Astroblog

Global Astronomy Month starts April the 1st. An initiative of Astronomer without Borders, there will be star parties, image competitions and more. See the Global Astronomy Month homepage for more information, follow the Australian GAM facebook page, or visit the IceInSpace GAM page.

To start off, there's an online Messier Marathon at 18:00 hours UT on April 1, (that's 4am April 2, AEST)

Labels: miscelaneous

At the Adelaide Oz Comicon with MiddleOne and the two Japanese exchange students. MiddleOne celebrates an annual solar rotation today, and is devestated you have to be 18 to buy replica swords.

Sunspot 1429, which produced several strong flares and was responsible for some nice aurora, is rotating back onto the face of the Sun we see. It is still active, and we might have a chance of aurora (although by the time it is facing us directly, strong Moonlight will interfere). See more here.

Labels: Solar flare, sunspot

The City of Adelaide is the oldest clipper ship in the world. In an event ideal for educators, hear from those involved about the innovative SA technology behind the massive project to bring her home from Scotland. Collect a free City-of-Adelaide-in-Bottle pattern.

The presentation will focus on the history and significance of the ‘City of Adelaide’ and will include a high level overview on how the clipper will be brought to Adelaide. Presenter is director and naval architect Peter Roberts.

Monday 2 April 2012 6.00pm - 8:00 pm at RiAus

The Science Exchange
55 Exchange Place
Adelaide, South Australia 5000

In association with the RiAus (The Royal Institution Australia)

ASCSA and RiAus members FREE; booking required

http://ascsacityofadelaide.eventbrite.com.au/

Non-members $10 non-member concession card holders and children $5

Book using the ticketing link below and pay at the door.

http://ascsacityofadelaide.eventbrite.com.au/

Drinks available for sale at the bar and nibbles provided free to attendees

Labels: science communicators

No it's Venus (I'm quoted). To be fair, down by the sea flares are a serious matter, and one going off can mean someone in distress or the local yobbos having a lark, so it's better to be safe than sorry. The Advertiser article on the Planet Dance is here, in the actual paper version there was a nice photo of my telescope.

Labels: miscelaneous

Eastern Sky at 8:30 pm daylight saving time.

At 8:30 pm on Saturday 31 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 north-eastern horizon the brightest object is Mars, followed by Saturn, close to the bright white star Spica above the eastern horizon. 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 with bright Venus nearby.

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 (although the ISS passes at 7:53 pm), 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

Now you see it, now you don't. The ion tail of C/2009 P1 Garrad on 27 March (left image) virtually disappears on 28 March (right image). Images taken with iTelescope T14. There are the low resolution JPG images. I'm still flat out so haven't time to process the FITS images yet.

Labels: C/2009 P1 Garradd, comet, iTelescope

The First Quarter Moon is Saturday March 31. This is a "Blue" First Quarter Moon, the second in the month. Daylight saving time ends. Venus is easily visible in the western evening sky close to Jupiter and the Pleiades cluster. On April 3 Venus is closest to the Pleiades. Mars is in the eastern evening sky, not far from the bright Star Regulus. On the 3rd the Moon is close to Mars and Regulus. Saturn is in the late evening eastern sky near the star Spica.

Evening sky looking east as seen from Adelaide at 8:00 pm local time on Tuesday April 3 showing Mars, and Regulus and the Moon forming a line. Saturn is nearby near Spica. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time. The inset shows the telescopic appearance of Mars, Saturn and it's Moons at this time. Click to embiggen.

The First Quarter Moon is Saturday March 31. This is a "Blue" First Quarter Moon, the second in the month.

Mars is in the constellation of Leo. It is the brightest object in the north eastern sky, and its distinctive red colour makes it easy to spot. Mars is rising before sunset and is at its highest in the northern sky around midnight.

Mars moves closer to the bright star Regulus in Leo, on April 3rd the waxing Moon, Regulus and Mars form a nice line.

