Astroblog

Smooth plains in Mercury's north. Larger image here.

MESSENGER has finished it's system checks and is now sending back stunning images of Mercury. Head over and have a look.

Labels: Mercury, spacecraft

Morning sky looking east as seen from Adelaide at 5:30 am central daylight saving time on Thursday March 31 (left image) and Friday April 1 (right image) showing Venus in Aquarius, not far from the crescent Moon. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time. Click to embiggen.

This will be good to view from about 1 and a half hours before sunrise to deep into the twilight. Not only will this be a great opportunity to see the beautiful sight of Venus and the Moon together. You may even use this as an opportunity to see Venus in Daylight.

Labels: Daylight, unaided eye observation, Venus

Posted on behalf of Adam Marsh, of the eastern Australian Meteor Network.

Over the last few nights i have been out watching the Delta
Pavonids. Only 3 hours of observing so far, and zero Delta Pav's seen.

However, with a total of only 20 meteors seen, I have noticed that 6 of
those have came from an area of RA 237 Dec -40 with a radiant size of
about 6 to 7 degrees.

6 out of 20 meteors from the one radiant defines this area, at first
glance, as a new and quite active meteor stream. There is nothing on
any list i have in relation to a meteor shower from this area at this
time. I have lists with several hundred meteor streams, and i seriously
can't find a match...!

All the meteors were of a medium-fast speed, were white and around + 2
to 4 magnitude. The closest radiant is the Alpha Scorpids (see below)
but the details don't match, alpha scorps are quite slow, and the Dec
position is all out. There is also the Alpha Lupids, but the RA is over
20 degrees off for this one.

a Scorpiids 246 -25 Mar 26 - Jun 4 Several Maxima Vel 35
kps Mag ave 2.5
a Lupids 217 -44 Mar 12 - 31 Mar 22

I will run this past the IMO over the coming days, but if we can get
some more observations on it, it would be fantastic. I would give the
stream a preliminary designation of "Gamma Lupids" at this stage, seeing
that is the closest bright star to the radiant position.

If we can get some more info, this would be a pretty cool new stream
discovery. If anyone does head out to make some observations, it would
be greatly appreciated. When listing the observations, list them as
"Gamma Lupids". Don't forward these ones to the IMO, i will correlate
the data and send a combined report on all the observers behalfs with
names, dates and all the usual stuff.

Data needed on the meteors are Magnitude, Colour, Train, Stream origin
and a rough estimate on the speed (fast, medium, slow) and med-fast or
med-slow if you feel confident enough. If we can get at least 10 hours
of observations, and a good ratio of "Gamma Lupids" vs "Sporadic"
meteors, hopefully we will have discovered a new meteor stream. Lets
see what happens......

Labels: Meteors

Carnival of Space #190 is now up at Centauri Dreams. There's cool brown dwarfs, hypersonic rockets, a doughty Mars Rover, planetary atmospheres and much, much more. Wander on over for a read.

Labels: carnival of space

The New Moon is Monday April 4. Venus is visible in the morning sky initially in the constellation of Aquarius. On the 31st of March and 1st of April the crescent Moon is close to Venus. Mars is visible below Venus in the early morning. Saturn is well placed for telescopic observation in the evening and is biggest and brightest on the 4th of April.

Morning sky looking east as seen from Adelaide at 5:30 am daylight saving time on Friday April 1 showing Venus in Aquarius, not far from the crescent Moon. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time. Click to embiggen.

The New Moon is Monday April 4.

Bright white Venus is readily seen in the early morning sky. This week it is in Aquarius.

On the 31st of March and the 1st of April Venus is close to the crescent Moon.

Venus is "gibbous" phase, and will progressively become more full (and smaller) over the coming weeks.


Evening sky on Monday April 4 looking east as seen from Adelaide at 10:00 pm daylight saving time in South Australia showing Saturn near Spica. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time.

Inset, the telescopic view of Saturn on the 24t (and on the morning of the 25nd), you will need a fairly large telescope to see any moon other than Titan. Click to embiggen.

Saturn is rising with sunset, and is visible all night long. It is high enough for telescopic observation in the late evening. It readily visible as the bright yellowish object not far from the bright star Spica.

The big storm on Saturn is now so large that it is visible in even small telescopes.

Even in small telescopes you can see Saturn's rings and it's moon Titan. Saturn is at opposition on April 4th, this is when Saturn will be at its biggest and brightest. While opposition is on the 4th, Saturn will be big and beautiful for many weeks to come.

If you don't have a telescope, now is a good time to visit one of your local astronomical societies open nights or the local planetariums.

The asteroid Vesta is quite faint (magnitude 7.6), so you need binoculars to see it and may need to watch over a number of nights to make sure you are seeing it. Currently Vest is not near anything interesting. Vesta is brightening and will be (just) visible to the unaided eye in a few months time.

Mars on April 1st at 7:00 pm local daylight saving time.

Mars returns to the morning sky by the 31st, faintly visible low in the eastern twilight.

Mercury is too close to the Sun to be seen.

Jupiter is too close to the Sun to be seen.

Printable PDF maps of the Eastern sky at 10 pm ADST, Western sky at 10 pm ADST. For further details and more information on what's up in the sky, see Southern Skywatch.

Cloud cover predictions can be found at SkippySky.

Labels: weekly sky

The Australian Science Communicators South Australia invite you to Ancient Skies Presented by Paul Curnow. Wednesday 30 March 2011, 7:30pm – 9:30pm
Adelaide Planetarium
Building P, Mawson Lakes Campus, University of South Australia

Cost and registration details here.

Labels: science communicators

It was fantastic.

Labels: home life, miscelaneous

Earth Hour was pretty much an astronomical non-event. Even the sky didn't get much dimmer over the city. Compare the just before and towards the end photos, apart from some darkening of twilight, not much happens.

Labels: Earth Hour, miscelaneous

Eastern Sky at 8:30 pm daylight saving time.

At 8:30 pm on Saturday 26 March thousands of people will turn their lights and other electrical equipment off for Earth Hour. What can you do in the dark? Well, you know my answer to that … go out and look at the sky! If you have an old telescope lying about, or a pair of binoculars, go grab them and dust them off. Why not hold an Earth Hour Star Party?

For us urbanites and suburbanites the sky won’t get very dark during Earth Hour, because essential lighting will stay on. However the sky will still be great to see.

Over on the eastern horizon the brightest object is Saturn, close to the bright white star Spica. You will need to wait a bit for Saturn to be higher in the sky before using a telescope on it.

