Lunar Meteorites

Lunar Landscape, August 2008


In celebration of the 40th. anniversary of the Apollo missions to the Moon I am going to post some cool images of some Lunar meteorites.

You may remember...or not depending whether or not you're a Lunar fanatic like I, Gene Cernans' , the last man on the Moon, words he spoke as he was climbing the ladder of his Lunar Module for the last time, December 14 1972, "America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow" ...well maybe not so much. One only has to look here instead of here to find where our priorities lie.


Lunar meteorites come to us courtesy of by chance some other meteorite striking the Moon sending rocks and debris out into space, to be captured by the Earth's gravity, then to strike through our atmosphere as a meteor to land and become a Lunar meteorite.

The above image is Lunar meteorite NWA (North West Africa) 4881, found near Algeria in 2005. I love the texture and look of this meteorite, looks like it is covered in cellophane, very otherworldly looking, like it is.


The above Lunar meteorite is Dhofar 910, found in Oman in 2003. It is classified as a Feldspathic glassy-matrix fragmented breccia from the Lunar highlands, really all I know is it looks like an icy cratered planet through a microscope. I guess what I'm trying to do by holding Lunar rocks and taking images is hold on to something that has long been forgotten, the days of Lunar exploration.

Just in case you're interested, the Orionid Meteor Shower takes place October 20-22, look to the east starting around 11:00 pm on each of those days for the show to start, the Moon will be out as well but you should still see around 20 or so meteors an hour.

The video below is a clip I put together of these two Lunar meteorites, imagine yourself in a spacecraft orbiting another celestial body as you are watching it.

The Auroras

Tis the season, season for what you may ask. The season for the Aurora Borealis or the Northern Lights, if you live in the Southern Hemisphere, the Aurora Australis or Southern Lights. Seems the magnetic field between the Sun's solar winds that cause the Auroras and the Earth's magnetic field are oriented perfectly in spring and fall more so then summer and winter.

What causes an aurora? Basically the Sun sends out hot plasma and charged particles into space, deadly radiation to human life, this is called the Solar wind. When the Solar wind gets to Earth, the Earth's Magnetosphere forces the Solar wind harmlessly around us and out into space. Some of the Solar wind however gets through and is trapped in the Magnetosphere and the Earth's upper atmosphere where it's charged particles collide with the oxygen and nitrogen particles of our atmosphere, the spent energy of the collision is turned into light energy, the greens and the reds we see are called the Auroras. They come and go before you know it. The closer you are to the poles the brighter they are but in high solar activity the Northern lights have been spotted as far south as Southern California. Look to the North in the Northern Hemisphere or South in the Southern Hemisphere on any particular night, if there has been heavy Solar activity chances are during the spring and fall seasons you'll see them, they spread out from the west to east. I just happened to be taking a picture of earthshine on the Moon and noticed they were starting to form, only lasted for a few hours, got a few pics and hope to get more through the spring.

A couple of updates for you. Kaguya the Japanese Lunar Orbiter has released more HD images of the Moon as well as some HD movies. Also, and I have discussed this previously here, the complete lunar photographic record, that is the original filght films from the Apollo project are being duplicated with high resolution scans and are releasing new scans on a daily basis here.

The above image is the hires scan of the week for the Apollo scan project, it is an image of the Apollo 17 landing site taken in 1972, this scan was released March 4th. The Kaguya image, ( top lunar image) was also of the Apollo 17 landing site, taken November 19/2007 released March 6th.

I would like to leave you now with one of my Aurora images as an animated gif.

In The Shadow Of The Moon

"We choose to go to the Moon,..... we choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

JFK.

Between 1968 and 1972 NASA sent 24 men to the Moon, out of them 12 walked on the Moon, out of that 12 only 9 are alive. In The Shadow Of the Moon, a documentary about the Apollo astronauts was released on dvd yesterday. I picked it up, watched it and must say it is excellent. There is a lot of rarely seen footage, example, when Neil Armstrong was looking for a smooth place to land the Lunar Module, it shows the capcom (capsule communicator, always an astronaut by the way) on film talking to Armstrong, very cool. There is lots of interesting film, but the main thing are the astronaut's interviews, what comes across very quickly is the profound affect travelling to the Moon had on each of their lifes.

"Science and technology allowed me to go the Moon, but now what I was feeling, at that moment in time, science and technology had no answers. because there I was and there you are, the Earth, so dynamic, overwhelming, I felt the world had too much purpose, too much logic, it was just too beautiful to have happened by accident, there had to be somebody bigger then you , bigger then me, and I mean that in the spiritual sense, not a religious sense, there has to be a creator of the universe who stands above the religions that we ourselves create to govern our lifes."

