Venus Moon Gathering And Rovers / Phoenix Updates

I suck at titles what can I say. There has been some great picture opportunities for my "Find And Photograph The Daytime Crescent Moon Contest". Again email your image to me and I will post it on my site. First place wins 50 pairs of Hanna Montana/Miley Cyrus 3D glasses, second place a DVD of "In The Shadow Of The Moon". Closing date is today November 3rd, or before my next post, this Thursday.


Tonight the Moon and Jupiter come within 3 degrees of each other in the South part of the sky just after Sunset. What's 3 degrees you may ask, well the Moon is a half a degree wide, so they will be within 6 Moon widths, another great photo opportunity.


The image below shows what the Moon, Venus and Jupiter gathering looked like Saturday just after Sunset, tonight the Moon will be right beside Jupiter.


Good luck to all the contestants which at this time is one, and it's a nighttime crescent Moon, getting more lax with the rules to get people to submit their images, first it was , "Daytime Crescent Moon", then "Nighttime Crescent Moon", then "Moon", then "A Link To A Moon Picture I Found While Surfing The Net", to "I Think This Is A Moon Image I Found While Shopping For Furniture Online Contest".


Well the little rover guys are both doing well, surviving another winter. Opportunity is on her way to the huge crater Endeavour, about 7 miles away, doesn't sound that far away but when you only travel 110 yards a day it takes 2 years to get there, but Opportunity will be doing lots of science on the way there. Spirit is up and running and doing science and image taking, of course she has dust on her solar panels from the dust storms that have been happening in her area, poor Spirit again, the troubled child of the two with a broke wheel and all.


Phoenix on the other hand, not so much, with the coming of winter, - 140 degree c temperatures, and fewer and fewer hours of Sunlight reaching her solar panels has created a low power fault putting the Phoenix into safe mode. Anybody that has a computer knows what safe mode is, I call it suck mode, can't do anything. The Phoenix team have shut down all they can on the Phoenix in hopes of the lander building up enough energy to be able to squeeze out all the science they can before the lander freezes over for good.

I'll leave you now with an animated crescent Moon I took on my outing Saturday night.

National Geographic Mars Rovers Special

Just a heads up people, mark your calendars and get the popcorn going for this Sunday night November 2 at 8:00 pm ET for three hours of Mars, the Rovers and the search for aliens on The National Geographic Channel.

The premier of Five Years On Mars gets things rolling. Journey with the little rovers Spirit and Opportunity on what was to be a 90 day mission on the red planet that has now lasted nearly 5 years. Using computer generated high-definition photorealistic animation you'll see how the rovers conquered mechanical failures and the harsh Martian environment to send back literally 100s of thousands of images and enough scientific data to keep scientists busy back here on Earth for years to come.


Very cool, right near the beginning of the show it cuts to a scene of a bunch of scientists all wearing 3D glasses looking over some assembled 3D images taken by the rovers. Well anybody that has read this blog will know that I am one with all things 3D, ........ I so want a job where I have to wear 3D glasses, I can't imagine... well maybe a little.

Intercom system: "ATTENTION! ATTENTION! would Bob Johnson please report to the 3D mission room and bring your 3D glasses with you, there is a lot of 3D scientifical discoveries to be made that will benefit all humankind and we need your expertise and 3D glasses, thank you.... and have a nice day".


Immediately following Five Years on Mars will be an encore showing of Life On Mars, then the premier of Calling All Aliens, about how we are reaching out to the heavens in hopes of one day making alien contact, speaking of which do you remember Jodie Foster in the movie Contact?
well you'll meet the lady her character was based on, Jill Tarter the director of the Allen Telescope Array.


Partially funded by Paul Allen co-founder of Microsoft, the Allen Telescope Array is used by the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI), 24/7 to collect and monitor datastreams from outer space to see if anyone not of this Earth is trying to make contact.

All in all a great night with 3 awesome programs you won't want to miss. Right now the Canadian dates and times aren't confirmed, once I find out I will update this post.

