Report for 2004-01-09

Brought to you from beautiful Park City, "View-tah".

Contents

Astronomical Times (Mountain Standard)

360° View of Mars

...we're on Mars," said NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe after NASA's Spirit Rover successfully landed on the red planet last night. The accompanying 360° image is the first set of images returned by the spacecraft. Checkout NASA's Mars Rover website for the latest information. 

Wow! What an amazing story..... a story that everybody in the world wants to hear. NASA web servers handled over 1 billion hits in the first few days of the Mars landing... that's 4 or 5 months worth of traffic normally. NASA has over 1300 web servers running to keep up with the demand.

Bush to Announce Manned Missions to Moon and Mars

Catch A Comet By The Tail

After traveling over 3 billion miles, NASA's Stardust Spacecraft made history... when it pulled within 150 miles of Comet Wild 2, reached out and snagged a bunch of passing comet particles... and is now headed for home. The craft will soon swing by Earth and drop its scientific cargo in the Utah desert for further analysis. Checkout the Stardust website for more information. 

Want to see what the entire encounter looked like from Stardust's perspective? Click Here!

It's Elementary

The orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory snapped this incredible shot of the interacting Antennae Galaxies. Huge amounts of complex elements are being created as these two behemoths interact. Gas clouds are being heated to multi-million degree temperatures... and are forging many heavy elements. Checkout NASA's Chandra Website for more details.

Viewing Outlook

Snoeshow Under The Stars

Saturn At Opposition

Comet C/2002 T7 Linear

How's this for a beautiful shot? G. Rhemann and M. Jäger captured this gorgeous image of Comet C/2002 T7 Linear on 12/20/03. At that point, the comet was about mag8.5 or so. It has recently brightened to about mag8.2 and is expected to reach perihelion on April 23rd, 2004 and brighten to between mag0 & mag1... making this an easy naked eye comet. Views through a telescope or binoculars ought to be absolutely incredible! 

Click here for ephemeris to help you find the comet.

Comet Encke

G. Rhemann and M. Jäger captured this beautiful image of Comet Encke on 11/12/03. The comet reached perihelion on December 29th, 2003. At that point, it was approximately mag4... making it visible to the naked eye... and a beauty in a small telescope or binoculars. The comet can be found in the morning sky... just above the eastern horizon in the constellation Ophiuchus. Checkout the Ephemeris for specific dates & locations.

Beagle 2 Still Quiet, Mars Express in Orbit

Mars Express flight controllers recently reported all systems go and  on Christmas Day, 12/25/03, the Mars Express Spacecraft was inserted into Martian orbit. On the same day, the Beagle 2 Lander was scheduled to touch down on the surface of the red planet. Visit the Mars Express Website for up to the minute details.

Solar System

Space Weather Update

Massive sunspot #536 is on a roll. It has launched a series of Coronal Mass Ejections in recent days.... touching of mild geomagnetic displays for those in the far north.

The sun is a fascinating subject. It's appearance changes from day to day. In fact, it is the only star in the sky that we can see any details on at all! If you'd like to observe our star, make sure you do so safely. Checkout these Safe Viewing Techniques.

Northern Lights

Troy Birdsall of Fairbanks, Alaska snagged this incredible shot on Tuesday (1/6/04). To make this and other beautiful shots, Troy used an Olympus E-1 digital camera operating at F/2.8 and set at ASA 800. Exposures were about 1 or 2 sec. If you'd like to see more of Troy's work, checkout his website which can be found at www.AuroraWebCam.com.

Given the activity generated by the big sunspots in the above picture... it's not surprising that we're under an aurora watch this weekend. Skywatchers should keep an eye on the northern horizon for the northern lights. Who knows... you just might be rewarded for your efforts.

Planetary Report

Mercury, the 1st Planet

This beautiful shot shows how quickly Mercury moves through the sky. In a matter of only a few weeks, Mercury appears above the horizon... climbs to it's highest point... and then sinks below the horizon. Mercury is currently visible in the eastern sky before sunrise. But, don't waste any time... or you'll miss out. Mercury reaches greatest elongation on the morning of 1/17/04. So.. you've got 2 weeks (centered on 1/17) at best to view the first rock.

Mercury can be found rising in the southeast about an hour and a half before the sun.

This beautiful series was created by Juan Carlos Casado of Spain

Venus, the 2nd Planet

Venus is now rising little more than two hours after the sun. You should now be able to find it easily in the evening sky shortly after sundown. In fact, now would be a good time to start watching Venus. Why? Well, because Venus is getting ready for some major changes. It is currently 79% illuminated. As it climbs higher in the sky over the coming months, it will grow considerably in size and brightness... while shrinking just as considerably in phase. By late winter / early spring Venus will only be 1/2 illuminated, but will be almost half again as bright.

I've been catching Venus above the western horizon about 30-45 minutes after sunset for the last couple of months. It is now high enough that you can actually view it at a leisurely pace. It'll only get easier at this point. Slowly but surely, Venus will come to dominate the night sky. If you have a nice wide sky horizon to horizon, compare Venus with Saturn. They're both about the same height above the horizon shortly after dark... Venus in the west... and Saturn in the east.

