Sunrise Images and A Total Solar Eclipse

I am so sick and tired and tired of being sick and tired of winter, it's either frigging cold or it warms up only to snow. The weather here needless to say has not been cooperating with my celestial viewing habits, missed the Lunar/Pleiades conjunction earlier this month and this morning missed the Lunar, Mercury, Jupiter, Mars conjunction due to clouds, all was not lost though, the clouds which prevented me from seeing and imaging the planets allowed me to capture a beautiful Sunrise.


Atmospheric refraction stretched out the bottom of the Sun giving the it a cool oblonged shape.



Even got a Green Flash.




As well as a Red Flash


I'm hoping the weather will work with me March 2, the next major conjunction. Look to the West the evening of March 2 for another gathering of the Moon and Pleiades, they will be close together most of the night in North America but will be their closest together as the pair sets together around 2:30 am CST.

We had a penumbral eclipse February 9, oh and by the way I missed it as well due to clouds. A Penumbral eclipse is when the Moon passes through the Earth's penumbral shadow, what you see is a slight Earth shadow on the Lunar surface making part of the Moon look darker. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency released what the event looked like from the Moon. Using Kaguya's, High Definition camera, the orbiter captured a beautiful image of what we know all too well , the diamond ring effect that happens during a Total Solar Eclipse here on Earth, very pretty.

Kaguya is Japan's Lunar Orbiter who's mission it is to gather data such as the Moon's mineralogy and geographic data as well as magnetic and gravity field information so as to better understand the Moon's origin and evolution. Kaguya is expected to ends it's mission with a controlled fall to the Lunar surface sometime in June. I'll leave you now with a clip of the event.

National Geographic Channel's "Direct From The Moon"and Phoenix Lander Recieves An Award

Get some more popcorn, the National Geographic Channel has another great space show lined up for us. As part of their first annual expedition week, "Direct From The Moon" will be broadcast in the U.S. this coming Monday November 17 at 9:00 pm EST, Canadian dates to follow.

Watch in High Definition, a beautiful Earth Rise and other Lunar images sent back to us from the Moon by JAXA's Kaguya spacecraft as Buzz Aldrin, second Man on the Moon gives his thoughts, very cool. You'll also hear from NASA scientists about the current goings on with respect to returning and setting up a permanent Moon Base as well as the challenges and the innovative technologies that will almost certainly arise as we reach for the Moon once again. Excellent program, one you won't want to miss.




Looks like the Phoenix is done for, with the onslaught of the Martian winter and dust storms the lander is not getting enough Sunlight to charge batteries required to operate Phoenix's scientific equipment.

Having said that the mission has been very successful, the textbook rocket landing, confirming the presence of ice water, returning more than 25,000 images, analysing Martian soil, recording and analysing weather conditions, filming and documenting the first ever snowfall on an alien planet, you done well Phoenix!! Also the Phoenix Lander has just been awarded in the space and aviation category, Popular Science Magazine's the "Best Of What's New Award". Mark Jannot editor and chief of the magazine stated, "For 21 years, Popular Science's Best Of What's New Awards honor the innovations that make a positive impact on life today and change our views of the future."

What's next? Well how bout a honking huge Mars Science Laboratory Rover, almost like the Phoenix Lander on wheels. A third generation Rover about the size of a small SUV. The image above shows the 3 generations of rovers, wow notice the size difference from my favorite rover guy, Sojourner Mars Rover to the white "I'll kick your Butt if you get In my Way Mars Science Laboratory", geez I think I even see laser turrets on it, take that you alien martian aliens!

This large Rover will carry more scientific instruments, travel the furthest and sample the most Martian rock and soil then any previous spacecraft, all in the quest for life past or present on Mars and to help future Mars colonists. Tentative launch date is October 2009, with it's landing on Mars slated for September 2010.

I'll leave you now with a preview clip of National Geographic Channel's "Direct From The Moon"

Purbach Cross

Click on image to enlarge


I must admit that even though I own property on the Moon I had never heard of the Purbach Cross, (sometimes called Werner X named after a nearby crater) until I read about it on page 45 of the April edition of Astronomy Magazine. I took one look at this strikingly elusive phenomena and said to myself, "I have got to get me one of those." Striking because it stands out from the rest of the Lunar landscape, like it doesn't belong, elusive because it only occurs during the Moon's 1st. quarter phase, (the first half Moon after the new Moon), and then only for a few hours, and on top of that, because the Moon's phases repeat every 29.53 days, you can't view this phenomena every month from the same location, you will be 12 hours early day 29, or 12 hours late day 30.

As I was reading this article I thought hey I've taken literally 100's of lunar images, maybe I've unwittingly, because that's how I usually do things, captured an image of the cross, after going through my collection of Lunar images, no luck. The article gave the exact date and time the cross would be available for viewing, April 12th. 8 pm EDT. So April 12th. comes around and I have clear skies, hopefully it will be our location's turn for the feature to show itself.

