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I have had an awful lot going on this summer, and this week has been no exception, so there has not been much time for blogging.  So, to get your fix on the astronomy and space side of the blogosphere, you might want to check out the Carnival of Space.  The 61st edition of the carnival is being hosted this week at Mang’s Bat Page.   If you run out of things to read there, then here is an archive of past editions of the Carnival of Space.

Any of you who write space related blog postings...

On the morning of June 30, 1908, people throughout the world were minding their own business. Then, a great fireball streaked across the sky over a remote part of Asia. Soon after a titanic explosion rocked Siberia. The explosion was heard for great distances, and it was even detected by its overpressure at sites around the world as the pressure wave circled the globe more than once. Debris in the atmosphere turned days and nights into twilight across the northern hemisphere for weeks...

The word of the day: Albedo.

When you look up information about planets, one of the bits of data given is the albedo of the planet. Albedo is one of the vocabulary words that introductory astronomy students have to learn. According to the textbook that we are using, Mars has an albedo of 0.15, Jupiter has an albedo of 0.44, and Venus has an albedo of 0.59. So, what is albedo? What do these numbers mean?

Put very simply, albedo is a measure of the reflectivity of a body. You compute the...

For my regular readers, I thought that I’d just post an update.  Yes, I am still alive.  I had a ton of things going on in the last week that basically took over and kept me from having time to compose any blog entries.  There has certainly been lots to write about, though, what with the discoveries going on at Mars and elsewhere.  I’ll try to get back into the swing of things, though, and get back to regular entries.

-Astroprof

According to a JPL press release, the Phoenix lander on Mars recently had an issue with its flash memory.  You can read more about the incident on Emily Lakdawalla’s blog posting about it.  Flash memory is a nonvolatile memory such as that used in memory sticks.  The RAM on board the spacecraft loses data when it is powered down for the night.  But, the flash memory holds onto the data.  Flash memory is very durable, so it is normally a safe way to store data.  However, Tuesday night,...

Of course, Jupiter didn’t leave the Solar System, become invisible, or any such thing. But, we haven’t seen it for a while in the evening skies. And, observers who have stayed up late or got up before dawn have been seeing Jupiter. It just hasn’t been visible at sunset in quite a few months.

Since ancient times, people have looked at the sky and observed that some “stars” appeared to wander from constellation to constellation. These wandering “stars” were called planets. ...

(Updated June 17)

It isn’t every day that a new mineral is discovered. But, I recently read a NASA press release about a new mineral discovered in some comet dust. The mineral is being named brownleeite in honor of University of Washington astronomer Donald Brownlee. He is a pioneer in the study of comet dust. But, he is best known to many people as one of the authors of the book Rare Earth: Why complex life is uncommon in the universe, in which the authors make a case for Earth being...

A little while ago, I read a report that caught my attention. Apparently, astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery have reported something floating away from the orbiter. Not long afterwards, astronauts spotted what appeared to be a small protrusion from the aft end of the orbiter’s tail. The NASA image below shows the debris floating away from the shuttle.

The debris floated away from the shuttle after it test fired its thrusters and tested its atmospheric flight control surfaces. It...

This week, the 58th Edition of the Carnival of Space is being hosted by Fraiser Cain over at Universe Today.  Unlike many of the recent Carnivals of Space, where some big news story dominated everyone’s blogging, this week’s entries range all over the map.  There are links to blog postings about suggestions for first telescopes, Jupiter’s moons, spacecraft, spacesuits, cosmology, model rocketry on Mars, the Aurora, and even some photographs taken years ago by Apollo 17 on the surface of...

41 years ago, on June 12, 1967, a modified R-7 rocket lifted off from deep within the Soviet Union carrying a spacecraft to another world. The spacecraft was Venera 4, and it was on its way to Venus. Venera 4 was not the first spacecraft to arrive at Venus. That honor goes to the American Mariner 2 spacecraft, launched in 1962. But, Mariner 2 just flew by Venus. Venera 4 was destined to actually enter the planet’s atmosphere.

As the name implies, Venera 4 was not the first spacecraft...

We have yet another new word to describe some of the things out there beyond Neptune: Plutoids. As you may recall, a couple of years ago, the International Astronomical Union finally defined the word “planet.” It was something of a shock to many people in the public, but astronomers had never actually come up with a definition of “planet” in all these years. Originally, planet meant a “wandering star.” That would be a star that appeared to move from constellation to...

The Phoenix lander is now well into its mission to study Mars. The first steps, of course, are to look around with the cameras. But, while the pretty pictures are what excite the public the most, scientists are much more excited about the other instruments on board the craft. These instruments will tell us the composition of the Martian soil. Despite many press reports that state Phoenix is looking for life on Mars, what it is really doing is looking for the chemistry necessary for life. ...

