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!

PLUTO REVEALS ITSELF
THIS WEEK TO NASA PROBE

       Our first and only close up view of famous dwarf planet Pluto will happen Tuesday, July 14, and the Space Age will have taken 58 years to reveal the faces of all the Solar System’s major members.

       Pluto is the last of the classic nine planets to show its face, and as you read this NASA’s New Horizons gets closer by 32,000 miles every hour.

       On July 14, New Horizons will begin its closest approach that will have it traveling 30,000 mph through the Pluto system that includes its large moon Charon and four tiny ones.  At a closest approach of just 8,000 miles, the spacecraft will be busy taking photos, measuring the atmosphere and making other measurements with seven instruments. Pluto is knocked over on its side (like Uranus) and the approach of New Horizons to the dwarf planet and its moons will be like flying through a bull’s-eye.

New Horizon spacecraft...the size of a Grand Piano   NASA artwork

       The first photos and data will take more than more than 9 hours to travel the 4 billion miles distance between Pluto and Earth.  But 85 years after its discovery, the wait will be worth it.

       Since May 2015 New Horizons has been sending back new photos across the millions of miles, each batch reveals details that tantalize astronomers anxious for the close-ups. Each day the nuclear-powered New Horizons has become 744,000 miles closer—the nine-year journey for the 1,000 pound spacecraft shaped like a grand piano is almost over. Here’s what we’ve learned about Pluto in the last 60 days from the $700,000 investment by US taxpayers in the last 60 days about Pluto:

·      Pluto is 1,471 miles wide; while moon Charon is 750 miles wide (our Moon is 2,190 miles in diameter) Astronomers are surprised that each is extremely different in appearance.

·      Pluto has two distinct faces, one dark and one bright. There appear to be several large craters, and a thin atmosphere of super-cold methane (-200 F.) might mean there are clouds. And there is a series of four, equally spaced dark circles maybe 300 miles in diameter around the equator that have created speculation from volcanoes to alien origins.

·      Charon has a dark polar cap, and is grayish. It also shows sign of some large craters. The other four moons, Kerberos, Styx, Nix and Hydra, will have to await the close encounter to be revealed.     

·      From the distance of four billion miles from the Sun is just a bright star, daylight on Pluto is similar to late twilight on Earth.

PLUTO and CHARON two hemispheres

       The controversy over Pluto’s demotion from planet status—though logical—is not going away, particularly with these new images giving the dwarf planet some character.

       New Horizons was launched in January 2006, when Pluto was still a planet.  But that changed in Prague, Czech Republic, at a meeting of the 1,600-member International Astronomical Union, the governing body that officially names celestial objects, among other duties. 

       Because there have been so many Pluto-size objects discovered beyond Pluto 4 billion miles away in the Kuiper Belt, the IAU met with a dilemma in 2006—add four or five new planets, or demote Pluto and create a new class of objects like it. The Kuiper Belt contains perhaps hundreds of thousands of rock and ice objects that were leftovers of the creation up to 10 billion miles from the Sun.

       The IAU opted for the demotion, and for Pluto supporters—named after a deity of Hyades—all hell broke loose!  Many astronomers and science educators still refuse to acknowledge the IAU's dwarf status for Pluto

       Also changing its status to dwarf planet is the largest asteroid, Ceres, orbiting in a ring of rubble between Mars and Jupiter. Ceres, 700 miles wide, is the only round object in the asteroid belt, is currently being orbited by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft.

       Beyond Pluto are dwarf planets Eris and Quaoar, each more than 2,000 miles wide. And another dozen dwarf planets have been discovered in the 1,000 mile range. 

       The fact that Pluto has five moons is reason enough to call it a planet, some say.  So, it is reasonable to think that other dwarf planets will also have moons.  Pluto's big moon, Charon, was discovered in 1978, and orbits extremely close at just 12,000 miles above the surface! They are in fact a “binary planet” revolving around a point outside the center of Pluto.  The other two 20-mile-wide moons, Nix and Hydra were discovered by the Hubble Telescope in 2005, and 10 miles moons Kerberos and Styx were found by Hubble in 2012.

CLYDE TOMBAUGH and DISCOVERY PLATES

       Many supporters of the planetary status for Pluto are endeared to its popular discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh, and the man who first began seeking “Planet X,” wealthy socialite Percival Lowell. Known for his promotion of the canals on Mars in a series of popular books in the early 1900s, Lowell theorized that Neptune was being gravitationally pulled by an unseen Planet X.  He employed Tombaugh in 1927 to begin a search mission, and the humble astronomer discovered Pluto in the constellation Gemini in 1930 as a result of a tedious search of photographic plates.

       The discovery of Pluto was big news, it doubled the size of the Solar System, and the planet was at first thought to be as large as the Earth.  Tombaugh became famous as the third human to discover a planet (William Herschel in England discovered Uranus in 1781 and J.G. Galle in Germany first confirmed Neptune in 1846.) He later developed military optical tracking cameras for rocket launches. But he was always accessible to amateur astronomers at his Albuquerque, New Mexico home.

