What's Up? The Space Place

Hey Space Placers! Be sure to get out tonight (Friday 7/31) to see the second Full Moon of July. Called a Blue Moon as explained in this article  this happens about once every 2 1/2 years. Here's my pic: For U.S. observers the International Space Station is starting a series of great passes. Go to Spot the Station to register your location so you can see ISS flyover. Quite the sight. Here's my FIRST telescope pic (movie) of ISS - look quickly! Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! Check out the very latest science results just published regarding ESA's Rosetta mission and its Philae Lander. Also enjoy this landing sequence that shows us where Philae landed. ESA Headed up the mountain to Big Meadows to talk about meteorites . Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! The solar system continues to amaze: NASA JPL Check out the RED colored arcs in the photo of Tethys, an icy moon of Saturn. The photo was obtained by the Cassini spacecraft that has been at Saturn for a decade. The photos were taken in April 2015. Mission scientists presently do not know what is causing the arcs but it is possible that they are chemical compounds or some kind of outgassing. It has been quite the year in solar system exploration and it is far from done. Stay tuned..... Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! Here's the latest on NASA's other 'dwarf planet' mission, Dawn. Instead of Pluto this mission has been exploring the largest body in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, Ceres. Mission scientists have been able to make the best maps to date of Ceres and have started naming features seen on this fascinating world. NASA The Dawn spacecraft is slowly decreasing its altitude around Ceres and will provide even greater details as it achieves its final orbit. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! Here's the news release from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency    that asks the worldwide public help in naming the asteroid its Hyabusa2 spacecraft will be exploring. JAXA Be a godparent to an asteroid! How cool would that be! Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! Here are some pics of the Moon taken with my new camera tonight: 8 Day Old Moon Copernicus Close Up Enjoy.... Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! NASA SWRI JHUAPL BEHOLD PLUTO! AN icon in the making, this image was taken by New Horizons 7 hours following the July 14th flyby and released at today's press conference .  The distant Sun backlights Pluto and allowed the spacecraft to photograph the hazy atmosphere. Details like two distinct layers can be seen and additional data and analysis will provide more information on the distant world. We also got to see flowing Nitrogen ice (!) on the surface   acting just as glaciers on Earth.....wow. NASA SWRI JHUAPL The New Horizons team will have more for us to feat our eyes on in the coming weeks. Stay tuned. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! We now have 6 astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) as 3 new astronauts of Expedition 44 joined the 3 already on board. The Russian Soyuz successfully rendezvoused with ISS   just after midnight EDT on 7/23/15 . NASA's exoplanet hunting spacecraft Kepler was the topic of a news conference on 7/23/15. It was announced that Kepler   had " confirmed the first near-Earth-size planet in the “habitable zone” around a sun-like star. This discovery and the introduction of 11 other new small habitable zone candidate planets mark another milestone in the journey to finding another “Earth.”  "The newly discovered Kepler-452b is the smallest planet to date discovered orbiting in the habitable zone -- the area around a star where liquid water could pool on the surface of an orbiting planet -- of a G2-type star, like our sun. The confirmation of Kepler-452b brings the total number of confirmed planets to 1,030." Artist's Concepti...

Hey Space Placers! We have another dwarf planet mission besides New Horizons going on in the solar system - Dawn at Ceres. This mission is orbiting Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. I have blogged about the 'bright spots' at Ceres which has captivated those who have seen them and are following the mission. NASA In an article published today in Nature   Ceres'   bright spots are discussed or more specifically, a mysterious haze that has been detected above them. Great stuff..... Our solar system continues to amaze us. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! Enjoy this cartoon and New York Times article on Pluto. See Credit - Sent by NASA via Twitter The New Horizons team will be releasing more data on a weekly basis. We'll keep you posted. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! A busy couple of days with Pluto and I will have more tomorrow BUT I had to share the following with you. I have ALWAYS wanted to photograph Pluto. It is A CHALLENGE as Pluto is faint and is currently amongst the dense star fields of the Milky Way in Sagittarius. I took one photo on the 15th and a second on the 16th, almost two days a part. Using a finder chart from Sky and Telescope I was able to pinpoint the elusive and wonderful world as you can see here: Identifying Pluto on these images gave me a sense of what Clyde Tombaugh had to do to discover Pluto in 1930. He used a device called a Blink Comparator to watch for changes in the star field of two different photographs whereas I did not. I had a finder chart for Pluto which he did not. It is not an easy thing to do finding Pluto. Even the New Horizons team had to make sure they were on target with their spacecraft. Maybe someday I will see this fabulous world in the eyepiece of a telescope - ...

