What's Up? The Space Place

Hey Space Placers! Not everyday you see this in the ATLANTIC! Sky Guy In the Atlantic

Hey Space Placers! NASA Wallops Island has done its 1st assessment of damage to structures and the environment   since yesterday's explosion of the ISS resupply mission ANtares rocket - see yesterday's blog. This will be an ongoing situation with NASA and Orbital posting additional updates. Sky Guy Crossing the Atlantic

Hey Space Placers! I am just learning of the explosion, or in NASA terms, mishap, of the Orbital Sciences Antares rocket just after launch on 10/28/14. News travels a bit slow while crossing the Atlantic Ocean even in the Internet age. The unmanned resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) was the 3rd resupply mission for the Dulles, VA based Orbital Sciences Corporation. This was the st launch of the two stage Antares rocket from NASA's Wallops Island Flight facility, and was the largest launch vehicle to ever be launched from the historic facility. The Antares lifted off and exploded 6 seconds later and was captured live by NASA TV HD cameras . The explosion is all the more dramatic as it was at night. Fortunately there were no injuries but I am pretty sure the launch pad had to suffer some damage from the exploding fireball and debris. The launch had been originally scheduled for 10/27/14 but had to be scrubbed due to a sail boat being in the launch zone....

Hey Space Placers! Greeting from Tenerife. Check out this UNREAL picture taken of Jupiter by the Hubble Space Telescope . Get the background on the photo here . Sea Dream I leaves for Barbados tonight. Sky Guy Greg

Hey Space Placers! Greeting from the Atlantic Ocean. Getting settled in on Sea Dream I and hoping for clear skies tonight for our onboard guests as we attempt to hole our 1st "At Sea Under The Stars" session. If you are on the US East Coast you might be able to see the newest resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) launch from NASA'sWallops Island Flight Facility, located on the Eastern Shore of VA. As of a few minutes ago all systems are "GO" for launch at 6:45 p.m. EDT This will be the first nighttime launch of the Antares Rocket so you need to check this visibility map  and this info from Orbital to see if you can se the ascent of the rocket from your location in DC, VA, MD, and the US East Coast. A rocket launch at night is a sight to see as I saw a space shuttle and the LADEE mission do so and it was impressive. Antares on the Pad At Sunrise NASA Hope to have some at sea pics soon… Sky Guy in The Atlantic Aboard Sea...

Hola From Malaga, Spain Space Placers! Lots of walking amid ruins, castles and Picasso today. But here is an artistic rendering, perhaps the most accurate ever of a black hole that was done for the upcoming movie Interstellar - see my previous blog.  The amazing past of it is that Kip Thorne, a black hole expert is the moving force behind this artistic rendering - AND he claims that he will be able to publish two science papers because of it. The Movie opens in two weeks. Sky Guy Awaiting Sea Dream I in Malaga, Spain

Hey Space Placers! Greetings from beautiful Malaga, Spain. A truly gorgeous city…. From NASA a truly INCREDIBLE pic: The News Release: CLOSE ENCOUNTERS: COMET SIDING SPRING SEEN NEXT TO MARS This composite NASA Hubble Space Telescope Image captures the positions of comet Siding Spring and Mars in a never-before-seen close passage of a comet by the Red Planet, which happened at 2:28 p.m. EDT October 19, 2014. The comet passed by Mars at approximately 87,000 miles (about one-third of the distance between Earth and the Moon). At that time, the comet and Mars were approximately 149 million miles from Earth. The comet image shown here is a composite of Hubble exposures taken between Oct. 18, 8:06 a.m. EDT to Oct. 19, 11:17 p.m. EDT. Hubble took a separate photograph of Mars at 10:37 p.m. EDT on Oct. 18. The Mars and comet images have been added together to create a single picture to illustrate the angular separation, or distance, between the comet and Mars at closest approach. Th...