       When he died in 1997, he was an icon among the astronomy community, and often toured regions of the country, autographing posters and books at star parties and Pluto lectures.

       And the memory of Clyde Tombaugh is likely to live on for many more years as some of the astronomer's ashes are being carried aboard the New Horizon spaceship bound for Pluto. 

       When blasted off the USA Cape Kennedy Space Port on Jan. 19, 2006, New Horizon was the fastest spacecraft to leave Earth at some 25,000 mph, passing the Moon in just 9 hours—a trip that took 72 hours for Apollo astronauts.

       July 15, 2015 will be an historic day for planetary astronomers as the first close-up images of Pluto will complete the photo gallery of the traditional Solar System. 

       The only detailed images of Uranus and Neptune (and some of their moons) are courtesy of the Voyager 2 flybys in 1986 and 1989, respectively.  Soon Pluto, a planet for 66 years and a dwarf planet for the last nine years, will have a face.

       Websites to keep up with the latest include: nasa.gov; seeplutonow.com; dailypluto.com; spacedaily.com; space.com; universetoday.com; facebook/New Horizons and spaceweather.com.

Jupiter and Venus in Incredible Conjunction

       Something extraordinary is happening right now in the evening sky after sunset that in another millennium would have the world turned upside down.

       It is somewhat amazing to me that there isn’t some minor hysteria and wild predictions as what might happen during the next two weeks of celestial “magic.”

       Because what’s going on in the stars after sunset is something that demanded attention thousands of years ago, and now it is being completely ignored except for the brethren of amateur astronomers poised to capture the event with their cameras.

       Just what am I talking about?

       Something no less than what might be the return appearance of the famous Star of Bethlehem…and I’m not kidding!

       On the night of Wednesday, June 30, 2015, the two brightest planets, Venus and Jupiter, will seem to merge as one star to the naked eye—exactly what happened on the night of June 17, 2 BC.

Jupiter, top, and Venus
photo by MarQ

       This “super” conjunction of the two planets that have been characterized as the King and Queen of many ancient mythologies has been one solid explanation for the most famous star of all, the Star of Bethlehem.  In our only source, the Bible Book of Mathew says guided “Wise Men” from the Far East to the manger in Bethlehem where the Christian Messiah was born. 

       Both the conjunction 2015 and 2 BC occurred in the regal constellation Leo the Lion, near the bright yellow star Regulus, known as the “Regal One.”

This might be the event that triggered a clan of wise skywatchers from Persia to saddle up the caravan and travel the 600 miles to a town called Bethlehem and an infant named Jesus.

       This beautiful night sky event has been playing out in our pre-Summer nights, just like they did 2,017 years ago. To the ancient cultures these god-like planets chased each other in the Zodiac house of stars that was considered the place for laws and royalty.

Venus below Pollux and Castor
Photo by MarQ

       Yes, amateur astronomers have been watching for six months the convergence of Venus towards Jupiter, with the bright yellow star Regulas nearby. Called a “conjunction” in astronomy talk, the meaning is when two celestial bodies are in the same proximity of the sky, usually within 5 degrees of each other. Five degrees is the distance an arm-length human fist covers in the sky, of the distance between the pointer stars of the Big Dipper.   

While Jupiter and Venus are near each other about every eight years, it is a rare event centuries apart that will have both planets visible in the same low power eyepiece of a telescope for a few hours.

The separation will be less than the width of the Moon, which is one-half degree—or the width of your outstretched pinky finger. During the conjunction of 2 BC, the planets were even closer, Venus nearly covering up Jupiter.  

       Though close in the sky, it is a line-of-sight perspective as the planets are actually more than 500 million miles apart.  Venus is close to the Earth at about 20 million miles away while Jupiter is on the other side of the Sun 600 million miles away and a month away from going behind our star and popping back up in the morning sky. 

       It was just a little more than 2,000 years ago that ancient star watchers also observed with fascination as the brilliant white Venus kept moving upward to the gold Jupiter under the scrutiny of nearby Regulus.  The significance was even more impressive to the ancient stargazers as the quick moving Mercury moved in and out of the scene during the two months of celestial cat-and-mouse in 

the Spring of 2 BC. 

       In the 21^st Century we know that Jupiter is coincidentally the largest of the eight planets and named after the King of the Gods in Roman mythology.  And Venus is shrouded in clouds, giving it a pearly white and bright appearance that the ancients associated with virginity and birth.  Leo the Lion was one of 12 constellations where the planets, Moon and Sun are always found, and each was thought as a celestial house of influence on the lives of man. Leo was an authority figure and lawgiver in the ancient minds of astrology.

       This month’s spectacular conjunction of the two brightest planets is silently ignored by the astrologers of our millennium.  But 2,000 years ago there would be a buzz in the civilized lands about the King of the Gods being visited by the Queen of Fertility, and the news about it being reported by swift, mythical messenger Mercury.