Mars was at opposition on March 4, when it was biggest and brightest as seen from Earth. Sadly, this is a poor opposition and Mars will be fairly small in modest telescopes. Even so, you should be still able to see the polar caps, so still have a go if you have a telescope.

Saturn is above the north-eastern horizon, not far from the bright star Spica. Saturn is high enough in the northern sky in the early morning for telescopic observation, but is rising about 7 pm local time.

Mercury is lost in twilight.

Evening sky on Tuesday April 3 looking west as seen from Adelaide at 6:45 pm local time in South Australia showing Venus next to the Pleiades cluster and Jupiter nearby. The inset shows the appearance of Venus seen telescopically at this time. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time (click to embiggen)

Bright white Venus and Jupiter are readily visible together in the evening western twilight sky from around half an hour after sunset for around an hour and a half.

Venenters Taurus this week and is drawing away from Jupiter. Between the 2nd and the 4th of April Venus is close to the beautiful Pleiades cluster, being closest on the 3rd.

Telescopic observation of Jupiter is now very difficult.

However, Jupiter is still a good binocular object. Jupiter is visible until around 7:30 pm local time.

With Mars just past opposition and Saturn rising, there are lots of interesting things in the sky to view with a telescope. 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.

Printable PDF maps of the Eastern sky at 10 pm AEDST, Western sky at 10 pm AEDST. For further details and more information on what's up in the sky, see Southern Skywatch (this will be up dated to February a little later).

Cloud cover predictions can be found at SkippySky.

Labels: weekly sky

Carnival of Space #242 is now up at Dear Astronomer. There is SpaceX, Mars, “Steamy” exoplanets, test pilots, “warp speed” planets, and much, much more! Zip on over for a read.

Labels: carnival of space

...and Terral's prediction of "...one of the strongest earthquake events in Earth history" has not come to pass. We didn't even get a measly magnitude 8+ quake. But then, we knew that (see here and here). The Heavy Mass Object remains invisible, despite thousands of amateurs scanning Leo for the M95 supernova.

Labels: earthquakes, Pseudoscience

The Moon, Venus and Jupiter at 8:10 pm local daylight saving time in Adelaide. Click to embiggen.

Typical, clouds. At least there was a hole in the cloud for a brief while (just like on the Night of the Smiley Fritz), here you can see the crescent Moon with Earthshine peaking through the clouds, with Venus and Jupiter either side.

The Moons reflection is silver on the water below, an aircrafts lights are below Jupiter, and the lights of the channel mark the edge of the sea.

Labels: Conjunction, Moon, Venus

The Moon, Venus and Jupiter at 8:00 pm local daylight saving time in Adelaide. Also visible are the Pleiades and Hyades cluster. Click to embiggen.

After days of appalling weather the clouds cleared for this fantastic view of the crescent Moon near Venus and Jupiter.

Hopefully it will be clear tomorrow when the Moon appears between them.

Labels: Conjunction, Jupiter, Moon, Venus

Most of you know I blog at the iTelescope site (Sky Alerts), well, you should because it's in the info bar to the left.

Anyway, the good folk at iTelescope have made me a Science Advisor to them. I am very chuffed, it's an honour to work with the iTelescope crew, and very humbling to know they find my contributions valuable.

And it sounds cool: Ian Musgrave, Science Advisor to the STARS!

Labels: housekeeping, iTelescope, miscelaneous

For denizens of South Australia, my telescope will feature in an article on the upcoming Dance of the Planets in the Monday Advertiser. The photographer took quite a number of shots of Don, the 8" scope, before rain forced us to abandon the photo-shoot, one should have turned out nice.

Labels: miscelaneous, Science Blogging, science communicators

This is my first attempt at a mosaic stretching from comet Garradd to M81, with lots of galactic goodness. This is done on the low resolution JPEG files, I'll work on the TIFF files when I have time.

Click to embiggen, it's worth it.

Images taken with iTelescope T14 and assembled in the GIMP.