Gene Cernan, Apollo 10 and 17 astronaut.

As far as the Moon itself Mike Collins the command module pilot for Apollo 11 stated " I did not sense any great invitation on the part of the Moon to come in to its domain, I sense more, almost a hostile place, a scary place". If you are a Moon or Apollo person or someone who enjoys a good documentary, you gotta pick this one up.




Only one more post after this one before the Total Lunar Eclipse February 20 at 10:00 pm EST.


The show starts at around 8:43 pm EST. so don't miss it , last one till 2010. I have been practicing taking images of the Moon with the Canon 40D, as in the above 28% of full Moon image just in case I have to leave my scope behind, yes I have a plan, if it is cloudy up here in Saskatoon, I plan on heading south towards Moose Jaw, Sk, yes that is a name of a little city, not just pulling it out of a hat, Moose Jaw usually has opposite weather to us, 2 eclipses ago, when it was cloudy here, it was clear in Moose Jaw, being only 2 hrs away, it would definitely be worth it.

I'll leave you now with my most current Lunar image as a gif.

Magnificent Desolation

Just when I thought I'd have to wait until February/08 to watch Astronauts walk on the Moon I happened to be surfing the net and found a newly released DVD called " Magnificent Desolation Walking on the Moon ", it's tag line being, "Only 12 have walked on the moon, YOU'RE NEXT". So within a half hour I had picked it up and double bonus just as I arrived at Rogers they were unpacking Guitar Hero III for the PS3 which I picked up for my boss, you can not find this game anywhere in town, so killing two birds with one stone made both of us happy and made 10 bucks in the process, the tip from the Boss. The movie is Narrated by Tom Hanks and you can't go wrong with Tom Hanks as a narrator, second only to James Earl Jones in this category, oh and both Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg are the executive producers.

Buzz Aldrin the second man to walk on the Moon and the Apollo 11 Lunar Module pilot actually coined the phrase "A Magnificent Desolation" when he stepped on the Moon , magnificent for the ability of man being able to go to the Moon and desolation for the extreme desolation of the Moon. There is a lot of rarely seen footage on this DVD, some of the astronauts would be walking along just talking to capcom (capsule communications from Earth) when they would trip over a rock or just trip up and fall, quite funny the amount of times this would happen, never saw this on the live versions. Another very interesting thing I learned from this DVD is that the Moon played visual tricks on the astronauts, because there was no buildings or trees on the Moon the astronauts perspective was out of sync, they had a hard time telling how big or far away things were, example, Capcom was asking the Apollo 15 astronauts about how far away they were from Hadley Rille, they replied they weren't too sure but estimated about 50 metres, right after that they were surprised when the edge gave way and it started to slope down to the bottom of the Rille, now Hadley Rille is a gorge comparable to the Grand Canyon, yet they couldn't see it coming, I found that very interesting and as they put it they had to be very careful because of it.

Overall a very good movie, if you like the Moon and space travel it is a no brainer pick it up.

There is a newly released computer network sharing program called Cosmology at Home. Works on the same principle as SETI at Home, you donate your computer's free time, resources and bandwidth for the greater good of either looking for aliens as with SETI or help solving the mysteries of the universe with cosmology at home. Some of the things you will be helping research with cosmology at home are items such as the universe acceleration, distribution of galaxies and fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background, right now as I'm doing this post I am also looking for new pulsars as well as aliens, no flys on me! All you do is go to their web site and download their interface a program called Boinc and you're good to go. You don't have to do aliens or cosmology stuff there's numerous research programs you can help with, such as temperature patterns if you're in to global warming, to researching malaria.

Half Moon

Got a real cool shot of the Moon last night in its half Moon stage, the clouds were just right and gave a haunting mysterious look to the Moon, which is what the Moon is , haunting and mysterious. Interestingly enough the Moon had no color to it , couldn't saturate it at all, probably because of the fact there has been no solar activity lately. I marked off on the image below where Apollo 11 landed at the Mare Tranquillitatis or as we know it, The Sea Of Tranquility. July 20, 1969, Niel Armstrong was the first man to set foot onto the Lunar surface, below it is marked as a black circle on one of the images I took last night.



