The scale of things

[Allegro]

^ Space Data Exploitation | Royal Observatory of Belgium, ESA, ©European Union 2012


^ Space Junk | Wow. LOVE the music!


^ Space Debris | Mark 0.30 begins relevant information.

[Allegro]

^ ESA’s New Deep-Space Listening Station Rises
Malargüe Station expected to be fully operational in 2013.

[Allegro]

Highlights mine.

_________________
A Face-On Blast From the Past | Phil Plait
Bad Astronomy | Thursday, June 27, 2013, at 8:00 AM

Every week, the folks at Hubble release a lovely image taken using their fine observatory. It’s always fun to see what they’ll show next, but this week’s gave me a bit of a surprise and a wonderful wave of nostalgia.

The image is M61, a spectacular face-on spiral galaxy:


^ Like looking in a mirror, isn’t it? A really, really big mirror. Photo by ESA/Hubble & NASA [Acknowledgements: G. Chapdelaine, L. Limatola, and R. Gendler.]

The shot is a bit unusual in that it’s composed of only two colors: an image taken in blue light (shown as blue in the picture) and another in the near-infrared (colored yellow in the picture). I rather like the way they combine. The spiral arms in a galaxy are where most stars are born, and the brightest ones are young, hot, and blue. That makes the spiral pattern pop out in blue. Those stars die young, so older populations tend to look redder, like in the center of the galaxy. Light-absorbing dust blocks the glow of both, and you can trace the whirlpool right down to the center of the galaxy.

The surprise, though, was the shape of the image itself. The step pattern (sometimes called a batwing or Stealth bomber shape) is a giveaway that this image was taken using Hubble’s Wide Field/Planetary Camera 2, installed on the observatory in late 1993. The WFPC2 had four detectors on it: three that had a wide field of view and one that was higher resolution, able to zoom in a bit more on smaller objects (like planets). They were arranged in that odd manner that became an iconic look for Hubble for many years. In 2002 the Advanced Camera for Surveys was installed on Hubble and took over the main imaging functions, and in 2009 astronauts removed WFPC2 and replaced it with the Wide Field Camera 3. That was a built-in part of the Hubble mission: the ability to take out old tech and replace it with more advanced, modern instruments.

I used the original WFPC a bit for some work shortly after I got my Ph.D. and played around some with WFPC2 data as well. I haven’t really thought about it in some years, so seeing this image of M61 was a nice little blast from the past. It was taken as part of the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures program, to highlight older or less well-known images from the venerable observatory. It was a great choice.

And a pretty one, too. M61 is part of the Virgo Cluster, a nearby collection of more than 1,000 galaxies, about 60 million light-years away. M61 is not all that different from our own Milky Way; it’s about 100,000 light-years across, has well-defined spiral arms, a bar in the center (the rectangular feature you can see in the Hubble picture; the Milky Way’s bar is much larger, though), and, like all big galaxies, has a ginormous black hole in its very core. Although it has roughly the same mass as the one in the center of the Milky Way, unlike ours, the M61 central black hole is actively gobbling down matter, which heats up as it falls in, getting intensely bright. That makes M61 a so-called “active galaxy,” though somewhat on the low end of the scale (unlike, say, Herc A).

And hmmmm. Right now the constellation of Virgo is high in the sky once it gets dark out and is bright enough to spot pretty easily in a small telescope. I may have to give it a try with mine. It won’t look quite as magnificent as it does via Hubble, but that’s OK. There’s just something about seeing that light with your own eyes, knowing it’s traveled for tens of millions of years across the vast reaches of space to finally reach us. It’s one of the reasons so many amateur astronomers do what they do. Me included.

[Allegro]

Highlights mine.

_________________
The Flaming Skull Nebula. Seriously. | Phil Plait
Bad Astronomy | Friday, June 28, 2013, at 8:00 AM


^ AAAAAAAIIIIIIIiiiiiiiieeeeeeee! Photo by T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage) and H. Schweiker (WIYN and NOAO/AURA/NSF)

Planetary nebulae are among my favorite objects in the sky. When a star a bit more massive than the Sun starts to die, it blows off a super-solar wind of gas. As it ages more, this wind it blows speeds up, slamming into the stuff previously ejected, carving it into weird and amazing shapes. Eventually, the entire outer layers of the star blow off, exposing the star’s hot, dense core. This floods the surrounding gas with ultraviolet light, causing it to glow.