       In fact, this dance of the special wandering stars among the royal house of the favored constellations had to be watched even more intently by the ancient Zoastrian priests of the ancient world.  For centuries they had been looking for signs in the sky that a Messiah of the Hebrews would be born, as predicted in ancient teachings from prophets like Abraham and Moses.

       And when the King and Queen of the night stars merged into one star for a few brief hours on June 17, 2 BC, skywatchers interpreted it as a sign from their God, and thus the famous story of the Bible’s Gospel of Matthew unfolded.

       But the reaction in the 21^st Century is quite blasé.  There are no religious outcries that I can find anywhere on the Internet.  No wacko groups are professing that the end of the world is near.  I can’t find any predictions of the return of Jesus.  Nor any apocalyptic predictions of famine, drought or pestilence. 

       Gee, anybody remember Y2K fears of a computer melt-down? Or how about in 1997 Heaven’s Gate? There were 39 members of the cult who committed suicide in matching outfits and Nike shoes. They believed they were catching a ride to eternity aboard spaceship following Comet Hale-Bopp!

       Really? A re-creation of what could have been the most famous star in history—THE Star of Bethlehem and nobody wants a piece of it?  I can’t find a decent tabloid on the newsstands, any mention in the UFO magazine rack or any special discounts at the corner Palm Reader’s shack. 

       This beautiful conjunction of Venus and Jupiter is only talked about in the usual monthly publications of Astronomy and Sky & Telescope, as well as the 2015 almanacs and calendars of celestial events.

       Venus has been jumping up from the horizon to met Jupiter before it begins dropping back down to swing into the morning sky by the early Autumn.  Jupiter slips behind the Sun in August. In the September 2015, the planetary pair will dazzle the pre-dawn skies into morning twilight.

       Any doubters about the similarity of these conjunctions 2,017 years apart? You can check it out for yourself by downloading the popular desktop planetarium program, Stellarium.org.  It is free and takes about five minutes to install on your computer.   

       What will be amazing about this event should be the photos taken of both planets in the same field of view.  Venus will have a gibbous phase and be a little bigger than Jupiter with its squashed poles with several wide, dark bands of clouds cutting across the globe.  Jupiter will have three moons on one side and one on the other of its easily visible four moons discovered by Galileo.

       To prepare for any photos, or just to enjoy the peak of the conjunction on the night of June 30^th, pay attention to where the planets are as they set over the upcoming nights. 

       You’ll have a ring-side seat to see celestial mechanics as played out by the laws of physics. 

It might not be a time for the return of any Messiah, but you can certainly enjoy the spirituality of the event with a knowledge that surpasses anybody living two millennia ago. 

       I’ll be watching, of course.  And just in case I can hitch a ride somewhere that night, I’ll be wearing my sneakers.

       

NASA’s DARKEST WEEK 

HAS SILVER LINING

       NASA's darkest week in its history ends with the lessons learned orbiting Earth in the incredible International Space Station.

       Within a week, NASA and space watchers mourn the loss of 17 brave spaceflight pioneers. It's just a coincidence that the sorrow of three American space fatalities is relived over such a short span of time. 

The mistakes causing the fatal disasters are well-known human blunders when looking with hindsight.  Acknowledged and corrected, there always lurks another failure that will, someday, claim the lives of more space travelers.

NASA's first astronaut fatalities in a spacecraft occurred during rehearsals on the launch pad when Apollo 1 caught fire and killed three spacemen eventually bound for the Moon.   That occurred on Jan. 27, 1967—48 years ago.

       Incredibly, 29 years have passed since the launch explosion of Shuttle Challenger claimed the lives of seven astronauts on Jan. 28^th.  The dead included the Teacher-In-Space winner Christa McAuliffe. The 1986 space disaster was one of those “Where were you when?” events of a generation.

And the last NASA space fatality was 12 years ago on Feb. 1 when during reentry from a successful mission Space Shuttle Columbia was ripped apart over East Texas and Western Louisiana as it approached Kennedy Space Port for landing in Florida. Seven astronauts were killed, including Israel’s first astronaut and war hero Ilan Ramone.

       The Russian Space Program has claimed four lives in spacecraft during flight.  A cosmonaut died when a parachute failed after reentry of Soyuz 1 in 1967, and three cosmonauts suffocated when a valve opened during the reentry of Soyuz 11 in 1971.  But they’ve had their share of close calls, including a 1997 fire on their space station Mir.

       The newest player in human space flight, China, has safely launched 10 “taikonauts” on five spaceflights, including two women. Their small space station was occupied twice, and the world awaits the next Chinese space mission as they have boasted of going to the Moon.

       The American disasters could have been avoided and no doubt adversely affected those who were in charge:

Gus Grissom, Ed White, Roger Chaffee

·      The Apollo 1 fire occurred on the launch pad during a routine test.  Bare wires created a spark that ignited the 100 per cent oxygen cabin, creating a fire that suffocated Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee. 

    They died trying to open the hatch that normally took several minutes to unscrew.  Among the hundreds of changes to the Apollo spacecraft, the new hatch could be opened in less than 30 seconds.

