Thread: Space Events

When is the next meteor shower? | Astronomy Essentials | EarthSky

Taurid Meteor Shower November 5th, late at night until early morning November 6th.

EDIT: Woops, sorry. You Americans, or any Northern Hemispherers have until:
November 2011 North Taurids, late night November 11 and 12 until dawn the following mornings.

Get outside and check it out! I just saw one by accident lol, completely forgot about it until I came back to my computer due to cloud cover blocking my scope viewing. BUt I definitely saw one light up twice, overpowering the clouds!

Wayfaerer - I only have a small Olypmus camera, but my dad has a DSLR which I'm sure he'd be happy to let me borrow. I don't have the camera mount however, but hopefully I might get one before I go to the country soon!
Oh and, the viewing condition here are fucking terrible tbh. Way too much light pollution.

Then next up after November 8th YU55 is

November 17, late night until dawn the following morning Leonids
The Leonid meteor shower is famous. Historically, this shower has produced some of the greatest meteor storms in history – at least one in living memory, 1966 – with rates as high as many thousands of meteors per hour. These storms sometimes recur in cycles of 33 to 34 years. Most years, the Lion whimpers rather than roars, producing a maximum of perhaps 10-15 meteors per hour. Like the October Orionids, the Leonids ordinarily pick up steam after midnight and display the greatest meteor numbers just before dawn. This year, however, the last quarter moon will be shining near the radiant point of the shower in the constellation Leo. The unwelcome presence of the moon is sure to dampen the 2011 Leonid display. If you’re game, you can try watching from late night November 17 till dawn November 18, though the moonlit glare will subdue the 2011 Leonid meteor shower.

Damnit!

Appears (lol....) I will not be able to see it.

Found this post on an Australian astronomy forum.
"As far as I can see, closest approach will be 23:28, 8 Nov UT. Immaterial really because it's approaching Earth from the sunward side and will not be optically visible from anywhere on Earth at that time. It will start to become visible a few hours after the close approach as it enters 'dark skies'. It will be brightest at mag 11.1 at around 4:30 9 Nov UT, or 3:30pm AEDST (UT+11), again in daylight for us. This is worked out on the phase versus the distance from us, and doesn't coincide with closest approach.

So the optimum time will be after twilight on 9 Nov. It will be about 20-deg away from the big gibbous Moon then, and will close in on it as the night progresses. It will be gradually fading, from mid mag 11s to around mag 12. The next night it will have faded right off into the mag 14s so there will only be one realistic opportunity, on the night of Wed 9 November in Australia. And a poor one because of the Moon."

Also it's cloudy as shit here right now.

For astrophotography, you can literally just put the camera at the edge of the eyepiece and take a picture. That's called afocal photography. It only works on bright objects and obviously doesn't give a spectacular image, but it's an easy way of letting others see what the telescope is showing.

Serious astrophotography requires an equatorial mount and a motor to follow the stars during long-exposure photos (this rules out Dobsonian telescopes unless you put this strange equatorial adapter under it). Most astrophotographers use refractors or catadioptric telescopes for their longer focal lengths and better optics. You can use an SLR camera (film or digital) with a special adapter or a purpose-built astrophotography CCD camera (expensive). For pictures of faint objects, most people take many (up to 100) long exposure images (30 sec - 5 minutes) and stack them to produce the final product.

It's really really difficult to get good astrophotography results, and the proper equipment is super expensive. Don't go expecting magazine-quality photos.

Originally Posted by Spartiate

It's really really difficult to get good astrophotography results, and the proper equipment is super expensive. Don't go expecting magazine-quality photos.

Yeah, it does seem quite expensive. But probably worth it if one can afford it. And I have seen some photos from people, easily equal in quality to magazine quality photos.
Obviously they are not able to look at things as far away as larger telescopes can, but for closer objects, they are very very good.

Oh and thanks for the afocal info. Might try that out.

Found this cool website to view live feeds of interesting events SLOOH SpaceCamera - Live Event Pretty awesome, next one's in 3 days.

NASA's Curiosity just launched on the 26th, should get to Mars in August next year. It's going to be testing whether Mars could have ever supported microbial life.

Here's the launch:

Hey tommo, did you ever get a chance to see McNaught? If so you have no idea how jealous I am.

I remember Hale-bopp in 1996 well. Those were some of the best nights of my life.

Oh WOW!!!! No, I didn't! That's really disappointing now lol I never would have known, thanks a lot
Nah it's all good. That picture is amazing. Hope you stick around in this thread and tell us when you come across something!

