The scale of things

[Allegro]

Highlights mine.

_________________
Ain’t Misbehavin’ – Turbulence, Solar Flares and Magnetism
Universe Today, Tammy Plotner | May 22, 2013


^ New research led by a Johns Hopkins mathematical physicist focuses on the “misbehavior” of magnetic fields in solar flares. In this image, the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured an X1.2 class solar flare, peaking on May 15, 2013. Credit: NASA/SDO

What’s more fun than something that misbehaves? When it comes to solar dynamics, we know a lot, but there are many things we don’t yet understand. For example, when a particle filled solar flare lashes out from the Sun, its magnetic field lines can do some pretty unexpected things – like split apart and then rapidly reconnect. According to the flux-freezing theorem, these magnetic lines should simply “flow away in lock-step” with the particles. They should stay intact, but they don’t. It’s not just a simple rule they break… it’s a law of physics.

What can explain it? In a paper published in the May 23 issue of “Nature”, an interdisciplinary research team led by a Johns Hopkins mathematical physicist may just have found a plausible explanation. According to the group, the underlying factor is turbulence – the “same sort of violent disorder that can jostle a passenger jet when it occurs in the atmosphere” – or the one your brother leaves behind after he’s eaten baked beans. By employing a well-organized and logically constructed computer modeling technique, the researchers were able to simulate what happens when magnetic field lines meet up with turbulence in a solar flare. Armed with this information, they were then able to state their case.

“The flux-freezing theorem often explains things beautifully,” said Gregory Eyink, a Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics professor who was lead author of the “Nature” study. “But in other instances, it fails miserably. We wanted to figure out why this failure occurs.”

Just what is the flux-freezing theorem? Maybe you’ve heard of Hannes Alfvén. He was a Swedish electrical engineer, plasma physicist and winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). He’s the man responsible for explaining what we now know as Alfvén waves – a low-frequency traveling oscillation of the ions and the magnetic field in plasma. Well, some 70 years ago, he came up with the thought that magnetic lines of force sail along a locomotive fluid similar to snippets of thread flowing along a stream. It should be impossible for them to break and then join again. However, solar physicists have discovered this just isn’t the case when it comes to activity within a particularly violent solar flare. In their observations, they have determined that the magnetic field lines within these flares can stretch to the breaking point and then reconnect in a surprisingly quick amount of time – as little as 15 minutes. When this happens, it expels a copious amount of energy which, in turn, powers the flare.

“But the flux-freezing principle of modern plasma physics implies that this process in the solar corona should take a million years!” Eyink animatedly states. “A big problem in astrophysics is that no one could explain why flux-freezing works in some cases but not others.”

Of course, there has always been speculation that turbulence may have been the root source of the enigmatic behavior. Time for investigation? You bet. Eyink then joined forces – and minds – with other experts in astrophysics, mechanical engineering, data management and computer science, based at Johns Hopkins and other institutions. “By necessity, this was a highly collaborative effort,” Eyink said. “Everyone was contributing their expertise. No one person could have accomplished this.”

< Gregory Eyink, professor of applied mathematics and statistics at Johns Hopkins. Photo by Nat Creamer.

The next step was to create a computer simulation – a simulation which could duplicate the plasma state of solar flare activity and all the nuances the charged particles undergo during different conditions. “Our answer was very surprising,” stated Eyink. “Magnetic flux-freezing no longer holds true when the plasma becomes turbulent. Most physicists expected that flux-freezing would play an even larger role as the plasma became more highly conducting and more turbulent, but, as a matter of fact, it breaks down completely. In an even greater surprise, we found that the motion of the magnetic field lines becomes completely random. I do not mean ‘chaotic,’ but instead as unpredictable as quantum mechanics. Rather than flowing in an orderly, deterministic fashion, the magnetic field lines instead spread out like a roiling plume of smoke.”

Of course, other solar experts feel there may be alternative answers for this rule-breaking activity within solar flares, but as Eyink says, “I think we made a pretty compelling case that turbulence alone can account for field-line breaking.”

What is most exciting is the collaborative effort of the team members from such widely varied disciplines. It was a group effort which aided Eyink to come up with this new theory on the solar flare riddle. “We used ground-breaking new database methods, like those employed in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, combined with high-performance computing techniques and original mathematical developments,” he said. “The work required a perfect marriage of physics, mathematics and computer science to develop a fundamentally new approach to performing research with very large datasets.”

