Here Comes The Sun

At one time I had really big plans for the Sun and this blog, gonna post a lot of images and such, but alas the Sun has not been co-operating, nothing going on, little or no Sunspots, flares or prominences. I took the image of Sunspot 0999 above over a month ago. The image below is what was on Spaceweather.com today, actually been the same blank Sun for going on 6 weeks now.



A little bit of solar background, the Sun's solar activity such as sunspots, flares and prominences goes through an 11 year cycle of highs and lows, we are currently on the extra long decaying end of cycle 23, in the next few months we will see more solar activity as the Sun builds to solar maximum around 2012. At solar maximum we can expect to see upwards of 120 sunspots and intense solar flares daily as well as auroras as far south as Florida.

The Phoenix lander has been drilling into the Martian surface with it's motorized rasp on the back of it's robotic arm, collecting the sample with it's scoop and then watching and documenting the whole procedure kind of like a dress rehearsal in preparation for an actual gathering and depositing in the lander's oven when they are hoping they will finally be able to get some of that ice water into an oven to scientifically conclude ice water on Mars.

Okay now for the exciting news, NASA just released some 3D stereo views of the Martian surface around the lander. You've heard me talk before about my cardboard 3D glasses, people mock me for wearing them, actually I'm wearing them right now as I type, and yes It isn't the easiest thing to do, type while your wearing 3D glasses, but boy is it ever cool, may not look cool, but the view of the images with these glasses is, well it's like you're there, get yourself some of these glasses, you'll never regret it. Before I got my professional ones I had made some up by buying blue and red gels and taping the cut out squares to my glass lenses, word of advice, you may want to do that in private, it's not like people will think anything less of you when they see you wearing them, it's just they probably won't think anything more of you.

I'll leave you now with an animated Lunar Pleiades Occultation.

The Solstice Moon Illusion

May Full Moon

As the Full Moon rises tomorrow you will see what is called a Solstice Moon Illusion. A huge Moon will be rising in the east. Normally a low Moon on the horizon means an unusually big looking one, but for some reason during the summer solstice it seems to look bigger. No one really knows for sure why this illusion takes place, technically the Moon is the same size no matter where the Moon is but our brain sees it larger on the horizon, whatever the reason, just look to the east at Moon rise tomorrow to get a spectacular view, weather permitting I'll be taking lots of images to post for the weekend if you miss it.

To find out when the Moon rises in your location just visit Sky View Cafe, click on the find tab, type in your city and it will come back with all kinds of goodies like the whereabouts of the various celestial bodies at times for your area, if you need any help with the Moon rise time for your location just leave a comment and I'll get it for you.

Sun filtered through clouds, June 15, 2008

I was out last Sunday to get a horizon Moon shot for this post but it never showed itself from behind the clouds, so I thought I'd post this one instead. As I was turning to leave I happened to notice a pastel like cloudscape around the Sun and was very lucky to be able to capture the above image just as a bank of clouds was dropping which filtered out the blinding light of the Sun to show it's shape.


Snow White Dig site

Still nothing in the water finding department at the Phoenix Mars Lander site. They started a new dig called "Snow White" just today. It is about .8 inches in depth. The previous dig where they found the mysterious white stuff was around 2 inches deep, which by the way they are still keeping an eye on, if the white substance is ice it will either develop frost or sublimate, which means turn from a solid to a gaseous state.

I'll leave you now with an animated Solar cloudscape image.

Fireball In The Sky!!

The University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon campus caught an awesome fireball Saturday January 5th. 9:05 pm. My hats off to the staff and students for having a camera on top of the chemistry building to capture such events, too cool for school!

A fireball is basically a large meteor, the fireball objects entering our atmosphere can range from a few inches to a few feet in size, entering our atmosphere at up to 70,000 mph they stop burning around 10-20 miles high and only 1-2% reach the ground to become a meteorite.

Messenger had it's closest approach to Mercury Monday January 14th, another spacecraft had an important happening on that date as well. Ulysses spacecraft was at it's highest point over our Sun's north pole. NASA and the ESA have joined together for the Ulysses mission, launched from the Discovery Shuttle October 1990 the Ulysses spacecraft used Jupiter for gravitational assist to orbit around the Sun's poles. Just as Earth's poles are crucial to studies of terrestrial climate change, the Sun's poles may be crucial to studies of the Solar cycle.

Photo credit Sky and Telescope

The Sun goes through an eleven year cycle from minimum solar activity, things like Sunspots and flares to maximum activity. We are at Solar minimum and January 3rd was declared the start of a brand new cycle, cycle 24 has just started with the arrival of sunspot, active region 10981. Active region 10981 has an opposite magnetic polarity compared to active region 10980 and is at a high solar latitude, both indications a new cycle is upon us. What this means for me is more sunspots and flares to take pics of.

Got my first picture of a Sunrise the other day and guess what, decided to make another animated gif, hope you like it.

Solar Stuff and Mars Attack!!!!