Jarvis, Onizuki, McNair, Resnick, McAuliffe, Smith, Scoobee

·      Space Shuttle Challenger was doomed at liftoff when an O-ring seal broke on one of the segments of the right solid rocket booster, sending out flames like a blow touch that blew up the fuel tank just 70 seconds into launch as America watched on television.  Freezing temperatures compromised the  integrity of the rubber O-ring causing concern from technicians, but launch officials proceeded with the 9 am blastoff on a chilly Florida morning with a fatal outcome. The other astronauts who gave their lives on the 25th Shuttle launch were Commander Dick Scobee, pilot Mike Smith and mission specialists Christa McAuliffe, Judy Resnick, Ellison Onizuka, Ron McNair and Gregory Jarvis.

front: Chawla, Husband, Clark, Ramon; back: Brown, McCool, Anderson

·      Columbia was also doomed at liftoff when a suitcase-size chunk of insulation flaked off the huge, orange external fuel tank, busting a hole in the left wing. The damage was suspected by some technicians but not confirmed by orbiting spy satellites, though a request was made. And astronauts on board couldn’t see the wings out their windows. The 17-day science mission in the SpaceHab module in the cargo bay—planned without any spacewalks which might have seen the damage—was perfect.  That is until the fiery reentry penetrated the fist-size hole in the wig, starting the break-up of the Shuttle over California at the supersonic speed of 5,000-plus mph just minutes before landing. The astronauts who perished were Commander Rick Husband, pilot Willie McCool, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark and Israeli Ilan Ramon. 

       After 54 years of spaceflight, that probably isn't too bad of a track record.  All counted the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo flights total 30 space flights. Add the 135 Shuttle flights and that makes for 165 American blast offs, and only two failures.  That is just a 1.2 per cent failure rate, not bad for the most complicated machines ever made by man.

There have been several astronaut deaths in NASA aircraft, and even car wrecks. There is also a short list of technicians who died in accidents at NASA facilities. 

       What is incredible is that more people haven't died in the construction of the International Space Station. Taking 12 years to build and taking 35 Space Shuttle missions, a couple dozen Soyuz flights and another dozen unmanned ferry spacecraft, there have been no mishaps.  And the more than 150 spacewalks necessary to put it all together have also been error free.     

       As of Feb. 1. 2015, there have been 538 people who have orbited Earth.  The total time spent in space by humans is more than 125 years!  Add to the safety record the more than 300 spacewalks and 12 men walking on the Moon and it’s clear that all the intensive training and heavily tested spacecrafts have paid off in conquering outer space. 

Mercury 7 Astronauts 1960

Astronauts and cosmonauts are not heroes anymore. It's the human side of astronauts that have given them their new anonymity.  And in many ways, an astronaut is just a cool job, like an airline pilot or a boat captain. 

     Americans knew the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts by name.  Their missions, and sometimes their families, frequently appeared in newspaper and magazine stories. 

       Astronauts stopped being heroes when the Apollo 13 crew returned to Earth from their near-death disaster on the way to the Moon in April 1970. The Hollywood movie “Apollo 13” accurately portrayed the drama after the crippling explosion on the way to the Moon and made astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert household names to movie lovers.

        For the tremendous risk of space travel, astronauts aren’t paid as well as you might think. The paycheck of an astronaut is on par with that of other civil servants like firemen and policemen.  Many cash in on their fame after retirement—everybody loves hanging out with an astronaut! 

       At the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida is the giant mirror Memorial Wall to the fallen heroes of space travel. Their names are etched and illuminated for remembrance of the eternal light that shines on the manned space program. 

       Throughout America, public school buildings have been named for Grissom, McAuliffe and most of the other astronauts who've given their lives to push the envelope of manned space exploration.

       NASA and Russia have been good at minimizing fatalities and injuries during half a Century of human space flight.  The manned hours in space has been accumulated to into experience that has been used to

build the amazing International Space Station.

       The ISS, built over 12 years beginning in 1998 with more than 50 separate manned Shuttle and Soyuz rocket launches, has been a completed space laboratory for 5 years.  Making 17 orbits of the Earth every day, the space laboratory has united 16 nations of the world in a goal that took diplomatic cooperation as well as coordination in space construction. 

       And keeping ISS alive and well are men and women who have trained for years to spend three to six months in outer space, performing important science. Six people make up the three Expedition crews a year rotated out three at a time by the Russian’s Soyuz spaceship. In March 2015, an American and Russian be launched to spend a full year on the ISS, and the world will get to know space veterans Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko on their long mission.

       With six people doing their jobs in relative anonymity, all is well aboard the ISS. But the next moment something goes awry, that is when you'll know another astronaut or cosmonaut by face and name. 

       Let's hope there isn't a fatality involved. 

AUTUMN SKIES DELIGHT FOR SENSES

       The autumn skies are one of the starry delights of the year, and the last time you might spend night time outdoors.

       Let’s face it, the days are numbered that you’ll be outside after dark as cold weather and busy holidays keep most of us inside when the day turns to night.