In conclusion, Eyink noted this type of research work may very well give us a better understanding of solar flares and coronal mass ejections. As we know, this type of dangerous “space weather” can be harmful to astronauts, disrupt communications satellites, and even be responsible for the shut-down of electrical power grids on Earth. And you know what that means… no satellite TV and no power to watch it by. But, that’s O.K.

“I don’t stay out late. Don’t care to go. I’m home about eight… Just me and my radio. Ain’t misbehavin’.. Savin’ my love for you.”

Original Story Source: Johns Hopkins University News Release.

[Allegro]

RESOURCE

The above article has numerous keywords, all of which were informative during research this morning with space weather in mind. Of course, I discovered the Cluster II spacecraft wiki page, which includes an mp3 of Chorus, an exciting sonification with rhythms so obvious that, in my opinion, you’ll be listening to a gorgeous Chorus!

_________________
Cluster II (spacecraft) wiki

< begin excerpt >

Chorus Emissions Found Further Away From Earth During High Geomagnetic Activity. Chorus are waves naturally generated in space close to the magnetic equator, within the Earth’s magnetic bubble called magnetosphere. These waves play an important role in the creation of relativistic electrons and their precipitation from the Earth’s radiation belts. These so-called killer electrons can damage solar panels and electronic equipment of satellites and represent a hazard to astronauts. Therefore, information on their location with respect to the geomagnetic activity is of crucial importance to be able to forecast their impact. Chorus [mp3] sound file: http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object ... ctid=38339

< end excerpt >

---

Additionally.

Ten Years of Success for Cluster Quartet

[Page introduction] 06 Sep 2010
In the summer of 2000, four identical ESA spacecraft lifted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome at the start of the most detailed investigation ever of the interaction between the Sun and Earth. 10 years later, the Cluster quartet continues to unravel the secrets of the invisible particles and magnetic fields that envelop our Earth.

Resume.

[Allegro]

Thanks, Jeff.

[Allegro]

RESOURCE

In this comment space is the introduction to George Smoot, who worked with a drummer for Grateful Dead, Micky Hart (introduced in the second comment space down thread from this one), who collaborated with Mark Ballora (introduced in the next space). The trio of collaborators produced a 25-minute film titled Rhythms of the Universe, a presentation that includes photos of objects in space mutually related with vibratory patterns of sounds, dynamics, pitches, rhythms, timbres, all sonifications of numerical data, orchestrated to create a musically scientific work of art.

Much of Smoot’s Nobel Prize funding has been invested in an integrated research and education outreach initiative designed to inspire people to study science, and to set the agenda for science education in the 21st century.

Highlights mine.

_________________
1992: John Mather and George Smoot Image the Infant Universe
From Everyday Cosmology


^ John Mather

On April 23, 1992, cosmology again made headlines. But this time it was not a bigger picture of galaxies, or a more distant quasar. It was a remarkable image of the universe as an “infant,” only 389,000 years old, when the first atoms were formed and light could finally run free. The slight differences in temperature of the early universe imaged by the COBE satellite gave rise to the formation of stars and galaxies that we see today.

The COBE results also paved the way for the WMAP satellite, with even more sensitive instruments that produced an even sharper image of the early universe and determined its age to be 13.7 billion years. John Mather, at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and George Smoot at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory later received a Nobel Prize for their work on COBE.

In 1964 Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson announced their finding of a faint microwave signal from all directions that was most likely the afterglow of the Big Bang. The average temperature of the universe appeared to be about 3° Kelvin above absolute zero. Their discovery raised two important questions. First, was the signal really the afterglow of the Big Bang, or did it come from some other source? And second, if the temperature was exactly the same everywhere, how did stars and galaxies form from such a smooth, homogenous mixture of atoms and light? The COBE satellite answered “Yes” to the first question, and confirmed that the microwaves were the afterglow of the Big Bang.

The finding that made front-page news answered the second question. Onboard the satellite was an instrument that measured the intensity of microwaves coming from all directions with great precision. The result would indicate if there were any slight differences in temperature. Prior observations indicated that the background radiation was perfectly smooth, with differences no more than one part in 10,000.

Launching a satellite to measure the microwave background even more precisely would be a very expensive gamble, since the results could be the same as before—no differences in temperature at all. But COBE succeeded in finding very slight differences in temperature from different directions only about one part in 100,000. The differences were small, but big enough to result in the stars and galaxies we see today. In a sense, it was the first “baby picture” of our universe soon after the Big Bang.

