Report for 2003-03-28

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Brought to you from beautiful Park City, "View-tah".

Contents

Astronomical Times (Mountain Standard)

Chicago Meteors

Naked Eye Asteroid

Messier Marathon

Comet Watch

Viewing Outlook

Mission Update

New Mars Mysteries

After a year of data collection, the orbiting Mars Odyssey Spacecraft has raised more questions than it has answered. What is the chemical composition of the Red Planet? Was there ever water on the planet? Is there any now?
Checkout Space.com for more info.

Solar System

Space Weather Update

On March 18th, the orbiting Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) imaged this beautiful double solar blast. The prominence on the right spans over 20 Earth diameters.

This sketch comes from amateur astronomer Bill Cook of Vernon, New Jersey. Bill made the sketch last Friday 3/14 using a refracting telescope operating at 100x. Of course Bill had a quality solar filter attached to his telescope for the session.

According to Cook: "The seeing conditions were good enough to show excellent penumbral relief, and the contrast between the outer bright ring and undisturbed photosphere was sharp". 

Want to view the sun for yourself? Follow these Safe Viewing Techniques.

What in the world have we got here? Well... this picture shows some beautiful northern lights... along with a pair of rockets. The rockets were launched by the Poker Flats Research Range to study the motion of aurora. As the rockets climbed, the release a glowing chemical which lingered in the air for quite some time. Pretty sweet.

Planetary Report

The accompanying image was created from a series of images made by the Mariner 10 spacecraft. Note the blank spot at the top. This represents an area not imaged by the spacecraft. 

Mercury is quite the illusive object for amateur astronomers. Since it is the innermost planet, it never gets far enough away from the Sun to be seen in dark skies. Additionally, views along the horizon are typically the most turbulent. So... simply seeing Mercury is about the best you can hope for. I did just that on Wednesday when  Mercury was just east of the crescent Moon. To find it for yourself, use the planets Mars and Venus as guides. Draw a line from Mars through Venus and continue for about the same distance along that same line and you should come to Mercury. The next few days will provide you with your best views of Mercury for several weeks. 

Mercury is currently in the constellation Pisces.

Venus is now rising about 1.5 hours before the sun. It will disappear from the morning sky during the summer months and reappear in the evening sky this fall. As it sinks, it grows in phase and shrinks in overall size and brightness. At this point, it is considerably past its maximum size and brightness now. It has shrunk from over 1' in diameter to only 15'... less than 1/4 of it's largest. It has also dimmed from over mag-4.6 to under mag-4.1... 

This beautiful image was taken in Ultra Violet Wavelengths by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope..

Venus is currently in Aquarius.

 

This beautiful image was taken by Astronaut Don Pettit, science officer on the International Space Station. This image captures two celestial events in one.... Auroras over Canada and the Manicouagan impact crater in the foreground. Clouds and Earth's surface are illuminated by moonlight. 

The Manicouagan Crater in northern Canada is one of the oldest impact craters known. It was formed by an incredible impact some 200 million years ago.

Lunar Phase

We'll get a new moon on Tuesday. In the meantime, we'll be under a waning crescent moon with 15% of the Moon's visible disk illuminated when it rises over Park City at about 4:50 am. 

This incredible shot was taken by the Galileo Spacecraft during a "fly by" of our planet. From a distance of 6.2 million miles, this is what we look like. Pretty cool, huh?  

Visit our Lunar Information Page for even more images and information

Is Mars safe for astronauts? Recent suggests a stronger than expected level of radiation on the surface of the Red Planet. While not beyond manageable levels, the levels would be yet another thing for astronauts and mission control specialists to track. Find out more at Space.com. 

Mars took another step towards grandeur this week. At 7", it is now almost twice as large as it was just a few months ago. No surface detail is yet visible, but that will come soon when Mars passes the critical 10" mark. That event will occur in early May. In the meantime, colors visible on the planet suggest that details will soon be appearing. I viewed the Red Planet Wednesday morning through a 6" Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope. Views were a bit of a tease, but... that was ok. I know that by August, Mars will be bigger and brighter than at any time in over 70,000 years! Why is this you may be wondering... Earth and Mars both orbit the Sun on different paths and at different distances. This summer, both planets will be on the same side of the Sun. This type of alignment, known as Opposition, occurs about every 26 months. No big deal, right? Well... that depends because the separation at opposition varies considerably. On August 27th, that distance will be about 35 million miles. At the previous opposition in June of 2001, the distance was 41 million miles and in 1995 it was almost 70 million miles. So... what can you expect? Well.. only the best views of the Red Planet in your lifetime! Mars will shine at mag -2.9. This is about as bright as Jupiter ever gets! Additionally, Mars will have an apparent diameter of 25". That's more than 4 times its current size. Still not convinced? Want even better views? Well, short of climbing aboard a spaceship (not completely out of the question nowadays) you'd have to wait until 2287 for a closer peak.