       And we don’t want to think about those January and February cold nights, when there are dark skies at 6 pm but not much gumption to brave the usually harsh weather.

       So make some time every week for an hour or so stargazing by just sitting outdoors in comfortable clothes on a comfy recliner and allowing your eyes to adapt to the night.

       I guarantee it won’t be wasted time.  I think you might be recharged a little bit, and for sure you’ll witness with eyes and ears a new perspective on your neighborhood.

       Most of us will be battling the security lights of the neighbors, so try and block yourself from annoying stray light.  Start relaxing outside in the deep twilight and see all kinds of nature stirring about as the stars come out to play with you

Your eyes take about 15 minutes away from white light to allow the pupils to open wider and allow a dramatically better night vision.  The human eye isn’t sensitive to red light, and flashlights with a red bulb or cellophane are what’s needed to look at a star map or equipment.  As your eyes open wide like an owl, use your ears to hear the night world around us coming alive. 

       You’ll hear crickets and other insects in their nocturnal cacophony, then a few bats will dart by, snagging flying insects that buzzed by you earlier. You realize car tires make a sound of their own on the streets, and somewhere overhead a propeller plane is heading to a twilight landing. A dog barks, quarreling cats howl and in the distance a train’s whistle moans. 

       All of a sudden, it’s dark.

       Even if the Moon is high and the lunar light drowns out the stars, there will always be a few dozen of the brightest to shine through. And maybe a planet or two. 

       Getting familiar with the night sky is like meeting neighbors that change as you drive down a road that repeats every 12 months. Seeing the Great Square of Pegasus in the northeast this Autumn time of the year is like seeing an old friend you haven’t talked to since February when the celestial horse was setting in the west.

A star chart is essential and fun to use when beginning to get curious about which star is which and the starry outlines of the constellations. A “planisphere” is a star wheel that can be moved to show you the star patterns at any date and time, and they can be found at most book stores. Libraries will have several books on constellations, and free sky charts are on the Internet, like StarMaps.com.

Hey! That 1965 edition of the New Encyclopedia Britannica you inherited from your parents—or snagged cheaply at a yard sale—will no doubt have a star chart for the North and South Hemispheres of Earth.  Even some world atlases will have star charts.  It doesn’t matter how old your star chart is, the constellations haven’t changed in millions of years, only the positions of the Sun, Moon and planets change.

To know the night sky is truly a rewarding experience that never gets old. There is so much to learn…and so little time. You can’t stargaze when the Moon is bright for a week or so around full phase, and then you have plenty of cloudy nights. 

Then everyone has a personal life that has lots of evening commitments.  So in reality, you might be lucky to seriously stargaze just five or six times a month.

Before you know it, the night sky has changed its characters, the constellations you were learning are setting, and new ones are rising in the east. After a season or two of steady stargazing, you’ll come to learn the rhythm of our Earth’s journey around our favorite star, the Sun. The rewards will be something you only measure inside your mind.

This October 2014 we are treated to an encounter by two stellar objects the ancient stargazers would have feasted about—the conjunction of Mars and its antithesis, Antares. 

Literally “not Ares,” the Greek god of war, this giant, old red star has few rivals in our nearby Universe. Mars is the Roman god of war, and that name has stuck to this red, wandering “star” that all cultures recognized as blood, a warrior or omen for conflict. 

This Autumn 2014, Mars is above and to the left (west) of Antares, which is the heart of Scorpius, a giant fish hook of stars that curve to the southern horizon. This rather small constellation (in the Zodiac, only Cancer is smaller) looks like its namesake, the stinger lying near the center of the Milky Way.  Mars will be visiting the Milky Way this fall as it goes from Scorpius than into the feet of the Snake Handler, Ophiuchus (the unrecognized 13^th constellation of the Zodiac) and into Sagittarius by mid-November.

Milky Way photo by MarQ

The 2014 conjunction of Mars with Antares happens after summertime of watching Mars move back and forth in Virgo between planet Saturn and bright star Spica, This would be huge news in the astrology-fueled world of the ancient stargazers. Five thousand years ago, the plains of Mesopotamia and the valleys of Babylon would be abuzz trying to figure out the intent of the gods as the celestial scene played out over months.  Being the “Chief Astrologer” to a King would be a great gig in the ancient world—as long as your stargazing predictions came true! 

Both Mars and Antares have nearly the identical hue of red and brightness. Mars gets significantly brighter when near Earth every two years or so. But the similarities stop at the naked eye threshold when seeing these two red “stars. 

       They are two physically interesting worlds.  Antares is a super giant star, nearly 500 million miles in diameter, so huge it would swallow up the orbit of Mars if it replaced our Sun. It also has a bluish companion star orbiting it, easily seen in a telescope. Antares is 325 Light Years away, meaning the light we see tonight left this giant, dying star in 1689…the year Peter the Great became Czar of Russia!

       That’s a concept that ancient astronomers would never grasp—that we actually look back in time because the stars are so far away.  Even light traveling at 186,000 miles a second—6 trillion miles in a year—takes years to traverse the distance to even the closest stars to our Sun. 