George Smoot


^ George Smoot

The road to COBE was long and treacherous. It started in 1974 when NASA received several good proposals to search for detail in the cosmic background signal. Rather than choosing one proposal, in 1976 NASA administrators invited members of the three teams to work together and come up with the best possible plan. John Mather and George Smoot were two of the members on the new team.

Whereas Mather had attempted to measure the spectrum of the microwave background from mountaintops and balloons, Smoot had used a U-2 spy plane to seek the differences in temperature. But everyone thought that it would be possible to find slight differences in temperature if the instruments were sufficiently sensitive—and if they could be placed on a satellite above the atmosphere. They got their chance when COBE was launched by a Delta rocket in 1989.

[Allegro]

RESOURCE

The film, Rhythms of the Universe, includes narrations from George Smoot and Micky Hart; images from space; and video, music and sonifications. Beginning in the video below, at mark 8.30, Ballora shows some sonifications he produced for the film.

What’s most important, I think, is the sonifications in the film Rhythms of the Universe are intrinsically related to the datasets. The sonifications are not space music, as many online videos claim sonification when they are, in fact, not.

< begin personal perspective >
If videos of sonifications sound messy when compared, for instance, with clean, simple sonifications, then the experienced listener will understand that inexperienced sonifiers, claiming backgrounds in music or expertise in music composition, the probabilities and levels of which are scholastically unverifiable, would be not necessarily conceits, albeit sonifiers’ active involvements with official science or space programs with logos of well-established universities, companies or nonprofits at the time of video productions.
< close personal perspective >

Therefore, while listening to a scientifically generated sonification, one must have reasons for trusting that sounds and music heard are authentic contours of original data. Ballora mentioned in passing the use of SuperCollider software, and I suppose that software is part of the European Grid Infrastructure.

_________________
< TEDxPenn State Univ | Mark Ballora
uploaded December, 2011

Mark Ballora joined the Penn State faculty in 2000. He holds a joint appointment in the School of Music and the School of Theatre. Ballora teaches courses in music technology, history of electroacoustic music, musical acoustics, and software programming for musicians.

He received degrees from the University of California at Los Angeles, New York University, and McGill University. He is the author of Essentials of Music Technology (Prentice Hall, 2002), and a number of “Square One” columns written for Electronic Musician magazine from 2004 to 2008.

Early work includes sound designs and electroacoustic scores for modern dance, theatre, animated films, and radio dramas. His compositions have been played at international electroacoustic music festivals, and his piece for flute choir, Squid Sarabande, was a finalist in the 2012 National Flute Association’s newly published music competition.

He has also written articles describing uses of sonification (rendering scientific datasets with sound) in the areas of cardiology and computer network security. His sonifications of astronomical and physiological datasets have been used by percussionist/ethnomusicologist Mickey Hart as part of performances of the Mickey Hart Band, and on their album Mysterium Tremendum.

He also designed sound for an interactive instrument designed by the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco, which was played by Mickey Hart as part of the celebration of the Golden Gate Bridge’s 75th anniversary, and participated in a presentation at the 2012 AARP convention that included visualizations and sonifications of Hart’s brain activity.

[Allegro]

RESOURCE


^ Sounds From Outer Space And Recording the Nubians in Egypt | Mickey Hart


^ Rhythms of the Universe | The above video is only two minutes of the 25-minute film presented by Mickey Hart at a SETI Institute Conference, the date of which is unknown, at this writing.

Press release | Rhythms of the Universe shown in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico, in January, 2010.

[Allegro]

[Allegro]

Highlights mine.

_________________
An Amazing Anniversary Image from the VLT
Universe Today, Jason Major | May 23, 2013


^ A new view of the spectacular stellar nursery IC 2944 (ESO)

This Saturday [May 25] will mark 15 years that the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) first opened its eyes on the Universe, and ESO is celebrating its first-light anniversary with a beautiful and intriguing new image of the stellar nursery IC 2944, full of bright young stars and ink-black clouds of cold interstellar dust.

This is the clearest ground-based image yet of IC 2944, located 6,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Centaurus.