The North-western sky at 8:30 pm local daylight saving time (click to embiggen)

To the West, Orion the Hunter and his belt (the saucepan to us Aussies, young men dancing to the Boorong people) can be seen clearly, below that is the V-shaped group of stars that make up the head of Taurus the Bull with the baleful red star Aldebaran as its eye. If you are lucky to have a clear, level horizon you can see the Pleiades Cluster twinkling above the horizon.

To the South, you can see the pointers showing the way to the Southern Cross. Just below Mimosa, the second brightest star in the cross, the delightful Jewel Box cluster is visible in binoculars and telescopes. Above the Cross is the rambling constellation of Carina, the keel of the mythical ship Argos. There are lots of small beautiful clusters in the sky here. Sweeping around with binoculars will find many delightful groups of stars. You may even find the Tarantula Nebula!

The Southern sky at 8:30 pm local daylight saving time (click to embiggen)

Sadly, there are no passes of the International Space Station or Iridium flares during Earth Hour, but look carefully and you might see some dimmer satellites tumbling past, or maybe even a meteor!

In no time at all the lights will come on., and you will not have finished exploring the skies.

Labels: Earth Hour, Observational Astronomy

Labels: comic

So, 3 hours after taking 40 homeopathic sleeping tablets I'm not sleepy. And after the low sleep week I had, I should be. Heck, I didn't even fall asleep on the train home, which I usually do.

Why did I take an overdose of homeopathic medicine .... Ahhhh, I'll tell you later in the week :-)

UPDATE: 7 hours post homeopathic overdose, going to bed now, have to be up early for EldestOnes tennis match.

Labels: miscelaneous, Pseudoscience, science communicators

The Australian Science Communicators South Australia invite you to Ancient Skies Presented by Paul Curnow.

Do all cultures see the night sky the same way? Do Native Americans interpret the constellation of Orion in the same way as ancient Egyptians once did? How similar are the Australian Aboriginal and the ancient Japanese constellations?

Come and learn about the night sky as seen by many cultures of our world. Learn to identify prominent constellations and hear the stories behind the stars and the early beliefs attached to them.

Wednesday 30 March 2011, 7:30pm – 9:30pm
Adelaide Planetarium
Building P, Mawson Lakes Campus, University of South Australia

For ages: 16+
Cost:
ASCSA members and those who join
on the night: $10.00
Non-members: $20.00
Payment at the door
Bookings essential:
http://ascsaplanetarium.eventbrite.com/

Labels: constellations, science communicators

For the benefit of those claiming that solar flares and solar activity affect earthquakes, I have create these two graphs. The first is a graph of earthquake frequency and magnitude for all earthquakes of magnitude 6 and above (otherwise we would drowning in noise from magnitude 5 quakes) plotted against sunspot number from 1979 to 2010. Click on the image to embiggen.

I’ve use a 4 point smoothing to make the data more legible (which is why some Mag 8 earthquakes don’t appear). Data for earthquakes is from here, and sunspot data is from here.

As you can immediately see, earthquake number and intensity is basically random. There is no correlation with sunspot number, which is a proxy for solar activity and flare numbers. You can play around with the raw data and plot it in a variety of ways (binning earthquakes by month etc.) but the answer is the same. No relationship.

To get a better handle on this, I’ve also plotted all earthquakes for 2010 magnitude 5 and greater against all solar flares magnitude C1 and greater (C is weakest, M more intense and X very intense). Flare data is from the Australian IPS. Coronal mass ejections (when Earth directed) tend to hit 48 hours after the solar flare (click image to embiggen).

Again, as you can see there is no correlation between solar flares and earthquake number or magnitude.

Labels: scepticism, Solar flare, Sun

The southern evening sky around 9:00 pm daylight saving time in March in Australia.

The Globe at Night world ligh pollution survey is being revisited this year. The survey is being re-run from 24 March to April 6 (starting tomorrow night). Everyone can be involved, hopefully students and teachers too. Basically, an hour or so after sunset (8-10 pm) head out, look to the north to find Leo, (if you are in the northern hemisphere) or south to find Crux (for us southern hemisphere types) then check how many stars are visible, and report your observations. It's a great excuse to get outdoors and look at the sky. You might even see the International Space Station or an Iridium flare or NanoSail-D.

This year you can submit your results a smart phone or tablet. To do this, you can use the web application at www.globeatnight.org/webapp/. Globe at Night is also on Facebook and Twitter.

There is a pod-cast on light pollution from 365 days of astronomy and a powerpoint presentation that explains about light pollution and how to do the sky survey, and special activities for kids. So go on, get out and have a go!

Labels: globe at night

Comet 2010 X1 Elenin visualised after downloading orbital elements into Stellarium 10.6.1

Bottom line, if you do not already have Stellarium, or have not yet upgraded to Stellarium 10.6.1, go and download the upgrade now.

I’ve used the free planetarium program Stellarium since version 0.9, and it is no secret that it is my favourite planetarium program for unaided eye observation, and for illustrating aspects of the sky to school groups and the general public. With version 10.6.1 the Stellarium development team have produced a program that I truly love.

The first aspect is that Stellarium 10.6.1 (for windows, also versions for Linux and Mac) runs faster on my machine (a less than state of the art Dell Inspirion 1420 with Windows Vista) than the previous 10.5, and more stably. The old 10.5 would very rarely, but randomly, crash for no apparent reason. This version chugs along quite nicely under quite strenuous circumstances.

All the old features that make this an excellent planetarium program (photorealistic sky, customisable locations, zoomable objects, large star databases, easy navigation, switching between constellation shapes and plain view, satellite passes, night mode, multiple sky culture maps, ability to see the sky from other planets) are there. The search option is still very sluggish though. All my keyboard shortcuts work as they did before.

And what’s more, it has added a feature that makes me almost delirious with joy. There is a plug-in that lets you download new solar system objects. Gone is the laborious hand editing of the system.ini file, you can download new comets and asteroids from online sources, or upload them from files on flash drives (if you are using a field laptop with no internet access.

To access the plug-in after downloading Stellarium 10.6.1, press F2 to enter the configuration files, click on the Plug-in tab, then choose solar system editor plugin, click on the load at startup checkbox, then restart Stellarium.

After restart, go back to the plugin tab and choose solar system editor, then click on configure. Choose the “solar system” tab and click on “import elements”. In the next screen choose the “lists” tab, then choose either comets or asteroids. If you are connected to the internet, click on “online list”, then either type a URL manually, or choose from the preconfigured drop box.