Once it starts to emit light, the gas cloud becomes visible to us on Earth, and we can see the weird forms it can take. This structure can be quite fantastic, depending on how exactly the star was spinning as it blew off those winds, what angle we see this at, and the chemical composition of the gas.

In the case of the planetary nebula Sh2-68, though, we have an added factor: motion. The star at the heart of this nebula is moving rapidly through space, and it happens to be in a location in our galaxy where there is more gas and dust between stars than usual. So as it moves, the gas it blows off is itself blown back, like a dog’s hair is blown back when it sticks its head out of a car window.

The image above, taken by my friend Travis Rector using the KPNO 4-meter telescope, shows this in detail. The blue gas is oxygen (which is slightly false-color here; this flavor of oxygen is actually more greenish), and the red is hydrogen. The star itself is the blue one right in the center of the blue gas.

I could go into great detail about the overall shape of the gas, the cavities in it, the actually quite interesting physics of how the gas interacts with the interstellar gas… but c’mon. Seriously.

The nebula looks like a giant screaming head with its hair aflame streaking across the galaxy!

That is just way too cool. I used to read the Ghost Rider comic books when I was a kid, and when I look at Sh2-68 it’s hard to shake the image of Johnny Blaze on his motorcycle, his flaming skull grinning maniacally as he wreaks vengeance upon evildoers.

Or maybe that’s just me. Either way, this is no illusion; we are seeing the gas blowing back due to what is essentially wind, with the parallel tendrils and streamers of gas flowing downwind adding to the effect. The red color Travis used doesn’t hurt, either.

‘nuff said.

[Allegro]

Highlights mine.

_________________
What Happens When Stars Collide? In This Case, A Newly Observed Kind of Pulsating Star
Universe Today, Elizabeth Howell | June 28, 2013


^ Artist’s impression of the eclipsing, pulsating binary star J0247-25. (Credit: Keele University)

It sure would be interesting to watch two stars run into each other — from a safe distance, of course. One can imagine there would be quite the titanic battle going on between their competing gravitational forces, throwing off gas and matter as they collide.

They also leave behind interesting echoes, at least according to new research. A European team looked at the leftovers of one collision and found a type of pulsating star that has never been seen before.

It’s common for stars to form in groups or to be paired up, since they form from immense gas clouds. Sometimes, a red giant star in a binary system gets so big that it will bump into a companion star orbiting nearby. This crash could shave 90% of the red giant star’s mass off, but astronomers are still trying to get their heads around what happens.


^ Artist’s impression of a binary star system (courtesy NASA)

“Only a few stars that have recently emerged from a stellar collision are known, so it has been difficult to study the connection between stellar collisions and the various exotic stellar systems they produce,” Keele University, which led the research, stated.

Researchers who made the find were actually on the hunt for alien planets. They turned up what is called an “eclipsing” binary system, meaning that one of the stars passes in front of the other from the perspective of Earth.

The scientists then used a high-speed camera on the Very Large Telescope in Chile called ULTRACAM. The camera is capable of taking up to 500 pictures a second to track fast-moving astronomical events.

Observations revealed that “the remnant of the stripped red giant is a new type of pulsating star,” Keele stated.


^ The Very Large Telescope (VLT) at ESO’s Cerro Paranal observing site in the Atacama Desert of Chile, consisting of four Unit Telescopes with main mirrors 8.2-m in diameter and four movable 1.8-m diameter Auxiliary Telescopes. The telescopes can work together, in groups of two or three, to form a giant interferometer, allowing astronomers to see details up to 25 times finer than with the individual telescopes. Credit: Iztok Boncina/ESO

“We have been able to find out a lot about these stars, such as how much they weigh, because they are in a binary system,” stated Pierre Maxted, an astrophysicist at Keele.

“This will really help us to interpret the pulsation signal and so figure out how these stars survived the collision and what will become of them over the next few billion years.”

The next step for the researchers will be to calculate when the star will begin cooling down and become a white dwarf, which is what is left behind after a star runs out of fuel to burn.

Check out more details of the find in Nature.

Source: Keele University

[Allegro]

Highlights mine.