Emission nebulae like IC 2944 are composed mostly of hydrogen gas that glows in a distinctive shade of red, due to the intense radiation from the many brilliant newborn stars. Clearly revealed against this bright backdrop are mysterious dark clots of opaque dust, cold clouds known as Bok globules. They are named after Dutch-American astronomer Bart Bok, who first drew attention to them in the 1940s as possible sites of star formation. This particular set is nicknamed the Thackeray Globules.

Larger Bok globules in quieter locations often collapse to form new stars but the ones in this picture are under fierce bombardment from the ultraviolet radiation from nearby hot young stars. They are both being eroded away and also fragmenting, like lumps of butter dropped into a hot frying pan. It is likely that Thackeray’s Globules will be destroyed before they can collapse and form stars.

This new picture celebrates an important anniversary for the the VLT – it will be fifteen years since first light on the first of its four Unit Telescopes on May 25, 1998. Since then the four original giant telescopes have been joined by the four small Auxiliary Telescopes that form part of the VLT Interferometer (VLTI) – one of the most powerful and productive ground-based astronomical facilities in existence.

The selection of images below — one per year — gives a taste of the VLT’s scientific productivity since first light in 1998:


^ A selection of images from 15 years of the VLT (Credits: ESO/P.D. Barthel/M. McCaughrean/M. Andersen/S. Gillessen et al./Y. Beletsky/R. Chini/T. Preibisch)

Read more on the ESO site here, and watch an ESOCast video below honoring the VLT’s fifteen-year milestone:



Happy Anniversary VLT!

Source: ESO

_________________
See more by Phil Plait

[Allegro]

Highlights mine.

_________________
Drooling over Pictures of Pavlof Volcano from Space | Phil Plait
Bad Astronomy | Thursday, May 23, 2013, at 11:05 AM

The Pavlof volcano sits in the long, long chain of the Aleutian Islands off the west coast of Alaska, and is one of the most active volcanoes in the United States. It’s about seven kilometers (4 miles) across and 2500 meters (1.5 miles) high. After being quiet since 2007, it started erupting again on May 13, 2013.

A few days later, on May 18, astronauts aboard the International Space Station had this amazing view of the event:


^ Does the name Pavlof ring a bell? Click to hephaestenate. Photo by NASA

One thing I love about photos of the Earth from ISS is that the astronauts can see things at an oblique angle. Most satellites take pictures straight down and you lose the sense of depth. The astronauts have a wider view, and can see surface features closer to the horizon. This angle can give an incredibly dramatic view like that one.

The plume of ash shot up to a height of six kilometers (almost four miles), and goes a long way. That picture above was taken using a telephoto, but a shorter lens provides a bit of context:


^ The plume from the May 13 eruption of Pavlof extends for hundreds of kilometers. Photo by NASA.

WOW. The plume extends for hundreds of kilometers, blown by winds to the southeast. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a plume that long seen so clearly before.

Volcanic ash is a hazard; it’s composed not of smooth dust but of very small grains of rock that can have extremely sharp edges and ridges. Even in small quantities it can choke an airplane engine and damage windshields, so air traffic has to be routed around active volcanoes; Pavlof is creating such a situation now.

Alaska is loaded with volcanoes, many of which are active and hazardous to airplanes and people. Scientists need to observe these volcanoes constantly, keeping an eye on them in case any of them decides to wake up. However, the Alaska Volcano Observatory has had its funding cut recently; it’s been halved since 2007. Budget cuts, sequestration, and the loss of earmarks are to blame. The effect has been bad: the AVO has had to stop real-time monitoring of at least four of Alaska’s volcanoes, and much of their equipment is old and on the verge of failing, if not already malfunctioning.

I know the economy means that lots of programs get hit, but not every program the government funds is equal. The idea of cutting back on volcano observatories is, simply, nuts. People’s lives are at stake, and certainly a big eruption has economic impact. The intersection of science and public safety is not a place we can afford to cut back.

I remember, back in 2009, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal using volcano observatories as an example of foolish spending. It’s that kind of thinking that’s foolish. Monitoring volcanoes is in everyone’s best interest, and should be a funding priority.

_________________
See more by Nancy Atkinson

[Allegro]

Highlights mine.

_________________
The Beautiful Death of the Sun’s Big Brother | Phil Plait
Bad Astronomy | Saturday, May 25, 2013, at 8:00 AM

The Ring Nebula is one of every amateur astronomer’s favorite objects. From the northern hemisphere it gets up high in the sky in the summer, is ridiculously easy to find, and when you look at it through a small telescope it looks like a ghostly, pale smoke ring.