The next screen will ask you to choose an object from the list. You may have to wait a minute or so for the list to load, depending on internet connection and speed (slowish wireless broadband dongle in my case), but when the list comes up, choose the object you want, and click add objects. This takes you back to the download objects screen (this is initially confusing, but is actually handy if you want to load objects from a different catalogue), but as you work back through the screens, you will see your new objects in the list. Daggerstab, take a bow.

There are quiet a lot of new features that I won't go into. Suffice it to say that Stellarium covers a wide range of utilities that an amateur astronomer, educator or just interested person would find handy, without being a clunking behemoth.

The other thing that I think is important is that the satellite plugin. They have updated the code and made it more accurate. They have also added satellite tracks. If you already had the satelliet plug-in installed in 10.5, when you install 10.6 it will automatically turn on the satellite tracks. I actually find this annoying, but it is dead easy to turn on or off in the confiuration menu (down the bottom), so you can have it on when you want.

I give it 4 out of 5 Cepheid variables. What lets it down in my opinion is they still haven't produced a scripting manual. I love the scripting capabilities of Stellarium, and the new scripting language looks really powerful, but working out how to use it is really hit and miss.

Still, that relatively minor quibble apart (I should get off my bottom and make my own guide) , Stellarium 10.6 is a fabulous program, go give it a try.

Labels: review, stellarium

The Last Quarter Moon is Saturday March 26. Venus is visible in the morning sky initially in the constellation of Capricorn then in Aquarius. On the 27th Venus is close to Neptune. On the 31st the crescent Moon is close to Venus. Saturn is well placed for telescopic observation.

Morning sky looking east as seen from Adelaide at 5:30 am daylight saving time on Thursday March 31 showing Venus in Aquarius, not far from thecrescent Moon. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time. Click to embiggen.

The Last Quarter Moon is Saturday March 26.

Bright white Venus is readily seen in the early morning sky. This week it moves from the constellation of Capricornus (just underneath the bright star Deneb Algedi) to Aquarius.

On the 27th Venus is within 0.4 degrees of Neptune, you will need a decent aperture telescope and a widefield lens to see them both together.

On the 31st Venus is close to the crescent Moon.

Venus is "gibbous" phase, and will progressively become more full (and smaller) over the coming weeks.

Evening sky on Saturday March 26 looking east as seen from Adelaide at 10:00 pm daylight saving time in South Australia showing Saturn near Spica. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time.

Inset, the telescopic view of Saturn on the 24t (and on the morning of the 25nd), you will need a fairly large telescope to see any moon other than Titan. Click to embiggen.

Saturn is rising well before midnight, and is high enough for telescopic observation in the late evening, although it is still best seen in the early morning. It readily visible as the bright yellowish object not far from the bright star Spica.

The big storm on Saturn is now so large that it is visible in even small telescopes.

Even in small telescopes you can see Saturn's rings and it's moon Titan. Titan is close to Saturn on the 24th.

If you don't have a telescope, now is a good time to visit one of your local astronomical societies open nights or the local planetariums.

The asteroid Vesta is quite faint (magnitude 7.6), so you need binoculars to see it and may need to watch over a number of nights to make sure you are seeing it. Currently Vest is not near anything interesting. Vesta is brightening and will be (just) visible to the unaided eye in a few months time.

Mars returns to the morning sky by the 31st, faintly visible low in the estern twilight.

Mercury is too close to the Sun to be seen.

Jupiter is too close to the Sun to be seen.

Printable PDF maps of the Eastern sky at 10 pm ADST, Western sky at 10 pm ADST. For further details and more information on what's up in the sky, see Southern Skywatch.

Cloud cover predictions can be found at SkippySky.

Labels: weekly sky

Here.

Labels: Mercury, spacecraft

Not much happened, no major earthquakes, or clusters of minor earthquakes. Well, astrologer Richard Nolle actually cleared up his definition of what a “supermoon” is (compare with the wording here).

It turns out it’s any full Moon with a perigee closer than 361585 Km (a bit closer than the average perigee distance of 357372 Km). The justification for this distance is pretty much non existent, but even the closest “supermoons” have a tidal force only 4% greater than the “supermoon” cutoff. Also, recall that in Astronomical terms “Full Moon” is when the Sun and Moon are exactly aligned. For us ordinary folks wandering out in the evening, Full Moon is from Moonrise to Moonset on the night of the Astronomical Full Moon and I think this is the form of “Full Moon” that Nolle is using. In terms of wandering out and looking up at the Moon (and failing to see any actual difference without a telescope and a photographic record), this is perfectly okay.

However, in terms of earthquake generation, the alignment of the Moon and Sun is critical. You can imagine that the flexing of the Earth as the lithosphere tide (all 30cm of it) passes through the Earth might set off an earthquake that was already “ready to blow” as it were. Indeed, there is a week correlation between the lithospheric tides associated with Full/New Moon and a subclass of shallow earthquakes (increasing the probability of this subclass of earthquakes by less than 1%).

Buuuutttt. Remember a) the tidal force falls off the cube of the distance and b) the tidal bulge (both oceanic and lithospheric) depends on the sum of the Solar and Lunar tidal force and c) the further perigee is away from Astronomical Full Moon (when the Moon and Sun are exactly aligned), the Lunar tidal force opposes the Solar tidal force (that’s why neap tides, at the quarter Moon, when the Moon and Sun are at 90 degrees, are lower than the tides at full and New Moon when the Moon and Sun are aligned). So even if a “supermoon” has a perigee closer than average, if the perigee time is far from the alignment with the Sun, the tidal force (which is less than 5% greater than average anyway) will reduce the tide size rather than enhance it). Many of the “supermoons” listed by Mr. Nolle are not very super after all.

Chart of "supermoons" vs earthquake date for 2010, with "supermoons" marked. No alteration of earthquake pattern with "supermoon" status is seen (click to embiggen)

For example, Mr. Nolle lists the February 27, 2010 Full Moon as a “supermoon”. It is is 357831 Km away (about 3% greater tidal force than Nolles cut-off). But perigee occurs 18 h before the full Moon so the overall tidal force is lower.

Now Mr. Nolle points out that the February 27, 2010 Full Moon occurs not far from a 8.8 magnitude quake. However, in any given year there are 1319 quakes between magnitudes 5-5.9, 134 earthquakes of magnitude 6-6.9 (this includes the earthquake that demolished Christchurch), 15 earthquakes of magnitude 7-7.9 and 1 earthquake of 8 or greater. So, choose any random date and within +/- 3 days of that (the window used by Mr Nolle) you will almost certainly, on average have two-three quakes of magnitude 6-6.9 in that date range and a roughly 25% chance of having a larger magnitude quake in that time slice. So just having one magnitude 6 or greater earthquake near a supermoon is not particularly surprising. Indeed, in 2010 there are 4 “supermoons” and 1 “extreme supermoon” (Perigee of 356592 Km 2 h after full Moon), none of which are associate with any earthquakes more than we would expect by chance (see chart above). The complete lack of any significant activity associated with the January 30 “extreme supermoon” is telling.