       So take advantage of these mild Autumn nights that have so many starry friends awaiting your acquaintance. Look up and imagine each starry point as a world of its own, probably with several planets and maybe a companion star orbiting it.

       And just maybe you’ll find it so enjoyable that you’ll continue stargazing though the Winter and get in rhythm with the seasonal stars.  You won’t be disappointed. 

Apollo Moon Conquest 45 Years Ago



It was 45 years ago when a troubled America began turning its attention to a distraction from our problems—the first Moon landing. 
 The year 1969 was an unforgettable time of triumph and tragedy. 
 Racial strife...women's lib...President Richard Nixon...Vietnam...nuclear disarmament...Woodstock...
 But America's domestic woes and the unpopular war 9,000 miles away were nearly forgotten in the Summer of '69 when the historic events of Apollo 11 culminated in the footprints of Americans on an alien world 240,000 miles away.  
 Mankind’s greatest adventure was set in full motion July 16 at 9:32 AM when three Apollo 11 astronauts were blasted off the Earth by the largest rocket ever built, the Saturn V. It was the culmination of a decade of technological innovation that spread world-wide and continues into the 21st Century. 
MOON SHIP ATOP SATURN V AT LAUNCH PAD 

The first steps of the risky Moon voyage by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) began in 1961 with America’s first spaceflight in 1961 by Alan Shepard. And it was fueled by President John F. Kennedy's directive to “land and man on the Moon, and return him safely to Earth before the end of the decade.”
 Americans weren't the only ones wanting to go to the Moon.  Communist Soviet Union put the first man in space, and continued with propaganda-fueled space spectaculars of the first female and first two and three person crews in orbit.  But the Russians were conducting their space program in secret, while Americans showed their triumphs and failures to the world. 

 The 1960s saw a logical progression of building blocks of knowledge about the unforgiving unknowns of outer space.  First were six one-man Mercury spaceflights, and then nine two-man Gemini missions.  Finally there was the three-man Apollo Command Module that was tested in Earth orbit with Apollo 7.  The bold, orbit-only mission to the Moon by Apollo 8 in December 1968 made the world see America was serious and almost ready to make those giant steps on our celestial neighbor 240,000 miles away.  

In March 1969, Apollo 9 tested in earth-orbit the moonship that would take two men to the surface.  Designed only to fly in space and land on the Moon, the Lunar Excursion Module resembled a giant four-legged spider and was called “LEM.” The Command ship 
Command Module and Lunar Lander
would orbit the Moon and return to Earth, the LEM would land with the leg section becoming the launch platform for the bulbous, pressurized cabin.  Both vehicles would need code names chosen by the astronauts.
The full dress rehearsal was made by Apollo 10 astronauts when “Charlie Brown” was in orbit May 21, 1969 and the moonship “Snoopy” flew to within 9 miles of the lunar target in Mare Tranquility. Despite a few problems in the landing radar system, the mission was an overwhelming success and NASA ramped up for the actual lunar landing. 
 Finally, the Moon was within man's grasp.
 The stage was set, and every move of the principle characters were followed in the media for the next two months in the Summer of '69. It was a Thursday on July 16th when one million people lined the roads leading to Cape Kennedy, Florida to watch the morning launch of the mighty Saturn V moon rocket. Crammed in the tiny cockpit of “Columbia” were astronauts Michael Collins, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Commander Neil Armstrong, while nestled beneath them was the moonship, “Eagle.” 
 The media coverage world-wide was unprecedented, rivaling the 24-hour coverage of the assassination of President Kennedy in November 1963. The morning and evening editions of newspapers, radio, and the three broadcasting networks—ABC, CBS and NBC—reported up-to-the-minute reports from NASA on the status of the moonship. 
 The non-stop TV coverage began Saturday afternoon July 19th when the two docked spacecraft entered lunar orbit.  ABC’s Jules Bergman and CBS’s Walter Cronkite spent the next 36 hours on the air with NASA astronauts and rocket scientists trying to explain and document the adventure.  The moment of landing came at 4:17 pm EST Saturday, followed by Armstrong’s first footprint on an alien world at 9:28 pm EST. The two-hour moonwalk by Armstrong and Aldrin was broadcast live by a Black & White video camera on a tripod, and included a congratulatory conversation from President Richard Nixon.  
Neil Armstrong's first step seen live on television

The lunar stay ended at 1:52 pm Monday afternoon when the “Eagle” spacecraft blasted off the alien world, meeting up two hours later with Collins orbiting in the moonship “Columbia.” The three day voyage back to Earth was all smiles, and splashdown at 2 pm Thursday July 24th saw the astronaut heroes picked up by the USS Hornet, with President Nixon on deck. America had won the Moon Race, and Kennedy’s dream was realized. 
 Today, the year 1969 is a nostalgic, far away land of 35-cent gasoline in $3,000 new cars that were parked in the garages of average American homes that cost $26,000.  A great steak dinner was $10, a gallon of milk was $1.25 and.  And it seemed everyone was smoking 35-cent packs of cigarettes at their work desk, in restaurants and anywhere they wanted to light up. Minimum wage was $1.60 an hour. 

