Observing this FridayMichael Murphy sends the follow note about IAS/SDAS observing this Friday;

“The weather looks good so the plan is to meet up at the Sugarloaf car park at 9:30pm. After that we can either stay in the car park or travel to our new site in Trooperstown for more observing.

If you are interested can you either reply to the thread on www.irishastronomy.org or ring 087-6398143 before 8pm on Friday to make sure the observing is going ahead.“

It won’t get very dark but Saturn will be well placed for viewing. The summer constellation Scorpius will be high enough just before midnight to spot the nice globular cluster M4 which lies near Antares, the red giant beating at the celestial scorpion’s heart. In fact, quite a few globular clusters can be swept up in even just binoculars at this time of year.

Globular clusters are giant conglomerations of up to half a million suns and are scattered in a halo about our Milky Way. Their stars are ancient and globulars themselves may be the remnants of satellite galaxies torn apart by tidal interaction with our own galaxy. Long-exposure photographs show them to be densely packed but collisions between stars in a globular are extremely rare. Still, for a planet orbiting a star in a globular cluster the night sky would never get truly dark.

Jupiter’s SEB fades

Aubrey phoned me a short while ago to say that the internet is abuzz with news that Jupiter’s South Equatorial Belt (SEB) has faded. Such an event occurs about every 3 or 15 years. Some planetary scientists believe it is due to higher altitude white clouds forming in the gas giant’s atmosphere and obscuring the lower SEB which is a darker hue. You can read more about the discovery at http://planetary.org/blog/article/00002477/ and http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18889-jupiter-loses-a-stripe.html

Jupiter rises around 2:30am these mornings so an early start to the day is required to catch a glimpse of the planet.

Young Moon and Venus

Saturday’s slender crescent Moon will only be 20¼ hours old – a breathtaking sight – when you spot it above the WSW skyline after sunset. The golden curl will be 5-degrees up at 9:30pm (summertime) and Venus lies to its upper left.  Mars and Saturn are also on view in the evening sky.

Spaceflight

Japan’s Akatsuki (Planet-C) space probe is due to lift off on May 17^th and will reach the planet Venus in December 2010. The mission objectives are to study the thick Venusian atmosphere from orbit and determine if there is ongoing volcanic activity on surface of which there have only been tantalising hints to date. Read more about the mission at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akatsuki_(spacecraft) … though the external links will probably have a lot more information.

The final mission of the Space Shuttle Atlantis is pencilled in for May 14^th. The crew will bring additional components to the International Space Station and install them during a number of spacewalks. Making his second spaceflight is Garrett Reisman who visited Ireland about a decade ago when still a trainee astronaut. If anyone is following the current plans for the US space programme then you may have just this week seen a number of the Apollo veterans criticise future NASA plans for space exploration. The current push is for NASA to embrace more private space ventures such as commercial vehicles to resupply the ISS, extending the life-time of the ISS to 2010 and to send astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid before committing to a manned mission to Mars. I believe this phased approach makes far more sense than hugely expensive task of establishing a permanent base on the Moon. Let the debate begin!

Sad news

I heard some sad news yesterday that Chris MacLochlainn, one of our members, died tragically during the week. Chris was one of the gentlest people you could meet and had a wide circle of friends. Our last conversation was some time back when Chris and I chatted about all aspects of the night sky. His many friends offer our deepest sympathy to his family at this time.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 13th, 2010 at 13:43 and is filed under Astronomy News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.