The Mars Society is now taking applications for mock Mars missions at their Mars Desert Research Station. Applications will be accepted from healthy people between the ages of 18-60, must be understood there will be hard work, no pay but eternal glory, all applicants must be willing to sign a liability waiver. The Mars Society has 4 mock Mars habitats, one in the Canadian Arctic, their Desert Research Station, one in the Australian outback and one in Iceland. They state, "In these Mars like environments, we will launch a program of extensive long duration geology and biology field exploration operations, conducted in the same style and under many of the same constraints as they would on the red planet. By doing so we will start the process of learning how to explore Mars". The Mars Society has many big sponsors including NASA. If I had the time and money I would so be there, want some of that eternal glory.



Tycho Crater is my latest feature saturated color Lunar image, again lots of red, I'm running out of images that have any color in them, it was cool while it lasted. I've mentioned this fact before but I'll say it again cause it's cool. One of Tycho's rays intersected the Apollo 17's landing site over 2,000 kms away, the crew gathered a sample of the ejecta and the age of Tycho was determined by that sample, 108 million years old. Tycho is the large crater just left of center with a central peak.

You aliens can run but you can't hide! The Allen Radio Telescope is now online and has started gathering data last week with it's 42 radio dishes. The array will eventually have 350 dishes and in the next couple decades will gather 1,000 times as much data as was gathered by SETI in the last 45 years. Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft contributed 25 million dollars, another group of investors has contributed 25 million dollars and UC Berkeley and SETI are fund raising additional funds to complete the project. They estimate completion with all 350 dishes in place in just 3 years. Below is a YouTube video of the array in action.

Harvest Moon

I took the above picture around 10:30pm September 26th. I was hoping to get a shot of the Moon as it rose from the horizon to get more of a yellow tinge to it, but unfortunately it had just finished raining, but I did get a real nice rainbow shot.

Never fear, I did get a good shot of the 98% Harvest Moon the night before as it was low on the horizon, has got a nice yellow tint to it. The pictures below illustrate the effect the atmosphere has on the color of the Moon. The top one was taken at 7:00pm, the one below it was taken at 7:24pm, the higher the moon is the less atmosphere it's light travels through, therefore less tint caused by the Earth's atmosphere. The picture below is one of my favorite pictures of the Moon I've ever taken. Since it was still a little light out when I took it, you can see the blue sky contrasting against the wall of the telescope, looks as if your looking through the window of the Lunar Crew Exploration Vehicle as your approaching the moon.

The Harvest Moon is the full moon closest to the autumn equinox, in the northern hemisphere, this year it happens to be September 26th. Called a Harvest Moon because it rises as the Sun sets giving the farmers much needed light as they work long into the night to get their crop off, back in the olden days farmers never had lights on their tractors so the harvest moon was a welcome sight indeed. Anna over at My Only Photo took some great pictures as well check them out.

Tycho Crater , top left side of the Moon in the above picture, the major crater with the vast ray system, some reaching as far as 2000 kms, I've mentioned this crater a couple times before, what can I say it's my favorite. Tycho was in 2001: A Space Odyssey the book and the film, Tycho was a location for one of the monoliths, also in the film Star Trek First Contact, Tycho was the location of Tycho City.

To give you an example of how much the full moon lights up the night sky, I was up at 3:30am Wednesday morning to do some astronomy, it was going to be a warm night , by warm I mean 10 degrees C so I thought I'd take advantage of the last warm nights before winter and do some stargazing. I get outside and the moon is directly overhead casting it's blue gray glow over everything. My pod was actually glowing a blueish color, spooky yet beautiful. This strange moonlight is what our eye night sensitive rods pick up, which are 1,000 times more sensitive than our eye cones which are used for day viewing, but the rods are colorblind and are more sensitive to the blues more so then the reds. In astronomy we use averted vision, when we can't see something directly, we look off to the side of where we think the target should be and let our rods find the target, works all the time. The strange moonlight article has some cool sayings, "Moonlight steals color from whatever it touches" or "it's a bit like seeing the world through an old black and white TV set". Needless to say it was too bright that morning for viewing galaxies or nebulae, but the globular and open star clusters were magnificent as usual.

A Press Release issued last Thursday by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory stating a team of 5 astronomers has found a "mysterious" pulse from outer space, about 3 billion light years distant. It was a one time pulse lasting under 5 milliseconds. To date no other pulse or signal has the same characteristics as this one and as they put it "represents an entirely new astronomical phenomenon". The team had gone through approximately 500 hours of archival data recordings by Parkes Radio Telescope of Apollo 11 fame. Scientists are not sure exactly what they have found, could be anything from superdense neutron stars colliding to evaporating black holes. Right now no one knows or has seen anything like it, that's why it is so exciting.