Labels: C/2009 P1 Garradd, comet, iTelescope

From left to right, views of Venus Jupiter and the crescent Moon as seen from Adelaide at 8:00 pm local daylight saving time on the 25th, 26th and 27th. Click to embiggen, similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time. Images generated by Stellarium.

If you have been watching Venus and Jupiter over the past few weeks (see here, here and here), you will have seen them draw close together and then start moving apart. Starting Sunday 25th March the crescent Moon joins then for a rather beautiful line-up, which is best on Monday the 26th when the Moon is directly between Venus and Jupiter.

If you look to the west between half an hour and an hour after sunset you will have the best views, especially if you have a level, unobstructed western horizon.

Labels: Conjunction, Jupiter, Moon, stellarium, Venus

This is my first image of the new supernova 2012aw in M95, taken with iTelescope T05 (5 x 120sec exposures stretched in FITS liberator and stacked in image J). Click to embiggen.

Compare this with the discovery image. There's a lot of light contamination because M95 is so close to Mars at the moment.

Of course, as nice as pretty pictures are, on going observations are needed to follow the brightness curve of this type IIp supernova. I'll do some magnitude estimates when I get the time.

You can get a Stellarium plugin with all the bright historical supernovas if you want (hat tip Ethan Siegel).

The Bad Astronomer has a great many image links and a video. And here's another iTelescope image from Francis Walsh.

Labels: iTelescope, stellarium, supernova

My article on Earthquakes and the recent prediction of a magnitude 9 earthquake on March 22 by Terral03 has had a sudden spike in hits in the wake of the magnitude 7.4 earthquake in Oaxaca.

But remember, we have on average 15 earthquakes of magnitude 7-8 every year, the probability of an earthquake of magnitude 7-8 on any given day of the month is 1 in 24. the probability that an earthquake of magnitude 7-8 will fall within +/- 2 days of a given day is 1 in 5.

So, no a magnitude 7.4 earthquake in on March 20 does not validate Terrals' prediction.

Labels: earthquakes, miscelaneous

North-western sky at 9 pm local daylight saving time in Australia showing Orion.

Woops, nearly missed this!

Globe at Night, the international light pollution survey, is running its Third survey this year from March 13-22 (it's US HQ'd that means we Australians/New Zealanders have until the 23rd). There is one more to come on April 11-20. Visit their website for easy to follow instructions and charts to estimate how dark your sky is.

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) or Orion (for everybody) 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.

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.

Labels: globe at night, light pollution

The New Moon is Friday March 23. Venus is easily visible in the western evening sky close to Jupiter. The thin crescent Moon joins the pair between 25-27 March, and is between them on the 26th. Mars is in the late eastern evening sky, not far from Saturn, which is near the star Spica.

Evening sky looking east as seen from Adelaide at 10:00 pm local daylight saving time on Saturday March 24 showing Mars, and Saturn near Spica. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time. The inset shows the telescopic appearance of Mars, Saturn and it's Moons at this time. Click to embiggen.

The New Moon is Friday March 23.

Mars is in the constellation of Leo. It is the brightest object in the north eastern sky, and its distinctive red colour makes it easy to spot. Mars is rising around 6:00 pm (local daylight saving time), and is at its highest in the northern sky around midnight.

Mars was at opposition on March 4, when it was biggest and brightest as seen from Earth. Sadly, this is a poor opposition and Mars will be fairly small in modest telescopes. Even so, you should be still able to see the polar caps, so still have a go if you have a telescope.

Saturn is above the north-eastern horizon, not far from the bright star Spica. Saturn is high enough in the northern sky in the early morning for telescopic observation, but is rising about 8:30 pm local daylight saving time.

Mercury is lost in twilight.

Evening sky on Monday March 26 looking west as seen from Adelaide at 8:00 pm local daylight saving time in South Australia showing Venus and Jupiter not far from the Pleiades cluster. The thin crescent Moon can be seen between Venus and Jupiter. The inset shows the appearance of Venus seen telescopically at this time. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time (click to embiggen)

Bright white Venus and Jupiter are readily visible together in the evening western twilight sky from around half an hour after sunset for somewhat over an hour and a half.