December 2011 lunar eclipse - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lunar Eclipse on December 10th - Saturday

It will be visible from all of Asia and Australia, seen as rising over eastern Europe, and setting over northwest North America. In the Philippines, the lunar eclipse is visible just after sunset.

Basically if you're anywhere in this picture at 14:32 (greatest eclipse point) you'll see it.
Well, you won't see it at 14:32 lol, coz it's eclipsed, but you know what I mean; get outside an hour earlier.

Spoiler for Image of Earth from greatest eclipse point:

The bad news is that it’ll be interrupted in North America by morning dawn, and the setting of the moon (or the rising of the sun).
But the good news is that some of us will see the eclipse when the moon is low in the sky – when the moon might look exceptionally large due to the moon illusion. If that’s you, you’ll see a super-sized eclipse!
The Rocky Mountain states of the U.S. and especially the Pacific Coast states will be able to see a total eclipse before the moon sets.

The Midwestern U.S. states and much of Mexico will see a partial eclipse before moonset.


Canada is even better positioned. The western half of Canada should have little trouble witnessing all of the December 10, 2011 total eclipse.

I would love to catch a glimpse of this. May be staying up until dawn tomorrow for it. Or Christmas, maybe? I dunno. Would be awesome, though.

After Skirting the Sun, Comet Lovejoy Provides a Cosmic Show - NYTimes.com

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/su...t-lovejoy.html

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/ba...en-from-space/

Damn. Just realized it's in the Southern Hemisphere. May be too far South for me to see?

Oh wow....



Fuck that's beautiful....


For Australians/Southern Hemipsherer's, this is what I could find.

look towards the East from 3:30am AEDST until the sky gets too bright. It may only be visible for a few more days - no one knows for sure yet.

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/70-667-0-0-1-0.html

Better stay up tonight to see it, looks like I already missed a few days of good viewing.

Hating this shit weather right now.... Clouds every night. If I had found out earlier I would have had completely clear skies :'(

Quadrantid Meteor Shower 2012: Shooting Stars Wednesday Before Dawn - ABC News

I'll be just getting out of work, around that time. It's gonna be cold as fuck, but I hope the skies will be clear.

Hehe, that must've been what I was seeing the past few nights. There were heaps of them, didn't even know it was that lol

Never got to see Lovejoy, but I had fantastic viewing up in the country for just general viewing (can see various nebulae with naked eyes, really incredible!), and the Moon on New Years Eve was absolutely beautiful; it was sitting just above the mountainous horizon, and looked as if it was sitting about 20 metres above the ocean, right in front of me! lol Was really nice.

Apparently the Quadrantid Meteor Shower peaks tonight, so tell me how it goes! Way too cloudy here tonight I think.

Ok Tommo I remembered the thread this time



On Feburary 26, 2012, asteroid 2011AG5 has been logged and has been identified as having the highest chance of impacting the Earth within the next century. It’s currently probability is 1 chance in 625 so it’s a relatively low probability but of course NASA takes out insurance policies for risk that are a lot more remote than 1 chance in 625. So the scientific community is taking this very seriously In fact this is even taken up by the United Nations committee on the peaceful uses in outer-space. They’re stating we need to be prepared to divert this object if it proves to be a greater risk.

Now keep in mind the 1 chance in 625 is a crude estimate and due to its current location in the daytime sky, observations of 2011 AG5 cannot be made by Earth-based telescopes, so its orbit has not yet been fully determined to a level where scientists can confidently project its location decades into the future. We’ve only been able to measure about one-half the objects orbit and before we can really pin point exactly what the probability is or where it could possibly hit you need one or two orbits. So its going to take more time, within the next few years Scientist will be able to come back and say rather the probability is higher , lower or null regarding an impact.

This asteriod will have a few flyby's in the following years.
September 2013
Late fall early winter 2015
February 2023
and 2028

The Near-Earth Object Program Office states the Earth's gravitational influence on the space rock during these flybys has the potential to place the space rock on an impact course for Feb. 5, 2040, but currently the odds are 1 in 625.

NASA - Asteroid 2011 AG5 ? A Reality Check

Nice! 140 metres too. Hope it is visible!

Just found this too
Huge tornadoes discovered on the Sun
Looks like they're over 100,000km high!

Huge tornadoes discovered on the Sun



(PhysOrg.com) -- Solar tornadoes several times as wide as the Earth can be generated in the solar atmosphere, say researchers in the UK. A solar tornado was discovered using the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly telescope on board the Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO) satellite. A movie of the tornado will be presented at the National Astronomy Meeting 2012 in Manchester on Thursday 29th March.

"This is perhaps the first time that such a huge solar tornado is filmed by an imager. Previously much smaller solar tornadoes were found my SOHO satellite. But they were not filmed," says Dr. Xing Li, of Aberystwyth University.

