dawn on 6-24-14. Sky Safari Plus Graphic This will be an especially beautiful view  because the Moon will exhibit Earthshine - the pale light that reveals the darkened Moon and is caused by the reflection of sunlight off our planet's clouds and oceans - and will feature the Pleiades or Seven Sisters star cluster. Try to take a look at 5 am or a bit earlier. The brightening sky will wash out the view as it gets later. I will be trying for a pic and you can too by mounting your camera - a digital model is best - on a tripod and taking multiple exposures. You can try your cell phone and tablet too. Here's to clear skies for us all….. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! Any space-smartphone/tablet geeks out there? If so, this is your lucky day. Did you know that NASA has dozens of space related Apps that literally are out of this world (mostly)? I say mostly because some involve planet Earth. Just about anything space related cane found in NASA catalog of apps posted here . I have not tried any of them as I do not own a smartphone yet - waiting for the upgrade through my carrier. My bride has the family iPad so I haven't been able to load any of them. But NASA has set the standard for Social Media so I doubt you will be disappointed. Drop me a line and let me know which one is your have. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! Well the longest amount of sunlight for the year has passed and we are now working our way towards winter in six months. Here is a great write up on today , the first day of summer for the Northern Hemisphere. It is also the shortest night of the year. Here is a great photo that explains the seasons: The summer Milky Way is visible when it gets dark and passes from the south up towards the north and is a sight to see in dark skies. I hope you are able to enjoy summer and get out under the sky. Wear your sunscreen and watch out for ticks! Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! NASA held a live teleconference yesterday on efforts to find an asteroid suitable for the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) and an update on ARM as well. ARM is due to launch in 2019 and fly to a selected asteroid. NASA is looking at two options in the ARM mission:  Either capture an entire asteroid or remove rubble off of an asteroid,  which will then be placed in lunar orbit for later exploration by astronauts. An asteroid will be selected about 1 year before the launch of ARM. A leading contender for ARM is the orange spot you see in the picture supplied by NASA. Known as 2011 MD it is about 20 feet across and may be a rubble pile instead of a solid rock. The picture was obtained with NASA's infrared seeing Spitzer Space Telescope over a period of 20 hours of observation. Currently there are 9 asteroid candidates. This is a good mission that will enable astronauts flying the new Orion spacecraft to rendezvous with and explore the captured aster...

Hey Space Placers! The Universe is ALWAYS throwing us curves. You would think that the biggest galaxies would be the best at forming new stars. But a new study using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) shows that dwarf galaxies formed a large portion of new stars early in the Universe. The decade long study shows that dwarf galaxies doubled their entire mass of stars in as "little" as 150 million years - a mere eye blink of time in astronomical terms. Normal size galaxies would take 1-3 BILLION years to do so. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! 5 years ago today NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) were launched for the Moon. LRO remains in lunar orbit and is the most data prolific planetary mission in NASA's history having returned over 500 TB of data and still climbing. LRO has rewritten the books on the Moon and LRO managers have applied to NASA for another mission extension of 2 years. We will know in a few weeks if their request is granted. I hope it is as LRO is healthy and can last for another 8-10 years according to Deputy Project Scientist Dr. Noah Petro. I was very fortunate to see LRO and LCROSS as they were being built and my pic taken with them is among my most treasured photos. I wrote the feature story on their missions for Sky & Telescope Magazine which appeared in the June 2009 issue. Remember the Moon Art contest? Well, my selection and prediction as to the winner cam true - the peak of Tycho Crater. T...

Hey Space Placers! You can see 3 planets in the sky right after dusk tonight at about 9:30 p.m.. Bright Jupiter is sinking into the west and will soon be gone in the Sun's glare. Mars is dimming but still somewhat bright in the Southwest. Saturn is in the South sky. Use my Sky Safari Plus chart to zero in on the planetary trio: Enjoy the view! Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! UPDATE: Tweet: Alex Parker  ‏ @ Alex_Parker     29m Here's the first raw Hubble image from our KBO search. We should have our first clean stacks by the end of the day. pic.twitter.com/3FNSgDHL4M Alex Parker HST That DID NOT take long to get the 1st pic! -------------------------------------------------------- NASA's New Horizons spacecraft that is enroute to Pluto was just brought out of hibernation last week and all systems are go for a July 2015 flyby of the last planet of the known solar system (Pluto was a main planet when New Horizons was launched on 2006 - it is now classified as a dwarf planet. It was also the only planet not visited by a spacecraft). Pluto Flyby of KBO NASA Because it takes so long to get out to Pluto and budgets are tight for new planetary missions, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Time Allocation Committee has decided to conduct a test to see if it is feasible to find a post-Pluto flyby target in an ...