Tranquility Base from lunar orbit

 Americans were watching on new color televisions (and more black and white TVs) “Get Smart!,”  “Hogan's Heroes” and “Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In.” They were listening on transistor radios to “Mrs. Robinson” by Simon and Garfunkel, “Honky Tonk Women,” by the Rolling Stones and the Beatle's last album, “Abbey Road.” And at the $1.50 ticket movies, 1969 offered “Midnight Cowboy,” “Easy Rider” and “Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang!” 
 The Moon Race with the Soviet Union was decidedly won by the United States—but it was very close.  The Russian's lunar spaceship was ready, but their moon rocket had blown up twice in the spring of 1969, leaving their moonship grounded. The Apollo 11 moon landing was the ultimate fatal blow in the USSR Moon plans, and they turned to earth-orbiting space stations.  
 As incredible as the Apollo 11 triumph was—indeed the debatable #1 historic event of the entire 20th Century—the conquest of the Moon was achieved against the background of an America in chaos at home with racial desegregation and at war in Vietnam.
While civil rights showdowns became ugly and American soldiers fought the Communists in Southeast Asia, rocket scientists in the USA traded space spectaculars with the top secret Moon program of Communist Russia. The Moon Race, costing American taxpayers around $40 billion at the time ($200-plus billion in 2014 dollars) and the Vietnam War (another $50 billion or more) both had their detractors—and it was amazing both were financed at the same time. 
 Now, 45 years later, we know the Soviet space program was a lot of smoke and mirrors to make them look good.  Propaganda from the USSR in the 1960s was commonplace as the two Superpowers vied for the world's attention as the technologically superior nation.
 And when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed their moonship named “Eagle” on the shores of an ancient, frozen lava ocean named Tranquility, the Soviets responded by saying they had no desire to walk on the Moon. 
But the Russians were lying, their national pride hurt.  Their moonship, named Zond, was built for just one man, and was to be attached to the two-man Soyuz spaceship, as two cosmonauts were to make the lunar voyage. 
 Moonship Zond was the size of a bulky telephone booth with landing legs and rocket engines. One lucky cosmonaut was to land in this moonship, step outside quickly to gather rocks and take photos, then blast off after only a couple hours on the surface. The whole concept was crude, highly dangerous and had little room for spacecraft system failures. 

That was a far cry from the 10-ton NASA Lunar Module that took two men to the Moon's surface on July 20, 1969, and for some 20 hours on the surface fulfilled a dream of mankind.
 The American spirit was never stronger or filled with more pride than on that amazing Sunday summer night of July 20, 1969. Maybe as many as 1 billion of the Earth's 3.6 billion people were watching live television as Armstrong and Aldrin lopped across the Moon's dusty surface.  
 Five more successful Moon landings followed, including the last three with Lunar Rovers that allowed serious geological exploration during three-day stays on the surface. 
 Forty-five years after those first tentative footsteps on an alien world, it's questionable whether the United State of America has ever swelled with more pride—or ever will again.

 Some will argue that the orbiting $100 billion International Space Station is a greater accomplishment than the Apollo moon landings.  In many technical ways it is, but the Space Station lacks the attention and drama of the lunar voyage.  
 Four and a half decades later, the voyage of Apollo 11 is a distant memory to a generation, and a footnote in history to those too young to remember.   The crowning achievement of Space Age, the events at Tranquility Base on the Moon will forever be a benchmark in mankind’s quest to find our place in the Universe. 

Mars Red Ruby of the Night

       Mars.

       The word brings to mind all the mystery and imagination by humans.  Since ancestral man began paying attention to the five wandering stars that moved among the fixed star patterns, Mars has beckoned.

       Tonight and all through the Summer of 2014, Mars beholds your attention with just a look to the south when twilight descends.  Far from its red brilliance when it was opposite Earth in April, Mars is still a ruby red eye-catcher in the Summer darkness.  Watch Mars move against the backdrop of stars during the next months by checking its relationship to the bright, white star Spica, both celestial objects in the sprawling lady of the night, Virgo the Virgin.

       When you look at Mars, you’re looking at the one celestial object that has inspired more science fiction and questions of science facts than any other stargazing sight. Sure, plenty has been written about the Moon, but it is Mars where the hope of life has tantalized the writers of books, movies and documentaries.

Percival Lowell's Martian "Canals"

       Everyone probably has a favorite Mars movies (mine being “War of the Worlds” 1953 and “Red Planet” 2000) and maybe a science fiction or fact book (again, my favs are “Stranger in a Strange Land” by Robert Heinlein and “Mars 3-D” by Jim Bell).  Just 100 years ago, a Boston aristocrat with eccentric ways, Percival Lowell, was enjoying the afterglow of his three best sellers: “Mars” (1895), “Mars and Its Canals” (1895) and “Mars As the Abode of Life” (1908). Lowell, who built his observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz. and later began the search for Planet X, aka Pluto, is responsible for popularizing the popular notion that Mars had a dying civilization calling to Earth for help. That was the inspiration for H.G. Wells and his Earth invasion by Martians in “War of the Worlds.”