Got a cool pic of the Sun a couple days ago. it was shinning behind some wispy clouds and looked huge, grabbed my palmcorder and took the pic. The thing I like about the images is that they are in 16:9 Anamorphic widescreen, looks classy, and I love to say Anamorphic. Another Anamorphic Widescreen image I took is below, it is our lovely Sun in all it's Solar Minimum glory. Just missed an actual sunspot, #0978 had just rotated out of view a few hours before this image was taken. I took this image of the Sun with my Anamorphic Widescreen Plamcorder, stuck my white light telescopic Solar filter in front of it with one hand and snapped the image with the other, in this image you can see solar granules on the surface of the Sun, gives it a grainy appearance, basically they are caused by bubbling plasma, the same way when you boil fudge on the stove it bubbles, or boling water.



I put on the image for comparisons sake circles representing the sizes of Jupiter and Earth, the ratio is 1, 10, 100, that is the Sun is roughly 10 x the diameter of Jupiter, Jupiter is 10x the diameter of Earth, therefore the Sun is 100x the diameter of the Earth. Haven't posted many pictures of the Sun since I started my blog mostly because it is at Solar Minimum. The Sun goes through this 11 year cycle of high and low activity, right now and up until March of next year we are at the low spot , after March the Sun will start it's 5 and a half year climb to Solar max and we will slowly see increases in the amount and frequency of items such as solar flares, sunspots and prominences, nothing like a good ole solar flare to raise my spirits! Below is an image I took of the Sun a couple years ago while it still had some cool activity.

An asteroid, which by the way has been tracked by NASA since November 20, has a 1 in 75 chance of hitting little Mars on January 30th, 2008. Asteroid 2007 WD5 is around 160 feet across, is also supposed to be similar to the asteroid that broke up in midair before it flattened a Siberian forest back in 1908. If it does hit Mars the rovers may or may not get an image of the event, they figure it will hit somewhere north of Opportunity.

The blue arrow in the above image shows the predicted path of the asteroid and the orange line is the predicted impact zone. Scientists say the asteroid is behind the Moon right now, they will have a better idea if and when it will hit Mars in January when the glow of the Moon dies down and they can fine tune it's trajectory. NASA is pretty excited about the prospect of an asteroid hitting Mars, no one has ever witnessed an asteroid hitting anything, I'm all excited it's not gonna hit us!!

Since this will be my last post till after Christmas, MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE !!

Our Sun

Well this has got to be the coolest Solar Video I have ever seen! Just released by NASA last week, it shows our Sun in action. Pictures taken by Stereo (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory) are stitched together to produce the video. Stereo is basically two space based observatories providing stereoscopic measurements to give us a better understanding of Coronal Mass Ejections or CMEs.

The Stereo mission provides us with a better understanding of why CMEs happen and also provide early warnings for any Earthbound CMEs, since they do major damage to satellites, just about anything electrical, have been known to cause blackouts and if there are any Astronauts working out in space they have to take cover.

Warnings are issued to various tech companies to prepare them for the CMEs, my daughter's boyfriend is an IT guy and gets them so he can prepare for it and warn any clients that he feels may be affected by the CME.

CMEs are the "biggest" explosion in our solar system, equivalent to one billion hydrogen bombs and can travel up to two million miles per hour making the trip to Earth in just 2-4 days!

Since we're on the topic of the Sun I thought I would add a couple of pics I took of the sun. below are pictures taken with a Solar Hydrogen Alpha Telescope, it allows only the hydrogen wavelength of the Sun through, allowing us to see the Chromosphere where all the neat stuff happens. Below you can see on both pictures Solar Prominences, shooting into space, the pic right below you can also see a sunspot as well as the Suns "orange peel" look which is created by thousands of Solar Granules , small convection cells 200-2,000 km in diameter, ever changing, have lifespans anywhere from 8 to 20 minutes.

Lunar Eclipse

Mark your calenders boys and girls, Commencing at 4:20 a.m. EDT August 28/07 there will be a total eclipse of the moon for most of the Americas. I will post little reminders here and there to keep you up to date. Two buzz words that get any amateur astronomer's pulse going are "Eclipse" and "Transit". Eclipse is defined as , "when one celestial object moves into the shadow of another", during a Solar eclipse the Earth moves into the shadow created by the Moon comming between the Earth and Sun. In a lunar eclipse the Moon moves into the shadow created by the Earth comming between the Sun and Moon. I have posted an image I took of the Oct 28/04 eclipse. The beautiful reds and sometimes brown colors on the Moon during an eclipse are the result of sunlight being refracted through the Earths narrow, troposphere, which tends to only allow the longer wavelengths, reds through to the lunar surface, the blues are absorbed and scattered by our troposphere. A transit is defined as an astronomical event that occurs when one celestial body appears to move across the face of another celestial body, as seen by an observer at some particular vantage point. Transits can be as simple and frequent as one of Jupiter's moons moving across Jupiter's surface to Venus transiting the Sun which happens very infrequently, in 234 years only 4 Venus transits of the sun occured! the last one in 2004 I missed due to clouds, doh! Oh and the Mercury transit last year in Nov I missed due to snow storm.