What's Up? The Space Place

Hey Space Placers! UPDATED : MOON & JUPITER AT BIG MEADOW SHENANDOAH NATIONAL PARK 4/29/18 Full Moon is tonight 4/29/18 and is the Pink Full Moon. No, it won't be pink in color.......it is named for the time of year when the flowers are in bloom.Two other names for the Full Moon in April are Grass Full Moon and Egg Full Moon.....as you can see all Spring related. The Full Moon will be at precisely 8:58 p.m. EDT. The Moon will have a guest these next two nights as bright Jupiter will be keeping the Moon company throughout the night. Jupiter will be closer to the Moon on the last night of April into the 1st morning of May. Get out tonight and enjoy the view. Oh, and don't forget to see brilliant Venus in the West as it gets dark. The beautiful planet is now about as high as it will get in our sky each night for Spring and Summer. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! Here's a good article from Space.com   updating NASA's efforts on the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! The European Space Agency (ESA) released today the most recent data about the Milky Way Galaxy (MWG) and surrounding area of space. This is a HUGE data release of over 1.7 BILLION stars in our galaxy, data on the 12 dwarf galaxies orbiting the MWG and the Andromeda Galaxy. Just look at YOUR home galaxy in color: Here is the description by ESA: Gaia’s all-sky view of our Milky Way Galaxy and neighbouring galaxies, based on measurements of nearly 1.7 billion stars. The map shows the total brightness and colour of stars observed by the ESA satellite in each portion of the sky between July 2014 and May 2016. Brighter regions indicate denser concentrations of especially bright stars, while darker regions correspond to patches of the sky where fewer bright stars are observed. The colour representation is obtained by combining the total amount of light with the amount of blue and red light recorded by Gaia in each patch of the sky.  The bright horizontal...

Hey Space Placers! HST is 28 years old this month ! Hard to believe but it is still going strong as you can see in this image of the farthest individual star seen to date. The Farthest Star Ever Seen Icarus, whose official name is MACS J1149+2223 Lensed Star 1, is the farthest individual star ever seen. It is only visible because it is being magnified by the gravity of a massive galaxy cluster, located about 5 billion light-years from Earth. Called MACS J1149+2223, this cluster, shown at left, sits between the Earth and the galaxy that contains the distant star. The team had been using Hubble to monitor a supernova in the far-off spiral galaxy when, in 2016, they spotted a point of light near the supernova that began to brighten. Even though the object subsequently became three times brighter in one month, the colors of the light coming from the object did not change. Analysis of these colors showed it was a blue supergiant star in the background galaxy whose magnification gre...

Hey Space Placers! This is our planet seen from the Moon. What a photograph for Earth Day 2018. Will human eyes experience this in person from the Moon someday? Only time and our collective caring for Earth and therefore ourselves will decide. Earth From Lunar Orbit Credit: NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Please visit EarthSky to get a great read on Earth Day , its origins and learn about the theme of 2018 - plastic. If there is just one thing you remember from Earth Day, let it be this: "The Earth doesn't need us, we need the Earth". We humans are so wrapped up in our own lives and timelines that we forget the Earth is 4.6 BILLION years old and has another couple billion years to go. The dying Sun will vaporize the planet and eventually return all that it was back to the Milky Way Galaxy. Every atom that ever existed on the planet will return to from whence it came perhaps to form a new planet and life elsewhere. We are not immortal, nothing is. But we are...

Hey Space Placers! Today is Astronomy Day and the Lyrid Meteor Shower is peaking. Got back from Windstar Cruises' Star Pride - what a great trans-Atlantic crossing that was. Getting over a bit of jet lag ;-) Have a grand time today and tonight. Sky Guy Greg

Hey Space Placers! NASA's TESS  mission was successfully launched yesterday. The hunt for planets beyond our solar system will get a big boost with this mission. Pulling into Lisbon tomorrow and returning to the U.S. Sky Guy in the Atlantic

Hey Space Placers! Tonight about 45 minutes or so after sunset go out and face the West. Look for brilliant Venus about a fist width at arm's length above the horizon and the very thin crescent Moon just to the lower left. Binoculars can help in the view and there should be some Earthshine visible. We are cloudy out here in the Atlantic but I will be looking anyway to see if a pic is possible. Sky Guy in the Atlantic

Hey Space Placers! Read all about the close call we had by an asteroid this weekend that we discovered only hours before it flew by by just over 119,000 miles. This asteroid was 3 to 6 times larger than Chelyabinsk which hit Earth on 2/15/13. Spaceweather.com   in its 4/16/18 posting placed  2018 GE3  in the 48-110 meter range which makes it A Tunguska size asteroid - Tunguska wiped out 80 million trees over 800 square miles in Tunguska on 6/30/1908. Once again we are reminded that space rocks are all around us and we need to step up our efforts to detect them and build a defense system. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! Enjoy this video that takes you to the Cosmic Web - the structure of the network of galaxies in the Universe. Be sure to enjoy the fly through at 2:26! Sky Guy in the Atlantic

Hey Space Placers! My fave place in the Universe in 4K video courtesy of my fave spacecraft LRO! Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! Hello from the middle of the Atlantic. Sorry I have been out of touch. Learn a little about the Earth's outer atmosphere: Be sure to check out my latest at sea pics on my Facebook and Twitter accounts. Sky Guy Greg

Hey Space Placers! 50 years ago today, April 2, 1968, was the world premier of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey at the Hollywood Grauman's Chinese Theater . I saw it at Grauman's and it was just incredible. It is my number 1 movie of all time. When I saw it in summer 1968 (school was out) I drove to Hollywood - my first time there. Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) was called in during the end of the movie due to some in the audience "tripping" on LSD, presumably caused by the sequence where Dave Bowman is being transported from Jupiter orbit to who knows where/when. The sets used in '2001' are still unsurpassed. These were not computer generated - it was gorgeous paintings and spacecraft models. The view of the Earth from low earth orbit is easily surpassed today by movies such as 'Gravity' BUT NO ONE has captured the beauty and majesty of the Pan Am Clipper on final approach to the orbiting and rotating space station or the WO...

Hey Space Placers! April 1-30 is Global Astronomy Month  (GAM) . Credit: Astronomers Without Borders Click on the link to get the very latest and find out if there is an event near you. Of course I am MOST pleased that the main theme this year " centers on Earth's lone natural companion that has fascinated cultures around the world -- the Moon. Throughout Global Astronomy Month this year, the Moon will be celebrated with special series of programming that will be dedicated to helping people rediscover our closest companion in space." I hope you read my last blog about NASA returning to the Moon. GAM 2018 is just another indicator that the Moon is becoming more and more central in our current plans for space AND astronomy   outreach-education. Sky Guy in VA