_________________
Neutron Stars: A Cataclysmic Conception
Universe Today, Tammy Plotner | June 28, 2013


^ This “SWASI” phenomenon is an analogue of the SASI instability occurring in the supernova core, but it is one million times smaller and about one hundred times slower than its astrophysical counterpart. (Image copyrights: Thierry Foglizzo, Laboratoire AIM Paris-Saclay, CEA)

It’s one of the most intense and violent of all events in space – a supernova. Now a team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics have been taking a very specialized look at the formation of neutron stars at the center of collapsing stars. Through the use of sophisticated computer simulations, they have been able to create three-dimensional models which show the physical effects – intense and violent motions which occur when stellar matter is drawn inward. It’s a bold, new look into the dynamics which happen when a star explodes.

As we know, stars which have eight to ten times the mass of the Sun are destined to end their lives in a massive explosion, the gases blown into space with incredible force. These cataclysmic events are among the brightest and most powerful events in the Universe and can outshine a galaxy when they occur. It is this very process which creates elements critical to life as we know it – and the beginnings of neutron stars.

Neutron stars are an enigma unto themselves. These highly compact stellar remnants contain as much as 1.5 times the mass of the Sun, yet are compressed to the size of a city. It is not a slow squeeze. This compression happens when the stellar core implodes from the intense gravity of its own mass… and it takes only a fraction of a second. Can anything stop it? Yes. It has a limit. Collapse ceases when the density of the atomic nuclei is exceeded. That’s comparable to around 300 million tons compressed into something the size of a sugar cube.

Studying neutron stars opens up a whole new dimension of questions which scientists are keen to answer. They want to know what causes stellar disruption and how can the implosion of the stellar core revert to an explosion. At present, they theorize that neutrinos may be a critical factor. These tiny elemental particles are created and expelled in monumental numbers during the supernova process and may very well act as heating elements which ignite the explosion. According to the research team, neutrinos could impart energy into the stellar gas, causing it to build up pressure. From there, a shock wave is created and as it speeds up, it could disrupt the star and cause a supernova.

As plausible as it might sound, astronomers aren’t sure if this theory could work or not. Because the processes of a supernova cannot be recreated under laboratory conditions and we’re not able to directly see into the interior of a supernovae, we’ll just have to rely on computer simulations. Right now, researchers are able to recreate a supernova event with complex mathematical equations which replicate the motions of stellar gas and the physical properties which happen at the critical moment of core collapse. These types of computations require the use of some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, but it has also been possible to use more simplified models to get the same results. “If, for example, the crucial effects of neutrinos were included in some detailed treatment, the computer simulations could only be performed in two dimensions, which means that the star in the models was assumed to have an artificial rotational symmetry around an axis,” says the research team.

With the support of the Rechenzentrum Garching (RZG), scientists were able to create in a singularly efficient and fast computer program. They were also given access to most powerful supercomputers, and a computer time award of nearly 150 million processor hours, which is the greatest contingent so far granted by the “Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE)” initiative of the European Union, the team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA) in Garching could now for the first time simulate the processes in collapsing stars in three dimensions and with a sophisticated description of all relevant physics.

“For this purpose we used nearly 16,000 processor cores in parallel mode, but still a single model run took about 4.5 months of continuous computing”, says PhD student Florian Hanke, who performed the simulations. Only two computing centers in Europe were able to provide sufficiently powerful machines for such long periods of time, namely CURIE at Très Grand Centre de calcul (TGCC) du CEA near Paris and SuperMUC at the Leibniz-Rechenzentrum (LRZ) in Munich/Garching.

< Turbulent evolution of a neutron star for six moments (0.154, 0.223, 0.240, 0.245, 0.249 and 0.278 seconds) after the beginning of the neutron star formation in a three dimensional computer simulation. The mushroom-like bubbles are characteristic of “boiling” neutrino-heated gas, whereas simultaneously the “SASI” instability causes wild sloshing and rotational motions of the whole neutrino-heated layer (red) and of the enveloping supernova shock (blue). (Images by Elena Erastova and Markus Rampp, RZG)

Given several thousand billion bytes of simulation data, it took some time before researchers could fully understand the implications of their model runs. However, what they saw both elated and surprised them. The stellar gas performed in a manner very much like ordinary convection, with the neutrinos driving the heating process. And that’s not all… They also found strong sloshing motions which transiently change to rotational motions. This behavior has been observed before and named Standing Accretion Shock Instability. According to the news release, “This term expresses the fact that the initial sphericity of the supernova shock wave is spontaneously broken, because the shock develops large-amplitude, pulsating asymmetries by the oscillatory growth of initially small, random seed perturbations. So far, however, this had been found only in simplified and incomplete model simulations.”

