Astroblog

Finally bit the bullet and bought a trolley for the kayak, instead of
strapping it to a sack truck. Still a bit of mucking around to do, but
much. much easier. Went with the Bettdeckererscnappender weisle to see
how the Country Fire Service stand was going at the Caravan and
Camping show, and saw the trolley whole trying to navigate through 30
gigatons of caravans.

Comet 2009 P1 Garrad imaged near the globular cluster M15 with the GRAS 14 instrument at Global Rent a Scope with 1 x 120 sec Red filter FITS image, 1 x 120 sec Green filter FITS image and 1 x 120 sec Blue filter FITS image. Images stacked and contrast enhanced using Image J then assembled into a RGB composite.

Definitely click to embiggen, it will be worth it.

Comet 2009 P1 Garrad is currently magnitude 8 and in the constellation Pegasus, ideally located for northern hemisphere viewers. It will pass lots of interesting clusters and galaxies as it goes by. On August 1 and 2 it will be quite lose to the globular cluster M15.

Labels: astrophotography, cluster, comet, Global Rent-a-Scope

Two months ago I wrote a somewhat scathing critique of Mensur Omerbashich's unpublished paper “Astronomical Alignments as the Cause of ~M6+ Seismicity” http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.2036. To remind you, the paper claims to show that astronomical alignments, particularly that of comet X1 Elenin, are the proximal cause of earthquakes of magnitude 6 or stronger.

Dr. Omerbashich has recently put out a revised version of his paper, does it improve on the previous versions?

The answer is no, it raises more questions than it answers, although it answers some things (but not in a good way).

Gravitational shadowing: I now know what "gravitational shadowing" is. Mensur Omerbashich speaks of resonance patterns caused by "gravitational shadows" passing Earth. It turns out that the Good Doctor doesn't like Newton or Einstein, and has formulated a theory where gravity is a repulsive force, and that attraction between objects is due to the objects blocking the repulsive gravitational force (the explanation of "gravitational shadowing" is up the back of this paper on scale invariance).

Now, Einstein's theory has been tested to high levels of precision, and the frame dragging effect has been experimentally measured, so I'm not sure we need a repulsive theory of gravity. Still, for our purposes Omerbashich's theory reproduces the tidal effects seen with Newtonian/Einsteinian gravity, so we can use tidal force calculations in testing his theory.

The Metaphor: Dr. Omerbashich often uses the metaphor that his resonator effect to that of a group of soldiers marching in lockstep across a bridge, causing damaging resonances in the bridge. Well, imagine the Moon is a 70 Kg soldier marching along (his footfalls are the 14.7 day Full Moon-New Moon interval, see here). Adding further "soldiers" marching with the same footfall pattern and you can build up a resonance.

The problem here is the mass and periods of the other astronomical objects. Imagine marching with the soldier is an an ant. The mass of the ant is far too small to add to the resonance, and on the other critical issue, the frequency of its footfalls will not match the soldiers. AND that ant is 10 times more massive in relation to the soldier than Elenin is to the Moon. In terms of tidal force, which is what counts, Elenin is more like a bacteria, the ant is roughly the relationship between Venus and the Moon in terms of tidal force.

Now, it is just a metaphor, and we shouldn't push it too hard, but it does help think about the relative masses and periods of astronomical objects in relationship to the Earth and its alignment.

Mercury, Venus and Earth on 20 April 2010, according to Mensur Omerbashich, this constitutes an alignment.

Alignments: It's still not clear what constitutes an alignment in Omerbashich's paper. That is, how close do two objects have to be in the sky for them to significantly contribute to the resonance effect (is the ant marching with the soldiers, or behind them, and how far behind will work).

It is not explicitly stated in the paper, but looking at what he actually presents as "alignments", an "alignment" is a very large piece of territory.

For example, the "Earth-Mercury-Sun-Venus" alignment of 3 January 2010 (see table 1 of the paper), the "alignment" occurs with the planets within a circle centered on the Sun which is 4 degrees in radius. To put this in perspective, it's a chunk of sky 16 full Moons in diameter, you could cover it with your outstretched hand. This is an enormous chunk of territory to claim an alignment over (the September 3 alignment is also 4 degrees in radius).

Remember tidal force/"gravitational shadowing" falls off as the cbe of the distance, but also depends on the vector angle (this is why high tides are higher during Full/New Mooon than First/Last Quarter Moon), so angular separation is important.

Worse, Omerbashich calculates his alignments from the JPL Orbital Solution program, rather than an actual analytical astronomical program. His errors are +/- 1 degree, which is astronomically enormous (an error of +/- two full Moon diameters). So the alignments are not guaranteed to be meaningful. For example, in the April 13 "alignment", the Moon is 15 degrees from the Sun, and Mercury, Earth and Venus are over 5 degrees apart, by April 20 the "alignment" of Mercury, Earth and Venus is 12 degrees apart (see image above).

As well, there are a couple of errors in listing alignments that make them look better than they are. For example, the Full Moon is shown as occurring on February 27, at the same time as the Magnitude 8.8 Earthquake in Chile, but the Full Moon (and closest Earth-Sun-Moon alignment) was on February 28 at 16:38 UT, while the Chilean Earthquake was at 6:34 UT on February 27. Other errors that I noted in my first post have not been fixed.

This is the alignment of June 12 (Earth-Sun-Moon, Earth-Uranus-Jupiter) as noted by Dr. Omerbashich, it makes no sense from Omerbashich's own hypothesis.

Furthermore, in terms of the metaphor of soldiers marching in lockstep, some of the alignments are at cross purposes.

Any three (or more) bodies in more or less a straight line constitute an alignment, but many times one alignment is at a significant angle to the other.

