What a spectacular show, last night just after the Sun set the Pleiades open star cluster and the Moon complete with earthshine crossed paths. Couldn't have asked for a better night, clear skies and above zero temperatures, actually I think I overdressed for the occasion, didn't really need the gloves or the toque, spring has arrived and what an opening act.
I took a wide angle shot as well of the event as the International Space Station was passing by, people the sky was so full of stuff, you had Orion, Taurus the Bull, the Pleiades, the Moon and to top it all off a guest appearance from the ISS all in the same field of view, awesome!
The next big event to watch out for will be the Lyrid meteor shower the night of April 21-22. This is usually one of the better meteor showers but because of the full Moon the impact won't be as great, but still worth a view. I will be out snapping images for you if you happen to miss it. the radiant or point to which the meteors seem to start from is in the Lyra constellation, look to the NE. around 10 pm the 21st for the start of the shower, expect 10-20 an hour.
Our company was involved in Earth Hour and after the event our President sent out an email to the companies employees with some cool results of the initiative which I would like to relay to you at this time. At least 50 million people participated worldwide; in Canada 250,000 people and 6,000 businesses signed up online in the lead up to the event. Electricity use dropped 8.7% in Toronto, a 4%drop was reported from Ottawa, and a 5% drop was reported across Ontario as a whole. By turning off the lights for one hour on Saturday March 29th. 2008 , participants in Ontario alone prevented 200 tonnes of greenhouse gases from polluting our atmosphere.
I'll leave you now with one of my Moonrises as an animated gif.
I was so lucky to be able to get the above image Wednesday April 2nd. the night before the International Space Station and the Automated Transfer Vehicle docked. Very cool to see the little ATV follow behind the big bright ISS the length of the sky, like a baby duckling following it's mother, very cute, I mean not kitten playing with a ball of string cute, but space cute. Cute isn't word I throw around lightly on this blog, this blog is about space stuff, space is one of the harshest environments known to humankind, not cute.
The ATV docked with the ISS Thursday April 3rd at 10:45 am EDT. The Automated Transfer Vehicle, Jules Verne, named after the science fiction writer carries important cargo to the station such as water, scientific equipment, oxygen, nitrogen and propellant. Jules Verne will be docked with the ISS for 6 months allowing the crew to unload it's cargo then reload the vehicle with the station's waste products. Just before the ATV leaves it will fire it's thrusters to push the ISS into a higher orbit, detach and then fire it's thrusters once again to put it into a de-orbit for a controlled destructive re-entry over the Pacific Ocean. The docking procedure was fully automated, the ATV is guided by lasers, that's right lasers to guide it to the docking port, anything that uses lasers to guide it is too cool. I get so excited when I talk about stuff like the ATV, Shuttle and the ISS, people we have different countries working together for a common good to do hard science, so that instead of flying by the stars of the Big Dipper so to speak, we can one day fly to.
Jules Verne is the first of at least seven ATVs planned for the ISS. The ATV was developed by the European Space Agency over 10 years at a cost of 1.9 billion dollars for an exchange of astronaut slots in the upcoming ISS crews. The ATV class cargo ship can carry up to 3 times the amount of payload as the current station service vehicles the Russian Soyuz and Progress spacecraft.
Get ready for a beautiful conjunction/occultation of the crescent Moon complete with earthshine and the Pleiades star cluster this coming Tuesday April 8th. Look to the west just after Sunset for the stunning gathering, hopefully I'll have clear skies to take some pics. I'll leave you now with a clip I put together of the ATV following the ISS the night of April 2nd.
I'v been sucking wind lately with trying to come up with titles, woke up 5:30 am do the post before work, think what will I be talking about, lets see the International Space Station, Gemini, Mars...and they're kinda conjuncting,...done, good enough. The above image was possible due of course to my camera but also a web site called Heavens Above.
You type in your location latitude and longitude, which you can find here and it comes back with flybys of the various satellites that will pass over your location, it gives you the start and end times, the altitude and magnitude, plus a couple maps. The map above was the one I used for the ISS last Saturday. I knew that at 9:23 pm the ISS would rise above the west horizon, it would reach it's max altitude in Gemini around 9:28 pm, and then disappear into the shadow of the Earth shortly after, it also tells you how high it is, the flyby that night was at 372 km.