Seeing In The Dark

" Sky-watching Tunes- Up Your Brain", when you view the cosmos your mind lights up, that is the general consensus of amateur astronomers interviewed in "Seeing In The Dark" a new film by Timothy Ferris . The film started showing on PBS last Wednesday. When viewing the cosmos we are amazed and humbled by the inability to put what your seeing into words. Professor Timothy Ferris states in the film "to see a galaxy is to see time". The show is a mixture of history, technology and art show with music. Timothy profiles more than 20 amateur astronomers, one being Michael Koppelman a record producer for Prince and Paula Abdul . NFL running back and amateur astronomer Robert Smith is also interviewed. The film is shot in 1080p High Definition, and let me tell you it looks great, saw it last night and I give it 5 stars. The main thing you pick up is the passion these amateur astronomers have for their hobby, An amateur astronomer who has been viewing the stars for 25 years states, "no matter how many times I look at Saturn through the telescope it blows my mind, takes my breath away".



Google Earth is getting a face lift. The launching of Digital Globe's WorldView-1 satellite will be able to give you the highest resolution allowed by the U.S. Government (20 inches). WorldView-1 can take tons of images faster as well. A Delta II rocket carrying the WorldView-1 lifted off September 18 at 11:35am PDT from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Google Moon also got a big update, better quality images. This website has photographs from various lunar orbiters and all the Apollo missions. All of the Apollo landing sites are on the maps, you can zoom onto added detailed high resolution images, showing points of interest that sometime include audio visual aids. You may want to check out Google Mars as well, cool site, check out the Face Of Mars , it has a little write up on it.

NASA is looking for new Astronauts, if you have multiple advanced degrees, a body of steel, experience flying jet aircraft and a strong stomach, have they got a job for you. NASA is accepting applications for the 2009 Astronaut Candidate Class. People who apply and are accepted may be either staffing the ISS or heading back to the Moon. The last time NASA recruited for Astronauts was back in 2004, they hired 11 U.S. candidates and 3 international people. Salary ranges from $59,000- $130,000 a year. The press release states the destinations you might travel to; " Texas, Florida, California, Russia, Kazakhstan, The International Space Station and the Moon.

Shirley at Way Cool Pictures posted about my Lunar Eclipse photos on her blog. That was just great thanks very much Shirley. I love her blogs, very cool pictures and a blog on Mandala Art
and Way Cool Quotes, don't know where she finds the time to do a great job on her sites.

Lunar Craters

I love Lunar craters, went out last weekend got my high power scope setup and took a couple of images of my 2 favorite craters.

So you're in your brand new Ares I crew module, you look out the window, you see the above Lunar landscape, you are about 120 miles above the Lunar surface and are slowing down to enter Lunar orbit at around 60 miles high. When ever I'm looking at the Moon through my telescope I daydream the above scenario, makes it a lot more interesting and fun.

The 3 billion year old crater Plato is the darkest and one of the most mysterious craters on the Moon. In the picture above it is the dark crater lower right of center. Plato is situated between 2 mountain ranges, the Montes Alpes, the mountain range on top of Plato in the pic above, and Montes Teneriffe, the mountain range just below Plato in the pic above. The mysterious part of Plato is that it has one of the highest occurrence rates for all kinds of Transient Lunar Phenomenon ranging from gaseous anomalies to bright flashing lights.

The relatively young crater Tycho at only 108 million years old is pictured below, just off center with a central rock formation peak. Tycho is noted for its impressive ray system, some as long as 2,000 kilometers. Actually one such ray intersected Apollo 17's landing site, 2,000 kilometers from Tycho, the Astronauts gathered some of the ejecta and that's how they determined Tycho's age, cool.

To The Moon

It may interest you to know that more then half the people alive today, were born after America last landed a man on the moon. Do you also know the software, hardware and the know how to send a man to the Moon no longer exists, NASA has to start from scratch, once we beat the Russians to the Moon America lost interest and instead of saving, they shredded. Does this make any sense to you? I would have thought they'd have a whole area just set aside for Apollo parts and blue prints, I mean it was a huge event, probably the greatest technological breakthrough of all time to land a man on the Moon and bring him home safely, with I might add 1969 technology. How much will it cost to start from scratch? well there have been estimates anywhere from 109 billion to 160 billion dollars, the plan is to land a man on the Moon by 2020.

Why should we return to the Moon? NASA posed the question to more than 1,000 people across the world. Scientists, engineers, commercial entrepreneurs and the general public, the answers that came back fit nicely into six areas.