For example, in the June 12 alignment, the Earth, Jupiter, Uranus alignment is almost at 90 degrees to the Earth, Sun, Moon alignment.

Now we know that the highest high tides occur when the Moon and Sun are in alignment, and the lowest high tides occur when the Moon and Sun are 90 degrees from each other. The same principle should occur here. In terms of the soldier metaphor, it's like the soldiers are marching 90 out of phase, breaking the lockstep.

What's still missing: Dr. Omerbashich ignored lot of solar system territory in his alignments. It was unclear in his initial paper why the focus was the tiny comet Elenin, rather the the other comets of 2010, like the spectacular Hartley, or the plethora of much bigger asteroids. His reasoning is that anything with an inclination of greater than 1 degree to the plane of the ecliptic can't form long alignments (3 days plus) with other planets.

However, by this criteria, there are 11, 903 known objects in the solar system capable of doing just that, like 24 Themis, a 193 Km diameter asteroid far more hefty than wimpy Elenin. It forms a nice long alignment with Venus and Earth centered on September 15, and a Saturn-Sun-Earth-Themis alignment centered on September 30. Yet these are not considered despite Themis producing a larger "gravitational shadow" than Elenin.

As well, He's still claiming that Elinin is dragging around a mass of gravitationally locked particles, but this is the coma, a feature of all comets that approach the Sun closely, (comet 81P Wild had a coma of 50,000 Km and 103P Hartley had a coma of 150,000 Km). The coma is not gravitationally locked, but is dynamic, being continually renewed as particals are lost to space.

Testing the hypothesis: Dr. Omerbashich doesn't test his hypothesis beyond showing there are alignments with earthquakes at roughly the same time (he claims that the numbers are too small for statistics, which immediately raises a red flag).

But the null hypothesis is not "there will be no earthquakes in the absence of alignments" but "earthquakes will occur randomly with respect to alignments". After all, geologists and geophysicists have their own explanations for earthquakes (plate slipping and plate subduction), for which there is some degree of evidence.

Now, some of the alignments do coincide with earthquakes, but is it more than you would expect by chance alone? Our intuitive sense is a very poor guide to answering statistical questions, so we have to be a bit rigorous here.


One of these graphs represents real data from a year of earthquakes, and one is simulated through random number generation. Can you tell which is which (click to embiggen, answer below at [*]).

In my original post I showed that the frequency of earthquakes during Full/New Moon alignments were no different than you would expect by chance, and that the Full/New Moon alignments had no more earthquakes than the First/Last Quarter Moons, which is not what would be expected under Omerbashich's hypothesis.

For this post I generated a random distribution with the frequency of 6+, 7+ and 8+ earthquakes based on the 10 year average for these earthquakes.

Remember, in any given year there are 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 +/- 1 days of that (the window used by Dr. Omerbashich) you will almost certainly, on average have at least one quake of magnitude 6-6.9 in that date range and a roughly 13% chance of having a larger magnitude quake in that time slice.

The resonance patter seen as a gravitational shadow transverses Earth. Or is it?

I generated random "earthquakes" for 365 days then dropped the dates of Omerbashich's alignments on them.

Not surprisingly, a lot of the alignments had "earthquakes" associated with them. The image to the left is for a typical association. It looks as if the earthquake magnitude rises with time, just like in the (badly flawed) figure 1 of Omerbashich's paper. But of course we are just seeing a random association with simulated data.

This rather graphically establishes that Dr. Omerbashich's results are no more than chance associations. You can do Chi Squared tests as well, to show that the distributions are just what we expect by chance alone, but those are kind of dry. Is there another way to demonstrate that Omerbashich's results are just chance?

Fourier Analysis: We can use Fourier Analysis. I reported the results in my previous post but didn't show the graph. I do so now. Fourier analysis is the standard way to extract signals of cyclical phenomena from noisy data. Usefully, it can pull out multiple periods from a single data set.

The canonical astronomical example is Fourier analysis on Sunspot data to find the periodicity of sunspots (see http://linuxgazette.net/115/andreasen.html and scroll down to example 2).

Another use which is even more relevant here is extracting the orbital period of exoplanets from doppler shift data (heck, it was even used back in 1805 by Gauss to find the periods of the Orbits of Pallas and Juno).

So what we are trying to find in the earthquake data is the periodicity associated with the Earth- Moon-Sun alignments, Earth-Mercury-Sun alignments , Earth-Venus-Sun alignments and so on. Long period alignments won't turn up in Fourier analysis with the amount of data we have, but the short period ones will. Importantly, I'm talking about the periodicity of the alignments, not the length of the alignments. Mercury and Venus produce long alignments as per Omerbashich, but occur quite frequently.

Now, again I emphasize that the data will be noisy, we don't expect a M6+ earthquake every alignment, nor do we expect the earthquakes will occur precisely at times of maximal tidal force/"gravitational shadowing". But again, that's the point of Fourier Analysis, it can pull out patterns out of noisy data.

In the 11 year data set from 2000 to 2010 there are 264 Earth-Moon-Sun alignments, 69 Earth-Sun-Mercury alignments, 14 Earth-Venus-Sun alignments and 20 Sun-Earth-Jupiter alignments (alignments calculated using SkyMap, earthquake magnitude data from here).

If these alignments play any significant role, as Dr. Omerbashich claims, then we should recover these periodicities in an 11 year data set (for example, I can recover the 11 year sunspot cycle from a 32 year data set - this is short data set compared to the signal).

Even if the Moon signal is relatively weak, with 264 alignments the peak should stand out (I can recover this peak in a single years tidal records using Fourier Analysis). Mercury should stand out like a sore thumb. And Earth Moon Sun signal should be particularly strong if Omerbashich is correct. Dr. Omerbashich himself picked up the Moon periodicity in superconducting gravimeter data (see this paper, figures 4 and 5), so if this translates to earthqukes, as he claims, it should show up.