Venus is in Aries this week and still close to Jupiter. The pair are quite easy to see together but now draw apart. Between the 25thh and the 27th the thin crescent Moon visits the pair. On the 26th, the Moon is between them, making a very nice sight. Venus is also coming closer to the beautiful Pleiades cluster.

Telescopic observation of Jupiter are now very difficult.

However, Jupiter is still a great binocular object. Jupiter is visible until around 8 pm local daylight saving time.

With Mars just past opposition and Saturn rising, there are lots of interesting things in the sky to view with a telescope. 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.

Printable PDF maps of the Eastern sky at 10 pm AEDST, Western sky at 10 pm AEDST. For further details and more information on what's up in the sky, see Southern Skywatch (this will be up dated to February a little later).

Cloud cover predictions can be found at SkippySky.

Labels: weekly sky

Venus and Jupiter on the 18th (left image) and 19th (right image) of March. Click to embiggen. It is raining now of course.

Labels: Conjunction, Jupiter, Venus

Carnival of Space #241 is now up at Starry Critters. There's a whole bunch of ways of destroying asteroids (black hole anyone?) Discouraging news a bout the probability of terrestrial exoplanets, Yuri's Night, new ways to make wormholes in space and much, much more. Go have a read.

Labels: carnival of space

Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd and galaxy NGC 4236-1 taken on 15 March, 2012. This shot was taken with iTelescope T20. 5 x 120 second images stacked in ImageJ. Click to embiggen.

I am seriousy bad at this colour imagery business.

Labels: C/2009 P1 Garradd, comet, iTelescope

Comet C/2012 E2 (SWAN), the official name for Comet SWAN, diving into the Sun as seen from the COR2A instrument of STEREO. (click to embiggen)

The Beacon images I posted earlier were from the behind spacecraft, but the high resolution fits from the behind spacecraft have not been posted yet.

I made an animation, see below. Comet Al has a nice multiframe image.



Animation of comet C/2012 SWAN sundiving in the COR2A instrument of STEREO.

Labels: comet, Kreutz, Stereo Satellite, sungrazer

A revisiting of my images from the 14th. Here I've used 8 x 120 second images (dumping two that were cloud affected) instead of 5, stretched with FITS liberator, and stacked then SUMMED with ImageJ, then despeckled using default settings. Click to embiggen.

The left image is the result of that process, and the right image had a square root transform applied to it. Compare with the result of stacking just 5 images here. Galaxy detail is better, comet definition cold be better. Compare it with Rolando Ligustri's image from the same night.

Labels: C/2009 P1 Garradd, comet, iTelescope

Venus and Jupiter above the ocean at 8:45 pm AEDST 16 March. Click to embiggen.

Labels: Conjunction, Jupiter, Venus

Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd near the galaxies NGC 4236-1 (the big obvious one), UGC 7490 (near top of image) and NGC 4250. The image is a stack of 5x120 second images taken with iTelescope T14.

Images were stacked in ImageJ, SUMMED, the given a light despeckle. Despite some slight cloud interference, this turned out very nicely.

Embiggen for full cometary and galactic goodness.

I have been grossly neglecting my C/2009 P1 images, I have a whole bunch, black and white and colour, archived ready to process. I just have to wait for a quiet time (Ha!)

Labels: C/2009 P1 Garradd, iTelescope

Comet SWAN enters the field of view of the SOHO Lasco C2 instrument, and doesn't come out again. Animation made using ImageJ form images from NASA SOHO.

Labels: comet, Kreutz, Soho, sungrazer

Comet SWAN as seen the the STEREO H1B imager on March the 12th, 2012. Before it's fateful rendezvous with the Sun. The image is inverted so the tail is clearer.

In the animation below you can see the tail twist in the solar wind.

Raw Image source, NASA STEREO. Images stacked and cleaned up in imageJ.