About 3 months ago I wrote about the GLAST (Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope) and the search for a new name for the mission. The satellite was supposed to launch this weekend, but it has now been delayed until at least June 11. If all goes according to the plan, GLAST will lift off some time around noon on that date aboard a Delta rocket from Pad 17B at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

GLAST is designed to study gamma rays. These are an extremely energetic form of light, and thus...

A few days ago, I wrote about a possible record setting small super-earth. Now, I have read about an even smaller super-earth discovered by a team of astronomers led by David Bennett of Notre Dame.

This newly announced planet is designated MOA-2007-BLG-192L b. Actually, everything in that string of letters and numbers refers to the star except for the letter “b” at the end. That is the planet. This planet may be only about 3 times Earth’s mass (the one that I talked about a few days...

Ken over at Out of the Cradle is hosting this week’s Carnival of Space, the 57th edition.  So, go check out the wonderful job that he has done putting it together.

-Astroprof

The Phoenix lander has deployed its robotic arm and has carefully scooped up a shovel full of Martian regolith (soil). The camera, of course, is only black and white, but to make it color, three images were taken of the soil as illuminated by three different color LEDs. The images were then put together to make this color image. But, whether black and white or color, several things stand out.

You can see that the regolith is rather granular in nature. I don’t see any obvious rocks or...

A couple of days ago, the Space Shuttle Discovery lifted off from Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center to begin the STS-124 mission to the International Space Station. Space Launch Complex 39 (Kennedy Space Center) has two launch pads: 39A and 39B. These two launch pads were originally constructed in the 1960s for the giant Saturn V rockets used by the Apollo missions to the Moon. They used to support Skylab in the 1970s. Then, they were modified to accommodate the Space Shuttle...

Recently Christophe Lovis of Switzerland’s Geneva Observatory presented preliminary findings of work done with the European Southern Observatory’s High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) in which he reported several dozen extrasolar planet candidates. One extremely interesting point in this report is that these planets were all much smaller than Jupiter. The way that these planets are detected is through monitoring the motion of their star as they orbit. HARPS is able to...

I am an avid scifi fan. But, I think of science fiction as more than just aliens and spacecraft. In fact, I sometimes rather just like fiction that incorporates science. Of course, by that reasoning, TV shows such as CSI would count as science fiction, since they are heavy in the trappings of science, but they are most assuredly fiction. You can’t really do all of the things that are shown in those programs. But, it is still cool to think of using science to do things!

Yesterday, I...

This week, Darnell Clayton is hosting the Carnival of Space at the Lifeboat Foundation Blog.  He’s calling the Carnival of the Space Geeks.  As you can imagine, an awful lot of the entries are related to the recent Phoenix landing on Mars.

So, go check out the carnival and read all of the interesting space related blog posts gathered there.

-Astroprof

Well, I am now on Mars. Or, at least my name is on Mars. Early last year, I wrote about a program sponsored by the Planetary Society to send names to Mars aboard the Phoenix Lander on a special DVD, “Messages from Earth.” Now that Phoenix is safely on the ground (it didn’t blow up on the launch pad, miss Mars, burn up in the Martian atmosphere, or have anything else disastrous happen to it) then the DVD is there, with my name on it. In fact, the DVD even shows up in this image taken...

The Phoenix has been on Mars for one sol. Its nominal lifetime is 90 sols. So, what’s this “sol” thing that we keep talking about when we talk about Mars and the landers on its surface?

Put simply, a sol is a Martian day. Mars rotates a bit slower than Earth, so a Martian sol is a little longer than an Earth day. Mars rotates once every 24.6229 hours (24 hours, 37 minutes, 23 seconds). So, that is a sol, right? Well, not exactly. You see, Earth, itself, rotates once every 23 hours,...

The Phoenix Mars lander is down and initial data seems to show that the landing went very well, indeed. After landing, the spacecraft sent back telemetry showing that it had landed flat. It is within 1/4 to 1/3 of a degree from horizontal, indicating an extremely flat landing site (what we expected). Apparently, the parachute opened a few seconds later than expected, so the lander slightly overshot the target, but the landing was still within the expected landing oval. A few images were...

In a few hours, the Phoenix will land on Mars. The chosen landing site is far into the northern plains. This is farther from the equator than any other spacecraft has successfully landed on Mars. Of course, that doesn’t mean that it can’t safely be done, just that it hasn’t been done before. Mars is an odd world. It is almost like two planets stuck together. The northern hemisphere is largely smooth and low elevation. The southern hemisphere is largely higher elevation and heavily...

Wow, it’s been a long and difficult month for me. It has been one thing after another all month. As my regular readers can see, I have not been keeping up with Astroprof’s Page much this month. In fact, this has been the slackest month, I think, since I started blogging!

So, it is perhaps fitting that I begin with writing about the Phoenix Mars mission. It is about to land on Mars (in a bit under two days). The Phoenix was named for the mythical bird, the phoenix. According to legend,...