1. Extend human presence to the Moon to enable eventual settlement.

2. Pursue scientific activities that address fundamental questions about the history of Earth, the solar system and the universe- and about our place in them.

3. Test technologies, systems, flight operations and exploration techniques to reduce the risks and increase the productivity of future missions to Mars and beyond.

4. Provide a challenging, shared, peaceful activity to unite the nations in pursuit of common objectives.

5. Expand Earth economic sphere and conduct Lunar activities with benefits to life on Earth.

6. Use a vibrant space exploration program to engage the public, encourage students and help develop the high tech work force that will be required to address the challenges of tomorrow.

Nasa has just awarded Boeing the contract to build the upper stage of the crew rocket. they are totally scraping the Saturn V rocket, something that was extremely reliable and going into a system with 2 rockets. They would first launch the Ares V rocket containing the Lunar Surface Module and the Earth Departure Stage into a low Earth orbit, then launch the Ares I rocket containing the crew exploration vehicle, which once in orbit docks with the Lunar Surface Module and Earth Departure Stage. Once docked the Departure Stage fires its engines to achieve Earth escape velocity and we're off to the Moon. Once at the moon, all 4 Astronauts then transfer into the Lunar Surface Module and descend to the Lunar Surface. After they do their stuff, (the first initial stays will be 7 days, leading up to eventually 180 days on the Lunar surface.) they launch off the Lunar surface to rendezvous with the crew module and return home. The landing site is yet to be determined, they are thinking probably one of the Lunar poles because of the likelihood of water and the temp is more constant at the poles then anywhere else.

This cool YouTube Lunar video basically sums up NASA's Lunar program real well, enjoy. Something cool just happened to me, when I was surfing the NASA site a questionnaire popped up for me to fill out, they don't occur that often, I've never had one, so that was neat.

Apollo In Hi-Res

Oh happy day, A Press Release dated August 1st./2007, announces the complete Apollo photo set will soon be available in digital high resolution first generation scans. Right now you can view the complete Apollo photo set at "Johnson Space Center" , but these are copies of copies. I downloaded the picture above of the Apollo 16 Lunar Module and Rover from the Johnson Space Center, which is decent enough, but on the first generation high resolution scans you'll be able to see the photographic grain, wow! It says in the public press release "These photos have great scientific value, despite being taken decades ago". The project is expected to take 3 years, but you should be able to view the first Hi-Res scans in a few months.

A gentile reminder about the Perseid's Meteor Shower this coming Sunday at dusk, with Mars in the NE sky as well as a new moon, it's leading up to be a great show. Also don't forget about the August 28 total lunar eclipse, starting at 4:20am EDT, if you miss this one the next will be February 21/2008 visible to the Americas and parts of Europe.

Moon Passes Gas, Apollo 16 Witnesses

Boy slow day at the office, scientist must have decided to dig up some cold case astro files. I would have gone right by this puppy but Apollo 15's name was mentioned and me being the Apollo nut I am did a little digging, made a few calls, called in a few favors and found out some interesting stuff.

Lunar Transient Phenomenas or "LTP"for short, are short lived phenomena, usually of bright white or red lights coming from the moons surface, apparently they are rarely photographed, the picture above is from 1953. I belong to the "LTP Research Program" and have spent many hours looking at Aristarchus and Plato,(50% and 15% of the LTPS happen in these craters) just hoping for some kind of flash to happen, to date notta, nothing, but there is always hope.

Scientists have discovered a strong relationship between "LTP'S" or "TLP'S" and escaping gases from beneath the moon's surface. "Radon" is a non colored gas but when it is cooled below-96 degrees Fahrenheit it becomes a yellow gas, if the temperature dips below -180 C it actually turns a red color. the Moon's temperature varies between 111C nearside temps to -193C at the darkside.

Apollo 15, detected traces of Radon in the Aristarchus, Kepler and Grimaldi. craters. Below is a conversation between capcom (capsule communication on earth)
and Orion, Apollo 16 lunar module.

Capcom: You talked about something mysterious?

Orion: Ok, Gordy when we pitched around I'd like to tell you about something we saw around the LM (Lunar module). When we were coming about 30 or 40 feet out, there were a lot of objects-white things flying by. It looked as if they were being propelled or ejected, but I'm not convinced of that.

Capcom: We copy that Charlie.

Could the Orion have been witnessing a LTP? I am going to leave you with a cool YouTube video of the descent, ascent and the famous hammer, feather experiment of. "Apollo 15" , a mission summary of Apollo 16, notice the "UFO?" behind Charles Duke and a "."Apollo 16" strange flashes video.