Labels: comet, Kreutz, Stereo Satellite, sungrazer

Top row: Left Image, SWAN enters the field of view of the SOHO Lasco C2 imager. Right image, SWAN is noticibly thining and fading as it approaches the Sun.
Bottom Row: SWAN enters the field of view of the STEREO COR1 beacon images. Left image, approaching the Sun. Right image, The faint trace of the comet appears to wrap around the Sun. Image sources, NASA SOHO and STEREO respectively.

Comet SWAN continues it's plunge to the Sun, and appears to be evaporating, in the low resolution STEREO beacon images a faint trace of the comet can be seen rounding the Sun, it's unlikley anything will come out the other side. We will have to wait for the high resolution images to see what is really happening.

Previous posts here and here, a blog post from Comet Al here.

Labels: comet, Kreutz, Soho, Stereo Satellite, sun grazer

Marcus Pallinger sent me this beautiful auroral image from Point Addis (about half way between Torquay and Anglesea) in Victoria from the March 12 auroral event.

Here's some links to more images from the March 12 auroral event (remember copyright vests with the owners, please play nice).

Michael Mattiazzo's images from Castlemain Victoria
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3332610470659&set=a.2377943164573.137103.1130450367&type=1&ref=nf
Roger Groom from Perth
http://www.rogergroom.com/items/aurora_australis_12th_march_2012_perth
A short video from Adam Marsh, NSW
http://s919.photobucket.com/albums/ad32/blacklegend17/Astronomy%20and%20Related/Aurora%20-%20Tocumwal%20-%202012-03-12/?action=view¤t=Aurora2012-03-12b.mp4
Michel L from Fern Tree Gully
https://picasaweb.google.com/107389084721807995376/2012_03_12?authkey=Gv1sRgCPSaqbLMpIOhWQ#5719184371026237330
Ian Stewart, Tasmania. Vimeo Video.
http://vimeo.com/38422355
Russell Cockburn, Melbourne
http://www.russellsastronomy.com/aurora/12032012.htm

There was an M8 Flare on the 14th, the coronal mass ejection form this flare is expected to hit earth at at 06:20 UT (+/- 7 hours), that's between 10:20 (15th) and 0:20 (16th) AEDST. The IPS http://www.ips.gov.au/Space_Weather doesn't have a storm warning out though.

Labels: aurora

The new Kreutz Sungrazer comet SWAN, has entered the SOHO lasco C3 imager.

It's reasonably bright and beautifully formed. It is heading straight in for the Sun, and may turn up in the C2 imager tomorrow. I'll also have a look at the STEREO C2 beacon images, but they are pretty low resolution.

Tomorrow the high resolution STEREO images from H1B should be available. I suppose I also should try estimating magnitudes and such.
(UPDATE: Comet Al has made a great animation from H1B on the 11th here)

I made another animation, you can see the comet fly into the solar storm produced by the recent M7.9 flare.

Labels: comet, Kreutz, Soho, Solar flare, sungrazer

.. and it's raining. Not just raining, we've had some amazing thunderstorms, with 22,000 lightning strikes today. The lightning shorted out the railway signals, paralysing the trains for a couple of hours and blew out our power for a little while.

Oh well, skies are clear in New Mexico, going to image Garradd now.

Here's a link to some other folks images of Venus and Jupiter.

Labels: Conjunction, Jupiter, Venus

Carnival of Space #240 is now up at Links Through Space. There's oxygen on Dione, giant solar flares, exomoons, the Drake equation and much much more. head on over and have a read,

Labels: carnival of space

Is this Kreutz comet seen in the STEREO H1B imager (low resolution beacon image, first piced up by Rob Matson) the SWAN Kreutz comet? (Actually, yes it is, as I was putting this together Karl Battams posted an update identifying the same object).

Another potential Kreutz comet has been picked up. Amazingly, it was picked up in the SWAN imager, no Kreutz comet has been found in this imager before hand. The odds are that this will be a reasonably bright comet, probably not as bright as C/2011 W3 Lovejoy, but still reasonably bright.