Hey Space Placers! BEHOLD PLUTO NASA SWRI JHUAPL In this just released photo taken by the New Horizons spacecraft during its 7-14-15 flyby of Pluto you can see mountains made of ice that are 11,000 feet high! Pluto also lacks impact craters that you would expect for a 4.5 billion year old world. The lack of craters means that Pluto is a geologically active world that "refreshes" it surface. This is an entirely unexpected discovery.  BEHOLD CHARON NASA SWRI JHUAPL Charon, the largest moon of Pluto, has a surprisingly young surface devoid of large numbers of impact craters just like the Pluto image. The "gouge" in the upper right section of Charon is a canyon over 4 miles deep and we can actually see through one part of it into space itself. Ridges, the dark pole, oh so much going on here! More images and data will be coming in and the next release should be this Friday.  This is JUST STARTING as there are 16 months of data ...

Hey Space Placers! 7-14-15 A few haunting seconds after the signal from the New Horizons spacecraft was supposed to be heard, it finally phoned home a little after 8:52 p.m. EDT . Transmitted over 4.5 hours earlier the radio signal came in to the Mission Operations Room at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab having covered 3 billion miles of space. As the telemetry provided the health of the spacecraft the wonderful word 'nominal' was used over and over to describe each of the systems. In the end, 'The spacecraft is healthy' was the assessment given to New Horizons - the piano sized spacecraft that had survived the close approach to the last planet to be explored up close and personal. New Horizons has been acquiring data all day and will be sending it back over the next 16 months. We should get our first look of Pluto at closest approach, a shade under 7,800 miles, tomorrow. I am sure this will be something to see. Here is what Pluto and its biggest moon Charo...

Hey Space Placers! Here is the last picture taken by New Horizons on 7-13-15 prior to today's 7:49 a.m. EDT closest point of approach (see my previous blogs). NASA SWRI JHUAPL We will not know for certain if the New Horizons spacecraft successfully completed its scheduled flyby of Pluto until about 9 p.m. EDT tonight - 7-14-15. That is when the "thumbs up" signal scheduled for transmission at approximately 4:30 p.m. EDT will be received. It will have taken 4 1/2 hours for that radio signal to reach Earth 3+ billion miles away traveling at the speed of light - 186,000 miles per second.  The spacecraft has maintained radio silence during the flyby in order to concentrate on data acquisition. It will take 16 months for all of the flyby data to be transmitted and received by Earth. The transmission rate is only 2,000 bits per second - painfully slow due to the immense distance involved. We will hopefully receive the first flyby photo tomorrow, 7-15-15. Pluto is...