Also as you're out Halloweening tomorrow night with the kiddies or just out by yourself, look low in the SW just after Sunset for a beautiful gathering of the crescent Moon and Venus.

I'll leave you now with an animation of the Full Moon and clouds.

Perseid Meteoroid Hits Moon

The next meteor shower I attend, and that will be the Orionids, peaking October 20,21, I'm pointing my camera and telescope at the Moon. The above animation was taking by amateur astronomer Robert Spellman shows a Perseid Meteoriod blasting into the Moon to the equivalent of around 100 lbs of TNT, quite a site, sign me up for a piece of that.

Some updates on the Phoenix Mars Lander, the above animation was taken with the Lander's surface stereo imager, it is a clip of 10 frames over a time frame of 10 minutes and shows ice clouds moving over the landing site. This helps scientists track winds on Mars, the clouds are made of ice crystals similar to the cirrus clouds here on Earth. The Lander has also gathered another soil sample into one of it's ovens. This sample came from the Stone Soup 7 inch deep trench, the deepest todate, "We are anxious to find out what makes this deeper soil cloddier than the other samples" Doug Ming, Phoenix science team member.

The little rover guys are still going strong, the above image shows the tracks of Opportunity coming back out of the Victoria Crater, notice two sets of tracks, it came back out over the same tracks it went into the crater with. Spirit's batteries are charging up again and is still doing science, both have made it through another Martian winter, a couple robots that were only to last 30 days have now been working for around 4 years, geez they keep going and going, the Phoenix should be so lucky.

Get thee over to Google Chrome, download this browser, it's fast and it's clean, it's a clean machine. The only problem with it I've found so far is that when you do your posts it doesn't underline like Firefox your spelling mistakes, which for me is quite a big thing, my posts usually have a gazillion words underlined, right now nothing is underlined, which means I've either spelled everything right or I'm screwed, so I may end up surfing the net with Chrome and then doing my posts with Firefox.

I'll leave you now with a Sunset I took a few nights ago.

Shuttle Endeavour Returns Home

Shuttle Endeavour and her crew landed safely at Kennedy Space Center at 8:39 EDT. STS 123's main missions were to deliver and install the first stage of the Japanese Kibo Laboratory as well as Dextre a special kind of mechanical maintenance robot that will be able to do basic repairs outside of the station without having to send an astronaut on a spacewalk, which is always potentially dangerous. The only slight problem the crew encountered was a ding the size of a small ball bearing on one of Endeavours windows that posed no threat to the Shuttle or her crew.

The Auroras from space

Dextre in action

Some interesting facts: STS 123 was the 122nd. Space Shuttle flight, the 25th. to the International Space Station, it was the 21st. flight for the Endeavour and the 2nd of 6th planned for this year. STS 124 Shuttle Discovery is the next flight to the station, it's main mission to deliver and install the main stage of the Kibo (hope) laboratory, launch date TBA.

UPDATE: NASA has just reversed the decision to cut the rovers funds, nobody knows for sure why the sudden reversal, could be the tremendous public outcry against the cuts, whatever the reason NASA has instructed the rover people to carry on as usual, like the cutback letter had never been issued.

Rover Opportunity pointed it's cameras overhead to image these cool cirrus like clouds, wispy clouds formed mostly of ice crystals. Mars surface ice warmed by Sunlight can briefly turn to vapour in Mars atmosphere and form into ice crystals. Due to budgetary cutbacks the Rover program has just been handed a 4 million dollar cutback which means one rover, probably Spirit will be shut down for the rest of the year. The rover people have also been told to expect another 8 million dollar cutback for 2009.


Venus, Mercury Conjunction March 24th, 2008

A conjunction I mentioned here between Mercury and Venus occurred a couple days ago, nearly didn't get the pic. due to some stubborn clouds hanging around, they finally moved and I got some images, bonus, got an image of a cool misty Moon on the opposite side of the horizon getting ready to set.

Venus, Mercury Conjunction March 24th., 2008

I'll leave you now with my misty Moon as an animated gif.