Mr. Nolle has a number of examples of Full Moons near earthquakes, but again this is just cherry picking, we expect some to turn up by pure chance alone. Mr. Nolle emphasises that the Christchurch magnitude 6.3 earthquake is in his time range around a "supermoon", but you would expect at least 2-3 magnitude 6 or greater quakes in that time frame (and there 3 in this range, exactly what you would expect by chance). By ignoring all the Full/New Moons that are not associated with earthquakes you can make it look as if there is an associate where there isn’t one.

I’ve plotted the frequency of all earthquakes of 5 or greater in 2011, showing the times of New and Full Moon, and apogee and perigee (see diagram at the top of the post, the yellow symbols are full/New Moon, blue symbols times of Perigee/apogee). If Mr. Nolle is right, we should expect more earthquakes around aligned Moons near perigee, if fact you can see there is no association at all. The big earthquake that devastated Japan occurred just off apogee, during first quarter, when the tidal force was quite low.

We might also expect that earthquake magnitude would correlate with perigee closeness (when the tidal field is strongest), so I plotted the magnitude of all quakes in 2011 (up to the first Japanese quake, after that he subsequent quakes are aftershocks from the main quake, and not independent) against the lunar distance at the time of the quake (to the nearest minute).

I have shown the regression line and its 95% confidence limits. The line slope is not statistically significantly different from zero, ie there is no relationship between earthquake magnitude and lunar distance. To do this properly, you need to calculate the total Sun-Moon tidal force and use more data points (I leave that as an exercise for my readers, times of perigee and full/new Moon from Inconstant Moon, Distance at UT time from SkyMap, Earthquake data here), but any association as obvious as Mr. Nolle claims would stand out).

The distribution of days +/- 1 and +/-2 days from Full and New Moon. By chance alone we would expect 3-4 out of 10 super-earthquakes to occur within +/- 2 days of a Full or New Moon.

Our statistical sense confounds us sometimes. One of the Bad astronomer’s commenter’s pointed out that of the 10 most severe earthquakes 3 occured within +/- 1 day of the full/new Moon, and 2 more within +/- 2 days of the full/new Moon, as if this indicated an association.

But assume mega-earthquakes fall randomly anywhere in a given month. In any given month there are two Full/New Moons, +/- 1 day gives you 6 days possible days where it could fall, a 20% chance of a random quake being +/- 1 day near a Full/New Moon. There are 10 days within +/- 2 days of Full/New Moon, giving a 33% chance of a random Earthquake being within +/- 2 days of Full/New Moon. Thus the observed frequency of mega-quakes near Full/New Moons is pretty much what we would expect by chance.

So, the “supermoon” was beautiful, but not baleful, despite Mr. Nolles dire predictions.

Labels: Moon, Pseudoscience

Perigee Moon, March 20th 2011, 4:40 am as seen from Largs North, Adelaide.

Typical, really.

Moonrise on the 19th was beautiful, but we were at our friend Wilhem's Gallery Opening, so I didn't have access to my telescope. By the time we got home, the clouds had come over. And of course they didn't clear up.

[sigh]

Labels: astrophotography, Moon

Chez Reynella's good friend Wilhelm Bronner is an artist of some repute, and he has an exhibition of some recent works at the Black Diamond Gallery, Port Adelaide, from 20th March (that's today) until 27 March.

I think it's fabulous, and not just because Chez Reynella and Archie the Galah feature in a couple of the artworks.

Labels: home life, miscelaneous

Carnival of Space #189 is now up at Steve's Astro Corner. There's musings of the number of Earth-Like planets, movie reviews, Hubble's measurements of the expansion of the Universe, moving rocks with Solar Sails and much, much more. Sail on over and have a read.

Labels: carnival of space

Hmm, must be all those salubrious images of Venus.

Heck, I even use the term "unaided-eye" to avoid zealous filters.

Labels: humor, miscelaneous

Full Moon as seen from Adelaide, Australia at 4:40 am Sunday March 20. Similar views will be see from elsewhere in Australia at the equivalent local time (click to embiggen).

Just a reminder to those Australians who want to catch the Full Moon at its biggest since 2008/1993/1992, you have to be up EARLY.

The Moon is Full (astronomical definition) and closest at 5:10 am AEDST, 4:40 am ACDST and 2:10 am AWST. If you wait for moonrise on the evening of the 20th, it will be smaller (in fact, smaller than at moonrise on the 19th). Not that you will actually be able so see minute fractions of arc minute differences.

Labels: Moon

MESSENGER live webcast for orbital insertion ins on now. Click here. No pictures until March 29 though.

Labels: Mercury, spacecraft

I'll be on ABC local radio (Adelaide 891 AM) with Ashley Walsh (Saturday March 19th), going live about 7:10 am ACDST (they doing streaming, so even if you are not in Adelaide you can catch this on your computer). I'll be talking about the "Supermoon" that occurs this Sunday.

Labels: Radio

Comet 2010 X1 Elenin visualised in Stellarium on 16 October, 2010 (click to embiggen).

As a follow up to the previous posts on 2010 X1 Elenin, I present to you these data files for Celestia and Stellarium so you can simulate the comet in these programs.

For Celestia, copy the data between the lines into a file called 2010X1.ssc (or Elenin.ssc or whatever you like), and copy that file into the Celestia extras folder. The data for Elenin is fairly old in the Celestia file, obtained here. For some reason the newest data, that works perfectly in Stellarium, results in Elenin just sitting in front of the Beehive cluster.