Whether it will get bright enough to see with the unaided eye like Lovejoy is an open question. While reasonably bright in the STEREO beacon images, it is not as bright as Lovejoy was.

There are still not enough data points to determine the comets orbit with high accuracy.

Follow the story of the comet over at the Sungrazer Comet site, and at the SOHO comet watchers site.



Video of 20 frames of the H1B low res beacon images. The comet is at the bottom left in the last few frames, entering a coronal mass ejection.

Labels: Kreutz, Soho, Stereo Satellite, sungrazer

The Last Quarter Moon is Thursday March 15. Venus is easily visible in the western evening sky close to Jupiter. Venus and Jupiter were at their closest on March 14, and are now moving apart. Mars is in the late eastern evening sky, not far from Saturn, which is near the star Spica.

Evening sky looking east as seen from Adelaide at 11:00 pm local daylight saving time on Saturday March 17 showing Mars, and Saturn near Spica. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time. The inset shows the telescopic appearance of Mars, Saturn and it's Moons at this time. Click to embiggen.

The Last Quarter Moon is Thursday March 15.

Mars is in the constellation of Leo. It is the brightest object in the north eastern sky, and its distinctive red colour makes it easy to spot. Mars is rising around 8:00 pm (local daylight saving time), and is at its highest around 1 am.

Mars was at opposition on March 4, when it was biggest and brightest as seen from Earth. Sadly, this is a poor opposition and Mars will be fairly small in modest telescopes. Even so, you should be still able to see the polar caps, so still have a go if you have a telescope.

Saturn is above the north-eastern horizon, not far from the bright star Spica. Saturn is high enough in the northern sky in the early morning for telescopic observation, but is rising about 10:00 pm local daylight saving time.

Mercury is lost in twilight.

Evening sky on Saturday March 17 looking west as seen from Adelaide at 8:00 pm local daylight saving time in South Australia showing Venus and Jupiter not far from the Pleiades cluster. The inset shows the appearance of Venus seen telescopically at this time. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time (click to embiggen)

Bright white Venus and Jupiter are readily visible together in the evening western twilight sky from around half an hour after sunset for somewhat over an hour and a half.

Venus is in Aries this week and still close to Jupiter. The pair are quite easy to see together but now draw apart.

In the evening Jupiter is readily visible in the northern-western sky, from about twilight. Telescopic observation of Jupiter is now very difficult.

However, Jupiter is still a great binocular object. Jupiter is visible until around 9 pm local daylight saving time.

With Mars at opposition and Saturn rising, there are lots of interesting things in the sky to view with a telescope. 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.

Printable PDF maps of the Eastern sky at 10 pm AEDST, Western sky at 10 pm AEDST. For further details and more information on what's up in the sky, see Southern Skywatch (this will be up dated to February a little later).

Cloud cover predictions can be found at SkippySky.

Labels: weekly sky

Left Image: Venus and Jupiter above the beach around 9 pm ACDST March 12. Right Image: Venus and Jupiter above the house around 8:30 pm ACDST March 13 (cick to embiggen).

Venus and Jupiter have been getting closer and closer, tomorrow night (March 14th) they will be at their closest.

Labels: Conjunction, Jupiter, Venus

The Kp index has just hit 6, and the Australian IPS has just issued an aurora warning for high latitudes. Tasmanians and Southern New Zealanders, head out now!

Labels: aurora

Rob McNaught is the Energizer Bunny of comet hunters, his most recent discovery is 2012 DR30, not a comet, but a Transneptunian object (TNO), one of a large cohort of icy planitesimals that creep on from the outer dark to the relatively toasty climes of Neptune's orbit.

Rob's find is roughly 150 Km in diameter, and is currently at its closest to the Sun, at 14 AU away (one AU is the average distance of the Earth from the Sun). It's also a relatively bright (for a TNO) magnitude 19, which is 26 times fainter than the faintest star we can see with the unaided eye, and a bit of a challenge to all but serious amateurs and professional astronomers.