An immense planet wide dust storm of 2001 sweeps across Mars in this series by Ed Grafton. Let's hope there is no such repeat this year.

Jupiter, the 5th Planet

 

Rising:		1:40 pm
Visual Magnitude:		-2.33
Visual Diameter:		41"
Distance:		4.76 AU
Constellation:		Cancer

 

Jupiter's moons are currently involved in a rare dance. I'm sure you know that the moons routinely drift in front and in back of Jupiter. However, due to a chance alignment between Earth and Jupiter, for the next few months the moons will actually be eclipsing each other. For times when these events may be viewed, visit the Astronomy Magazine website.

To find Jupiter look almost directly overhead shortly after dark. Jupiter is the brightest star-like object in the night sky. Need a bit more help? Checkout this star chart.

Jupiter is currently in Cancer.

Saturn is now rising about noon and is well positioned for observing as soon as it's dark, giving planetary viewers a nice bedtime treat. Saturn can be found about 15° north of Betelgeuse... the alpha star in Orion. Did you know that the rings are visible in binoculars? It's true. You'll have to hold it extremely steady... or maybe even mount it on a tripod, but.. they are visible.

This beautiful image of the 6th planet was taken by The Cassini Spacecraft scheduled for a July 2004 rendezvous with the ringed planet. Astronomers expect to learn much from this expedition.

Much of this "subtle" detail can be seen with an amateur telescope from the convenience of your backyard. Check it out next time the skies clear... Saturn is pretty close to it's best for the next couple of months. After that, it'll be setting too early to provide more than a quick glance.

How's this for an awesome view? This is certainly one you'll never see from Earth... a crescent view of Neptune. Since Neptune is beyond Earth's orbit, we never see it in any phase except full. This shot was taken by the passing Voyager II spacecraft. Pretty cool, huh?

Similar to Jupiter, Neptune is categorized as a gas giant. Neptune is roughly 17 times more massive than the Earth. William Herschel is credited with the discovery of Neptune in 1781. However, it had been recorded in several catalogs as a star as far back as 1690.

Take this bit of planetary information either as an interesting side note, or an observing challenge. Pluto is in the constellation Serpens, about 15 degrees north of Mars. At magnitude 13.9, Pluto is basically out of reach of smaller telescopes. One way to verify that you have found Pluto is to sketch the star patterns over several nights. If you have actually found Pluto, one of the the faint star-like objects will have moved over the course of a few nights. This is Pluto.

Pluto orbits the Sun at about 30 times the distance of the Earth - nearly 2.75 billion miles away. The series at right was captured by Gordon Waite. This series depicts how Pluto was originally discovered. After years of searching for a planet beyond Neptune, Clyde Tombaugh in 1930 came upon Pluto. His was not a simple discovery. He didn't just scan the sky with his telescope and see Pluto. Nope. He took countless images of the sky. Each image would be compared to an image taken days or weeks earlier. While the stars are essentially motionless over short periods of time, solar system objects would appear to move. On February 18, 1930, Tombaugh compared images taken on January 23rd with images taken on January 29th. While blinking the images, a technique which alternates the images from one side to the other, he noticed that one of the stars moved. That star was actually the planet Pluto. And so on that fateful day, the population of our solar system increased by one. No other planets have been found in our solar system since!

(Just in case you're having trouble, you should see Pluto dancing towards the lower left corner of the image. If you don't, hit your browsers "Reload" button.)

Need more information? Checkout the Pluto Home Page.

Deep Sky

Hubble Vision

We've got a special treat for you in this weeks Hubble Vision section. These are the first shots made public from the new camera installed in the Hubble Space Telescope. I'm sure you'll agree that these shots are even more impressive than previous Hubble products.

If you are able to find all of these objects, you may be one of the few, the proud, the Deep Sky Obsessed. 
E-mail your findings to DeepSkyObservations@UtahSkies.org.

IDA-Utah Light Pollution Update

Stay up to date on astronomical happenings by regularly checking the Utah Skies website at http://www.UtahSkies.org  

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