Phoenix Mars Lander

I haven't been this excited about a spacecraft landing, well since way back in '97 when little Rover Sojourner landed on the red planet and into our hearts, while at least mine, never seen anything like it before, the thing could roam, get out and look for things and drill, anyways it was very cool. May 25th. the Phoenix Mars Lander enters the Martian atmosphere to begin it's mission which is to uncover clues to the geologic history and biological potential of the Martian arctic.

There are 3 major reasons why I think this is a pretty cool mission. I'll start with number 3 and work my way to number 1.

3. It is actually going to use rockets to land like a real spacecraft, not inflatable balloons. I've always thought what an undignified way for the little rovers to land, bouncing around, making them all dizzy and such. Phoenix's heat-shield will hit the Martain atmosphere at around 12,000 mph. Approximately 7 minutes later it's parachutes will open, then descent rockets cut in reducing the speed to 5.4 mph before landing on 3 legs, now that's the way to land.

2. Phoenix has a built in lab, and a neat robotic arm, get the picture? With its robotic arm Phoenix can dig down below the protective top soil layer to the ice water below, bring the sample to its lab and perform complicated scientific analysis to further NASA's overall Mars science strategy, "Follow The Water".

1. My most favoritist reason I love this mission is, it's going to land the furthest north of any craft on Mars to date, where there is going to be frozen water within reach of the lander's gathering equipment, now isn't that cool. There is one advantage the little rovers have over the lander, lets say there is ice water 40" away from the lander and the lander's robotic arm is only 39" long, well it would suck to be the lander, the rovers would just rove over, but with the lander, it's not like wheels are going to pop out of the landing legs and then rockets pop out of the wheels, although that would be cool, unfortunately the lander is stationary.

Right now 3 Mars orbiters are adjusting their orbits to be at the right place at the right time to be able to observe and record the Phoenix landing as well as trying to determine the ideal landing site for Phoenix, even the rovers are helping out by simulating transmissions from Phoenix for tests with the orbiters.

This coming Wednesday March 5th. we got a beautiful conjunction going on, just before the Sun rises look to the SE. to see a crescent Moon, Mercury and Venus all huddled together, perfect photo op, I'll be ready weather permitting with my camera.

Below is my most current Sunset image as an, that's right an animated gif.

Christmas Moon

The above Lunar image is the December 100% of Full Moon, or as the Colonial Americans used to call it, "Christmas Moon". Actually went looking for a Sunset just on the outskirts of town, no luck again clouds, but when I turned around and glanced at the East, a got a light red Moonrise low on the horizon, took my anamorphic widescreen camera and got the pic. Just before Mars came close I got the shot below of the Christmas Moon through my Telescope, complete with a light cloud cover.

Various Cultures have different names for the monthly Full Moon. The Celtic call the December Full Moon "Cold Moon", the Chinese call it "Bitter Moon", Neo Pagan "Long Night Moon" but my fav is what the Colonial Americans called it "Christmas Moon", although "Twelfth Moon" is kind of catchy, that was the name given to the December Full Moon by the Dakotah Sioux.



If you don't mind getting up at 2 in the morning, boy have I got a meteor shower for you. The Quadrantid Meteor Shower peaks Jan 3rd. evening through to the morning hours of January 4th. It's radiant, that is where all the meteors seem to start from, is in the constellation "Quadrans Muralis" which by the way no longer exists. In 1920 the International Astronomical Union dropped the constellation when it decided on the final 88 official constellations we know and love today. So come next Friday at 2 am look towards the N.E. that's when and where the show begins, don't forget to dress warmly, it is January. Expect around 1-2 meteors a minute. I'll be up and out there, the weather network says it will only be -1c, and the weather network is always right!

UPDATE: NASA/JPL Near -Earth Object Program announced Friday that the chances of Mars getting hit from asteroid 2007 WD 5 has increased from a 1 in 75 chance to 1 in 25 chance . They made the adjustments based on the asteroid's appearance on 3 images taken November 8th, nearly 2 weeks before the actual discovery, the observations were then added to the existing observations and the prediction was refined.