Of course, when you look at it with Hubble, the picture is significantly more wow-inducing. New observations of the Ring show some amazing details, and have revealed even more information about the dying star that created it.

It’ll also melt your brain.


^ Sauron’s summer home (we’ve already seen his main residence with Hubble). Photo by NASA, ESA, C.R. O’Dell (Vanderbilt University), and D. Thompson (Large Binocular Telescope Observatory)

Trust me; you really want to click that picture to embiggen it. You’re welcome.

This gigantic gas cloud, ten trillion kilometers across, is the dying gasp of an old star. It probably started out roughly twice the mass of the Sun, and after a few billion years began to run out of hydrogen fuel in its core. The star responded by expanding, cooling (and turning red), and blowing a slow, dense wind of subatomic particles—a stellar wind, like the Sun’s solar wind. Over time, the core of the star underwent various other changes, and the star responded to that by shrinking, heating up, and blowing off a less dense but much faster wind. It lost much of its outer layers to this wind, eventually exposing the hot, dense core (which flooded the gas with ultraviolet light, causing it to glow; that’s why we can see the nebula in the first place).

In rare cases these winds expand as a sphere, but most stars, we’ve learned, possess planets. As the star expands, it can swallow these planets, which act like egg beaters as they orbit inside the star, whipping up the interior and increasing the star’s spin. That in turn changes the shape of the wind, creating fantastic shapes we call planetary nebulae.

In the case of the Ring, it was thought for a long time to be a sphere, but Hubble observations in the late 1990s showed it was actually shaped more like a barrel, and it’s pointed right at us; we’re looking straight down into it. The trick was to look at the blobs of dark material inside the ring; those are where the fast and slow winds meet. If you look carefully, you’ll see they form in a circle at the inside rim. If the Ring were actually a spherical shell, we’d see those blobs scattered across the whole ring, even inside the rim. Since we only see them along that circle, it’s clear we’re looking down the top of a cylinder.

These new observations are even deeper and high-resolution than those older ones, and reveal new structure. You can see radial spokes heading away from the center, just outside the main ring. Those are actually due to shadowing, the light from the central star blocked by the darker, denser blobs. They’re cosmic crepuscular rays!


^ Mmmmmmm, colliding winds
of subatomic particles infused
with hot helium. Photo by
Shutterstock/WiktoryThe nebula is filled with a blue glow due to helium gas, and it’s now thought that this hot gas fills the entire interior and sticks out the ends, a bit like a hot dog in a wrap-around bun. The Ring is a pig-in-the-blanket! Of course, it’s one that’s a light year across, to give you a sense of scale. That’s a lot of hot dog.

The Ring is a fantastic and beautiful example of what happens when a star dies, and it happens to be close enough—roughly 2000 light years—that we get a pretty good view of it. And yet, after all this time, it also shows us there’s still much to learn about what happens when a star shuffles off this mortal coil.

[Burnt Hill]

Allegro, what a fantastic lot of information you have been posting here, especially the last few pages.
Looking to the heavens and finding the coorolation to- and an expression of- music, is thrillingly spiritual.
Thank you so much for what you do!

[Allegro]

Thank you, Burnt Hill, for your ^ comment. I’m glad you’re enjoying the posts!

There are likely a lot of people who would and eventually will for (I suppose some deep psychological?) reassurances project correlations of their culture’s spirituality or religious beliefs with sounds the Universe makes. It’s all too compelling for most humans to project, I think.

These days, science-friendlies are realizing the Universe is viewed and heard doing what it does best—yet not for human benefit—those myriad universal processes humans love listening to, whether instant, real-time sounds heard via hand held devices, or sounds sonified from large, raw datasets, or sonifications of sounds into pitches gleaned from scales of music evolved in any culture on Earth.

From my perspective, I easily ride in tandem with this quote regarded as written by Dr. Arnheim. The following is taken as is, since I only know of Arnheim via these words.

Nothing is more humbling than to look with a strong magnifying glass at an insect so tiny that the naked eye sees only the barest speck, and to discover that nevertheless it is sculpted and articulated and striped with the same care and imagination as a zebra. Apparently it does not occur to nature whether or not a creature is within our range of vision, and the suspicion arises that even the zebra was not designed for our benefit.
— Rudolf Arnheim (b 1904) German-born author, art and film theorist, perceptual psychologist. Refer.

