Imagine the view the astronauts onboard the ISS get to taste every day. The Earth from orbit – surely a beautiful image that will navigate its way safely into your memory and stay with you forever.
Well that’s great for astronauts and well they deserve it. Thankfully enough for us astronauts frequently aim their cameras toward Earth and their images are uploaded to a huge archive. James Drake, a science educator added 600 such images, stitched them together and produced this amazing HD timelapse movie.
From the Pacific Ocean, flying over the Americas before reaching sunrise over Antarctica this video is stunning even showing the network of night-time cities that inhabit Earth and lightning storms past the southern coast of Mexico.
Raw data was downloaded from NASA’s Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth which is a Johnson Space Center project hosting the best and most complete online collection of astronaut photographs of the Earth which should keep interested followers busy until the ISS gets it’s new streaming HD video cameras in 2012.
View Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth here.
Back on track! Take a look at images 45 to 41 in this weeks instalment from the ESO Top 100 Images series*. The left hand side of number 41 is fairly impressive.
# 45 - Paranal Observatory and the Volcano Llullaillaco - Credit: ESO/G.Hüdepohl (atacamaphoto.com)
# 44 - Bird’s Eye View of the Very Large Telescope - Credit: ESO/G.Hüdepohl (atacamaphoto.com)
# 43 - Latest Rendering of the E-ELT - Credit: Swinburne Astronomy Productions/ESO
# 42 - The Future European Extremely Large Telescope - Credit: Swinburne Astronomy Productions/ESO
# 41 - Close-up of the drama of star formation - Credit: ESO/Sergey Stepanenko
In his book “The Solar System and Back” (Doubleday, 1970), famed science writer Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) argued that the planet Mercury:
“… is hardly ever visible when it is truly dark. Mercury … will be seen only near the horizon in dawn or twilight, amid haze and sun glare. I suspect, in fact, that many people today (when the horizon is dirtier and the sky much hazier with the glare of artificial light than it was in centuries past) have never seen Mercury.”
Weather permitting 8-15 September amateur astronomers will be presented with an excellent opportunity to view Mercury in the early morning dawn sky. An “inferior planet” because its orbit is nearer to the sun than the Earth’s, Mercury, as Asimov indicated, always appears from our vantage point to be in the same general direction as the sun.
Mercury will be surprisingly easy to see from now through 15 September and will be rising before the sun in the northern hemisphere. Just look low above the eastern horizon during the morning twilight and be sure that it’s about 30 to 45 minutes before sunrise – search for a bright yellowish-orange “star.”
As mentioned in our monthly events guide Mercury was at its greatest elongation just west of the sun, on 3 September. The planet, like Venus, appears to go through phases like the moon.
At its greatest elongation Mercury appeared roughly half-illuminated and the amount of its surface illuminated by the sun has steadily increased as each day passes helping keep it in relatively easy view over the next 7 days.
Position of Mercury and Regulus early September (click to enlarge) - Credit: Stellarium/Sky-Watching
As a bonus, early on Friday morning, Mercury will have a close conjunction with the bright bluish 1st-magnitude star, Regulus, in the constellation of Leo. Look for them, they will appear to be almost side by side, low near the east-northeast horizon and around 45 minutes before sunrise.
If you intend to view, Mercury will be to the left of Regulus and will shine about 8x brighter than the star. Binoculars may make it easier to sight Regulus – Mercury will then pull rapidly away to the east on successive mornings.
By 15 September it will have substantially brightened, more than any star in the sky with the exception of Sirius. Days later, despite its brightness it will be swallowed up by the dawn glow.
Best view of Perseid meteors could be before dawn 10-11 August
Although the actual peak date of the Perseid meteor shower will be 12-13 August (as mentioned in our August Astronomy Events post) the best time to watch the Perseid meteor shower might actually be today – Wednesday 10 August, during the dawn hours into Thursday.
At their peak, the Perseids commonly produce 50 or more meteors per hour – when the moon is out-of-the-way. This year, however, the full moon will shine from dusk till dawn on the peak night wiping out all but the brightest Perseid meteors. With this in mind working around the moon to optimize the view of the Perseids (summertime’s premier meteor shower) is probably the best call.
The best time will probably come in the next 24 hours dependent on your location.
At mid-northern latitudes in Europe the moon will set between 1am and 2am. The moon’s precise setting time, however, depends on where you reside within your time zone! Checkout the moonrise section at timeandate.com to check what is best for you.
Generally, you see the greatest number of Perseids in the hours before dawn (even on a totally moonless night). Given a dark, open sky away from pesky city lights, you might see 15-20 Perseid meteors per hour.
Although the predawn sky may present the best view of the 2011 Perseid shower, that won’t stop die-hard meteor enthusiasts from watching the Perseids starting now and throughout the weekend!
Artist rendition of Dawn spacecraft gathering spectral data from Vesta - Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/McREL
On 16 July NASA’s Dawn spacecraft will enter the orbit of Vesta – on track for the first extended visit to the large asteroid. The mission expects to begin gathering science data in early August. Vesta resides in the main asteroid belt and is thought to be the source of a large number of meteorites that fall to Earth. Read our previous post on Vesta here.
“We look forward to exploring this unknown world during Dawn’s 1-year stay in Vesta’s orbit.” said Robert Mase from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
Traveling for nearly 4 years and covering 1.7 billion miles, Dawn is to date about 96,000 miles away from Vesta and when the asteroid captures Dawn into its orbit on 16 July there will be approximately 9,900 miles between them and they will be approximately 117 million miles away from Earth.
We’ve packed our year at Vesta full of science observations to help us unravel the mysteries of Vesta,” said Carol Raymond from JPL. Vesta is considered a protoplanet, or body that never quite became a full-fledged planet.