======cut 8<==================2010X1.ssc========================
"Elenin:2010X1" "Sol"
{
Class "comet" # Just copying the data for Halley
Mesh "halley.cmod"
Texture "asteroid.jpg"
Radius 4 # best guess at maximum semi-axis
MeshCenter [ -0.338 1.303 0.230 ]

# No idea why any of this works.
# These are old orbital elements, but replacing them with
# more recent elements, the ones that work perfectly for Stellarium and
# SkyMap, causes the comet to sit in front of the Beehive cluster
# and not move. I’ve been driven to frustration by this

EllipticalOrbit
{
Epoch 2455578.5 #2011-Jan-17.0
Period 3457004.12
SemiMajorAxis 22862.71468671387
Eccentricity 0.9999788963233883
Inclination 1.840276249645969
AscendingNode 323.2462306600872
ArgOfPericenter 343.7899811826415
MeanAnomaly 359.9999325013102
}

#Again, this data is copied straight from the ssc files for Halleys’ Comet
# chaotic rotation, imperfectly defined:
# this version from "The New Solar System", 4th Edition; Eds.
# JK Beatty, CC Petersen, A Chaikin
PrecessingRotation
{
Period 170 # 7.1 day axial rotation period
Inclination 66
PrecessionPeriod 3457004.12 # 3.7 day precession period
}

Albedo 0.8
}
==========8<=====cut================================================

For Stellarium 0.10.5 and older, make a backup copy of your Stellarium.ini file, then add the following lines to the end of the INI file. The radius is wrong, but it’s the only way I know of to get the magnitude right (there is a way to specify magnitude in Stellarium, add these lines
absolute_magnitude = 8.0
slope_parameter = 4
but it makes the comet too dim)
Stellarium 0.10.6 has just been released, which has a plugin which will allow you to add comets and asteroids directly, but the above method will still work.

[Elenin]
name = 2010X1/Elenin
parent = Sun
radius = 24
oblateness = 0.0
halo = true
color = 1.0,1.0,1.0
tex_halo = star16x16.png
tex_map = nomap.png
coord_func = comet_orbit
orbit_TimeAtPericenter = 2455815.22816
orbit_PericenterDistance = 0.482473
orbit_Eccentricity = 1.000016
orbit_ArgOfPericenter = 343.8071
orbit_AscendingNode = 323.2259c
orbit_Inclination = 1.8392
lighting = false
albedo = 1
sidereal_period = 365.25

Labels: celestia, comets, stellarium

Over at the NASA Science blog is a post about the upcoming "Supermoon" on Sunday March 20 (March 19 UT). Whereas as astrologer Richard Nolle uses a very broad definition of "supermoon" in his claims, the NASA site seems to use a very narrow definition of "Full Moon", when they claim that the close perigee full Moon of 2008 was a "near miss".

Strictly speaking Astronomical Full Moon occurs when the Moon is directly opposite the Sun (and in this sense the NASA site is completely correct). For this full Moon Astronomical Full Moon is at 18:10 UT on 19 March, which for east coast Australians is 5:10 am on the morning of the 20th with perigee (closest approach) of 356575 km occurring pretty much at the same time.

However, in general people think of "full Moon" as the entire time from Moonrise to Moonset on the designated Full Moon night, not just the hour around astronomical Full Moon. You don't look up at the big round thing in the sky and think "that's not the full Moon, the full Moon was two hours ago" after all, do you.

In the case of the 2008 full Moon the perigee of 356565 was 4 hours out from
Astronomical Full Moon (4:00 am on 3 December as seen from Adelaide, with perigee tat 8 am). However at Astronomical Full Moon it was only 20Km more distant than this years perigee full Moon, and from 2 hours to 6 hours post Astronomical Full Moon the 2008 Moon was closer than this years Moon at exact perigee. In the case of looking up at the big round thing in the sky (for those parts of the world where the Moon didn't set at perigee), on the night of the full Moon the 2008 Full Moon was bigger for longer. So for most people the "full Moon" they were seeing was indeed closer in
2008 than 2011 (and in this sense the NASA article is misleading).

Again, as I have explained before, the human eye, for those of us with good eyesight, can only reliably detect differences of 1 arc minute in diameter. This full Moon (March 19/20) will be 33.7 arc minutes in diameter, last months full Moon was 33.4 arc minutes in diameter, so if you remember that one, you won’t notice any difference. If you wait for next months full Moon, that will be 33.5 arc minutes in diameter, so you won’t notice any difference either.

You may notice a difference if you can remember what the August 2010 apogee full Moon looked like, when the Moon was 14% smaller. However, remember that to the unaided eye, the Moon is around half the width of a finger held at arms length, so detecting a 14% difference between a perigee and apogee Moon will be difficult. Although the difference is within our visual acuity, comparing the Moon you are seeing now with your memory of the Moon 5 months ago is non trivial for most of us.

Any perceived difference in full Moon size this weekend will be almost certainly psychological for most of us (especially when the Moon is close to the horizon, when the Full Moon Illusion makes the Moon look abnormally large.

However, if you have a decent zoom lens on your camera, or can attach your camera to a small telescope, take a picture this Sunday, then using the same settings to image the upcoming October 12 apogee (furthest distance) full Moon. THEN you will see a difference in the Moons' diameter.

Labels: astrophotography, Moon

After 7 years of journeying, the MESSENGER spacecraft will enter into orbit around Mercury on Friday March 18, at 12:45 a.m. UTC, that's between 8 am and 12 pm in Australia depending on your time zone (around 12 pm in the Eastern states), I presume the encounter will be on NASA TV, you can read more about the orbital insertion at NASA science news.

Labels: Mercury, spacecraft

I was wondering why Comet 2010 X1 Elenin was attracting all the attention from the apocalypse and Nibiru crowd rather than Comet 2009 P1 Garrad. It turns out it’s Leonid Elenin’s fault.

According to a video* going around the web at the moment, Leonid Elenin isn’t a real person (Leonid, a long time comet observer who contributes to the comet-obs discussion group and has his own blog, may be surprised at his non–person status, but bear with me for a moment). Leonids' name is a secret code, ELE for Extinction Level Event and NIN for some tatty old goddess. I mean, you just can’t make a decent code from Garrad or McNaught.

The same video claims that it is comet Elenin, rather than “supermoons” that caused the Chilean and Japanese earthquakes.

Now, I see this as another “teachable moment” as in the case of the so-called “supermoons”. There are two issues here; first the statistical issues and then the ideas of scale.

First off, let’s try thinking statistically. In the video much is made of the claim that within 5 days of the alleged closest approach of Elenin and the Earth there was a large earthquake. Now, in any given year there are 1319 quakes between magnitudes 5-5.9, 134 earthquakes of magnitude 6-6.9 (this includes the earthquake that demolished Christchurch) and 15 earthquakes of magnitude 7-7.9. So, choose any random date and within 5 days of that you will almost certainly, on average have a quake of magnitude 6-6.9 in that date range and a roughly 20% chance of having a larger magnitude quake in that time slice. Thus a simple “earthquake somewhere near a comet close approach” is not by itself convincing. You need some sort of physical plausibility.

