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A drop in the void
2008-03-16 14:06:00
All the water on Earth is claimed to fit in the small blue sphere on the left - and all the air in the sphere on the right.From the Science Photo Library.
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Futurama theme song from 1967 with dancing transistors
2008-02-11 21:55:00
The original of the favourite series, Futurama 's theme song is "Psyché Rock" by Pierre Henry.
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Gamma error in picture scaling
2008-01-28 18:16:00
Apparently there's a simple, hard to notice error in almost every image processing software. Its effects range from the slightly annoying, if you're just meddling with your holiday photographs, to the more serious, if you forget about it while trying to infer some science from images. That's why I note it here, as the author mentions NASA images as well - where the error was also present, although not necessarily in images used for science.Gamma error in picture scaling by Eric Brasseur.
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Galactic neighbours from Spitzer
2007-12-24 23:01:00
See the high resolution (4200x3600) file (9.4 MB)This is 75 nearby galaxies imaged by the Spitzer Space Telescope. They're ordered into a Hubble tuning-fork. Normally, you could observe that elliptical galaxies (grouped to the left) are redder and spirals (grouped to the right) are bluer. What use can see on this image is quite the opposite. However this color difference is something that can be observed in the optical wavelenghts. Since Spitzer is not an optical, but an infrared telescope, they created color composites of their data to show us. The galaxies in this poster are three-color composites where blue depicts the galaxies at a light wavelength of 3.6 microns, while 8.0 microns is green, and 24 microns is red. Therefore, on these images red lumps show clouds of warm dust and gas heated by radiation from newborn stars (glowing in infrared) - a characteristic of spiral galaxies.Read the Spitzer group's article.
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Moon transit
2007-12-23 22:05:00
Out of this colletcion at the Astronomy Picture Of The Day website and this one at the Bad Astronomy blog - selection s of the most memorable astronomy pictures of the year -, the one I like the most is not a picture but a video. The video shows a transit of the Moon in front of the Sun, as seen by the Stereo-B spacecraft. Its distance from the Moon and the Sun is different from that of the Earth, so instead of the total eclipse that can often be seen from Earth, the Moon happens to appear much smaller than the disk of the Sun. This video shows how alien, how different these objects can actually be from the way we perceive them everyday. Details on the Stereo website.
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Scale comparison of the planets and the stars
2007-12-17 09:15:00
These tiny and not so tiny balls show how enormous are the differences between different astronomical objects.If Earth is a glass ball......then Jupiter is a football... ...and you'd fit into the Sun......and Sirius would crush youAn other series:We have no actual photographs of other stars than our Sun that show surface details, because they're just too far away, so the rest is artwork based on what we do know about them - their color and size.VV cephei is the largest star known - it's diameter is about 2000 times our sun'sAnd yet even it is just a tiny dot compared to the Milky Way itselfAnd an animation of the same objects
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Hotel Mauna Kea
2007-12-12 19:33:00
Welcome to the Hotel Mauna Kea. Five planetary astronomers bring you an original science music video about life at the observatory at the 14,000-foot summit of Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii. The astronomers, stationed at the Infra-Red Telescope Facility, wrote the song while they investigated aurora in Jupiter's atmosphere and the composition of Mars' atmosphere. One songwriter says: "The emission line and the dip that are mentioned in the video are real, and they are interesting. We have never abandoned an observing run to go to the beach."Credits: Juan Delgado (Flamenco guitar), Kelly Fast (vocal, videography, 12-string guitar), Ted Kostiuk (spoken vocal), Lyrics by John Annen, Juan Delgado, Kelly Fast, Ted Kostiuk, Tim Livengood From the Science Friday website.

Small Chinese Mars news
2007-12-09 00:19:00
A few days ago China Daily reported that the Yinghuo-1 prototype is currently undergoing tests. Yinghuo-1 is China's small, 110 kg Mars probe, that will travel to Mars on the back of the Russian Fobos-Grunt mission, to be launched in 2009. Mars orbit insertion will also be performed by the Fobos-Grunt spacecraft, before their separation. The compatibility of the two spacecraft will be tested next spring.The following presentation contains most of what's currently known about Yinghuo-1. A model of Yinghuo-1 in Shanghai:
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The Solar System from above
2007-12-08 13:40:00
This animation shows the known objects of the outer Solar System . Blue squares are comets. They appear to be falling "in" until 2002 and "out" afterwards because only comets observable in 2002 are plotted, out of the full cometary catalogue. They can only be observed when close to the Sun, and their positions are calculated back and forward.The position of the 4 major outer planets are shown, with their orbits. Centaurs (asteroids with orbits between Jupiter and Neptune) are orange triangles. Those with high eccentricities are shown with cyan triangles. Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) in general are red circles. Plutinos (TNOs in 2:3 resonance with Neptune) are white circles, Pluto is denoted by a large crossed white circle. Scattered Disk Objects (with highly elliptical orbits) are magenta circles.See more Solar System animations at the IAU Minor Planet Center.