What has this small lump of ice and rock got to do with Nibiru and 2012? Well, unless you have been living under a rock, you would be aware that 2012 is the focus of numerous fears of astronomical catastrophe. One of these fears centres around the mythical planet Nibiru. Supposedly either a Super Jupiter or a Brown Dwarf, Nibiru is allegedly in the inner solar system, somewhere between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars, heading for a close encounter with Earth.

The latest alarm comes from Terral Croft (Terral03), who claims that in March 22 this year there will be a magnitude 9 earthquake affecting the Pacific Rim. This will be due to a combination of the alignment of the Earth, Sun, New Moon, the constellation Leo and an alleged "Heavy Mass Object" (his version of Nibiru) on the equinox. He bases his prediction on the claims of Mensur Omerbashich (which I have refuted here and here), and his own 188 day cycle.

The basic idea is that every 188 days, roughly coinciding with the equinoxes, the line-up with Leo produces strong earthquakes (magnitude 7 or greater). The March equinoxes produce the strongest earthquakes, because they also line up with the "Heavy Mass Object" (more about this later).

On his page he talks about "winding back" 188 days from the March 2011 Fukushima earthquake and there's the September 2010 Christchurch earthquake. Then wind back another 188 days and there is the February 2010 earthquake.

Spooky! Although this is less impressive when you realise there were 7 magnitude 7+ earthquakes between March 2011 and September 2010, and 13 magnitude 7+ earthquakes between September 2010 and February 2010. On average there are 15 magnitude 7+ earthquakes a year, so six months after any earthquake you would expect to see another one. There is nothing special about the equinox months (here 7+ means any earthquake of magnitude 7 or bigger).

As well the actual dates of the earthquakes can be up to two weeks away from the equinox. Not a very convincing "alignment".

Okay you say, sure there's a lot of magnitude 7+ earthquakes. But maybe magnitude 7+ earthquakes are more common every 188 days?

Well, I've looked at this a couple of ways. I'm my original discussion of Mensur Omerbashich's ideas, I did a Fourier analysis of Earthquake frequency from 2000-2010. Remember that Fourier analysis is the standard way to pick up cyclic events out of noisy data. If earthquakes are more common every 188 days, we should see a peak at 188 days.

In fact there is no peak. Maybe it's only the M8+ earthquakes with the 376 day cycle that are more frequent. So I redid my Fourier analysis on 36 years of M8+ earthquakes (the earthquake data can be downloaded here)

Again, we see no peaks at all (see image to the top left). The red arrows indicate where peaks should be if they existed, but we see nothing but noise.

When I did this on 30 years of sunspot data, a very noisy data set with only 3 peaks, Fourier analysis clearly showed a peak of 10 years, not far from the long term average of 11 years (click on the images to embiggenthem).

Bottom line, no 188 or 376 day cycle, as claimed by Terral.

Fourier analysis is a very sensitive way to find cycles, but not everyone will have access to the tools needed to replicate my work. So I've also run the data through Excel in a couple of different ways that anyone can duplicate in Excel or Google Docs.

First I did a histogram of all M7+ earthquakes, I did this using the daynumber function in Excel (previously I used a clunky function to generate the Julian Day, but day number is simpler and gives us serial days from the horrible number format the earthquake database uses). First I looked for earthquakes clustering around the equinoxes, as Terral claims. You can clearly see that there is no clusters around the equinoxes.

Secondly, I looked for earthquakes clustering in multiples of 188, "winding back" from the Fukushima earthquake as Teral did.

So 188 days is 1.00, 376 days is 2.00, 564 days is 3.00, then I took only the decimal portion , so all multiples of 188 are zero, hence if there is an excess of earthquakes at multiples of 188, we should see clusters around 0 on the graph (indicated by red arrows, click to embiggen).

We don't.


Maybe the earthquakes are stronger, not more numerous. So I plotted earthquake strength vs multiple of 188. It's a straight, flat line, there is no correlation between between earthquake strength and multiples of 188.