Below is an animation of Spirit arriving at it's winter resting place, broke wheel and all, apparently little Spirit's been travelling around with a broke right front wheel since March 2006, the cause is a broken circuit on the wheel motor drive. Opportunity being closer to the equator is still doing science over at Victoria Crater at Cape St.Mary.

Coming up January 3rd. is Spirit's 4 year anniversary, Opportunity's 4 year anniversary is January 25th., not bad for a mission that was only supposed to last 90 days.

Rovers Get Ready For Martian Winter

NASA is moving Spirit Rover to a sunnier place to prepare for the upcoming Martian winter. They have found a nice sun facing slope to park the little rover. Opportunity on the other hand is closer to the equator so they aren't quite as concerned about it as much, also Spirit still has a lot of dust on it's solar panels left behind from the dust storms so it will have less power over the winter months. The majority of Opportunity's dust was blown off by wind gusts.

NASA scientists are going over Spirit's most important discovery to date. Just before the dust storms Spirit discovered nearly pure silica, scientists say it could have come from either a hot spring or fumarole, fumaroles are vents or holes in a volcanic environment in which gases and vapor vent to atmosphere. Either of these conditions on Earth would harbor lots of microbial life, just more evidence life once or still may exist on Mars.

NASA has a cool section on their website called Spooky Sounds, check it out, one of the sounds is a sonic boom of Jupiter captured by Voyager 1 in 1979, the sonic boom is created as the Solar wind moves past the planets at supersonic speed. There is also a cool Saturn's Aurora sound picked up by the Cassini's Spacecraft electronic equipment. I found a YouTube video of a lot of these sounds together below including the Voyager 1 probe encountering Solar winds.

JD from "The Uneasy Supplicant" has once again honoured me with an award, the "Blogger Cleverness Award, for being terribly clever" Jd has an awesome story, poetry, photo site all grouped into one which I visit quite regularly.

I want to pass this award on to swubird, Ya gotta check out his blog, he has an extensive military background and has very interesting posts, very glad I found this one!

Okay just got a new toy, a palmcorder. Panasonic SDR-H18. My wife got it for me as a pre-Christmas gift. Think of the possibilities, my first use of this device is to bring you Bing and Dean, check out the video below, after Dean does his thing notice what he does with his mike hand, cracks me up every time!

Blogging That Hits The Mark Award

Drowseymonkey over at drowseymonkey has awarded me with the Blogging That Hits The Mark award, since it's not pink and it looks cool I accept. The best thing about this award is that it came from drowseymonkey, probably one of the best names for I blog I've run into, love to say it, so much so that when my cat passes on to where ever cats pass on to, I'm considering naming my new Boston Terrier drowseymonkey. What do you think? there is a poll at the side of my blog, the two choices are, 1 Boba, which is my gaming name, or 2. drowseymonkey. I know your probably thinking both pretty strange names, or as my wife said; "your not really going to name your dog Boba?, well maybe not now, how's drowseymonkey?, come here drowseymonkey, come here boy, or sit drowseymonkey sit, attack drowseymonkey attack! works for me. Besides having a cool name for a blog she also has some good funny stuff on her blog, and she also has a drowseypics photoblog with awesome pics. I would like to pass this award onto Anna over at My Only Photo great photos and she has a Story Blob with lots of cool stories on it. Anna is my astrophotographer and my eyes and ears down east, she is always fulfilling her assignments perfectly and on time, thanks Anna for all your hard work and great blogs.

So far NASA is good to go on an October 23rd. Shuttle Discovery launch. There are however some concerns raised by an independent safety group about cracks in the wing panels. NASA is saying the cracks are small and won't be a problem stating "the defects are too small to allow hot gasses to burn through the composite covers and destroy the spaceship during atmospheric re-entry". Shuttle Discovery's main mission is to install the Harmony Module at the ISS which will be the main connecting point between the U.S. destiny lab, the European Space Agency's Columbus Module and the Japanese Kibo module. Remember to watch NASA TV for this one, cool camera angles.


