Since it’s the first thing someone considers buying a new telescope, Israeli astronomer Michael Vlasov illustrates which views can you expect to get through different telescopes.
On his page, he covers the Moon, planets, Sun, Deep sky objects, comets, double stars, light pollution, and shares a lot of other useful information.
Image copyright © DeepSkyWatch.com 2015
The Movement of Barnard’s Star
The fourth closest known star to our Sun (following the Alpha Centauri stars), Barnard’s Star is famous for having the largest known proper motion of any star. Proper motion is the measure of the observed changes in a star’s position against the distant background stars and in 1916, E. E. Barnard measured this star’s proper motion to be 10.3 arcseconds per year. This corresponds to a speed of 90 km/s across our line of sight.
This movie by RickJ, posted in the CosmoQuest forums, shows the movement of Barnard’s Star over 9 years. Each frame represents one year between 2007 and 2015.
Image: The proper motion of Barnard’s Star over the last 9 years. (Credit: RickJ)
as mentioned in these previous posts, kilauea, a flat broad shield volcano, has erupted continuously from its pu’u o’o vent since 1983, growing the island by about 42 acres a year as its basaltic lava flow oozes at a speed of fifteen yards an hour into the ocean. photos by tom kuali.
This image showing dental work on a mummy from ancient Egypt is evidence of ancient dentistry. Archaeologists believe this mummy was from around 200 BCE.
Yes, that’s a strawberry as seen from under the microscope. Wait ‘til you see what a peach looks like zoomed in. For more “Whoa!”, the burn from wasabi could be useful in developing new pain medications. What we’re reading…
The planet Jupiter, 4 March 1979, observed by the Voyager 1 space probe from a distance of 1,800,000 km. (NASA)
People rarely think about their waste beyond the curb, and it’s leading us to a dark place. The post-apocalyptic landscape we see in movies already exists in far too many places. The photos from Israel and Buenos Aires are just as bad — or worse.
54th Anniversary of First American in Space
Today, 54 years ago, Alan Shepard became the first American in space when the Freedom 7 spacecraft successfully took off from Florida on May 5, 1961. A decade later, Shepard would return to space to become the fifth man to walk on the moon — and the first one to play golf there.
During the mission, Shepard said: “It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract.”
A New View of the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula This image is composed of data from the INT Photometric H-Alpha Survey (IPHAS), including narrow-band H-Alpha (red) and broad-band Sloan r’ (green) and Sloan i’ (blue) filters. Image credit: Nick Wright (University of Hertfordshire, SAO), Geert Barentsen (University of Hertfordshire, Armagh Observatory)
New Horizons photographs first surface features of Pluto, possible ice cap.
Humanity’s first detailed pictures of Pluto are finally starting to come in from New Horizons! The probe’s Long Range Reconnaissance Imager, or LORRI, captured the above images from April 12 to 18.
The probe travelled five million miles over the course of these images being taken, from a distance of 69 to 64 million miles. In them, we begin to see surface detail on the dwarf planet, including light and dark regions. Since Pluto’s axis is nearly 90 degrees from it’s orbital plane - similar to Uranus’ - LORRI and New Horizon’s captured the system from above. The bright region on Pluto itself is hypothesized to be a polar cap of frozen nitrogen snow. Pluto and Charon orbit a “barycenter”, a gravitational equilibrium point. It takes 6.4 days for the two celestial bodies to complete a single revolution, and LORRI captured a full one.
The exposure for the photographs was one-tenth of a second, which was too quick to allow light from Pluto’s four smaller and fainter moons to be detected by LORRI. The New Horizon’s Team has been in Approach Phase 2 since early April, which will end in mid June. During this phase, scientists will get their first views of Pluto, initial instrument readings in Pluto’s vicinity, and preliminary observations ahead of AP 3 and the flyby. See the news release here.
We know that it’s possible to store and preserve data in DNA and living cells. Now, the collaboration Music of the Spheres between visual artist Charlotte Jarvis and British scientist Dr Nick Goldman want to store a digital music piece from the Kreutzer Quartet as digital information in synthetic DNA molecules.
Music of the Spheres is a cross-disciplinary art project inspired by the possibilities of the new bioinformatics technology developed by Dr. Nick Goldman. Visual artist Charlotte Jarvis commissioned music from the Kreutzer Quartet, the recording of which has been encoded into DNA. The DNA was then suspended in soap solution and will be used by Charlotte to create performances and installations filled with bubbles. The ‘recording’ will fill the air, pop on visitors’ skin and literally bathe the audience in music.
They are looking for £5,000 on kickstarter to achieve their goal. Potential backer rewards include a bottle of DNA-infused bubble solution and paintings made from music-encoded DNA being blown onto paper.
It’s a wonderful project, showing the potentials of bioinformatics, DNA Engineering and DNA Storage. But if you want to have a look on the dark side, check out DNA Fog for marking criminals.
NASA’s Mercury Messenger Probe to Crash Today
Launched in 2004, NASA’s Messenger space probe has been studying Mercury since it arrived in the planet’s orbit on March 18, 2011. Although a healthy and thriving spacecraft, Messenger (an acronym for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) has run out of fuel and is expected to crash into Mercury this afternoon (Thursday).
Although amateur astronomers will not be able to see the crash since it will occur on the side of Mercury facing away from Earth, Messenger will hit the planet’s surface at 8,750 mph (3.91 kilometers per second). Some of Messenger’s greatest successes include the full imaging of the planet (as shown above) and the data indicating that ice is in Mercury’s poles regions.
The team is currently its final goodbyes on Messenger’s Twitter account.