Mexican Space Agency to be created
2007-11-29 23:31:00
The Mexican Congress approved a proposal to create a Mexican space agency. The Senate is expected to vote on the approval in December, 2007.México, abr. 26, 2006.: La Cámara de Diputados aprobó el decreto por el que se expide la Ley que crea la Agencia Espacial Mexicana, AEXA, por sus siglas. Se espera a la aprobación de AEXA en la Cámara de Senadores por el diciembre de 2007.Video de Noticieros Televisa del canal 2, el reportero Leonardo Ferrera, ha iniciado una serie de reportajes sobre el desarrollo espacial en México y la importancia de la creación de la Agencia Espacial Mexicana.Para mayor informacion acerca del proyecto de la Agencia Espacial Mexicana por favor vaya a este link: http://aexa.divaac.org
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Solar sail mission to rise again?
2007-11-29 15:51:00
Louis Friedman, Planetary Society co-founder and executive director has a new post, writing they have received a $250,000 grant from the Discovery Channel for the development of Cosmos-2.Cosmos-2 will be a very similar replacement for Cosmos-1, the first solar sail propelled spacecraft that the Planetary Society managed to develop and build from donations. Unfortunately, the very economic choice of using a Volna rocket, launched from a Russian submarine - replacing the warhead with the Cosmos-1 spacecraft - turned out to be an unlucky one. 82 seconds after launch, the engine failed and the rocket aborted.This happened in June, 2005. Ever since, the Planetary Society was ready to build Cosmos-2. This new grant makes it possible to start the work, but they need to raise about $4,000,000 for completion.However, the history of Solar Sail s goes back much longer. It's probably no surprise that NASA did studies as far back as the 70s. But there was a already a serious proposal in 1967, ca...
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Meteorite impacts recorded
2007-11-26 23:38:00
Aristotle thought that the heavens were perfect and unchanging. He couldn't be farther from the truth. Three posts below I wrote about the interesting geological ( & atmospheric) processes going on in unexpected places of the Solar System, even on very small or extremely cold bodies.Another process that is obviously reshaping the surface of planets and moons is meteorite bombardment. Notable events are rare, but nevertheless, some were observed directly on the Moon and on Jupiter (apart from Earth).A meteoroid hits the Moon, May 2, 2006. See NASA news articleFor a short summary on the topic, see: Cudnik, B. M.: The Status of Lunar Meteor Research (and Applications to the Rest of the Solar System), 38th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. Available at http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007LPI.... 38.1115C.Missing from that article is the artificial impact event created by intentionally crashing the Smart-1 spacecraft into the Moon. See telescopic observation of the impact hereAn othe...
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Railguns as launchers?
2007-11-22 16:39:00
Check Advanced Nano's post on railguns. (What is a railgun?)Can it be the future launch vehicle to space? He cites a European study, in which a suborbital launch is planned to 100 km, using a 20 meter long railgun (and an awful amount of electricity). The real showstopper is that the projectile, or whatever you launch, needs to have an orbital speed by the time it leaves the railgun. That means reaching a speed of about 8000 km/s in a few 10's or 100's of meters - in the study, an acceleration of 13,000 g's is mentioned.This is may prove too much to bear for any complex and sophisticated hardware. Such high speed also means protection is needed from heat generated from air friction. The study calculates the required protection is easily within the reach of current hardwares. Their calculations are only for a very tiny payload, though. I don't know how does the needed heat protection capacity scale with size, but even if it can be solved - like it's solved on the Shuttle or on ...