So I'm getting excited, go out to my POD, fire up the scope attach my Canon directly to said scope, point it at the Moon, push the shutter button, look at the camera's monitor, there it was,.................people, I had a moment, actually I'm having a moment right now thinking about the moment I had back then.

Click on image to enlarge

The phenomena is created when Sunlight reflects off the higher crater walls of 3 back to back craters, Purbach, Blanchinus and LaCaille. If you would like your own personal X moment a list of the dates in Universal Time for the rest of the year when the Sun will be at the proper angle to create the X are below. You will need binoculars or a telescope to view the phenomena, look at the terminator just south of the Lunar equator.

May 12, 1530 UT; June 11, 0234 UT; July 10, 1255 UT; August 8, 2306 UT;

September 7, 0945 UT; October 6, 2126 UT; November 5, 1029 UT; December 5, 0050 UT.

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency has released new Earthrise and Earthset videos taken by their Lunar satellite Kaguya, and they are nothing short of amazing. Also released are newly created topographic maps of the Moon, created with the data collected by the orbiter, 10 times more accurate then previous maps done of the Lunar surface, they also show locations of valuable minerals such as uranium, thorium and potassium. Below is a YouTube video of the New Earthrise/Earthset released by Jaxa.

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.

Lunar Surface In HD 3-D

People, this has got to be the coolest thing ever in the world, or should I say Solar System. Kaguya the Japanese Moon orbiter has released the first ever super high def 3-D images of the Lunar surface and released them in movie form!!! They were taken with Kaguya's onboard terrain camera, which is basically two cameras in one, one pointing forward and one pointing behind the orbiter, therefore being able to take stereoscopic images. There are 3 movies released, two of which can be viewed by the general population without 3-D glasses, the third or anaglyph images movie has to be viewed with 3-D glasses, which of course I just happen to have, and is it the sweetest thing ever, just feels and looks more real. You may ask how did I come by 3-D glasses. Good question, when I purchased my copy of Spy Kids 3-D Game Over , believe it or not came with 4 pairs of 3-D glasses! You may also ask, why I would purchase a copy of the kids movie Spy Kids 3-D game Over, because I used to be a spy kid when I was a kid. My parents bought me a Secret Sam outfit.

Secret Sam came with a gun you put together, white bullets, a cool periscope you could attached to the gun, so you could spy ducked down behind something, but the coolest thing you got with it is an actual working camera that as you can see from the lower left of the picture, fit into the briefcase, you could then close the case and activate the camera with a secret button on the outside of the case and take the enemy's picture like a spy without them knowing about it. I think that was the point when my love for cameras started, I just remember taking a lot of pictures with that camera and my Dad having to get them all developed the old way, you know we didn't have digital back when I was a kid, sorry for the major tangent, back to space stuff.

Not to be outdone NASA just released the highest ever resolution of a couple of Saturn's UFO shaped moons. Atlas 24x11 miles big and pan 20x13 miles big. Both images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft's narrow-angle camera. Both moons orbit around Saturn in Saturn's outer rings.

Saturn's rings formed due to a few major moons orbiting Saturn colliding, the resulting debris quickly fell into orbit around Saturn forming the rings we know of today, scientist figure that some smaller particles attached themselves to a couple of the larger core rocks forming the UFO shaped moons Pan and Atlas.

On a final note, don't forget the Geminid meteor shower starts tonight at around 9pm EST, look in the east for the constellation Gemini the radiant of the shower for the start of the show.

Moon Rise In High Definition

The Japanese Moon Probe Kaguya has sent back stunning images of an Earth rise, the above picture and Earth set the below picture. Notice below in the Earth setting picture the Earth appears upside down, visible is Australia and Asia. The images were taken 62 miles above the Lunar surface. Bonus for us Canadians, the Discovery Channel HD in partnership with Japanese broadcaster NHK will be showing Return To The Moon which is about the probes mission to the Moon and will show the most current images. This program will be repeated throughout the coming weeks starting November 14/07. I will be PVRing mine this afternoon while I'm at work, very cool.

The Shuttle Atlantis made it's 7 hour 3 mile journey to it's launch pad in preparation for the December 6th. launch. This will be the 24th shuttle mission to the ISS. Atlantis's main mission will be to install the European Space Agency's Columbus module which will be dedicated to long term space research.

The Google AdSense ads have been working out great for me! So far I've purchased a 9.95 Earth rise Hi Res print, and 2,000 satellite TV stations for my laptop for only 50 bucks. the one ad said "Shocking discovery they don't want you to know", well who doesn't want to know what they don't want you to know? So now I have 2,000 satellite TV stations on my PC AND I now know what they didn't want me to know, check and mate, sometimes my own intelligence amazes even me.

I will leave you with a video I put together on Lunar travel using my Tycho perspective image, duplicated over and over again with the perspective changed a little each frame to give the illusion of moving over the Lunar surface.