NOTE 6:00 p.m.: Forecasters are all-but-guaranteeing thunderstorms from 9 to 11 p.m. tonight, so we’re NOT GOING TO RUN the Skaneateles session tonight. That said, if it’s clear – LOOK WEST TONIGHT!
NOTE: We’ll post a final announcement here by 8:00 p.m. tonight (Tuesday, June 30th).
Second, as Tennyson would have said if he was part of an astronomy club in Central New York:
‘Tis better to have announced a session and cancel than never to have announced at all.
It is with that in mind that I announce the following: If the skies clear tonight (which they likely will not), Bob Piekiel and I will be at the Skaneateles Conservation Area Parking Lot at 9:00 p.m. to take in the Venus-Jupiter Conjunction currently gracing our early evening skies.
If the sky’s patchy, we’ll still go ahead with the session just to get a chance to see the pair up close. If the sky is completely overcast (as expected), we’ll have to settle for a post-conjunction session in the very near future.
A few months back I featured Free Astronomy Magazine as the first of a (to be) series of articles on great free online content for amateur astronomers (see A Universe Of Free Resources Part 1). I received announcement of the May-June issue availability in mid-May (have been busy cleaning out CNYO email folders!).
You can find previous Free Astronomy Magazine issues by checking out our Free Astronomy Magazine Category (or look under the Education link in our menu).
The May-June 2015 Table Of Contents:
The web browser-readable version of the magazine can be found here:
The NASA News service provides up-to-date announcements of NASA policy, news events, and space science. A recent selection of space science articles are provided below, including direct links to the full announcements. Those interested in receiving these news announcements directly from NASA can subscribe to their service by sending an email to:
When NASA launches its next mission on the journey to Mars – a stationary lander in 2016 – the flight will include two CubeSats. This will be the first time CubeSats have flown in deep space. If this flyby demonstration is successful, the technology will provide NASA the ability to quickly transmit status information about the main spacecraft after it lands on Mars.
The twin communications-relay CubeSats, being built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, California, constitute a technology demonstration called Mars Cube One (MarCO). CubeSats are a class of spacecraft based on a standardized small size and modular use of off-the-shelf technologies. Many have been made by university students, and dozens have been launched into Earth orbit using extra payload mass available on launches of larger spacecraft.
The basic CubeSat unit is a box roughly 4 inches (10 centimeters) square. Larger CubeSats are multiples of that unit. MarCO’s design is a six-unit CubeSat – about the size of a briefcase — with a stowed size of about 14.4 inches (36.6 centimeters) by 9.5 inches (24.3 centimeters) by 4.6 inches (11.8 centimeters).
NASA and the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) have launched a global photography competition to highlight how the vantage point of space helps us better understand our home planet, improve lives, and safeguard our future by aiding sustainable development on Earth.
To highlight the role of space-based science and technologies and their applications on Earth, NASA and UNOOSA are inviting the public to submit photos depicting why space matters to us all in our daily lives. To participate, post a picture and description on Instagram using the hashtag #whyspacematters and tagging @UNOOSA.
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who is three months into a one-year mission aboard the International Space Station, will announce the winning photo each month by posting it from his Instagram account @StationCDRKelly.
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For more information about the International Space Station and its crews and research, visit: www.nasa.gov/station
All Systems Go For NASA’s Mission To Jupiter Moon Europa
Beyond Earth, Jupiter’s moon Europa is considered one of the most promising places in the solar system to search for signs of present-day life, and a new NASA mission to explore this potential is moving forward from concept review to development.
NASA’s mission concept — to conduct a detailed survey of Europa and investigate its habitability — has successfully completed its first major review by the agency and now is entering the development phase known as formulation.
“Today we’re taking an exciting step from concept to mission, in our quest to find signs of life beyond Earth,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “Observations of Europa have provided us with tantalizing clues over the last two decades, and the time has come to seek answers to one of humanity’s most profound questions.”
NASA’s Galileo mission to Jupiter in the late 1990s produced strong evidence that Europa, about the size of Earth’s moon, has an ocean beneath its frozen crust. If proven to exist, this global ocean could hold more than twice as much water as Earth. With abundant salt water, a rocky sea floor, and the energy and chemistry provided by tidal heating, Europa may have the ingredients needed to support simple organisms.
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For more information about NASA’s mission to Europa, visit: www.nasa.gov/europa
Veteran NASA Spacecraft Nears 60,000th Lap Around Mars, No Pit Stops
NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft will reach a major milestone June 23, when it completes its 60,000th orbit since arriving at the Red Planet in 2001.