Best of the best images
2007-11-21 15:53:00
APOD, the Astronomy Picture of the Day site treats us with fantastic pictures this week.APOD 2007 November 20: Earthrise from Moon-Orbiting KaguyaStill images from Kaguya's HD TV video, showing Earthrise as the spacecraft circles the Moon. (The video itself is only released in low-resolution yet.) The logo on the original was bothering me so I tried to remove it. Here's another shot:Earth Tele ShotAPOD 2007 November 19: Aurora in the DistanceExposure Time: 30/1 secFNumber: f 4ISO: 3200Model: Canon EOS 20DAuroras are very faint. APOD says this one wasn't even visible by eye. The camera must have been able to capture it because of the high ISO setting, I suppose.APOD 2007 November 17: Forest and SkyThis is my favourite one. Stars in constellation Perseus, trees, a satellite streak, and comet Holmes (the fuzzy spot).
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Activity in the outer solar system
2007-11-19 17:48:00
For a long time, our picture of the outer solar system was that apart from the four gas giants, it only consists of geologically dead bodies, moons, planets (=Pluto) and asteroids (like the Centaurs), cold clumps of ice and/or rock. Even if they differentiated in the past (like you could expect the largest of them, Ganymede), they are not expected to have interesting phenomena currently going on.Only exception was Saturn's moon Titan, which in 1944 was discovered to have an atmosphere. Then in 1979, the Voyagers flew past Jupiter, and photographs of the moon Io showed not only a very young surface, and many volcanoes, but even actual plumes from volcanic eruptions!Since then, slowly but steadily, many other objects turned out to be more interesting than ever imagined, with ongoing geologic processes, or some form of meteorology at least. Let's list them all!IoIo's Tvashtar volcano erupting, as seen by the New Horizons spacecraft in early 2007. The volcano itself is behind the l...
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Rosetta flyby
2007-11-14 15:02:00
New images! Yesterday, on its way to comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the Rosetta spacecraft passed 5000 km above Earth - one of its many planetary flybys designed to boost its speed without spending too much propellants. Before its arrival in 2014, we'll see it again from close, during its last Earth swing-by maneuver in November 2009.Rosetta from Earth (center of image).Earth from Rosetta.See more of these atRosetta's home.

Amsat P3-D countdown and launch video
2007-11-10 18:37:00
More about the P3-D (Amsat-Oscar 40)
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X-vehicles 1 to 50
2007-11-10 17:59:00
An interesting list of American experimental airplanes:American X-Vehicles : An Inventory — X-1 to X-50Many of them have to do with technical research into spaceflight, likeX-15, X-17, X-23A, X-34, X-37, and some were planned to become actual spacecraft, like X-38 X-40A, X-30 and X-33 (VentureStar).

#28 Carnival of space & collecting antimatter
2007-11-10 17:35:00
The 28th carnival of space is now online at the Planetary Society's blog.An especially interesting entry is aboutcollecting natural antimatter.Antimatter readily annihilates when it contacts with normal matter, and releases the whole energy corresponding to its mass (E=mc2). This makes it especially useful for spacecraft propulsion.The recently finished report for the Nasa Institute for Advanced Concepts says:For example, 100 nanograms of antiprotons can be used to catalyze sub-critical nuclear reactions and drive a one metric ton of payload to 100 km/sec. ... In comparison, if traditional chemical propellants were used for the same task, nearly 109 metric tons of hydrogen and oxygen would have to be launched into space.And that would mean about 500,000 shuttle launches.Currently antimatter is generated at CERN and Fermilab, with capacities about 1 nanogram/year (10-9 grams). The production costs are estimated to be about $100 trillion per gram.The report investigates trapping an...
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Pre-Dawn: The French-Soviet VESTA mission
2007-11-05 13:14:00
3D model of the asteroid Vesta The Dawn spaceprobe was launched toward the asteroid belt a month ago now. Few people remember that the Soviet Union was also planning a multiple asteroid flyby mission in the 80's. After the successful cooperation between France and the Soviets on the VEGA Venus (and Halley comet flyby) mission in 1984-85, a new project was proposed. The Vesta mission would have consisted of two identical probes (just like earlier Soviet Venus missions), to be launched in 1991. Similar to the Vega mission, each spacecraft would deploy one or more landers or balloons into the Venusian atmosphere, and then proceed to its next target. At Venus, a French satellite dedicated to asteroid flybys would be released. It would return to us for an Earth swing-by, and then reach about 3-3.3 AUs from the Sun. There they would fly by some smaller asteroids, and Vesta, if possible, with a small probe landing there (that's why the mission was named VESTA). The exact targets depend, ...
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Dance of the radio telescopes
2007-11-03 13:09:00
The Paul Allen Telescope Array have begun work recently. The radio telescope, that currently has 42 dishes, is used for SETI research - that is, search for extraterrestrial intelligence. At the same time, it is also used for astronomical observations, see the Key Science Goals.However, when I saw the above video, I thought there could be a third use to it as well. It's a perfect object for an art show, similar to the ballet of the cranes, that was organized in 1996 in Berlin. There, construction cranes were directed to dance to the music of an orchestra, playing the Ode to joy from Beethoven's 9th symphony.
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Video of the OSCAR-40 launch preparations from AMSAT
2007-10-31 11:30:00
A cool video of the AMSAT P3-D (AO-40) launch campaign in 2000. It is placed in the spare space near (under) a commercial PanAmSat communication satellite (the big black thing seen on the video) on an Ariane-5 launch vehicle. P3-D is eventually going to be the basis for their P5-A satellite to Mars.
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P5A - An amateur satellite to Mars
2007-10-29 11:25:00
ArchimedesI have written before about the Archimedes project. Archimedes is a privately sponsored, designed, built and operated balloon probe to Mars . It is a creation of scientists at the Mars Society of Germany. In the past five years, they have gone from designing the mission, the components, and building them, to testing them on parabolic flights (in microgravity environment) and in space on a test vehicle. A 1:2.5 scaled, but complete version, called Miriam, is currently being prepared for a March 2008 flight test (when it will be launched by an Orion sounding rocket to an altitude of about 100 km, from the Esrange sounding rocket range in Sweden). If everything goes well, Archimedes will be able to catch the 2009 launch window to Mars.Testing balloon inflation in the Olympiahalle Munich. 21 June, 2004Experiments on a zero-G flight. 28-30 June, 2005.First test in space. April 5, 2006.Amateur s to the rescueSo far, Archimedes appears to be on track. But how is a small, privately ...
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Wildfires as seen by Genesis I
2007-10-29 11:00:00
Genesis I, the first prototype space module of Bigelow Aerospace was launched into Earth orbit more than a year ago. The company has published these new images of the California wildfires taken by Genesis I, from a height of 500-600 km.
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Dark circle near the south pole of Mars
2007-10-24 17:06:00
This circular feature lies only 200 km from the Martian south pole. It has been known from the Mariner 9 and Viking Orbiter images, but now the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has taken new, high resolution images of this area. The circle itself is about 4 km across and looks quite perfect. Can it be an impact crater? After all, an impactor has to have quite an inclined orbit to be able to hit near the southern pole. Well, the team writes about this image: Bright areas are covered by carbon dioxide frost, with a "swiss cheese" pattern common at the south polar residual cap. The circular evenness of the depression suggests an impact crater, but there is no evidence of a crater rim or debris unless it lies beneath the frost. While the depression may have formed by collapse, the image is missing the typical ground fractures that form around a collapse pit.The HiRISE page has an even higher resolution image. (This is it) As can be seen, there's a cone near the center. The terrain around it...
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A Venus balloon prototype
2007-10-18 17:00:00
I'm really fond of using balloons for the exploration of other planets, even though only one such mission was realized, which was part of the French-Soviet Vega mission to Venus . However, new plans, designs, proposals keep appearing ever since. A somewhat promising example (as it's more than just paperwork) is a new prototype created by a team from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, ILC Dover and NASA Wallops Flight Facility. ILC was the maker of the airbags for the Mars Exploration Rovers. A balloon on Venus has to withstand the extreme heat, pressure and chemical environment. Actually the easiest is to design them to a specific atmospheric height, and of all the possibilities, specifically to fly at about 53 km, where conditions are fairly comfortable (temperature and pressure is earthlike). Still, intense radiation would come from underneath as well, as the white cloud layer reflects the strong sunlight. Anyway, the first thing about the balloon is its material. From Don Mitchell'...
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The 25th carnival of space
2007-10-18 16:56:00
Riding on an ocean of interesting posts in the Carnival of Space #25. And, by the way, all the previous editions at the Carnival of Space archive.

