TOP 10 ASTRONOMY STORIES OF 2015

        Hands down, the robotic flyby of Pluto at the farthest reaches of our Solar System is the top story in astronomy for 2015.

       Other stories that everybody heard about one time or another during the past year include the orbiting of Ceres in the asteroid belt by another amazing NASA spacecraft and the confirmation that water exists on the surface of Mars.

       Astronomy highlights of the year 2015 also include the 15th year of people on the International Space Station and 25 years of fantastic images from the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope.    

     Let’s look at my personal Top 10 Astronomy Highlight of 2015:

1)             Pluto: the flyby last July by NASA’s
New Horizons spacecraft revealed a dynamic world of active geology despite the minus -370 below zero temperatures.  

Pluto, smaller than Earth’s Moon at just under 1,400 miles wide has frozen nitrogen, water and methane that has created a bizarre landscape of mountains, moving glaciers and ice volcanoes. Also bizarre and an active world is the 375-mile-wide moon Charon, which has a hemisphere of ice spewed off Pluto. See the latest imagery at the New Horizons web site headquartered at Johns Hopkins University.

2)             Ceres: this dwarf planet in the asteroid
Belt surprised planetary scientist when cameras onboard the Dawn spacecraft revealed more than 100 white splotches mostly inside craters and a pyramid-like mountain. 

Dawn began orbiting in August 2015, and is the first spacecraft to orbit two bodies, having spent a year in 2012 around the asteroid Vesta. The now famous image of the bright spots inside crater Occator are revealed to be a mineral like magnesium sulfate—Epsom salt. Dawn has been lowered to is final orbit height of 240 miles and is already sending back incredible images.  Check out the Dawn website or Facebook at 1 Ceres Protoplanet being revealed.  

3)             Water on Mars: A decade of orbiters
and rovers, the collaborative knowledge has finally yielded the discovery worth waiting for; liquid water does flow on the surface of Mars.

 The visual evidence of water breaching the surface on the sides of many crater and canyons has been confirmed as salty water welling up from the ground.  NASA’s car-sized rover Curiosity has also found Martian mud a foot below its wheels as it works in the middle of an ancient riverbed. Slowly, the pieces of the puzzle are coming together about a wet Mars maybe 3 billion years ago.

4)             Earth-like Exoplanets Found: 

The search for extraterrestrial live in our Universe has taken some big leaps in 2015 as the Kepler Telescope and those powerful lenses on Earth keep narrowing the life indicators on planets orbiting other stars. 

5)             Europe Spacecraft Continues Orbiting Comet: 

European Space Agency (ESA) has a year of orbiting its spacecraft Rosetta around two-mile long Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. 

In November 2014 the spacecraft ejected refrigerator-sized lander Philae on the surface, and it sent photos before batteries ran out—all The odd, two-lobed shaped comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko was created when two comets collided at a low speed, giving it a distinctive “rubber duck” shape.

6)             International Space Station occupied 15 years: 

Since the year 2000, there have been at

least two people aboard the ISS orbiting 225 miles above Earth. 

That includes more than 320 people from all 17 countries that are part of the consortium that built the $400 billion “Station.” Aboard and heading to end their year-long mission in March 2016 are American and Russian experienced space men, Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko. The ISS is easy to see in our post twilight skies as a very bright, slow moving star, usually one week a month in the morning and one week in the evening. The NASA website will give you accurate times to see the ISS.

7)             Super Moon Lunar Eclipse:  

North America was captivated by the Sept. 30 total eclipse of the Moon that also happened when our celestial satellite was at its closest point to Earth, 338,000 miles away. 

Beautiful photos were captured as the Moon slipped into the shadow of the Earth, creating lasting memories across America.  A new awareness of these frequent “super moons” have piqued the public to look up at Full Moon time—and maybe do a little howling.

8)              Commercial Supply Runs to ISS:

Orbital Services spaceship Cygnus and SpaceX’s Falcon have flow to the ISS with supplies as private industry becomes a big player in the business of space flight.  After a disaster that lost its cargo ship in October, SpaceX rallied in December by launching its Falcon 9 rocket, safely landing its first stage vertically at Cape Canaveral while the second stage successfully deployed a constellation of 11 satellites. The year 2016 will be an active year for private industry continuing to push into the space frontier.

9)             Hubble turns 25:

 Launched on April 24^th, 1990 aboard

 the Space Shuttle Discovery, the Hubble Space Telescope celebrates 25 years in space in 2015. The final servicing mission in 2009 gave Hubble a reprieve from the space junk scrap heap, and the orbiting telescope is still going strong. Hubble has no less than pushed the limits in modern astronomy to become a modern icon of the space age.

10)      Messenger Ends 10 years at Mercury:

NASA’s Mercury exploring spacecraft wraps up its mission next year. Launched in 2004, MESSENGER arrived in orbit around Mercury after a series of flybys on March 18^th, 2011. MESSENGER has mapped the innermost world in detail, and studied the space environment and geology of Mercury. In late March 2015, MESSENGER achieved one final first when it impacted the surface of Mercury to end its extended mission.

11)      BONUS: The book and movie “The Martian:”

Written by a computer programmer Andy Weir, this first novel created a sensation with a simple rescue mission that was written around plausible survival techniques that are capable now.  The movie was a hit as actor Matt Damon turned in a credible performance about a man stranded on Mars having to survive more than 500 days before being rescued.  Even “non-space” people love it, so check the book or movie soon!

     These are just the headline stories of space exploration for 2015 as there are other breakthrough discoveries about Dark Matter, Black Holes and the cosmological questions of the String Theory and alternate Universes. 

     And 2016 will be just as fascinating...keep your heads up and your mind open!