Left image, Fourier analysis plot of 11 years of daily earthquake data (2000-2010). Right image Fourier analysis of one year of tidal data (click to embiggen).

As you can see, there are no peaks in the earthquake data. In contrast the 14.7 day Moon periodicity is readily recovered in the one year tidal dataset.

Impotantly, in the tidal data set, even though there is always a highest high tide, its timing and magnitude are variable. The fact that we can pick up the Moon peak out of a short, noisy data set is a positive control for the Earthquake dataset.

If, as Dr. Omerbashich claims, the majority of M6+ is due to astronmical alignments, we should recover some of these patterns from a 11 year data set. We don't, we can't even see the Moon. suggesting any influence of astronomical alignments on earth quakes is very small.

Summary: Analysis of earthquake data stes show that the apparent corrleation between earthquakes and astronomical alignments is by chance alone. The effect of comet Elenin on earthquakes is non-existant, whihc is only to be expected, you would hardly expect a bacterium marching in lockstep with a soldier to break a bridge, would you?


[*]Which distribution is real and which is random? Data 1 is the earthquake record for the year 2000, and data 2 is the randomly generated data.

Labels: comets, Pseudoscience

Carnival of Space #207 is now up at The Next Big Future. There's exoplanet aurora, one year of Neptune, Kardashev level two civilizations, nearby Dwarf Stars and much more. Pop on over and have a read.

Labels: carnival of space

Location of the radiant of the Southern Delta meteor shower. Left; location of radiant at 10:00 pm ACST on 29 July. Right; location of radiant at 3:00 am ACST 30 July (it is almost due north at this time), similar views will be seen a similar local times elsewhere in Australia, click to embiggen.

The number of meteors you will see depends on how high the radiant is above the horizon, and how dark your sky is. we should see around a meteor every 4 minutes. At 10 pm you should see a meteor about once every 10 minutes. At 3:00 am, when the radiant is highest, those with dark skies can expect to see a meteor every 4 minutes.

When looking, be sure to let your eyes adjust for at least 5 minutes so your eyes can be properly adapted to the dark. Don't look directly at the radiant site, because the meteors will often start their "burn" some distance from it, but around a hand-span up or to the side. Be patient, although you should see an average of a meteor every four minutes, a whole stretch of time can go by without a meteor, then a whole bunch turn up one after the other.

Make yourself comfortable, choose an observing site that has little to obstruct the horizon (and doesn't have street lights getting in the way), have a comfortable chair to sit in (a banana lounger is best), or blankets and pillows. A hot Thermos of something to drink and LOTS of warm clothing will make your observing time comfortable. As well as meteors, keep an eye out for satellites (see Heavens Above for predictions from your site).

The sky will also be beautiful, with the Milky Way sinking in the west, and Jupiter, the Hyades and Pleiades rising in the east.

Use the NASA meteor shower flux estimator for an estimate of what the shower will be like from your location. You need to choose 5 Southern Delta Aquarids and remember to set the date to 28-29 July 0r 29-30 July 2011.

Labels: Meteors

The crescent Moon shines just below Mars on the morning of Thursday, July 28 2011 at 6:10 ACST.

The left image shows a sweeping view of the sky from Jupiter (top left) to Orion, with the Pleiades and Hyades clusters as well. Mars is in line with the "horns" of Taurus the Bull, Elnath (the brightest star in line with Mars) and 24 Tauri. The right image is a 3x close-up. You will need to click and embiggen the image to see the stars at their best.

Labels: astrophotography, Hyades, Mars, Moon, Pleiades

The overexposed crescent Moon, a Jet contrail, sunlit clouds, Aldebaran (above Moon), Elnath an Mars (below Moon) as seen on the morning of July 27 at 6:30 am. Click to embiggen to see Aldebaran, Mars and Elnath (they can be quite difficult to find)

Labels: astrophotography, Hyades, Mars, Moon

The New Moon is Sunday July 31. This is the second New Moon this month. Jupiter is high in the morning sky. Mars leaves the horns of Taurus the Bull. The Moon visits Mars on the 28th and Mercury on August 1. Saturn is drawing away from the star Porrima, gamma Virginis. The Southern Delta Aquariids Meteor shower peaks on the mornings of July 29 and 30.

Morning sky looking north-east as seen from Adelaide at 6:30 am local time on Monday August 1 showing the Moon, Jupiter, Mars and the constellations. Mars is close to the "Horns" of the constellation Taurus, the Bull. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time. Click to embiggen.

The New Moon is Sunday July 31. This is the second New Moon this month, so you can think of it as a "Blue" New Moon.

In the morning Jupiter is high above the north-eastern sky. Mars is low in the eastern sky, between the stars that form the "horns" of the Taurus the bull. During the week Mars pulls away from Elnath and Zeta Tauri, the stars that define the horns. On Thursday July 28 the crescent Moon is near Mars.

After dominating the morning sky for months, bright white Venus is now lost in the twilight glow.

Evening sky on Monday August 1 looking west as seen from Adelaide at 6:15 pm local time in South Australia showing the crescent Moon, Mercury and the bright star Regulus forming a tiangle in the early twilight sky. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time (click to embiggen).

After giving us a nice show, Mercury begins to leave the evening sky. Mercury starts the week close to the bright star Regulus, and on Monday August 1 the thin crescent Moon, Mercury and Regulus form a nice triangle in the early evening sky. However, you will need a fairly clear, level horizon to see this massing to its best.

Saturn is readily visible as the bright yellowish object not far from the bright star Spica. It is getting lower in the sky, and the window for telescopic observation is narrower. Saturn is still close to the star Porrima (gamma Virginis). They are moving apart, but are still reasonably close together.