Hey Space Placers! Wish I was going to be in the UK in the near future as there is going to be a limited release of Stanley Kubrick's immortal 2001: A Space Odyssey . This is being done in advance of the highly anticipated (and highly praised) movie  Interstellar   directed by Christopher Nolan. 2001 is my all time space scifi flick because of the grandeur of the sets, story and music. I saw 2001 when it premiered in 1968 at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Los Angeles, CA. Pretty amazing memory even after all these years. 2001 can to this day, 40+ years after its release, hold its own against CGI and special effects. The low Earth orbit (LEO) Moon, Jupiter, spacecraft sets still astound and spell bound viewers. It is a classic that will never be surpassed. The movie is best seen now in BluRay on a large screen TV in a PITCH BLACK room with surround sound speakers. Still gives me goose bumps to see the Moon from orbit and on the surface with the beautiful music and sets. ...

Hey Space Placers! Comet Siding Spring - see my last blog - passed Mars yesterday and all 3 NASA orbiting spacecraft are A-OK . I think ESA and India's orbiters are as well as I have not heard anything contrary. Here is a NEAT pic of the comet and Mars from the live Slooh coverage: And a beauty of a pic taken by Nick Howes and the   tzecmaun observatory group: It will take a week or so for the data and pics obtained by the orbiting spacecraft and the two rovers on the surface to be downloaded and analyzed. I am sure there will be some good stuff from this historic event. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! Here's my story on the close encounter tomorrow between Mars and Comet Siding Spring. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! If it is clear the next few mornings before dawn get out and look for the Orionid Meteor Shower. These cometary particles that hit the Earth's atmosphere at an amazing velocity of 148,000 mph are from  Halley's Comet. The best time to see thew bright Orionids is about an hour or two before dawn when the bright stars and constellations of winter are in the sky. You can see where to look on this sky chart from NASA, Dr. Tony Phillips: The shower is underway now with the peak predicted for Tuesday morning before dawn. The predicted peak is about 20 meteors an hour. Get more details here . Hope you have clear skies and a good show. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! Check out the Rosetta mission trailer   (see my previous blogs on the mission)   done by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). It is a teaser for the upcoming landing on Comet 67/P of the Philae lander on November 12th. There is supposed to be an 11-minute film coming out as well. Better than sic-fi because it is real and is going to be something to see…. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! Tune in today , 10-14-14, at 2 p.m. EDT to hear the latest finding from NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission to Mars. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! Straight from NASA: NASA Invites Public to Join #SkyScience Cloud Study NASA is inviting people around the globe to step outside during Earth Science Week,  Oct. 12-18 , observe the sky and share their observations as citizen scientists. NASA's #SkyScience activity is part of an annual educational event organized by the American Geosciences Institute to encourage the public to engage in Earth sciences. Citizen scientists can participate in this global Earth science data collection event by observing, photographing and reporting on clouds over their location as a NASA satellite passes over. Reports and photos will be compared to data collected by NASA Earth-observing instruments as a way to assess the satellite measurements. Using the hashtag #SkyScience, participants are encouraged to post their cloud and sky photos and observation experiences to Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Google+ and Flickr. Throughout the week, NASA will share some of the mo...

Hey Space Placers! If you have been reading my blog for awhile you know that I am a lunatic as to ALL things lunar. My fave NASA mission is the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) which has been rerouting the books on the Moon since its launch in 2009. NASA has extended LRO for another 2 years and I am sure we will learn more about our Moon during that time. The BIG news released by NASA on October 12, 2014, is that LRO has found very strong evidence that volcanic activity on the Moon took place much later than previously thought. Before LRO's findings it was generally thought that volcanic activity on the Moon ceased over a billion years ago. LRO's detailed and exquisite photographic coverage has found surface features that show volcanic activity as "recent" as 50-100 million years ago. In geologic time that is fresh and recent. Called "irregular mare patches" (IMP) by lunar scientists, over 70 of them have been found by LRO whereas only 1 was previous...

