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Skylog: Brilliant Illuminations
The brilliant illuminations from our solar system SOL, and the reflections from our local planets and moons creates romance as well as objects of wonder!
Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope have confirmed the existence of a baked object that could be
called a "cometary planet." The gas giant planet, named HD 209458b, is
orbiting so close to its star that its heated atmosphere is escaping
into space.
Observations taken with Hubble's Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) suggest powerful stellar winds are
sweeping the cast-off atmospheric material behind the scorched planet
and shaping it into a comet-like tail.
( Photo by: Rob Kaufman, Australia-August 17, 2008)
What is a B-I-G Lunar Eclipse? Check out this Saturday morning, June 26th there is going to be a lunar eclipse sitting low near the horizon making the moon appear H-U-G-E. The eclipse begins at 3:17 am PDT (10:17 UT) when the moon enters the earth's shadow. The greatest moment of the eclipse is at 4:38 am PDT (11:38 UT) when 54% of the moon's diameter will be covered.
Because the moon is so close to the horizon during the 3 hours of the eclipse, the size will seem to be magnified...but remember the hugeness of the moon is only an optical illusion. Never-the-less making the view of the eclipse all the more magnificent!!
These comparison photos of Jupiter taken by amateur astronomer Anthony
Wesley and posted by The Planetary Society show the planet's lost
Southern Equatorial Belt on May 9, 2010.
Jupiter is currently shining very brightly in the eastern sky before sunrise. Amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley, revealed in his astrophotograph that the huge reddish band of clouds that make
up the planet's Southern Equatorial Belt has faded from view. There may have been some signs last fall that Jupiter was going into possibloy a fading southern belt period, but it was lost to viewers when it went behind the sun. Astronomers and Astrophotographers were eager to see if the band did indeed disappear once the planet reemerged for viewing recently. As it moves further away from the sun from earth's vantage point, it will be even easier to view and take images. We may also be able to see the belt reappear later this year or early next year.
Click on the post heading "Jupiter lost his belt-OH MY" for more on the subject
NASA's Cassini spacecraft successfully completed its 26-hour gravity
observation at Saturn's moon Enceladus last week, sending back data
scientists will use to understand the moon's interior composition and
structure.
The flyby took Cassini through the water-rich plume flaring out from
Enceladus' south polar region, with a closest approach of about 100
kilometers (60 miles) occurring in the late afternoon of April 27,
2010, Pacific Time, or just after midnight April 28 UTC.
Radio science was prime during the flyby and controlled spacecraft
pointing. The optical instruments were not pointed at Enceladus during
most of the flyby, so the imaging camera obtained some more distant
pictures, as seen in the photo of Enceladus above.
Nemesis is a hypothetical hard-to see a red dwarf star or brown dwarf, orbiting the Sun at a distance of about 50,000 to 100,000 AU (about 1-2 light years), somewhat beyond the Oort Cloud. Could this even be true? This star was originally postulated to exist as part of a hypothesis to explain a perceived cycle of mass extinctions in the geological record,
which seem to occur once every 26 million years or so. In addition,
observations by astronomers of the sharp edges of Oort clouds around
other binary (double) star systems in contrast to the diffuse edges of
the Oort clouds around single-star systems has prompted some scientists
to also postulate that a dwarf star may be co-orbiting our sun. There now may be more evidence to support this hypothesis!
After waiting years for Saturn to dim enough for the spacecraft's cameras to detect bursts of light, scientists were able to create the
movie, complete with a soundtrack that features the crackle of radio
waves emitted when lightning bolts struck.
The movie and radio data suggest extremely powerful storms with
lightning that flashes as brightly as the brightest super-bolts on
Earth, according to Andrew Ingersoll, a Cassini imaging science
subsystem team member at the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena. "What's interesting is that the storms are as powerful -- or
even more powerful -- at Saturn as on Earth," said Ingersoll. "But they
occur much less frequently, with usually only one happening on the
planet at any given time, though it can last for months."
In six years of cruising around the planet Saturn and its neighborhood,
the Cassini spacecraft has discovered two new Saturn rings, a bunch of
new moons and a whole new class of moonlets. It encountered liquid
lakes on the moon Titan, water ice and a particle plume on the moon
Enceladus, ridges and ripples on the rings, and cyclones at Saturn’s
poles. Cassini also released a European space probe that landed on
Titan. And Cassini has sent back enough data to produce more than 1,400
scientific papers — at last count. The enormous array of science objectives and targets — moons, rings,
Saturn itself — makes it one of the most complex missions ever flown. Cassini arrived at Saturn in 2004 for a four-year mission, but it was
so successful that NASA gave it a two-year extension, to September
2010. Then, in February, NASA extended it a second time for what it
calls the Solstice mission, lasting until Saturn’s northern hemisphere
summer in 2017. If all goes as planned, on Sept. 15, 2017, Cassini will
die a warrior’s death, diving inside the rings for 22 spectacular
orbits on the fringes of Saturn’s atmosphere before plunging into the
planet.