Even in small telescopes you can see Saturn's rings and it's moon Titan. Despite being past opposition, when Saturn was at its biggest, Saturn is still big and beautiful.

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 location of Vesta as seen at 8:30 pm on July 23rd looking east from Adelaide, similar views will be seen at equivalent local times elsewhere. Click to embiggen,

The asteroid Vesta is becoming brighter and is now readily visible in binoculars and is just over the threshold of unaided eye visibility (magnitude 5.8). To see it with the unaided eye you will need to be in a dark sky location though.

Vesta is now roughly between two relatively bright stars, zeta Capricorni and 24 Capricorni, making it very easy to find. Zeta Capricorni is the fourth star up and to the right of the brightest star in Capricornus (see image to left) and 24 Cap is the 5th. Vesta moves significantly night to night, so will be easy to follow. A chart showing Vesta's location is here.

The mornings of 29 and 30 July are the peak of the Southern Delta Aquarids. A reasonable meteor shower, if you look east from 10 pm on, you should see meteors Tthe best rates will be at 3 am in the morning (see here for a link to a map) when we should see around a meteor every 4 minutes .

Use the NASA meteor shower flux estimator for an estimate of what the shower will be like from your location. You need to choose 5 Southern Delta Aquariids and remember to set the date to 28-29 July 0r 29-30 July 2011.

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

A dimmer iridium flare today (Tuesday 26 July), only -1, but near the tail of Scorpius . The flare is just under the constellation of Ara, the altar, and in the picture you can see Ptolemy's Cluster (Far left) and the false comet (near top).

As always, click to embiggen for clustery goodness.

Labels: astrophotography, iridium flares

Mercury and the bright Star Regulus (alpha Leonis) in the early evening sky. Left Image: Friday 22 July around 6:30 pm ACST, Regulus is the bright object near top left, Mercury is the bright object to the left and below Regulus. Right Image: Mercury and Regulus on Tuesday 26 July 6:30 pm ASCT, Mercury and Regulus are close together, left of centre. As always, click to embiggen.

Labels: astrophotography, Mercury

The over exposed crescent Moon shines near the Pleiades (left) and Hyades (right) clusters with Jupiter above left (click to embiggen to see the Pleiades).

Labels: Moon, Pleiades

A magnitude -8 Iridium flare in the early evening, the sky lit with clouds (click to embiggen).

Labels: iridium flares

Vesta Moves! Images of the asteroid Vesta taken on 20-07-11 and 21-07-11 at 11:30 pm using a Canon IXUS at 3.0 x optical zoom and ASA 400 for 15 seconds exposure (hence the trailing, click to embiggen).

The Asteroid Vesta is currently bright enogh to see with the unaided eye .. if you're somewhere really dark, my backyard is not. However, it's really obvious in binoculars, and a simple unguided 15 second exposure with my "point and shoot" digital camera was good enough to pick it up and its movement over successive days.

Why don't you try it?

Labels: 4 Vesta, astrophotography

One of the unique costumes at AVCON.

AS people know, I am an unrelenting geek and nerd. A dedicated SciFi fan, I also like Manga and Anime. The first time I saw Neon Genesis Evangelicon I was hooked (several years and multiple viewings later, I still don't understand it, but that's part of the fascination see Haiku #3).

My boys like Anime and Manga too, although our interests don't fully over lap, we all like Bleach and Azumanga Diaoh, but I have no interest in Naruto.

I'm also not much of a convention goer, but the boys wanted to go to AVCON, the Adelaide Anime and Video Convention. Especially since Martin Billany, creator of the Yugioh Abridged series under the name, LittleKuriboh, was going to be there. So who was I to say no?


LittleKuriboh chugs a Farmers Union Iced Coffee, it was better than Vegemite (hey, it's a mobile phone in low light, with the stupidest camera button in the world, seriously, you need tentacles instead of fingers to use it) .

Little Kuriboh was definitely the highlight of the con, with huge line-ups to get into his panels. He was witty and hilarious, and went along with many of the fan requests, like chugging a carton of the local "delicacy" framers union Iced Coffee, and doing a rap battle.

His voice impressions were pretty amazing too, and he screened two new Yuigoh Abridged videos which had me crying with laughter.

As well, because of my project I attended the drawing and illustration workshops, and the Steampunk displays and costume display, all costumes at the con were pretty impressive, but I have a soft spot for steampunk, and the "costume show" had hilarious narration (elephants are endangered because mad scientists need them to demonstrate how effective their weapons are, and the portable elephant teleporter was a marvel).



Aside from that, MiddleOne and I saw some good Anime (Xam'd looks quite interesting, Vampire Knight not so much) while EldestOne hung out with his friends in the gaming sections. The "Spicks and Specks" type Anime quiz, "Tentacles and Mecha" was a bit disappointing, as due to the (admittedly awesome) Cosplay event running grossly overtime, there wasn't much time for it, and some of the questions were poorly framed.

Still, minor quibbles in an overall awesome weekend, a good mind break before second semester assaults us.

Labels: home life, miscelaneous

At AVCON this weekend with EldestOne and MiddleOne, not much blogging
going to happen (yes, I'm a geek and a nerd).

I know northern hemispherians laugh at what Australians consider cold. But the frost this morning shows that it was cold. Really.

There has been a lot of angst about the size of comet C/2010 X1 Elenin on the internet, with some people worried it is either a Brown Dwarf Star or the Satellite of a Brown Dwarf. Both Leonid Elenin and I have used maths and simulations to show that the comet must be small, but people continue to be anxious, and are discussing the matter endlessly on various discussion groups.