Dr. Huw Morgan, co-discover of the solar tornado, adds, "This unique and spectacular tornado must play a role in triggering global solar storms."



The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly saw superheated gases as hot as 50 000 – 2 000 000 Kelvin sucked from the root of a dense structure called prominence, and spiral up into the high atmosphere and travel about 200 000 kilometres along helical paths for a period of at least three hours. The tornadoes were observed on 25 September 2011.

The hot gases in the tornadoes have speeds as high as 300,000 km per hour. Gas speeds of terrestrial tornadoes can reach 150km per hour.

The tornadoes often occur at the root of huge coronal mass ejections. When heading toward the Earth, these coronal mass ejections can cause significant damage to the earth’s space environment, satellites, even knock out the electricity grid.

The solar tornadoes drag winding magnetic field and electric currents into the high atmosphere. It is possible that the magnetic field and currents play a key role in driving the coronal mass ejections.

SDO was launched in February 2010. The satellite is orbiting the Earth in a circular, geosynchronous orbit at an altitude of 36,000 kilometres. It monitors constantly solar variations so scientists can understand the cause of the change and eventuallyhave a capability to predict the space weather.

^Awesome. I was reading about that yesterday.

Also:

NASA: "Enceladus a Lifezone Hotspot --90 Geyser Jets Spewing Water Vapor & Organics"

BBC News - Cassini spacecraft captures Saturn moon geyser images

Almost time for the transit... Hopefully mine solar filter will arrive in time--and that weather will not ruin the display.

BTW, I wanted to watch the SpaceX launch, the other day, but they did it too early in the morning. =/
Oh well, looking forward to future launches.

Originally Posted by Oneironaut Zero

BTW, I wanted to watch the SpaceX launch, the other day, but they did it too early in the morning. =/
Oh well, looking forward to future launches.

Yea, night/dark launches are spectacular. I used to be able to watch them from my back yard in Melbourne, though I never got to see an up-close night launch sadly.

Originally Posted by Aristaeus

Almost time for the transit... Hopefully mine solar filter will arrive in time--and that weather will not ruin the display.

Yes! I'm waiting to see whether the weather will be good enough before I go and buy a solar filter. Think I'll wait until a day or two before and check the forecast.

Just in case anyone missed the previous comment
Transit of Venus, 2012 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Originally Posted by Oneironaut Zero

BTW, I wanted to watch the SpaceX launch, the other day, but they did it too early in the morning. =/
Oh well, looking forward to future launches.

Damn.... at least you get to see heaps of them though.

For some reason I completely missed that it was even launching, I heard they had to stop it just before launch (or the automated system stopped it) but then didn't hear anything else.

Oh yeah.... Australia missed out on the bulk of SKA
However, South Africa may kill two birds with one stone, they've secured 70% of the SKA telescopes, and may also prevent
fracking from being done there, as they implemented an astronomy act to protect the area from obstructions to astronomy.
http://www.news24.com/SciTech/News/S...plans-20120529

Originally Posted by Phion

Yea, night/dark launches are spectacular. I used to be able to watch them from my back yard in Melbourne, though I never got to see an up-close night launch sadly.

Yeah, I've seen night launches from my backyard, but never up close. I hate that I live so close to the space coast but never got to see a shuttle launch. Not that I haven't tried, though. Waiting in 3 hours of traffic for scrubbed launches is pretty disenchanting.

I feel like I can partially make up for it by seeing some of these first few launches of the new generation of space exploration, though.

@tommo: Yeah, they had to scrub it the first time. They had an 'instant window', unlike most shuttle launches, meaning that if the launch wasn't ready at 00:00:00, there would be no 'pause', and they would have to scrub for another day. So they waited like 3 days and sent it up at like 3:30am.

Get ready guys!!!!

I think it's today for you guys in Northern Hemisphere?
At sunset.

For Southern Hemisphere it's tomorrow morning! Can't wait.

Just hacked together an off-axis solar filter for my telescope....



Yes, that is blu-tack and tape.

This may be the last day I see out of my right eye haha

Everyone basically ate all the solar filter film in Australia or something. This is the best I could do.

Originally Posted by tommo

Get ready guys!!!!

I think it's today for you guys in Northern Hemisphere?
At sunset.

For Southern Hemisphere it's tomorrow morning! Can't wait.

Just hacked together an off-axis solar filter for my telescope....



Yes, that is blu-tack and tape.

This may be the last day I see out of my right eye haha

Everyone basically ate all the solar filter film in Australia or something. This is the best I could do.

Yikes. And I got paranoid looking through actual eclipse glasses, with no magnification.