~ A.

[Allegro]

Highlights mine.

_________________
Moonrise from Space | Phil Plait
Bad Astronomy | Monday, May 27, 2013, at 8:00 AM

In March 2004, the European Space Agency launched the Rosetta probe on its way to the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It’s still on its way there—space is big. But it made a few detours along the way, including a pass of Mars, three of Earth (to gain energy and boost it along its way), and two asteroids (Steins and Lutetia).

On Mar. 3, 2005, during the first Earth flyby, it took several images of our planet, including this achingly beautiful picture of the crescent Moon rising over the limb of our home world:


^ A ghostly Moon peeks over the edge of the Earth. Photo by ESA/Emily Lakdawalla

My scientist brain immediately notices that the Moon looks small compared to Earth because of how close Rosetta passed to us—just under 2000 kilometers (1200 miles) above Earth’s surface, a fantastically close shave—as well as how dark the Moon looks. Its surface is, on average, far less reflective than Earth’s, so to expose the planet correctly means the Moon looks much fainter.

But the part of my brain that appreciates art and beauty just sees the panoply of clouds, the graceful arc of the world, the thinner arc of atmosphere (visible on the left) allowing us to breathe, and the ghostly, milky looming of the Moon.

This is science, this is engineering, and this is art.


^ The raw image from Rosetta.
Photo by ESASome of the artistry came long after. My friend Emily Lakdawalla, writer for The Planetary Society Blog, took the raw image from Rosetta and reprocessed it to clean it up, enhancing the natural beauty stored in those zeros and ones. The raw image is inset here to give you an idea of what she did; click both to see them far larger.

Rosetta is due to reach the comet next year. It will launch a probe that will physically land on the surface of the comet, the first time humanity will have achieved such a feat. I can only imagine what wonders it will reveal then. Given that Rosetta took one of my favorite pictures of Earth of all time, I expect amazing things come 2014.

[Allegro]

Highlights mine.

_________________
Three Planets Dance in the West After Sunset | Phil Plait
Bad Astronomy | Monday, May 27, 2013, at 2:14 PM

Speaking of sunsets, over the past few days and for the next few as well, the planets Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury can be seen together in the west just after the Sun slips below the edge of the Earth. This is called a conjunction, and you don’t need any fancy equipment to see it; just your eyes, and a clear view to the west.

If you pick your spot carefully, the foreground might enhance what you see, though. The brilliant astrophotographer Thierry Legault went to the northwest coast of France, and on May 26, 2013 took this ridiculously beautiful picture:


^ Three planets over a tidal island. Click to conjunctivate. Photo by Thierry Legault, used by permission.

Mon dieu! That’s Mont-Saint-Michel, a tiny island off the French coast. It’s a tidal island; the causeway connecting it to the mainland is submerged at high tide and exposed during low tide. A monastery sits upon it, making it look like something out of a fantasy story. I’ve never been to that part of France, but it’s on my list now!

In the sky above and around it you can see Venus (lower right), Mercury (upper right), and mighty Jupiter (to the left). All three are unresolved dots at this magnification, but they may look different sizes because of their varying brightnesses. If the size variation were real, Jupiter would look three times bigger than Venus, and five times bigger than Mercury in the picture! Currently, all three are on the other side of the Sun, making them appear smaller than they can be. Mercury is actually the closest right now, about 170 million kilometers (105 million miles) distant, compared to 250 million km (150 million miles) for Venus and 910 million km (565 million miles) for Jupiter.

Think on that: Jupiter is so flipping big that even though it’s nearly four times farther away from us than Venus, it still looks much bigger through a telescope!

Photographer Ken Griggs also had a great view of the conjunction on May 26 in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, and this photo appears to be celebrating it:


^ Celebrating the planetary conjunction. Click to enpyrenate. Photo by Ken Griggs, used by permission.

I’ll note it’s actually a composite of two different photos; both had the fireworks and planets in them but added together made the picture even more pleasing.

As the days go on, Jupiter will sink lower to the horizon after sunset as Venus and Mercury climb higher, so this configuration will constantly change. It’s best this week, though, so go out and take a look. It’s a rare opportunity to watch these three worlds dance together in the sky.

[Hammer of Los]

...

Thanks for the beautiful thread allegro.

...