Except a commenter called Astronut, who did something unthinkable, rather than endlessly nattering he actually tested the hypothesis that Elenin was big.

He bought time on a remote telescope (one of the Slooh scopes) in the Canary Islands, and measured the position of asteroid (74732) 1999 RQ176 twenty -four hours after it's close encounter with comet Elenein on May 20.

And it was exactly where it was predicted to be (see also Leonid Elenins images of the asteroid post encounter).

Now, this pass was very close, at it's closest 1999 RQ176 was 225,830 km from Elenin (around 0.002 AU), which is 0.59 of the average distance between the Earth and Moon. If Elenin was as massive as Jupiter, it would have substantially altered the asteroids location. And I mean substantially, not just a few arc minutes off, more like being degrees off, the asteroid sling-shotted off into deep space.

Actually, if Elenin was a Brown Dwarf, with a radius of 4 times that of Jupiter (285 968 Km), at closest approach the asteroid would have been deep inside the Brown Dwarfs photosphere, and wouldn't have come out again.

The very fact that we could see 1999 RQ176 at all, means that Elenin is not a Brown Dwarf.

Science is at its heart a practical enterprise, we test things, and Astronut has shown that citizen scientists can make significant contributions, all props to you Astronut.

UPDATE: Astronut follows up the observations here.

PS, if Astronut or one of Astronut's friends reads this, could he/she get in contact with me, Global Rent-a-Scope has an offer for you.

Labels: comet, Pseudoscience, scepticism, science matters

Left Panel, Shuttle passing the star Suhail al Muhlif, Right Panel, the ISS passing the same star. Click to embiggen for cluster goodness.

Well, I saw the very last shuttle pass, the de-orbit burn was at 18:20 ACST, and the shuttle passed low in the south at 18:34. I got the entire family out to watch for the very last instalment in the history of this icon of space flight. They weren't impressed.

The shuttle has landed safely. Tomorrow, the sky will be somehow different.

Labels: astrophotography, ISS, Space Shuttle

The Shuttle has delayed its de-orbit burn until orbit 201, so we will have an ultimate last chance to see the shuttle tonight from Australia. See CalSky for local predictions.
http://www.calsky.com/

Labels: astrophotography, Space Shuttle

Composite image showing the orbital notion of Pluto's moons, including the new P4 (click to embiggen). Image Credit Hubble Space Telescope.

I'm probably the last person to blog this, but a team at the Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a new moon for Pluto.

The tiny moon, charmingly named S/2011 P1 (or P4) at this stage, is somewhere between 13-34 Km in diameter. It orbits between Nix and Hydra, and is probably like then the remnants of a giant impact early in Pluto's history. Interestingly, it was found during a survey looking for rings around Pluto.

The extra moon has re-ignited the "Pluto is a planet" debate, but as asteroids have multiple moons, I don't think this will fly.

You can find more detail and commentary at the Planetary Society Blog and the Bad Astronomer (and Wikipedia). So rather than add more, I'm going to do what I do best, and give you a Celestia file.

Visualisation of P4 in Celestia (click to embiggen).

Pluto, Charon, Nix and Hydra are already in Celestia 1.6 so just copy the data between the lines into a file called newpluto.ssc (or whatever you like), and copy that file into the Celestia extras folder.

The data is quite preliminary (I've just copied a lot from Hydra), and will be updated in the near future, but for the moment the visualization isn't too far off the real thing.

========newpluto.ssc===============
# Newest Moon of Pluto
# http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/20jul_p4/

"Pluto IV:134340 Pluto IV:S/2011 P1" "Sol/Pluto"
{
Class "minormoon"
Texture "asteroid.jpg" # "spectrally neutral"
Mesh "asteroid.cms"
Radius 17 #upper limit

InfoURL "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moons_of_Pluto"

OrbitFrame {
EquatorJ2000 { Center "Sol/Pluto-Charon" }
}

EllipticalOrbit
{
Epoch 2455740.5 # 2011 June 28
Period 32.1 # mean
SemiMajorAxis 59000 # mean
Eccentricity 0.00 # mean
Inclination 96.362 #Using Hydra
AscendingNode 223.077 #Using Hydra
ArgOfPericenter 45.4 #Using Hydra
MeanLongitude 322.4 #Using Hydra
}

Albedo 0.18
}
================================================

Labels: celestia, hubble, Moon, Pluto

Carnival of Space #206 is now up at ZIME science. Well, actually it was up quite a few days ago, but with visiting relatives (and their birthday parties, and circus visits, and the whole DCMA thing, I forgot about it, sorry). The space shuttle features a lot (naturally), a look at what is up in the sky, propulsion systems for space travel, Dawn arriving at Vesta, defending Earth from Asteroids and a whole lot more. Pedal on over and have a read.

Labels: carnival of space

Not as good as Deans though, the shuttle is hard to see.

Labels: ISS, Space Shuttle

While I and many others were clouded out yesterday, Dean Male was lucky to have a hole the cloud and could get most of the ISS-Shuttle pass. The following video is made from his images. Enjoy!

Labels: astrophotography, ISS, Space Shuttle

The Shuttle Atlantis (mission STS-135) seen through the cloud as it streaks past the bright star Antares at 18:00 ACST. Image taken with a Canon IXUS at 200 ASA and 4 seconds exposure (Click to embiggen).

WOOT! Got the shuttle on it's historic (almost) last orbit as seen from Australia.

I was a bit worried, after going on 891 ABC local radio this afternoon to get people to look at the pass, the clouds were coming over again, although not as thick as yesterday, and the twilight sky was quite bright.

Would the shuttle be visible against the twilight glow? CalSky predicted to shuttle would be magnitude -1.1, which should be bright enough, but if the shuttle turned or had a manoeuvre not accounted for in the CalSky calculations it might be too dim. All the other shuttle passes I had seen were dim.