“My colleague Thierry Foglizzo at the Service d’ Astrophysique des CEA-Saclay near Paris has obtained a detailed understanding of the growth conditions of this instability”, explains Hans-Thomas Janka, the head of the research team. “He has constructed an experiment, in which a hydraulic jump in a circular water flow exhibits pulsational asymmetries in close analogy to the shock front in the collapsing matter of the supernova core.” Known as Shallow Water Analogue of Shock Instability, the dynamic process can be demonstrated in less technicalized manners by eliminating the important effects of neutrino heating – a reason which causes many astrophysicists to doubt that collapsing stars might go through this type of instability. However, the new computer models are able to demonstrate the Standing Accretion Shock Instability is a critical factor.

“It does not only govern the mass motions in the supernova core but it also imposes characteristic signatures on the neutrino and gravitational-wave emission, which will be measurable for a future Galactic supernova. Moreover, it may lead to strong asymmetries of the stellar explosion, in course of which the newly formed neutron star will receive a large kick and spin”, describes team member Bernhard Müller the most significant consequences of such dynamical processes in the supernova core.

Are we finished with supernova research? Do we understand everything there is to know about neutron stars? Not hardly. At the present time, the scientist are ready to further their investigations into the measurable effects connected to SASI and refine their predictions of associated signals. In the future they will further their understanding by performing more and longer simulations to reveal how instability and neutrino heating react together. Perhaps one day they’ll be able to show this relationship to be the trigger which ignites a supernova explosion and conceives a neutron star.

Original Story Source: Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics News Release.

[Allegro]

An “Elemental” Explanation of Dark Matter
Universe Today, Jason Major | June 28, 2013

Atoms, string theory, dark matter, dark energy… there’s an awful lot about the Universe that might make sense on paper (to physicists, anyway) but is extremely difficult to detect and measure, at least with the technology available today. But at the core of science is observation, and what’s been observed of the Universe so far strongly indicates an overwhelming amount of… stuff… that cannot be observed. But just because it can’t be seen doesn’t mean it’s not there; on the contrary, it’s what we can’t see that actually makes up the majority of the Universe.

If this doesn’t make sense, that’s okay — they’re all pretty complex concepts. So in order to help non-scientists (which, like dark energy, most of the population is comprised of) get a better grasp as to what all this “dark” stuff is about, CERN scientist and spokesperson James Gillies has teamed up with TED-Ed animators to visually explain some of the Universe’s darkest secrets. Check it out above (and see more space science lessons from TED-Ed here.)

Because everything’s easier to understand with animation!

Lesson by James Gillies, animation by TED-Ed.

[Allegro]

Zodiacal Light Over ESO’s La Silla Observatory
Universe Today, Jason Major | June 29, 2013


^ A band of zodiacal light glows in the sky over ESO’s La Silla Observatory. (Credit: Alan Fitzsimmons/ESO)

We don’t put much stock in astrology or horoscopes here at Universe Today, but there’s one thing related to the zodiac that’s all science and no superstition: zodiacal light, captured here in a gorgeous photo by astronomer Alan Fitzsimmons above ESO’s La Silla Observatory.

Created by sunlight reflected off fine particles of dust concentrated inside the plane of the Solar System, zodiacal light appears as a diffuse, hazy band of light visible in dark skies stretching away from a recently-set Sun (or before the Sun is about to rise).

The Moon is located just outside the frame of this picture, bathing the observatory in an eerie light that is reflected off the clouds below.

The La Silla Observatory is located at the outskirts of the Chilean Atacama Desert at an altitude of 2400 meters (7,900 feet). Like other observatories in this area, La Silla is located far from sources of light pollution and, like ESO’s Paranal Observatory, it has some of the darkest night skies on the Earth.

The dome in the foreground, just to the right, is the Swiss 1.2-metre Leonhard Euler Telescope named in honor of the famous Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler (1707–83).

Image credit: A. Fitzsimmons/ESO

[Allegro]

A few seconds into the promotional video, which is actually an understated promotion for the observatory’s architectural and cultural histories, you’ll see telescopes during the introduction by the host, and they’re very small in a scale with what you might’ve expected. The telescopes are for looking around Amsterdam, although I’m thinking there’s at least some light pollution in the city, and I could be mistaken, too.

