Busy space days

So, the Japanese launched Hayabusa 2 yesterday, NASA tried to launch Orion for its first unmanned flight today (but it was scrubbed for 24 hours due to a valve issue) and on Saturday the probe New Horizons is going to be woken out of hibernation as it closes in on former planet Pluto.

Catching a comet

They did it!  Philae touched down (and then again, and then again) on 67P at a bit after 3am AEST Nov 12, '14.

Awesome... totally awesome.

So how big is 67P?  Well, here it is delicately placed on central Los Angeles...

(Grabbed image off twitter, lost track of source. Sorry!)

Philae landed somewhere in that crater on the right of the comet.

The ESA twitter accounts have included the following cartoons with their count-down to the big day.  Adorable.
I'm loving the new wave in science communication.  Using social media and making it fun and accessible.  Showing these pictures made it so much easier and more interesting to share the excitement of the acheivement with the kids at home.

The landing wasn't quite as smooth as depicted.  Reports now say that Philea landed, bounced a kilometer high, landed and bounced 20m high, and landed and bounced one last time.  It seems to have ended up about 1km away from the intial landing point (which was hit squarely, impressive!), and is resting against a crater wall or a boulder or something with one leg up in the air.  The harpoons didn't fire, the screws didn't dig in and the top jet was already faulty.

This didn't happen.

Little Philae ended up in the shadowy side of a crater, it looks like, and is only getting about 1.5 hours of sunlight on its panels per day - so it looks like it might slow down the experiments and readings it can take.

But, it is on the comet, it is doing science and it is returning data - so that counts as an incredible success for ESA.  A very cool moment for science.

Final words go to the final panel in the XKCD 142 panel extravaganza that covered the preparation and landing phase...

XKCD

All go!

Philae has got the Go on all systems, although the small cold gas thruster is reporting trouble. So they're pinning hope on the harpoons to secure it down.

Philae had been released and is drifting down at a walking pace. Less than 2 hours until we know!  Its about 1am here and I'm not able to make it to the live landing... I'll have to catch up tomorrow.

Good night, Philae!  Safe journey!

(Adorable cartoons from ESA twitter)

Almost there!

Been following the lead up all day via Twitter as the Rosetta probe got into position to release Philea.
I sure hope that after 10 years all the bits wake up and do what they need to do!

(Adorable cartoons from ESA twitter)

As big as Jupiter...

23rd Oct 2014

The Sun was still far enough above the horizon on the afternoon of the 23rd that I could drag out the telescope, and the light-box that I had made for the Venus Transit, and check out this sun-spot I had been reading about on Bad Astronomy and Universe Today.

Despite dusk starting to colour the sky, and a bit of high-level haze, I still managed to get a few good photos of the projection of the Sun.

Amazing to think that this spot is the size of Jupiter, and that the smaller darker spot is the size of Earth.  Brain goes fizzle!

Blood moon

We had two total Lunar eclipses this year, one on 15 April and the other tonight 8 Oct.  This is the last total Lunar eclipse for a while, the next is 31 Jan 2018, and we luckily found a gap in patchy cloud cover to see the eclipse just as it finished totality at 10pm, and watch the shadow slip away for a while.
Got to use my new tripod for the first time and snapped a few photos, mostly using the 200mm zoom, 4 seconds at f5.7 (the minimum available at 200mm)

The gear aimed at the Lunar eclipse

Not a bad shot

When a plane came over, I managed to adjust the camera just in time to capture this...

As I was mucking around with the camera, L was enjoying the view through the telescope and then had a go at getting some shots on my mobile.

Totality just slipping away

more

and more...

As a happy bonus, while I was researching on Stellarium I noticed that Uranus would be near the Moon at the time of the eclipse.  Maybe...

It seemed to be in the right position, and even though the light pollution and cloud and atmospherics made it a bit blurry - I'm sure that the bluey green target on the left was a disk, and not a point source.  So I'm claiming that as my first sighting of Uranus through my own telescope (I once got to look at it through one of the telescope up on Mt Stromlo when having a tour once)

And then the clouds rolled back in, and we were done for the evening.

Gods of Time and War

With the Perth-ites in town, we had J and L over for a sleep-over with Kn on the 30th of Sept.  While they were over J was interested in Dobby, so we dragged it out to the front yard for a quick look at whatever was up.
Fortunately Saturn was up in the Western sky, so that was the obvious first target.  As always, a thrill to look at, and J and L were impressed.  The conditions allowed us to almost distinguish the Cassini Division in the rings, and a point at the 5 o'clock position in the eyepiece was most likely Titan.
With not much else to see, I notices that Mars was in Scorpio and close to Antares, so swung up and left to Mars.  Then explaining how the "Ancients" (Greeks) named the star Antares to be the rival of Ares (Mars) I swung over to the star for a quick comparison.
Finished off with a quick look at the definition of the craters on the terminator of the Waxing Cresent Moon.

That was about enough for a pair of young Perth residents on a cool Melbourne evening, so we headed back indoors.  

Trying to spot C/2013 A1 Siding Springs

Tonight there was a brief break in the cloud and rain and the skies cleared beautifully.  So I decided to get out the back and have a crack at spotting comet Siding Springs.

Well,  even with the laptop out beside the telescope I couldn't make out the comet.  I'm sure I was in the right part of the sky - drawing a line up from the pointers Rigel Kent and Hadar and bringing a line across from Girtab and Shaula in the tail of Scorpio and then scanning around in the space up and to the left of where they intersect.

 

 I did, however, spot a beautiful Cluster that I hadn't tried looking for before.  I'm fairly certain it was NGC 6752.  It looked like this (only smaller and with not as many stars visible in the conditions)...

Photo credit: The Celestron forum. By Andrew Bray

One day I'll be able to take pictures like that.

That was a nice treat that made the effort worthwhile.  Still want to spot that damn comet, though.