The ISS seen through the cloud as it streaks past the bright star Antares at 18:02 ACST. Image taken with a Canon IXUS at 200 ASA and 4 seconds exposure (Click to embiggen).

As I was worrying about this, and taking some test shots, I suddenly saw the shuttle zooming underneath Saturn and then Spica, and it was bright. Easily showing up through the clouds.

Unfortunately, because of the twilight skies brightness and the clouds, I wasn't exactly sure where the shuttle was with respect to where the camera was pointing. So I only got a few shots in the frame as I dithered. Still, I got one just above Antares (also, I was trying to actually watch the shuttle, rather than concentrating on Astrophotography). Dean Male also got some good shots, and we will be doing our parallax calculations again.

My video of the pass is here, and Dean's video of last nights pass is here.

As the Shuttle headed towards the horizon, the ISS rose. The ISS was much brighter and much easier to photograph (but further from Antares). For the very last time the ISS and the shuttle were in the sky together.

But possibly not the last time we see the shuttle, depending on whether the shuttle does it's re-entry burn on orbit 200 or orbit 201, we could see the shuttle one last time, low on the Southern horizon (at around 18:35 ACST in Adelaide the shuttle will be magnitude 0.5, quite easy to see, if the burn is on orbit 201). The ISS comes past 6 minutes later, after the shuttle has gone.

Still, after 30 years the shuttle program comes to an end, an entire generation has grown up with the shuttle climbing into the sky. People will still go to the ISS, and still go into space. But for a long time our ability for humans to do more than just reach the ISS will be gone. We have had many highs (like the mission to fix the vision of the Hubble telescope) and lows (the tragic loss of the crews of Challenger and Columbia) and some spectacular images.

I'll certainly miss the shuttles, to me it seemed we were on the threshold of a true sustainable presence in space. Here's a podcast of Australian astronaut Andy Thomas talking about the significance of the shuttle program and his memories of it.

But there is still a lot going on in space. Mercury is being orbited by Messenger, Dawn is sending back the first pictures of the asteroid Vesta, the New Horizons mission is on its way to icy worlds from the that will throw light on the origin of the solar system, Cassini sends back astounding images of Saturn, and the Mars rover keeps on trundling. As well the Kepler Telescope is finding hosts of extrasolar worlds. And that's just a short list.

So farewell space shuttles, you inspired us, let us remember you fondly.

Labels: astrophotography, ISS, Space Shuttle

UPDATE: Got it! Despite the cloud. Pictures later on, dinner first. Now it's later, the pictures are up.

The International Space Station passes by the bright red star Antares at 18:02:10 ACST as seen from Adelaide on Wednesday July 20, 2 minutes after the space shuttle Atlantis has skimmed the same star (click to embiggen). The ISS will look like a dot, not like the icon in the image. Antares is above the eastern horizon.

While the last time to see the shuttle and the ISS together was last night (with most people clouded out, sigh - still, you can see some images here), you can see the shuttle one last time tonight.

In Adelaide and Perth the Shuttle/ ISS pass is quite dramatic.

In Adelaide, the shuttle is approximately magnitude -1.1 (as bright as Sirius) and passes just 25', less than a quarter of a finger-width from magnitude 0.9 Antares at 18:00:10 ACST. Two minutes later the ISS skims past Antares a bit further away.

Note the time is given in seconds, the shuttle and ISS move relatively fast, and although they are above the horizon for 6 minutes, there is only about two minutes when they are really bright and passing interesting things.

The bad news is that the pass is only 6 minutes after the end of civil twilight, so the sky will be only moderately dark (although the Shuttle, ISS and Antares will be readily seen, the other stars may be harder to see). Antares is about 50 degrees (around 8 hand-spans) above the eastern horizon, and the Shuttle and ISS pass from north-west to south-east.


The path of the STS-135, the space shuttle Atlantis, across the Adelaide sky from 17:57 to 18:02 ACST (click to embiggen). Maximum brightness and closeness to Antares is 18:00:10 ACST.

In Perth the Shuttle and ISS pass close to bright Alpha Centauri, with the Shuttle passing at 18:01:45 and the ISS skimming half a finger-width away at 18:03:55. However, the passes are right on the end of civil twilight, so the sky will be fairy bright (but you should still see the shuttle and ISS reasonably well)

The East coast has the pair skimming low over the southern horizon (and not as bright as Adelaide or Perth), and Darwin and Alice Springs miss out all together.

As always, location, brightness and timing are very location dependent, so you will need to check CalSky and Heavens Above for predictions for your location.

Tomorrow night there is a slight chance we could see the shuttle just after the de-orbit burn.

Cloud cover predictions can be found at SkippySky.

Labels: astrophotography, ISS, Space Shuttle

Blogger has reinstated "Comet Elenin, a FAQ for the Worried" and the following posts:

http://astroblogger.blogspot.com/2011/05/comet-2010-x1-elenin-earthquakes.html
http://astroblogger.blogspot.com/2011/03/from-super-moons-to-comet-elenin-we.html
http://astroblogger.blogspot.com/2011/04/comet-elenin-faq-for-worried.html

Many thanks to the Blogger team for their rapid and timely attention to this matter. Given that 24 hours later no actual Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaint turned up on the Chilling Effects website, I conclude that this was a frivolous complaint and Blogger has agreed with this assessment.

I was not the only one targeted, RationalWiki also got a frivolous DCMA suit over their comet Elenin article, which was dismissed (Thanks for the heads up to T Tolouse can someone tell the RationalWiki guys I'm back).

And of course may thanks to the folks who gave me support and offered to host the FAQ's, you were terrific. I will of course continue to speak out for rationality, reason and good science.