Tracking the ISS
2007-10-17 14:58:00
Astonishing video of the International Space Station passing overhead, tracked from a backyard. How to do it, and more interesting photographs can be found at Astrospider.
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Ferrying space shuttles by aircraft
2007-10-15 17:20:00
Shuttle Carrier Aircraft Some part of the STS (Space Transportation System, the official name of the shuttle) are transported on land and on sea (like the external tank), but the shuttle itself is carried by plane - one of the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. Originally the C-5 Galaxy was planned for this task, but because of both technological and political reasons, NASA decided to buy two Boeing 747 instead, in 1974, and modified them. They are used to transport the space shuttle back to Florida if it lands at Edwards AFB in California (which doesn't happen very often, since the early 80's there were only two such cases, STS-114 (August 9, 2005) and STS-117 (June 22, 2007). But these airplanes also took part in the development of the Shuttle. The shuttle Enterprise - built for specifically this purpose - is seen during test flights.TakeoffIn-flight separationMyasishchev VM-T AtlantThe Soviets would use an Antonov aircraft for their Buran shuttle. But the largest, appropriate plane was s...

The GOCE satellite
2007-10-13 20:31:00
Part of ESA's Living Planet Programme are the Earth Explorer missions. One of these is the GOCE (Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer) satellite. GOCE will provide data to determine the global and regional models of Earth's gravity field to an unprecedented accuracy. It is seeking to determine A global geoid of 1 cm accuracy at about 100 km spatial resolution and a gravity field model with 1-2 mGal precision accuracy and the same spatial resolution. The geoid is an equipotential surface of the Earth, as opposed to the shape of the actual crust. Without movements, the surface of the oceans would follow such an equipotential surface - the geoid. GOCE's measurements will be more than just an excercie in geodesy (which is very important in itself), but will bring important data to geophysicists, and even more importantly for oceanography.The experiments requires basically just two components: the so-called Electrostatic Gravity Gradiometer (EGG) - which consists ...
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