Named after the bestselling novel “2001: A Space Odyssey” by Arthur C. Clarke, Odyssey began orbiting Mars almost 14 years ago, on Oct. 23, 2001. On Dec. 15, 2010, it became the longest-operating spacecraft ever sent to Mars, and continues to hold that record today.
Odyssey, which discovered widespread water ice just beneath the surface of the Red Planet, is still going strong today, serving as a key communications relay for NASA’s Mars rovers and making continued contributions to planetary science.
Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have discovered the largest and brightest set of rings from X-ray light echoes ever observed. These extraordinary rings, produced by an intense flare from a neutron star, provide astronomers a rare chance to determine how far across the Milky Way galaxy the star is from Earth.
The rings appear as circles around Circinus X-1, a double star system in the plane of our galaxy containing a neutron star, the dense remnant of a massive star pulverized in a supernova explosion. The neutron star is in orbit with another massive star, and is shrouded by thick clouds of interstellar gas and dust. Circinus X-1 is also the source of a surprisingly powerful jet of high-energy particles.
“It’s really hard to get accurate distance measurements in astronomy and we only have a handful of methods,” said Sebastian Heinz of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who led the study. “But just as bats use sonar to triangulate their location, we can use the X-rays from Circinus X-1 to figure out exactly where it is.”
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For more Chandra images, multimedia and related materials, visit: www.nasa.gov/chandra
For an interactive image, podcast, and video about these findings, visit: chandra.si.edu
The currentmodels indicate that auroral activity tonight will not be significant for Central New York and, if it does pick up, it won’t until at least 2 a.m.
Therefore, CNYO won’t be hosting any official session at Happy Valley (as was reported on the recent syracuse.com article) and will instead wait for fantastic pictures from (1) Canadian observers or (2) CNY observers who decided to brave it only to find the predictions were inaccurate and the aurora were fantastic. Either way, we won’t know until tomorrow morning.
We’ll post any updates over the next several days, else will hope to see people at a Jupiter/Venus Conjunction on or near June 30th (currently finalizing a Syracuse location). Stay tuned!
Greetings fellow astrophiles (and those checking in from the syracuse.com page about auroral activity this week)!
For those not in the magnetic field line loop, Sunspot 2371 (which several of us saw in full glory at the Hazard Branch Library this past Saturday) let off a significant coronal mass ejection (CME for short) in our direction that made it to Earth two days ago. This has produced some gorgeous aurora for those not coated in cloud cover or light pollution (as was the case for Syracuse at its peak on Monday). CNYO’s David Wormuth has kept the board aware of potential observing the past two nights, while at least one member of ASRAS posted a picture from his own locale that shows just enough aurora with an 8 second exposure. When Glenn Coin from syracuse.com asked about potential activity yesterday, I “kept it local” by passing the image along (included in Glenn’s article “Northern lights could be visible this week in Upstate New York”).
The current auroral activity from SWPC/NOAA
We may be due for another glow-worthy event in the next day or two as a smaller storm passes by. We’re keeping track of predictions for early-early Thursday morning to see if activity will be worth waking up extra early for (or not sleeping at all). If you want to see/capture aurora:
Naked Eye:
* Look North!
* The higher (the elevation) the better
* Avoid having a big city to your North
* For the best view, wait until the Moon sets. That’s going to put you out to 2 or 3 a.m. right now, but not having its glow will improve auroral sights.
Camera – same as Naked Eye observing, but include the following:
* High ISO (+1600)
* Longer exposures (try the 5 second to 15 second range on most small cameras, then experiment with longer sessions with a good DSLR)
* Steady tripod – it is supposed to be clear enough in the next few nights, but wind will complicate your picture taking
solarham.net – Solar activity isn’t just for space scientists. The Sun is of great importance to HAM Radio operators. You can tell how serious they are by the very thorough presentation of data.
www.aurorasaurus.org – this is an awesome idea. It’s a perfect mix of twitter and google maps. If you see aurora, you make a quick post on the website to let others know it may be active in your area. If enough people report, I say trust the posts and make a drive. Why wait for predictions when you can keep track of real-time data?
We’ll be keeping track of events over the next few days. For those who want to see what caused the whole mess, I encourage you to come to Liverpool Public Library tonight for their How-To Festival, where we’ll have solar scopes (and solar glasses) available to get a good view of the very prominent sunspots currently on the surface. And if we go late enough, maybe even a sneak peak of Jupiter and Venus as their conjunction brings them especially close to one another on June 30th (which we plan to have a session for as well. Stay tuned!).