Mensur Omerbashich has updated his ArXiv paper on Elenin and Earthquakes. My major criticisms still stand, but I will revisit the paper in the near future.

Labels: comets, Pseudoscience, scepticism, science communicators

Brendan O'Brien captured this shot of the shuttle and ISS with his wife's DSLR and 75mm lens (7 second exposure copyright Brendan O'Brien, please don't use without his permission).

Sadly, the sky was very badly clouded out here, so I saw nothing. Many of my correspondents were clouded out too (sobs bitterly). My mate Dean Male got some shots through a hole in the cloud which was not over my way (sobs again).

At IceInSpace some lucky folks got shots of the pass, some in high resolution.

The NASA shuttle site has images from NASA TV of the shuttle departing, and a video of the undocking. Via the Bad Astronomer is this video of the ISS and Shuttle seen in daylight.

Labels: astrophotography, ISS, Space Shuttle

The Last Quarter Moon is Saturday July 23. Jupiter is high in the morning sky. Mars heads towards the horns of Taurus the Bull. The Moon visits Jupiter on the 24th and Mars on the 28th. Mercury closes in on the star Regulus. Saturn is drawing away from the star Porrima, gamma Virginis.

Morning sky looking north-east as seen from Adelaide at 6:30 am local time on Sunday July 24 showing the Moon, Jupiter, Mars and the constellations. Mars is close to the "Horns" of the constellation Taurus, the Bull. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time. Click to embiggen.

The Last Quarter Moon is Saturday July 23.

In the morning Jupiter is high above the north-eastern sky. Mars is low in the eastern sky, below bright red star Aldebaran, heading towards the stars that form the "horns" of the Taurus the bull. Between July 24 and July 28 Mars is between Elnath and Zeta Tauri, the stars that define the horns.

On Sunday July 24 the waning Moon is near Jupiter, on Tuesday the 26th the crescent Moon is near the star cluster the Pleiades. On Thursday July 28 the crescent Moon is close to Mars.

After dominating the morning sky for months, bright white Venus is now lost in the twilight glow.

Evening sky on Wednesday July 27 looking west as seen from Adelaide at 6:15 pm local time in South Australia showing Mercury near the bright star Regulus. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time (click to embiggen).

Mercury continues to become more prominent in the evening sky in July. Mercury closes in on the bright star Regulus, and is closest on Wednesday July 27.

Saturn is readily visible as the bright yellowish object not far from the bright star Spica. It is getting lower in the sky, and the window for telescopic observation is narrower. Saturn is still close to the star Porrima (gamma Virginis). They are moving apart, but are still reasonably close together.

Even in small telescopes you can see Saturn's rings and it's moon Titan. Despite being past opposition, when Saturn was at its biggest, Saturn is still big and beautiful.

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 location of Vesta as seen at 9:00 pm on July 23rd looking east from Adelaide, similar views will be seen at equivalent local times elsewhere. Click to embiggen,

The asteroid Vesta is becoming brighter and is now readily visible in binoculars and is just over the threshold of unaided eye visibility (magnitude 5.9). To see it with the unaided eye you will need to be in a dark sky location though.

Vesta is now near zeta Capricorni, making it very easy to find. Zeta Capricorni is the fourth star up and to the right of the brightest star in Capricornus (see image to left). Vesta moves significantly night to night, so will be easy to follow. A chart showing Vesta's location is here.

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

.. it's been taken down by blogger, along with two other Elenin related posts (see below) for alleged violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) . Given that there is no copyrighted material on these sites (either material generated entirely by me or links to and citation of publicly available material), this is just a frivolous attack on people countering Elenin nonsense. I expect this will be reversed soon. But in the meantime

http://astroblogger.blogspot.com/2011/05/comet-2010-x1-elenin-earthquakes.html
http://astroblogger.blogspot.com/2011/03/from-super-moons-to-comet-elenin-we.html
http://astroblogger.blogspot.com/2011/04/comet-elenin-faq-for-worried.html

are not available.

Labels: comets, Pseudoscience, science matters

International Space Station as seen from Adelaide at 6:59 pm on the evening of July 19 looking south. The ISS will look like a bright dot, not the shape in the image (click to embiggen).

On July 19 (Australian time) the space shuttle undocks from the International Space Station.

That evening Australians have an excellent opportunity to see the historic last pairing of a shuttle and the ISS. We will see the ISS and the shuttle only 6 seconds apart, the two crossing closely across the sky.

Where and when you will see them is highly location dependent (although it will be early evening between about 5:30 and 7:30 pm), you will need to check CalSky and Heavens Above for predictions for your location. The East Coast ISS passes are generally short before the ISS and shuttle enter the Earth's shadow, so you need to be get the time correct.

The ISS and Shuttle are also visible on the 20th, but they are three minutes apart, and won't be so dramatic (although from Adelaide, they pass close to Antares).

Labels: astrophotography, ISS, Space Shuttle

Image of Vesta taken by the dawn spacecraft on July 9, image credit NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

The Dawn Spacecraft successfully entered orbit around the asteroid Vesta on the 15th of July US time (that's the 16th here in Australia).

The first part of the ion-powered spacecrafts epic mission has now started. A one year orbit of the battered, potatoe shaped chunk of rock that is Vesta, taking high resolution images and analysing the composition of the surface.





The location of Vesta, looking east at 8:30 pm ACST, as seen from Adelaide. Similar views will be seen elswhere in the southern hemisphere at equivalent local times (click to embiggen).

While waiting for NASA to download the first high resolution images of Vesta, you can see Vesta for yourself. Vesta is one of the brightest asteroids, and for the next few weeks it is bright enough to be seen with the unaided eye, provided you have dark enough skies (and are viewing before the waning Moon rises).