This beautiful Hubble Space Telescope image shows us some fine detail in Venus' dense cloudtop.

Need to no more about Venus? Checkout this article by The Planetary Society.

Earth, the 3rd Planet

This beautiful picture was captured by the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor Spacecraft. It is the first-ever image of Earth taken from another planet. At this point, Mars is some 70 million miles away. Wow! What a beautiful shot. In case you're wondering, that little guy in the upper right is our Moon.

Lunar Phase

The moon was full on Wednesday. In the meantime, we'll be under waning gibbous phase with 95% of the moon's visible surface illuminated when it rises around 7:20pm. At this point, you'll get slightly more than an hour of unobstructed observing... before the moon lights up the sky. So... make the most of that time!

The accompanying image was taken with an Olympus OM-1 at prime focus through a 150mm Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope.

Visit our Lunar Information Page for even more great images and information

Mars, the 4th Planet

Mars is in the news lately... a fleet of spacecraft are arriving to study the red planet. This image (billed as the most detailed image of the planet ever) was taken by one of them... The Mars Spirit Rover.

Jupiter, the 5th Planet

 

Rising:		10:15 pm
Visual Magnitude:		-2.27
Visual Diameter:		41"
Distance:		4.84 AU
Constellation:		Leo

 

The accompanying image was taken last spring by Utah Skies own Don Brown through a Takahashi FS102 refractor.

Look for the Moon and Jupiter to pose together Sunday night and into Monday morning. The two will be just over 2° apart.

Saturn, the 6th Planet

Saturn reaches opposition on New Years Eve. Opposition occurs when the Sun and Saturn appear in opposite directions as viewed from Earth. So, on December 31st, as the Sun is setting, Saturn will be rising. This opposition should provide us with some of the best views of Saturn in quite some time. Saturn always looks great, right? What makes this year so special? Well... first off, Saturn recently reached perihelion... it's nearest distance to the Sun. This makes it seem just a little brighter than usual. Second, Saturn's rings are tipped about as much as they can be... roughly

So, what are you waiting for? Get out there and checkout the ringed planet. This winter will be the best absolute time to study Saturn's beautiful ring structure for some time, so... get out there and do it. If you find yourself under incredibly good skies... with incredibly good optics... see what kind of detail you can tease from the eyepiece.

Check this shot out!!! Taken just last month (11/03) by the approaching Cassini Spacecraft, this is one of the sweetest shots of Saturn I've ever seen. Look at the incredible detail within the ring system... and throughout the body of the giant planet. You can even see a few of Saturn's moon. Sweet!

Ok... here's an interesting note... Saturn's shadow... visible in these images on the rings... to the upper left of the planet... will switch to the opposite side in the coming months. Make a mental note next time you're out viewing. In the coming weeks, the shadow will get smaller and smaller... until it disappears and then slowly reappears on the opposite side of the planet.

Uranus, the 7th Planet

Interested in viewing the 7th planet? You'd better get on it quick. Uranus is rising in the early afternoon... putting it high in the sky by the time it gets dark If you wait too far after dark, you'll have trouble viewing the planet in the turbulent skies above the western horizon.  Uranus has recently dropped back to 3" in apparent diameter. 1" smaller than it's peak this fall. Ok.. it's only a 1" decline, right... Well... there wasn't a whole lot to work with originally. 1" marks a 25% decline... So... don't waste any time..

This beautiful HST image shows a newly discovered moon as well as Uranus' delicate ring system.

Interested in seeing Uranus... but don't know where to look? The bright planet Venus will be less than 1° from Uranus on Wednesday evening (1/14/04)

Neptune, the 8th Planet

Pluto, the 9th Planet

Astronomers made a surprising discovery about Pluto recently. As Pluto begins to move away from the Sun... towards the beginning of it's winter... things are actually heating up on the distant planet instead of cooling down. Checkout CNN.com/SPACE for more details

Take this bit of planetary information either as an interesting side note, or an observing challenge. Pluto is in the constellation Ophiuchus, less than °1 southwest of NGC6309 aka The Bug Nebula. I viewed The Bug this past weekend, so... photons from Pluto must have hit my retina :-) At magnitude 13.9, Pluto is basically out of reach of smaller telescopes... Even in the big scope... it's difficult to be sure that you've seen Pluto. One way to verify that you have found Pluto is to sketch the star patterns over several nights. If you have actually found Pluto, one of the the faint star-like objects will have moved over the course of a few nights. This is Pluto.

This  image was taken by The Hubble Space Telescope.

Need more information? Checkout the Pluto Home Page.

Deep Sky

Hubble Vision

If you are able to find all of these objects, you may be one of the few, the proud, the Deep Sky Obsessed. 
E-mail your findings to DeepSkyObservations@UtahSkies.org.

IDA-Utah Light Pollution Update

Stay up to date on astronomical happenings by regularly checking the Utah Skies website at http://www.UtahSkies.org