Hey Space Placers! New Horizons has FINALLY settled a most basic question of the deposed 9th planet of the solar system  - "How big is Pluto?" The data returned from 3 billion miles away says Pluto checks in at 1 ,473 miles (2,370 kilometers) in diameter.  This makes Pluto the largest of the four other dwarf planets known to exist beyond the orbit of Pluto. Be sure to tune in tomorrow morning for the flyby . Sky Guy in CLOUDY/RAINY VA

Hey Space Placers! Get your Pluto Flyby info here . Buckle UP - Less than two days and a million miles to go! Sky Guy in STILL CLOUDY VA

Hey Space Placers! Tomorrow starts my Pluto flyby coverage so here is my last non-Pluto blog for awhile. NASA's newest astronaut class selected in 2013 has completed training . No longer astronaut candidates after their two years of intensive training they now join the astronaut corps awaiting future flight and ground assignments. NASA Congratulations to all. Sky Guy in STILL Rainy/Cloudy VA

Hey Space Placers! A temporary break from New Horizons to Pluto today. NASA NASA has announced the 1st four astronauts to be assigned to the Commercial Crew Program to fly the Boeing CST-100 and SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station beginning in 2017. Be sure to watch the video to hear Bob, Eric, Doug and Sunni's reaction to their historic assignment. All 4 are veteran astronauts having flown in space previously and will use their collective experience to help finalize the spacecraft and prepare and train for their flights. This marks the first flight assignment for U.S. astronauts to fly into space on U.S. spacecraft since the space shuttle was retired in 2011. Boeing's CST-100 is slated for the 1st flight. This is a VERY big step indeed for NASA's return to using American hardware for manned spaceflight. Sky Guy in STILL Cloudy VA

Hey Space Placers! Here is the latest pic (received 7/8) from Pluto being called "the Heart" : NASA JHUAPL/SWRI The Flyby of Pluto has started! BEST.IS.YET.TO.COME! Sky Guy

Hey Space Placers! Here is the latest map of Pluto based on images taken from June 27-July 3rd: NASA JHUAPL We will see the resolution of Pluto improve dramatically as New Horizons gets closer to the Pluto system. But the "Whale and the Donut" are definitely capturing our collective attention. We should be seeing new photographs today, 7/8/15, as New Horizons resumed science operations yesterday following the resolution of the glitch that occurred over the 4th - see my previous blog for background. I will have more as it comes in from 3.BILLION.MILES.AWAY! Sky Guy in Perpetually Cloudy VA

Hey Space Placers! Pluto is going to be dominating the "known" Universe for the next week ;-) http://www.plutosafari.com Here is a video to give you an idea as to what will happen a week from today, 7/14/15 at closest approach. History approaches..... Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! NASA UPDATE AS OF 7/6/15 NASA has announced that New Horizons will re-commence science operations of July 7 as the cause of the glitch tot he spacecraft was not hardware or software related. It was a timing error in commands uploaded for the 7/14/15 flyby. NASA will hold a press conference today 7/6/15 at 3 pm EDT. The REALLY good news is that this did not happen days from now. All of the science lost while New Horizons was in safe mode will be obtained. No more commands are scheduled for uploading to the spacecraft prior to flyby. Getting REALLY excited. Sky Guy in VA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NASA's New Horizons spacecraft that is less than 10 days from its historic July 14th flyby of distant Pluto has suspended science operations due to a glitch . NASA and the New Horizons' team has set up an anomaly board to determine what caused the spacecraft to lose communications wit...

Hey Space Placers! J uly 4th, 1054 saw a "guest star" appear near Taurus the Bull, as noted by Chinese and American SW star gazers. Modern telescopes checking the position of this historical observation would discover the " Crab Nebula ": To see this very bright guest star must have been something to see - we are overdue to see one in the Milky Way Galaxy. I hope everyone in America has a safe and fun 4th of July. Sky Guy in Perpetually Cloudy VA

Hey Space Placers! Can you believe this? See the spots and wonderful/weird Pluto and Charon for yourself! Check THIS out from NASA/New Horrizons - be sure to click on the movie to zoom in for a closer view. It's only gonna' get better folks as we get closer! Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! Take a look at the four evenly spaced spots on the pic of Pluto below, right, the latest from New Horizons. What the????? Oh, and don't overlook the dark spot on the moon Charon in both frames.. Jeez, what a system we are going to see better and better each day to close encounter on the 14th. Get more pics and details here . Sky Guy in VA