But it is readily visible in even small binoculars. No matter whether you are using your eyesight or binoculars, if you look east between 8:30 and 10:30 pm you will see distinctive V shape group of stars that is part of the constellation of Capricornius



High power view of the area around Vesta, suitable for use with binoculars (click to embiggen).

Vesta is near the moderately bright star zeta Capricorni, making it very easy to find. Zeta Capricorni is the fourth star up and to the right of the brightest star in Capricornus (see image above).


If you are still unsure which one is is Vesta, Vesta moves significantly night to night, so it will be easy to determine which one is Vesta, and you can now follow it over the weeks, knowing one of humanities spacecraft is orbiting it.

A chart showing Vesta's location is here.

Labels: asteroids, spacecraft

The Full Moon is Friday July 15. Jupiter is high in the morning sky. Mars heads towards the horns of Taurus the Bull. Mercury closes in on the star Regulus. Saturn is still close to the star Porrima, gamma Virginis.

Morning sky looking north-east as seen from Adelaide at 6:30 am local time on Sunday July 17 showing Jupiter Mars and the constellations. Mars is close to the red star Aldebaran. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time. Click to embiggen.

The First Quarter Moon is Friday July 8.

In the morning Jupiter is high above the north-eastern sky. Mars is low in the eastern sky, below bright red star Aldebaran, heading towards the stars that form the horns of the bull.

After dominating the morning sky for months, bright white Venus is now lost in the twilight glow.

Evening sky on Thursday July 21 looking west as seen from Adelaide at 6:00 pm local time in South Australia showing Mercury near the bright star Regulus. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time (click to embiggen).

Mercury continues to become more prominent in the evening sky in July. Mercury closes in on the bright star Regulus, becoming very close by the end of the week.

Saturn is readily visible as the bright yellowish object not far from the bright star Spica. It is getting lower in the sky, and the window for telescopic observation is narrower. Saturn is still close to the star Porrima (gamma Virginis). They are moving apart, but are still reasonably close together.

Even in small telescopes you can see Saturn's rings and it's moon Titan. Despite being past opposition, when Saturn was at its biggest, Saturn is still big and beautiful.

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 location of Vesta as seen at 9:00 pm on July 16th looking east from Adelaide, similar views will be seen at equivalent local times elsewhere. Click to embiggen,

The asteroid Vesta is becoming brighter and is now readily visible in binoculars and is just on the threshold of unaided eye visibility(magnitude 6.0), unfortunately, the waxing moon makes it hard to see by eye alone at the moment.

Vesta i snow near zeta Capricorni, making it very easy to find. Iota Capricorni is the fourth star up and to the right of the brightest star in Capricornus (see image to left). Vesta moves significantly night to night, so will be easy to follow. A chart showing Vesta's location is here.

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

Carnival of Space #205 is now up at The Next Big Future. The last Space Shuttle flight dominates the news of course, space mining, PANSTARRS search for killer asteroids, Blondes in Space and much. much more. Head on over and have a read.

Labels: carnival of space

V Puppis, an Algol-style variable star that can help show that the Earth orbits the Sun.

How can we demonstrate that the Earth orbits the Sun, using simple amateur astronomy kit? I've discussed this before, but I have been inspired to visit the idea again by two things; firstly, the new astronomy stack exchange (as mentioned by the Bad Astronomer), particularly the stack on determining how to determine if the Earth orbits the Sun, secondly the report that a group misrepresented themselves to astronomers to make a film promoting geocentrisim.

So,what is the simplest way to show the Earth orbits the Sun. This is a slightly different question from showing that the other planets orbit the Sun. Remember, there are two models that have the Sun orbiting the Earth, the Ptolemaic system and the Tychonian System. In the Ptolemaic system the Sun, all the planets and the fixed stars revolve around the Earth. In the Tychonian system the planets orbit the Sun and the Sun orbits the Earth.

This has implications for the kind of tests you can do. To disprove the Ptolemaic system is relatively easy. Observing the phases of Venus will disprove the Ptolemaic systemand you can observe them with decent binoculars or a small telescope (see here), but you will get phases of Venus in the Tychonian system.

To disprove the Tychonian system you need a bit more. Things like the aberration of starlight and parallax shift are a bit beyond the average amateur with an average telescope. But there are two ways you can show that Earth orbits the sun with just binoculars.

Location of the Algol-style variable RZ Cassiopeia.

The first way is the annual variation in the paths sunspots take across the sun (explained here, and with a diagram at the end of the post here).

But I've just found another one. Using the time lags in the timing of maxima of of Algol -type variable stars over the period of a year, you can show that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

The basic idea is that the finite time it takes for light to cross the Earths orbit will cause the time of the Maxima of variables to differ by +/- 5.3 minutes. The details can be found here. The author used RZ Cassiopea, an Algol-style variable which has decent magnitude fluctuation that can be picked up in decent binoculars. The maxima and minima can be adequately timed with a good quality watch.

Of course, it takes some time to meausre the maxima and minima, and you need a couple of years of data to do it accurately, but it can be done by amateurs armed with nothing more than binoculars and a decent watch. For Southern Hemisphere observers, RZ Cas is not visible, but V Puppis, an Algol-style variable with a period of 1.4545 days may be an acceptible subsitute, although it may be below the horizon at some points.

Not that this will convince die-hard geocentricists, every observable motion, from Sunspot movement to the abberation of stratlight to changes in maxima timing to parralax motion is due to a magical aether (the one that was shown to be non-existent by the Michelson-Morley experiment) or magical properties of high altitude winds.

But you can do it yourself to your own satisfaction.

Labels: binocular, Copernhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifnk.gificus, Galileo