       Mars is the only planet that we see the surface, easy to do with even a small, backyard telescope when the Red Planet is at opposition every two years. The white polar caps and dark, angular markings are apparent against the orange-red of the assumed deserts. Until the Space Age began in the 1960s, the exact nature of the dark markings was unknown.  Details in large, professional telescopes were often best seen with the naked eye instead of photography because of limits of the films being used and unsteady atmosphere of Earth. Yet hundreds of features were recorded and given exotic names from Martian mythology, like Elysium, Sineus Sabous, Hellus and Syrtis Major.

       Authors have continually imagined Mars as an abode for life—if only the visiting astronaut.  Edgar Rice Burrough’s series of planet Barsoom and hero John Carter is legendary; as are the terraforming concept books of Kim Stanley Robinson: “Red Mars” (1993), “Green Mars” (1994) and “Blue Mars” (1996).  A friend called me just the other day to ask if I’d read a new best seller, “The Martian” by Andy Weir, which he plowed through in a couple sittings—then re-read it! It’s on my list, and debuted 12^th on the New York Times Best Selling Fiction list.

       And the movies are filled with Martian drama and comedy, from the 1964 “Robinson Crusoe on Mars” to the comedy “Mars Attacks” (1996). The movie rights to “The Martian” have been bought and Hollywood will soon bring us the story of an astronaut stranded alone on the Red Planet.  The fascination with Mars is timeless.

       The first Martian surface feature was sketched by Dutch Astronomer Christiaan Huygens in 1659, the triangular patch called Syrtis Major. This feature was rediscovered in the 1970s to be a plateau of a shield volcano form billions of years ago.

Mars from Hubble Space Telescope

With the 21^st Century invasion of Mars by American spacecraft that are in orbit and crawling on the surface, the real Mars is just as fascinating and mysterious as anything written in fiction—minus the aliens, of course. 

Many people are surprised that Mars is half the size of Earth at just 4,200 miles wide.  It is a cold world, and without a protective, thick atmosphere and shield of a magnetic system, the surface is bombarded by damaging ultraviolet rays of the Sun and cosmic rays of the Universe.

Mars is more like Antarctica, super cold, yet windy with sand being blown around everywhere.  There are eight huge volcanoes larger than anything on Earth that once belched ash around the planet.  The iron dust rusted from moisture in the air, and everything on Mars is coated with it. NASA’s rovers have a brush to scrape off the paper-thin layer of rusted volcano ash—giving the Red Planet its name since antiquity.

Looking up at Mars in the Summer of 2014 is an amazing time.  With two American rovers, two NASA orbiters, and a European robot in orbit, never has so much data on one planet been accumulated with such continuity—the satellites watching the Earth an obvious exception.

We know Mars had a watery past with a hemisphere covered with oceans. The huge volcanoes dormant for maybe 3 billion years (we think?) must have created a vast network of tube caves.  The protection of caves from the harsh space environment sterilizing the Martian surface could allow all kinds of life to flourish.  And there is plenty of evidence of underground water seeping to the surface, not to mention the billions of gallons of water frozen at the poles and buried just a few feet beneath the surface.

       There is no rain on Mars, but the polar lander Phoenix detected snow in the atmosphere that didn't reach the ground. Another discovery of the 1998 stationary lander was the melting of ice in front of the cameras—sublimating from solid water to a gas without taking liquid form.

Yet, Mars is a lot like Earth—more so, of course, than any other world in the Solar System. There are clouds and dust devils that have left squiggly lines in the deserts (and cleaned off solar panels on rovers). Evidence of flowing water is everywhere, from tapered islands in ancient rivers to pebbles in a dry creek that was in the path of NASA’s latest billion-dollar rover, Curiosity.

The imagery of Mars from the surface and orbit is astounding.  So alien in form and style that a display of Martian space art is on display through September 14 at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC.  

The surface of Mars has rocks like Earth. Of course there’s lots of vesicular basalt from volcanoes. Breccias from water sediments are also easy to find. And there is rocky andesite, volcanic sulfur and hematite that have rolled up in millions of balls the size of blueberries across the Meridinia plains that Mars rover Spirit in its amazing eight year trek.

It’s true that the surface of Mars can get a warm as 60 degrees F. on a hot summer day.  But the thin atmosphere doesn’t hold the heat well, so at your knees it might be 40 degrees and at the top of your head six feet off the ground it’s only 20 degrees or less! The thermal changes might pose problems for large structures, though six landers have operated within their limits designed by spacecraft engineers.

Martians are big our minds, and though we know they won’t be waving at us, all the evidence to support life has been discovered by American robots.  It might take astronaut cave explorers to turn over a rock and see the first alien cockroaches scatter.

So there’s plenty to think about when looking at Mars in our Summer evenings this 2014.  Let your mind go wild and join some great thinkers who have brought us both Martian fact and fiction.