Hey Space Placers! Here is an interesting press release about the world's religions and their response to extraterrestrial (ETs). We know there are other worlds beyond our solar system - almost 4,000 confirmed with thousands more to confirm. And it is currently thought that our Milky Way Galaxy has millions if not billions more exoplanets, including planets similar to our own Earth. A subset of astronomy called astrosociology is starting to pop up on the Internet and may achieve mainstream status someday. Interesting subject. If ET is found to exist it will transform humanity in some form or fashion. I personally believe we will see this come to pass someday as the Universe is just too full of planets, stars and the basic ingredients for life as we know it not to have other life. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! Here's an update from NASA on their newest mission to Mars - Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) . There will be a live  teleconference on MAVEN's first few weeks at Mars on Tuesday, October 14, 2014 at 2 p.m. EDT. It will be interesting to hear these very first results. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! I got my boarding pass for Orion today: Get yours here . You have until October 31, 2014 to do so. It is really cool to know our names will fly aboard Orion on Exploration Test Flight-1 and other deep space destinations as well. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! A magical night last night at Shenandoah National Park at Bald Mountain Overlook. The sky was clear except for an occasional puff of cloud forming and leaving and the Full Hunter's Moon was resplendent  before, during, and after the total lunar eclipse. Here are a few pics for you to see: This is the star field around the eclipsed Moon - Uranus is in the upper left Eclipsed Moon Over Shenandoah Valley Blood Moon Tree Totality Just Before Dawn Maximum Color At Totality  I hope you got to see the eclipse. If not, perhaps my pics will help you envision what it was like. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! The early morning hours of October 8th will provide  skywatchers a pretty sight - a total lunar eclipse. We had another total lunar eclipse back in April but I was at sea so I did not see it here in the U.S. but did witness it in the Atlantic. This eclipse will involve the Full Hunter’s Moon, or the first Full Moon after the Full Harvest Moon that took place in September. It will also present a bit of a viewing challenge for viewers on the U.S. East Coast as it will occur for low in the West and just before dawn. The Moon will enter the outer shadow of our planet called the penumbra at 4:45 a.m. EDT. The penumbra is a ghostly shadow that is hard to see but should be visible in binoculars or a telescope. Things get much easier to see when the Moon enters the dark umbra shadow of our planet at 5:15 a.m. EDT to start the partial eclipse phase. You will see the dark curvature of our planet projected onto the Moon and as time goes on more and more of the Moon ...

Hey Space Placers! The Delta IV-Heavy rocket that will launch the first space-worthy Orion spacecraft into orbit is vertical and on the pad: NASA We are less than two months away from the scheduled lift off of Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) which will send the Orion spacecraft 3,600 miles out from Earth for two orbits and then come plunging back into the atmosphere at 20,000 miles an hour. EFT-1 wil test the Orion thermal tiles, heat shield, spacecraft computer and systems. The data obtained will improve the follow on Orion spacecraft and get us that much closer to a manned flight in 2021. I can hardly wait. I will have info for you on the 10/8/14 total lunar eclipse tomorrow. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! The International Astronomical Union (IAU), the organization responsible for naming astronomical objects, has invited public organizations to name exoplanets and their stars. Here is a portion of the press release from IAU: The IAU invites all public organisations with an interest in astronomy to register on the IAU Directory for World Astronomy website for the NameExoWorlds contest, where they will in early 2015 be able to suggest names for exoplanets and their host stars. For the first time in history the public will then be able to vote for the official name of stars and planets. The IAU Directory for World Astronomy will function as a permanent platform for the global astronomical community. The deadline for registration for the contest is 31 December 2014. Details of the registration procedure can be found on the website . Eligible organisations include: planetariums, science centres, amateur astronomy clubs, online astronomy platforms, but also non-prof...

Hey Space Placers! Those of you who follow me on Twitter @SkyGuyinVA and in this blog know that I am a lunatic through and through as in I LOVE all things lunar. New research has just been published that solves a long standing mystery as to the area on the Moon known as Oceanus Procellarum - or Sea of Storms. It has been long thought that this vast area on the nearside of the Moon was caused by an impact from either a comet or asteroid as are all of the other impact basins that can be seen as the gray or dark areas on the Moon, especially when Full. Now researchers have discovered that the Sea of Storms is NOT an impact basin but rather a surface feature created by ancient lava flows that were eventually covered by lunar lava. Using data from NASA's GRAIL A & B spacecraft researchers discovered structures under the surface of the Moon due to differences in the gravity gradient (strength) of the area. Please read the caption to this photo for details. This new ...

Hey Space Placers! The International Space Station (ISS) is zeroing in on Earth to study the home planet. ISS is a busy place right now with a full crew and 5 spaceships docked. NASA Make sure you get out and see ISS with your own eyes as it is a spectacular sight to see . Sky Guy in Cloudy (AGAIN) VA