NASA announced yesterday that it is officially extending the rovers Opportunity and Spirit's mission through to the end of 2009. The rovers landed on Mars January 2004, their mission was supposed to last only 90 days, they have beat all odds and numerous dust storms to have survived nearly 4 years on the surface of Mars. Between them they have sent back nearly 200,000 images and have made some amazing discoveries including the best evidence so far to date that water once flowed on the surface of Mars. Check out this video about what's really going on at Mars.



I'll leave you today with another one of my saturated lunar shots, this one was extremely saturated. I have a theory. Since Moonlight is reflected Sunlight which by the way is made up of 91% hydrogen, which is in the red spectrum and most of my pictures are pink and red, I'm thinking the type and amount of saturation is directly dependent on the solar activity when the image was taken, whether it be a solar flare, or Coronal Mass Ejections , what do you think?

No Shuttle Repairs

Yes, in your face you stupid clouds. According to the Weather Network 14 day forecast for Saskatoon it's going to be sunny for the Total Lunar Eclipse August 28th., happy happy joy joy!

On a more sombre note, more bad news for the Endeavour and her crew. A micrometeorite dinged the shuttle's windshield, man these guys can't catch a break, my wife suggested they park the shuttle by the side of the road and wait for the next ride down. On Wednesday mission control cut short the planned 3rd. spacewalk because Rick Mastracchio noticed a hole in his space glove, the hole only penetrated 2 of the 5 layers of the glove and Houston stressed Rick was in no danger but hurried him back inside just to be safe, maybe they should do the repairs to the space shuttle just to be safe as well.

It is official now, NASA has decided that no repairs will be done to the shuttle's tile system. The chairman of the mission management team John Shannon said Johnson Space Center's engineering group in Houston wanted to proceed with the repairs , but every one else including safety officials voted to skip them. Douglas Osheroff a Nobel Prize - winning physicist who worked on the Columbia investigation four years ago, questioned NASA's decision not to proceed stating since they "can only increase their chances of making it down." he also stated "I don't see why NASA is going to invent a fix and not use it, this attitude of it looks okay, let's not do anything about it, seems like the Columbia NASA." And I thought Anna and I were the only ones having major concerns about this, I'm glad we're not alone on this one. Here is a good CNN video on the tile repair situation that I found for your viewing pleasure.

Martian skies are starting to clear for the rovers, Spirit is actually doing science again while the little opportunity rover guy is still having power problems.

Move on Rover

My plan for total world domination by making tons of money buying and selling rare items on Ebay is off to a shaky start. Above is my mattel rover which I paid $24.95 for in 2002, is now selling for $14.90, I guess it wasn't quite as rare as I thought.

On July 4th. 1997 NASA'S little rover Sojourner landed on Mars with It's main mission to find out if water ever existed on Mars. Its last successful data transmission was September 27, 1997. The Sojourner operated 12 times its designed lifetime of 7 days. During the mission more than 16,000 images were taken, 15 chemical analysis of rocks were completed and extensive data on winds and other weather factors were gathered. It was the first time engineers were able to deliver a semi-autonomous vehicle(a vehicle that has artificial intelligence, but can also be controlled by a human user if needed) to the surface of another planet. Its main mission was accomplished, findings suggested a warmer past in which water may have existed.

Fast Forward to January 4/25 2004 rover's Spirit/Opportunity land on the Martian surface. The rovers have been exploring Mars surface for more than 1,200 martian days, they were only designed to last for 3 months. The rovers have discovered the best evidence for water to date, that being soil rich in silica so much so that only water could have produced such a concentration. The little rovers are in trouble, widespread dust storms are blocking out 99.9% of the Sun's energy threatening to end their mission. Opportunity is about to make a major entrance into Victoria Crater. Conspiracy theorists are already saying whats down in the crater that NASA doesn't want us to see, oh my! There has been many Mars conspiracy theories from The Face to Blue Mars Conspiracy . I'll leave you with this video, what do you think? You Tube Mars faked photos.