Green Comet Visible This Week

Comet's Green Halo

Photograph courtesy Gregg L. Ruppel

Blurred stars seem to cut through the green halo of comet 103P/Hartley 2 in a five-minute-exposure photograph taken through a backyard telescope in the United States on Saturday. In recent weeks the comet has been drawing closer to Earth, and Hartley 2 will make its closest pass tomorrow, offering prime viewing via binoculars and telescopes. (See comet pictures.)

More information 

• Earlier post

Local information, from Skytools software with a 8 inch Orion Skyquest

On this night (20/21 October 2010)  103P/Hartley is best visible between 04:12 and 04:32, with the optimum view at 04:13. Look for it in Auriga, fairly high in the northern sky during morning twilight. It is easy visually in the Orion SkyQuest XT8 Dob. Use the Ultima 42mm for optimum visual detection. It is magnitude 6.2 with a diameter of 21.0'.

In the following 30 days this object is easy visually from October 21, and again from October 31 on, with the best view coming on November 3. During this period it will reach peak brightness of magnitude 6.2 on October 22 and rapidly move higher in the sky.

103P/Hartley will next reach perihelion in late October. Also in late October this comet will pass within 0.1 AU of the earth.


At this stage the almost full moon is a big factor in seeing this ball of ice. (Hannes Pieterse)

Astronomical Handbook for Southern Africa

Hierdie nuttige handleiding is November-maand op die rakke sê Struik-uitgewers. Dit is `n moet-hê publikasie. Dit gee vir jou maand-vir-maand inligting wat bo in die naghemel aangaan.  En nog baie meer.

Dit word vir R85.00 adverteer. Die Skyguide sal waarskynlik by die groter boekwinkels te koop wees. Ons sal laat weet as dit op die rakke is.

• Meer inligting by Struik-uitgewers

• Lede van ASSA kry dit gratis.
  
  Om by ASSA aan te sluit kos R100 per jaar en `n aanvanklike R25 aansluitingsfooi. Dit is eintlik baie goedkoop as jy die Skyguide se prys aftrek. So sluit sommer dadelik aan.
  - Lidmaatskapinligting
  
  
  
  

  The Astronomical Society of Southern Africa (ASSA)
  

Local Astronomy News

• South African space portal
  
• Visit Johannesburg Planetarium
  Download maps (Faint) Comet 103P/Hartley in SA skies this month
  
  Get out of town and use binoculars to look for this one, around 4am Oct 17th to 20th, or after 2am early Nov, when the comet will be higher in our skies
  
  - Star charts for the Southern Hemisphere

• Find the Southern Celestial Pole (SCP)
  
• Pretoria Centre
  Karoo Star Party 2011
  
• Johannesburg Centre
  ScopeX 2011
  
• Star Gazers Deep Space Atlas - Wayne Mitchel
  
• psychohistorian.org/astronomy
  Astronomy , mainly deep sky observing and outreach material, but also photos, news, general astronomy essays, a guide to what's visible in the night sky, stuff on the history of astronomy & ethnoastronomy, and so on.

NASA uses Photoshop! It's a conspiracy!

The beauty of the Orion Nebula can only be seen after some image processing. To the naked eye, the nebula looks very dull. Click to enlarge this image.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI

THE GIST

• A media frenzy ensued when some media outlets reported that NASA had Photoshopped an image of Saturn's moons.
• Raw images from space need calibration before being released to the public, not unlike red eye removal from your family photos.
  
  Read the story      
  
  Source:  DiscoveryNews

Orbital debris from Chinese satelite tops 3,000 pieces

Image: A view of the Chinese orbital debris problem. Only China's space debris plotted

Click to enlarge

Three and a half years after China intentionally blew up a satellite as part of a weapons test, 97 percent of the debris remains in orbit, posing “distinct hazards to hundreds of operational satellites,” writes NASA in its October issue of Orbital Debris Quarterly News.

The number of pieces of debris from the Fengyun-1C spacecraft surpassed the 3,000 mark last month. The tally as of mid-September was 3,037 objects -- roughly 22 percent of all the cataloged objects in low-Earth orbit, reports the Orbital Debris Program Office at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston

More space debris news:

• China Top of Orbital Garbage Heap, Study Shows
• CubeSails to Drag Space Junk from Orbit
• Laser System to Monitor Space Junk
• Space Junk Tracker to Orbit Earth
• Mexican Meteorite: Was it Russian Space Junk?
  
  
  Source: DiscoveryNews

NASA: Dress rehearsal for Shuttle Discovery's last launch

With mixed feelings, the shuttle Discovery crew and the NASA launch team on Friday wrapped up a dress rehearsal for the planned Nov. 1 liftoff on Discovery's last space voyage, an 11-day mission to delivery a storage pod and spare parts to the International Space Station.

SLIDE SHOW: For Space Shuttle Atlantis, The End Is Here

Discovery, which will be making its 39th flight, has been NASA's fleet leader in terms of number of missions and also for making both return-to-flight test runs following the Challenger and Columbia accidents in 1986 and 2003, respectively. Now it's fleet leader into retirement, with sisterships Endeavour and Atlantis expected to make their swan songs in February and June 2011.

• More info

Deep space drama: Top 10 views of the southern skies

The birth of stars

This colour composite image of the nebula RCW120 shows an expanding bubble of ionised gas 10 light years across. It causes surrounding material to collapse into dense clumps from which stars are born. The original images taken with the LABOCA camera on the 12-metre Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope.

(Image: ESO/APEX/DSS2/SuperCosmos/Deharveng (LAM)/Zavagno (LAM))

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) operates some of the world's most advanced ground-based telescopes, including the Very Large Telescope array (VLT) and the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) at Paranal Observatory in the Atacama desert, Chile. They recently posted their top 100 images: 

• Visit the top 10
  
• Visit the Top 100

Pyramid of Venus

Click to enlarge

Photograph by Tunc Tezel, TWAN

The path of Venus seems to stitch together the sky over Bolu, Turkey, in a recently released composite picture spanning seven months. The interval between each frame ranges from 4 to 11 days.

Because it orbits closer to the sun, Venus overtakes Earth every 584 days. This means that, over time, the bright planet changes from the "evening star," visible after sunset, to the "morning star," visible before sunrise.

Published October 13, 2010

Source:  National Geographic

Rover nears 24 km of driving on Mars

 MERB total odometry now reads in excess of 23,991.43 meters (23.99 kilometers, or 14.91 miles).

Source: MarsDaily

by Staff WritersPasadena CA (JPL) Oct 15, 2010 Opportunity drove only once this past week, nearing the 24-kilometer (15-mile) odometry mark.

On Sol 2382 (Oct. 6, 2010), the rover covered over 94 meters (308 feet) on her trek to Endeavour crater. With the use of autonomous navigation, the rover collects many more data products which fill the available flash memory.

More info

For First Time Ever, Asteroid Collision Photographed

Astronomers now have the first confirmed snapshots of what appears to be the aftermath of an asteroid collision in space.

When scientists first discovered the object dubbed P/2010 A2 in the asteroid belt in January using the Rosetta spacecraft, the fact that it trailed a tail made them think it was a comet. A closer look, however, suggested it was something more peculiar -- images from the Hubble Space Telescope revealed it had a bizarre X-shape nucleus, for instance. [Photo of the odd X-shape in space.]

More info