Hey Space Placers! This is an article from the 6/9/14 issue of TIME Magazine that gives you the inside scoop on Don Yeomans, the head of NASA-JPL's Near Earth Object (NEO) Program. It is worth your time reading about the "Guardian of the Planet". NEO News (06/13/14) The Man Who Guards the Planet Don Yeomans and his team at the NASA NEO Program Office at JPL received some great publicity in the form of a special article in  Time Magazine  for June 9. The full-page photo of Don is also outstanding. [ http://time.com/135476/the- man-who-guards-the-planet/ ] Space is full of potential killer asteroids. Meet the astronomer who stands between you and them.               by Jeffrey Kluger You don't want Don Yeomans' job, no matter how appealing it seems. He's an astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., which is awfully cool. And he's one of the lab's top guys, which is even better. The problem wi...

Hey Space Placers! Happy Full Honey Moon - the Full Moon of June - AND Friday the 13th. A relatively rare occurrence. In a  previous blog  I explained solar storms, space weather and their effect on our planet. Just the other day I told you about the Sun's Mini-Maximum that is ongoing. Even though the cycle is weak by historical standards the Sun had  three X-Class events bam-bam-bam . The Earth may have a minor geomagnetic storm today as the result of these eruptions. Here is a story worthy of Friday the 13th and the best apocalypse movies. NASA announced recently that the Sun underwent a solar storm event in 2012 that would have had enormous consequences for us IF it had hit us. Fortunately we did not suffer this Carrington-level solar event. because of our position relative to the Sun at the time.  We have a fleet of spacecraft watching the Sun so we will have a warning of solar events and hopefully can prepare accordingly. Enjoy the Moon and warm weath...

Hey Space Placers! Check out the radar images of the big space rock 2014 HQ124 taken after it flew by at just 3 lunar diameters distance on June 8, 2014 - see my blog for more info. Check out more pics and a movie on the 1,300 foot space rock here . Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! I am on travel with sporadic Internet - sorry! Read the latest assessment on our star, the Sun, and how its latest Solar Maximum is really a MINI-Maximum. This solar cycle we are seeing has the solar astronomers scratching their heads. Sky Guy On The Road

Hey Space Placers! Some very interesting lunar news was reported today ,   June 9. It concerns the formation of the Moon and how the far side - the "dark side" (so called due to its mystery and not the lack of sunlight) looks so different than the near side. Pretty interesting reading. SKy Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! A BIG space rock, 800-1300 feet across flies by today at 3 times the distance to the Moon or about 770,000 miles. The big news to me is that this big boy was just discovered by the NEOWISE spacecraft on 4-23-14. If an asteroid-space rock that big were to hit the Earth it would be large enough to destroy a city. 2014 HQ124 has ZERO chance of impact on this pass. More observations will be made to get better precision of the asteroid's orbit which is now known out to the year 2200. Efforts will be made to try and observe the asteroid using radar since it is passing relatively close. These observations should show us surface detail and how the asteroid is rotating if it is. Read more about it here . Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! It has been a busy couple of days with Friday being chock full as well. Tonight is Astronomy Festival on the National Mall  so if you are in the area try to attend. Tonight I will be at University of Virginia's McCormick Observatory for Public Night . In the meantime take a look at this latest video from NASA on the progress of building the Orion spacecraft. Simply amazing and inspiring. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! I am at NASA Goddard today for a behind the scenes look at the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope - the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). I will be seeing JWST which is being built at Goddard and meet some of the people involved. Much more to follow. Sky Guy at Goddard

Hey Space Placers! Heard about NASA's "Flying Saucer"? It is a SUPER COOL technology that will allow NASA to land heavier payloads, including humans, on the surface of Mars. NASA needs a new way to land payloads heavier than its Curiosity Rover, weighing in at 1-ton. You do not want to haul heavy rocket fuel which really won't work by itself in landing on Mars and you cannot rely completely on a parachute so you have to come up with an Entry-Descent-Landing (EDL) system that combines both. Enter NASA's Low Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) - a design that "puffs up" a large decelerator that helps slow a spacecraft from supersonic speeds which in turn will allow for the deployment of a parachute. Both of these techniques will allow for EDL of heavier spacecraft, including those with humans, onto the surface of Mars. LDSD is entering into active testing with a launch window that opens on 6/3 (the flight has been cancelled for 6/3 due to wea...

Hey Space Placers! I plan on getting the 'scope out tonight. You should get outside in deep twilight and look for Mercury in the NW and admire Jupiter and the Moon too. Mars is still bright in the South with Saturn in the SE as it gets dark. Wish me luck as I try for some pics tonight. Sky Guy in CLEAR VA