As we saw in the “supermoon” article, gravitational tidal effects could plausibly trigger earthquakes. The Moon is large and close, but even with the Moon the effect is quite small, it only occurs for certain types of shallow earthquake, and even then less than one percent of these types of earthquake are triggered by lunar tides. Now, The Moon is 7x10²² Kg in mass and 384401Km away. At the March closest approach mentioned in the video, comet Elenin was 273137000 Km away. We don’t know the mass of Elenin, but it is likely to be much smaller than comet Halley, which has a mass of 2.2×10¹⁴ Kg. We can use the mass of Halley as a proxy of Elenin for the calculations below.

You can already see that the tidal force due to Elenin is much, much less than that due to the Moon, and we know that the tidal force falls off as the cube of the distance. Now we know the formula for tidal force and we can calculate the tidal force of Elenin relative to the Moon (using Halley's mass for Elenin, an overestimate). It’s a staggering 10³⁴ times less than that of the Moon. So the plausibility of Elenin causing an earthquake is similarly low.

Finally, the video claims that the “alignments” of Elenin and Earth and Sun were on February 27 2010 and March 11-15 2011. The “alignments” were apparently determined by eye from the JPL orbit widget (which explicitly says not to use the orbit widget for this purpose). Fortunately, there are programs that can analytically determine when the closest approach of the comet too Eath is (when the comet, Earth and Sun are aligned). I use SkyMap with the latest orbital elements. It turns out that the comet was aligned with Earth on 27 March 2010 (nowhere near the Chile Earthquake) and will only next be aligned in May 5 2011 (before closest approach on 16 October 2011, again, nowhere near the Japanese Earthquake). No alignment, no earthquake to explain.

The take home message is to keep a sense of proportion (proportion, get it) and don’t try to estimate astronomical alignments by eye on tiny JAVA animations (oh, and check to see that the guy you are claiming is imaginary really does exist).

*I’m not going to link to the video, if you want to destroy your brain cells, go to this comment and copy and paste the URL. On your own head be it.

Labels: comets, Pseudoscience, Science Blogging

As I walk into the office, EldestOne asks if I have noticed any internet outages. No, I say, looking up in time to see Archie the Galah, whom ElderstOne is supposed to be minding, bite through the internet cable strung up on the wall. Hilarity ensues as I re-discover my long lost "twisting-minute-broken-wires-together" skills.

Internet is restored, EldestOne and Archie are both still in the bad books.

Labels: home life

The Full Moon is Sunday March 20. It will not be the closest for 19 years. Jupiter is lost in the twilight. Venus is visible in the morning sky in the constellation of Capricorn. Saturn is well placed for telescopic observation and on the 20th the Full moon is close by. On the 21st the Moon is close to the bright star Spica. Earth is at Equinox on the 21st.

Morning sky looking east as seen from Adelaide at 5:30 am daylight saving time on Sunday March 20 showing Venus in Capricorn, not far from the bright star gamma Capricornii. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time. Click to embiggen.

The Full Moon is Sunday March 20. It is at perigee, when the Moon is closest to the Earth, but it is not the closest perigee for 19 years. Earth is at Equinox on the 21st.

Bright white Venus is readily seen in the early morning sky.

Venus is "gibbous" phase, and will progressively become more full (and smaller) over the coming weeks.







Evening sky on Monday March 21 looking east as seen from Adelaide at 11:00 pm daylight saving time in South Australia showing Saturn and the Moon near Spica. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time.

Inset, the telescopic view of Saturn on the 21st (and on the morning of the 22nd), you will need a fairly large telescope to see any moon other than Titan. Click to embiggen.

Saturn is rising well before midnight, and is high enough for telescopic observation in the late evening, although it is best seen in the early morning. It readily visible not far from the bright star Spica.

The big storm on Saturn is now so large that it is visible in even small telescopes.

Even in small telescopes you can see Saturn's rings and it's moon Titan. Titan is close to Saturn on the 16th.

If you don't have a telescope, now is a good time to visit one of your local astronomical societies open nights or the local planetariums.

The asteroid Vesta is quite faint (magnitude 7.6), so you need binoculars to see it and may need to watch over a number of nights to make sure you are seeing it. You will need to get up a bit before 5:00 am local daylight saving time when the sky is still very dark. You will also need good, steady binoculars or a small telescope, and to make sure your eyes are dark adapted, in order to see Vesta, but it will be worthwhile. Vesta is brightening and will be (just) visible to the unaided eye in a few months time.

Mars is too close to the Sun to be seen.

Mercury is too close to the Sun to be seen.

Jupiter is too close to the Sun to be seen.

Printable PDF maps of the Eastern sky at 10 pm ADST, Western sky at 10 pm ADST. For further details and more information on what's up in the sky, see Southern Skywatch.

Cloud cover predictions can be found at SkippySky.

Labels: weekly sky

I was somewhat intrigued by a Yahoo news item claiming that the upcoming full Moon of 20 March (Australian time, 19 March UT) would be the closest for 19 years. I was rather intrigued by this, especially as no source was given, so I started to hunt out information on Earth-Moon distances.

First a quick primer; the Moon has an elliptical orbit around the Earth (greatly exaggerated for illustrative purposes in the diagram to the left). When the Moon is closest to Earth, it is at perigee, and furthest, at apogee. The orbit of the Moon precesses around the Earth, so that sometimes perigee occurs at full Moon, sometimes at new Moon, and every time in between. Also for a variety of reasons the distances of closest and furthest approach can vary by up to almost 1,000 Km. When a really close perigee coincides with a full Moon, this can make for a good photo opportunity when combined with images from apogee.

But was the claim in the Yahoo article correct? I found the times of perigee and full Moons from 1991 to 2011 and present them in this table (sources, Inconstant Moon and Astronomy Australia 1991-2011).