Terrals 188 day rule is an illusion, a chance alignment between two dates that is of no significance. There will almost certainly be a magnitude 7 earthquake during March, since we have on average 15 of these a year, but a magnitude 9? Not likely.

Since the 188 day rule is an illusion, what about the "Heavy Mass Object" that was supposedly involved?

Somehow something reputed to be 4 times (or more) the size of Jupiter, as close as, or closer than Jupiter, is invisible to the battalions of amateur astronomers relentlessly scanning the skies for comets, asteroids and supernova, while a mere 150 km ball of rock and ice can be picked up well outside Saturn's orbit.

Heck, even Jupiter's moons Ganymede and Europa, if not drowned out by Jupiters brightness, would be visible to the unaided eye. Even if a hypothetical Jupiter-sized object was as black as coal, at the distance of Jupiter it would still reflect enough light to be easily visible to the unaided eye, let alone the masses of amateur telescopes out there.

Apparently Terral has his own "astronomers" who he claims are tracking this alleged object. But no images or ephemerides have been forthcoming so other other astronomers can check for themselves. The only available image of this "Heavy Mass Object" is a fake, faked using one of my images.

There is plenty of amazing things in the sky at the moment, but not giant doomsday planets.

Postscript: I'm completing this the day after the anniversary of Fukushima, while my eldest son is on study tour in Japan. If you would like to contribute the the rebuilding, please donate here.

UPDATE: This article has had a sudden spike in hits in the wake of the magnitude 7.4 earthquake in Oaxaca.

But remember, we have on average 15 earthquakes of magnitude 7-8 every year, the probability of an earthquake of magnitude 7-8 on any given day of the month is 1 in 24. the probability that an earthquake of magnitude 7-8 will fall within +/- 2 days of a given day is 1 in 5.

So, no a magnitude 7.4 earthquake in on March 20 does not validate Terrals' prediction.

Labels: asteroids, Jupiter, Pseudoscience

Venus and Jupiter glow above stage 1 at WOMADelaide as Blue King Brown play (taken with Mobile Phone click to embigen).

Labels: Conjunction, Jupiter, Venus

Venus and Jupiter over the Adelaide Cathedral. Over the next few days they will come closer, being closest on the 14th

Labels: astrophotography, Conjunction, Jupiter, Venus

While I was at WOMADelaide watching the Master Drummers of Burundi, the IPS sent out an aurora alert, while I was watching an iridium flare over The Picture Box Orchestra, the Kp Index went to 7.6, and while I was tucking SmallestOne in to bed the first aurora were being reported from Tasmania.

In the end, faint aurora were reported as far away as Perth, although Moonlight and cloud interfered from most locations. To compensate for my lack of warning here's some Aurora photo-albums:
Shevil Mathers, Tasmania:
https://plus.google.com/photos/109921669020426367250/albums/5717880870845033025?banner=pwa
Russell Cockman, Bayside Melbourne:
http://www.russellsastronomy.com/aurora/09032012.htm
A video of aurora from Ian Stewart of Tasmania
http://vimeo.com/38224262
Roger Groom, Perth:
http://www.rogergroom.com/items/aurora_australis_march_2012_perth
And SpaceWeather has lots of images:
http://www.spaceweather.com/

As well, Sunspot 1429 fired off a strong M6 class eruption, while not as strong as the X5, this one is aimed directly at us, so this could also fire off aurora, with the Moon waning we should have a better chance of seeing aurora. The coronal mass ejection should hit us March 11 at 0649 UT (+/- 7 hr), for Australia this is anywhere between 11 am AEDST the 11th to 1 am the 12.

The IPS has forecast storms for the 11th, so keep an eye on the Kp index over that the IPS solar weather site: http://www.ips.gov.au/Space_Weather

Labels: astrophotography, aurora, Solar flare

Listening to a ukulele version of 'Born to be Wild'. Already have enjoyed Mongolian throat singers and the Peguin Cafe playing Fiobinacci sequences.