This week, I got to see something really, really, really cool at work. I got to go on a tour of the Lunar Sample Lab through my company. It was *awesome*!
You can read my blog post about the tour on the ERC blog.
Lunar Sample Lab Tour
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Tag Archives: space
Lunar Fog Halo
As the fog rolled in this morning, it made a neat halo around the Moon. The first picture shows Jupiter above the Moon; the second zooms in to try to capture the dynamic range I experienced in person – I could see both the lunar features and the fog halo.
No ISON
If Comet ISON had survived its solar flyby, today was the first day we were supposed to be able to see it. Although it appears that what survived is either rubble or small, we braved the early morning cold to try to catch a glimpse of what is left. No joy. It was too dim to be seen from Friendswood, Texas.
Saturn hovers over Mercury
As Murphy would have it, we’ve had heavy clouds and rain this week, so we weren’t able to look for Comet ISON. The clouds finally blew away this morning, so we braved the cold morning to see if we could spot the comet through the colors of the sunrise. We didn’t spot the comet, but we did see Saturn hovering above Mercury. It was quite striking, don’t you think?
Apollocon 2013 Report
I just got home from Apollocon 2013, which I consider my “local” science fiction convention. I’ve been going for a number of years, and I always enjoy it. As usual, I wished I could borrow Hermione’s time turner so I could attend multiple panels at the same time.
I enjoyed all the typical con things: meeting other authors, expanding my thinking on various issues at the panels, and coming home with new books and a list of more books and blogs that I want to read.
One of the neat things about this particular con is that because it is in Houston, home of NASA/Johnson Space Center, it has some great space science presentations and panels. This year, the highlights for me were:
– Dr. Paul Abell‘s presentation on the Chelyabinsk meteor that exploded over Russia in February (the audio recordings of this thing are just amazing)
– Astronaut Stanley Love‘s presentation on searching for meteorites in Antarctica (with lots of observations about the physical space spent on logistics and time spent on non-science work which are as invaluable to science fiction authors trying to get it right as it is to NASA mission planners)
– Dr. Paul Abell, Dr. Al Jackson, and Dr. Stanley Love’s panel on Planetary Defense and the work being done to find and categorize near earth objects with the potential to impact our planet and cause local to knock-us-back-to-the-stone-age destruction as well as the work being done to find ways to prevent such an event from occurring should a NEO be found that is predicted to impact the Earth
Of course, I am fascinated by meteorites, so I enjoyed all these talks immensely.
But even if one is not fascinated by meteorites, these guys make their subjects compelling. I highly recommend going to one of their talks if you ever get the opportunity.
Fireball Sighting
Yesterday, as my family was driving down the freeway, I saw a bright light in the sky. Initially, I thought it was a helicopter with its lights on, but it was moving too fast and disappeared midair.
Since watching meteor showers and trying to “catch” a meteor with my camera is a hobby of mine, I suspected I had seen a stray fireball, so I took note of the time and our location (and wished we had a dashcam that would have caught the event).
When I got home, I checked the American Meteor Society web site, and someone else in the area had reported seeing a fireball at the same time! So I contributed to science and added my observation.
I also checked my favorite satellite visibility web site, and the time and trajectory did not match up with any visible satellites or Iridium flares (and I think it was moving too fast to be either).
That event is now AMS event 1149 with three observers to date.
http://www.amsmeteors.org/fireball_event/2013/1149
Did anyone else in the Houston area see it? Do you have any stories of other fireballs you have seen?
The most amazing one I’ve ever see was over Florida almost 20 years ago. Amazingly bright and I was convinced that one landed somewhere. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to capture or report that data at the time, but I’ve always wondered what happened to it.
Comet PanSTARRS, Round 2, March 14, 2013
My son and I stayed in Buda, Texas during our college tour road trip and found a hill with nice dark skies west of town. We were able to find Comet PanSTARRS, but it was a real challenge, even with very dark skies. As you can see, it’s already dimmer (although in darker skies) than it was a few days ago.
Comet PanSTARRS – March 11, 2013
Comet PanSTARRs is visible from the Northern Hemisphere (Pearland, Texas – just south of Houston)! It is not yet bright enough to be visible to the naked eye, but it is obviously a comet through binoculars or a 200 mm lens.
Fireball over Russia
I was planning on blogging about alien design today, but, really, how can I resist blogging about a major meteorite event and a close fly-by of an asteroid happening on the same day?
Earlier today a fireball came apart over Russia and there are reported associated meteorites.
http://rt.com/news/meteorite-crash-urals-chelyabinsk-283/
Someone on the American Meteor Society has already estimated a rough orbit:
http://www.amsmeteors.org/2013/02/large-daytime-fireball-hits-russia/
I cannot wait to see what is learned from this event. Very exciting!
And on the same day we have a close fly-by of an asteroid (closer to the Earth than the Moon or geosynchronous satellites). But this one won’t hit us.
http://www.space.com/19781-asteroid-2012-da14-flyby-webcasts.html
It is an exciting day for space news!
Rocks from Space!
A number of years ago, during a visit to Texas Christian University, I visited the Oscar Monnig meteorite collection.
http://www.monnigmuseum.tcu.edu/Home.html
Before this visit, I knew what meteorites were (rocks from space that actually make it to the Earth’s surface), but I had never given much thought to where they came from (other than the famous Mars meteorite).
Scientists, of course, had thought about it and have figured out the “parent” source of some meteorites.
A few meteorites have been caught on camera as they heat up falling through the Earth’s atmosphere, and their previous orbits can be determined from that data. The results show that most meteorites came from the asteroid belt.
An early example is here:
Some clever scientists set up their cameras where it would be easy to find any meteorites that made it to the Earth.
Radar data can also be used to find meteorites and figure out where they came from.
Click to access Science-Manuscript-SM.pdf
But meteorites that are caught on camera during reentry are rare.
Scientists can also measure the reflection spectra of meteorites (the amount of light reflected back at various frequencies) and compare them to the telescopic spectra of various asteroids. They found some pretty close matches:
Click to access Burbine.asteroidsIII.20002.pdf
But not all meteorites come from asteroids. Some come from planets.
Martian meteorites tend to be “young” and contain gases that match the Martian atmosphere measured by the Viking spacecraft.
Lunar meteorites are also identified by their mineralogy and chemistry.
http://meteorites.wustl.edu/lunar/howdoweknow.htm
Recently, a meteorite was found in Africa that might originally be from Mercury:
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/home/The-First-Ever-Meteorite-from-Mercury-189374981.html
How cool is that?
Space&Aliens 