Date            Time    Distance                Moon Phase      Year
Mar 8 8:36 356529 km ++ F- 1h 1993
Jan 19 22:13 356548 km ++ F+ 0h 1992
Dec 12 21:38 356567 km ++ F+ 4h 2008
Mar 19 19:10 356577 km ++ F+ 0h 2011
Jan 30 9:04 356592 km ++ F+ 2h 2010
Nov 4 0:42 356614 km ++ F- 4h 1998
Dec 22 11:01 356654 km ++ F- 6h 2001
Dec 22 11:01 356654 km ++ F- 6h 1999
Oct 26 11:52 356754 km ++ F+ 6h 2007
Feb 7 22:20 356852 km ++ F- 8h 2002
Apr 25 17:18 356925 km ++ F- 2h 1994
Jul 30 7:37 356948 km ++ F- 2h 1996
Sep 16 15:25 356965 km + F- 3h 1997
Jun 13 1:06 357006 km + F- 2h 1995
Apr 17 4:59 357157 km + F+ 9h 2003
Jul 21 19:46 357159 km  F+ 8h 2005
Sep 8 3:08 357174 km + F+ 8h 2006
Jun 3 13:11 357248 km ++ F+ 8h 2004
Jan 10 10:53 357500 km + F- 16h 2009
Dec 22 9:29 358353 km  F+ 23h 1991
Nov 14 22:59 366050 km  F+3d 1h 2000

As you can see, the Full Moons of 1992, 1993 and 2008 are all closer that that of 2011. So, the March Full Moon will be the closest for a less than impressive 3 years. You can also see that the March full Moon will only be 20Km closer than the January 2010 full Moon. Bigger, but not really exciting.

The Yahoo site also says “The full moon could appear up to 14% bigger and 30% brighter in the sky”. Umm, yeah. But can you see it? The limit of distances that someone with good vision can distinguish between is 1 minute of arc (about the width of a human hair). So, for the vast majority of people any difference smaller than 1 minute of arc cannot be seen.

Perigee and apogee as seen through a telescope. With the unaided eye, the Moon only appears half a finger-width wide, so the difference is much harder to see.

This full Moon (March 19/20) will be 33.7 arc minutes in diameter, last months full Moon was 33.4 arc minutes in diameter, so if you remember that one, you won’t notice any difference. If you wait for next months full Moon, that will be 33.5 arc minutes in diameter, so you won’t notice any difference either.

If you can wait until October the 12th, when the Full Moon is at Apogee, then it’s diameter will be 29.5 arc minutes, and you could notice a difference if you have a good memory, but it won’t be spectacular.

However, it will be a good photo opportunity, if you have a decent zoom on your camera, taking a photo of the Moon on March 20 and then again on October 12 you will see a decent difference (you need to use exactly the same zoom enlargement, see Inconstant Moon for instructions).

What about the other claims?

“The last time the moon passed close to the Earth was on 10 January 2005, around the time of the Indonesian earthquake that measured 9.0 on the Richter scale”

Sorry, the Indonesian earthquake was on December 26, 2004. I remember it well. Unless there is some way for the Moon to reach back in time, there is no relationship. There was a Full Moon on the 27th, but that was near apogee, when it was furthest from the Earth.

“Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was also associated with an unusually large full moon.”

No it wasn’t. The full Moon was on 19th August, and was a very ordinary 357612 km away, not an unusually large Moon at all (in fact, further away than the average perihelion distance of 357373 Km, making it the 18th closest since 1991). Katrina began on August 24, shortly before Last Quarter.

Now, it is at least plausible that the Moon could be associated with earthquakes. As well as the ocean tides we are familiar with, the Moon raises tides in the lithosphere, the very rock of the earth. These tides are small, around 30 cm compared to the ocean tides of a meter or more. However, these small earth movements, stretching and relaxing as the tidal bulge travels around the world, might be enough to set off an earthquake that was all ready to go in the first place.

There is some evidence that full Moons are weakly associated with shallow earth quakes (a less than 1% increase for these kinds of quakes). But is there any evidence that full Moons at close perigee are more likely to be set off earthquakes than any other full Moon? We can actually work out the Tidal Force involved using the following equation (and a little help from an Excel spreadsheet).



It turns out that the tidal force of the March 19 full Moon is only 0.7% greater than the tidal force at average perigee (357372.7 Km, average of 2011 perigee distances) and 25% greater than that at the Moons’ mean distance from Earth (384401 Km). Comparing perigee to apogee, the March 19 full Moon tidal force is 40% greater than that of the October 12 apogee Full Moon.

Okay, but what does that mean practically?

Well, let’s look at the ocean tides as a proxy for the lithospheric tides. Tides are complex, affected by local geographic features amongst other things, but this gives you an idea of how the lunar tidal force plays out. The maximum high tide at outer harbour after the March 6 New Moon at apogee was 2.5 meters, the predicted high tide for March 19 is (drum roll) … 2.6 meters. This is about a 4% increase in tide height for a 40% greater tidal force. So I wouldn’t expect much of a difference between the March 19 Full Moon, and any other full Moon.

The Yahoo article is almost completely wrong. But where did the information come from? It seems like it comes from astrologer Richard Nolle (similar language is used at accuweather and space.com, and both articles link back to Nolle). While the exact same language is not used in the articles, we have Mr. Nolle writing.

“….First and foremost, that means being mindful of the March 19 full moon 28° 48' Virgo. It’s arguably the year’s most extreme SuperMoon, for a couple of reasons: it’s the closest SuperMoon of the year, occurring within an hour of lunar perigee (the Moon’s closest approach to Earth): the Moon will look huge when it rises at sunset. And being so close to the vernal equinox, this SuperMoon occurs within hours of the moment the full moon crosses the celestial equator from north to south, just as the Sun crosses in the opposite direction. That makes this a major geophysical stress window, centered on the actual alignment date but in effect from the 16th through the 22nd. Of course you can expect the usual: a surge in extreme tides along the coasts, a rash of moderate-to-severe seismic activity (including magnitude 5+ earthquakes, tsunami and volcanic eruptions), and most especially in this case a dramatic spike in powerful storms with heavy precipitation, damaging winds and extreme electrical activity. Floods are a big part of the picture in this case, although some of these will be dry electrical storms that spark fast-spreading wildfires.”

As we have seen, the March 19/20 Moon won’t look particularly huge compared to most of the other Moons (unless you have a good memory for apogee Moons and acute eyesight). Tides are not going to be much of an issue (unless 0.1 meters floats your boat). Earthquakes etc. are only marginally more likely simply due to the full Moon effect alone, not the effect of Perigee. I have no idea where he gets the weather stuff from.

He does write:

“Take Hurricane Katrina, for example; spawned from a tropical depression formed within three days of the August 19 SuperMoon. My forecast for 2005 warned of severe storms within plus or minus three days of the day Hurricane Katrina formed, and even specified the Gulf of Mexico as one of the areas at risk in connection with that particular SuperMoon alignment.”

The tropical depression formed on August 23, actually four days after what was not a particularly impressive “SuperMoon” (357395 Km, 12 hours before the full Moon). Much closer perigee’s nearer Full and New Moons respectively aren’t associated with anything in 2005.

Graph of "supermoon" occurrence vs Earthquake occurrence and intensity. Click to embiggen.