So of course it's cloudy, even though the weather network says it isn't, I go out to my spot just in case it isn't cloudy out there, or maybe the clouds will fly away by the time I get there. Get to my site look to the sky, and there are clouds. They don't look to be moving out of the way anytime soon. I'm about to go back to the car to leave and I notice the star Sirius trying to burn through the clouds, and think the ISS is much brighter and bigger, it might work.
So after some experimenting with f stops, exposure rates and the ISO levels, I come up with a combo that brings out the stars that are trying to burn through the clouds without over exposing the image, just in time, I notice the ISS rising above the west horizon, take a pic, 15 sec exposure, anything longer would have overexposed the image due to all the clouds
I was able to get 4 pics before the ISS disappeared into the Earth's shadow, the image above. The ISS is looking especially bright these days with all the additions like the Columbus Laboratory giving it more overall surface area for Sunlight reflection. I'll leave you with a video I put together of the images I took of the ISS flyby.
Astronauts on the Shuttle Discovery have completed repairs on the solar array successfully using the home made cufflinks and are heading home. After the Shuttle Discovery undocked from the ISS they performed the 360 loop around the space station to take one final look to ensure nothing is about to fall off the station, it also allows the station's crew to take final images of the shuttles heat shield to analyze later for damage, which is now standard practice ever since the 2003 Columbia disaster. As the astronauts were leaving the ISS yesterday while closing the hatches Clayton Anderson noticed a ding on one of the shuttle's thick windows, NASA doesn't anticipate any complications from this, apparently the window was struck by a micrometeorite. Below is a picture of one of the cufflinks used to repair the solar array. The shuttle will be landing at Kennedy Space Center,Fla. 1 pm.EST Wednesday.
There are a couple of good meteor showers coming up in the next couple months to watch out for. Late evening on November 17th. through the morning hours of November 18th. sees the return of the Leonids meteor shower. The source of the shower is the parent comet Tempel-Tuttle discovered independently by William Temple in December 1865 and Horace Tuttle in January 1866. Look for the radiant, the place where the meteors seem to start from low in the NE. sky around 11:30 pm November 17th. that's where and when the constellation Leo rises. Leo will continue to rise until early morning bringing with it 20-30 meteors an hour.
The second major shower, the Geminids will occur December 14th. but you'll be able to catch them between December 7-16 with peak activity December 14th. The Geminids are the most reliable of all the showers with up to 120 meteors per hour. Look for the constellation Gemini, the radiant of the shower to rise in the NE. sky around 8pm. and will of course continue to rise and bring with it many meteors from dusk to dawn. Find yourself a comfortable spot or even a chair and get comfy, make sure you're warm, here in Saskatchewan 20c below is normal for December. If you find yourself relaxing too much to a stage where you're dozing off and seeing visions of Obi Wan Kenobi your probably getting dead, snap out of it man and get inside and warm up. Mars as a bonus will also be in the constellation Gemini. Every 26 months Mars and Earth get the closest they can be in their respective orbits around the Sun. On December 18th. at 6:46 pm.EST. Mars will be within 55 million miles of the Earth, I can't stress enough, get some binoculars, it'll be worth it
The best viewing of celestial objects is happening right now. I was up at 5am. Saturday morning, it's hard to put into words, the sky was full of gems. It's like all the players showed up for the performance of the century and I was the only one invited. Venus starts off the show a bright white gem low in the east; Saturn next, a bright yellow ball a little higher in the south east; a little further west was the Moon followed by Mars high in the south; west of Mars was the open star cluster the Pleiades and then just north west of the Pleiades is Comet Holmes. These are all naked eye candies, don't need a scope to view this stuff people, it was a busy quite, if that is even a term, it was remarkable!
I am going to leave you with a compilation of my best Comet Holmes images I took from October 25th to November 2nd. all at 200x. I put them all together in windows crappy Vista operating system's "Movie Maker", but that wouldn't upload properly, duh, Vista, so I uploaded to You Tube and embedded it to my blog. WARNING!!!, if you have an irrational fear of a comet crashing into the Earth destroying life as we know it, don't push the play button! Also just a note to let you all know I will be posting every Monday and Thursday nights from now on.
I took a wide angle shot as well of the event as the International Space Station was passing by, people the sky was so full of stuff, you had Orion, Taurus the Bull, the Pleiades, the Moon and to top it all off a guest appearance from the ISS all in the same field of view, awesome!