And so it goes for the rest of his examples. By casting a sufficiently wide net, and using a rather broad definition of “superMoon”* Mr. Nolle can produce a wide range of spurious associations. After all, since there are on average 4 earthquakes of magnitude 5 or greater every day, it’s not too hard to find earthquakes within + or – 3 days of a full Moon near perigee. He gets excited about the February 27 “supermoon” (where the perigee occurs 18 h before the full Moon and is a rather unimpressive 357831 Km) near a 8.8 Magnitude quake and ignores the January 30 Full Moon (Perigee of 356592 Km 2 h after full Moon) which is nowhere near any reasonable quake.

Have a look at the graph to the left where I have plotted the occurrence of Mr. Nolles "supermoons" vs earthquake intensity and time. The two "supermoons" with the closest perigees closest to the actual time of Full Moon (where the tidal forces are greater) are down in the scurf of random magnitude 5 earthquakes, as are the 3 more dubious "supermoons". There is no uptick in magnitude 5+ earthquakes around these times as Nolle claimed would happen. Note all the activity nowhere near a "supermoon". The February 27 event is completely compatible with random association (times of perigee and full/new Moon from Inconstant Moon, Earthquake data here).

The take home message is that the March 19/20 full Moon will look much like any other full Moon, unless you have photographic equipment to image both it and the October 12 apogee Moon. The Moon will not cause horrible things to happen (well, maybe a very slight possibility of setting off a shallow earthquake, but not more than any other full Moon). As postscript, it’s rather sad that news sources, especially places like Space.com, don’t bother to do simple fact checking before going all breathless.

Oh yeah, the Bad Astronomer thoroughly debunks the idea that the March 19/20 "supermoon" had anything to do with the Japanese earthquake.

* His definition of “supermoon” is “a new or full moon which occurs with the Moon at or near (within 90% of) its closest approach to Earth in a given orbit.” But what does 90% of its closest approach mean? Is this as a percent of the distance at perigee? If so that’s a large chunk of orbit (since he classes the 27 February 2010 full moon as a “supermoon”, when perigee was 18 hours before full Moon, this would seem likely. Heck he classes the October 6 New Moon as a "supermoon" when perigee occurs a full day before the New Moon). An “extreme supermoon” is one at 100% or greater mean perigree. This definition is incoherent (but seems to be every full Moon that occurs within 4 hours of perigee judging by his table of extreme super Moons).

Labels: Moon, Pseudoscience

AAVSO Alert Notice 432 is now up at at my Global-Rent-a-Scope blog. The AAVSO is calling for observations of a magnitude 14.5 supernova.

Labels: Global Rent-a-Scope

By now you will already know of the earthquake and tsunami devastation in Japan. Our hearts go out to the Japanese people in this time of trail. The Australian Red Cross have set up a donation page here.

Labels: emergency

Astroswanny's AARTScope Scan Code.



Carnival of Space #188 is now up at Astroswanny's AARTScope blog. This is the mobile phone app edition. Point your mobile scanner at the scan images and you will be taken to the appropriate blog page. There is self esteem for asteroids, Ceres on Pluto, journalistic ethics and a whole lot more. Activate scanners and have a visit

Labels: carnival of space

For the telescopically inclined, I've posted my March Highlights over at my Global-Rent-a-Scope blog. There's Pluto near M25 and the Southern Pleiades.

Labels: Global Rent-a-Scope

Over at Science in Pen and Ink Lelia Battison has an in-depth discussion of Richard Hoovers' paper on alleged "fossil" bacteria in CI1 Carbonaceous Meteorites in the Journal of Cosmology. It is an excellent article that covers a lot of issues not previously covered, and brings together some other information that has been scattered around. I'm referenced as well. Go have a read of Microbes on a Moonbeam, disentangling the Meteorite Microbe claims.

(for reference my posts on the subject are here and here)

Labels: Meteors, origin of life, review, science

So I typed in just "Elenin" into a Certain Famous Web Search Engine, because I was too lazy to type in "Elenin aerith" to find comet 2010 X1's latest observations.

And wow, is there some crazy out there. Comet Elenin is a smoke screen to take our attention away from Nibiru, it's under intelligent control, its' going to hit Earth it's .. the origin of Nibiru AND it's going to hit Earth.

Look, it's just another relatively small lump of dirty ice that periodically comes close to the Sun, it can't hide a 4 Jupiter mass gas giant (we would have noticed), it's not going to hit Earth (we know it's orbit pretty well). No one has gotten all conspiracy-ey over C/2011 C1 McNaught, or A3 Gibs, or even C/2009 P1 Garrad which will be as bright as Elenin.

What is it about Elenin that makes it woo-tastic?

Labels: comets, miscelaneous, Pseudoscience

Sunspot group 1166 was the site of an X1.6 class flare about an hour ago (12:00 pm). This is a pretty significant flare, and should be sufficiently aligned with Earth to have a good chance of producing aurora. Currently the only warning from the Australian IPS is for a chance of activity today from the flares of yesterday from Sunspot Group 1164. See also Spaceweather.

We will have to wait a little while to see if this flare will have the potential for aurora.

UPDATE via Spaceweather:

Newly-arriving coronagraph data from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory show no bright CME emerging from this eruption. Some material was surely hurled in our direction, but probably not enough for significant Earth-effects.

Labels: aurora, Solar flare, sunspot

The Astronomical Society of the Pacific has produced two podcasts that may be of interest to people coming here. I'll just repost their email to me.

The nonprofit Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP)
is pleased to announce two new resources for
educators, outreach professionals, journalists,
and astronomy enthusiasts:

1. Prof. Michael Brown (Caltech) explains "How I
Killed Pluto and Why It Had it Coming" in a free podcast
in the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture Series from
Jan. 19th, 2011:
http://www.astrosociety.org/education/podcast/index.html

In this wonderfully personal and humorous talk, Dr. Brown
explains exactly what happened and didn't happen when
astronomers reached the controversial new definition of
a planet.

(On that same page, you can find a podcast from November,
in which Natalie Batalha sets the background about the Kepler
mission and explains the search for other Earths in our
cosmic neighborhood.)

2. The latest issue of "The Universe in the Classroom" Newsletter
on Teaching Astronomy celebrates the 50th anniversary of the
Drake Equation -- the formula proposed by Frank Drake that
helps scientists estimate the likelihood of intelligent, communicative
life in the universe:
http://www.astrosociety.org/education/publications/tnl/77/77.html

In addition to a nice historical summary of the equation and
how it is used, the issues includes resources and classroom
activities on this topic.

Labels: education, Pluto, podcasts, science communicators