Consider this video and the wiki content an endearing tribute to notable histories of astronomy, in particular, and of the visual and performing arts.


^ Felix Meritis Observatory

WIKI EXCERPT; links omitted. Felix Meritis (“Happy through Merit”) is the name of a building on the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam. Since 1988 The Felix Meritis Foundation has been located in the building as a European centre for art, culture and science.

It was built according to a winning design by the architect Jacob Otten Husly for the new society called Felix Meritis established in 1776 for Music, Drawing, Physics, Commerce and Literature in the modern neo-classical style. Husly had won a similar design contest for the city hall of Groningen in the previous year. The building itself was meant to exemplify the Enlightenment ideals the society stood for. The classical temple façade with its colossal Corinthian pilasters and pediment represent the society’s five departments with five sculptures representing the visual arts and architecture, literature, trade, natural sciences and music. The interior includes original 18th-century features such as the central staircase, the oval concert hall (renowned for its acoustics) and the domed roof, underneath which there used to be an astronomical observatory.

On October 31, 1788, the building of the same name opened its doors. The society focused on the promotion of arts and sciences in a broader sense than the artists collectives popular at the time. Husly was himself a board member of the Amsterdam city drawing academie “Stadstekenacademie”, that had close contacts with the Oeconomischen Tak van de Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen (economics branch of the Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen, which met in the Trippenhuis). The society was abolished in 1888.

Felix Meritis’s oval concert hall was the main music hall in Amsterdam until late into the 19th century and enjoyed a great international reputation. Many famous musicians performed there, including Robert and Clara Schumann, Camille Saint-Saëns, Johannes Brahms and Julius Röntgen. The orchestra of Felix Meritis was regarded as the best of the Netherlands and accompanied many Dutch premieres, directed by conductors such as Johannes Bernardus van Bree. Thus, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique had their Dutch premiere in the concert hall of Felix Meritis. The small hall of the Concertgebouw is a replica of this concert hall.

[Allegro]

Refer musical scales and modes. This post is an introduction to the post in the next comment space.

< Ancient Epigonion concert | Jan Dismas Zelenka, composer | Conductor, Eugenio Ottieri

The next three paragraphs are near the end of the video, and were personally retyped.

“The research lends itself extremely well to the demonstration format, in particular, the progress to have a professional musician play the virtual musical instrument.

“Delegates will also have the opportunity to interact with the reconstructed instrument via a keyboard.

“The work is innovative as it represents the first example of results from a scientific grid being made accessible directly to musicians.”

The following retyped quoted texts from the full case study pdf, Recreating ancient instruments, show keywords as data, network, infrastructure, technology, global, grid, technique—already associated with keywords such as supercomputers, satellites, information—with an additional favored keyword: sonification, that is, translating raw, numerical data or data visualizations into sounds, or musical pitches, for example.

Supercomputers are or evidently will be used by any industrial complex, music included, which implies the blending of human performing artists performing with human-performed electronic musical instruments, the music score of which is heard by pitches generated real-time via supercomputer(s). I’m really not sure, but I think I’m fascinated , and I’m not sure I’ve written this paragraph the way I want it to be, but it’ll do for the moment. So, here are the paragraphs of note from the pdf.

Being able to recreate the sounds of the [ancient musical instruments] Epigonion and the Barbiton, lost for many centuries, is a major step forward in our understanding and makes the past real for researchers and academics. For the first time we can actually hear the musical sounds of the past, using modelling techniques rather than guesswork. This same approach—using the network and grids for sound modelling—is also used in the work on data sonification, which is now being used by researchers to predict volcanic eruptions.
~ Dr. Domenico Vicinanza, Engineer, DANTE

21st Century research is very intensive from a computational point of view. We are facing a sort of technological revolution which is rapidly changing the research landscape. The intensive research, co-founded by the EU [European Union], has seen the creation of new e-Infrastructure—a term that in this context refers to the new generation of integrated ICT [Information and Communication Technologies]-based infrastructures. The success of the ASTRA project is testament to how e-Infrastructure can bring researchers and academics from across a multitude of disciplines together with artists, facilitating their creative collaboration on a global level. In addition, it provides an innovative use for research data, making this important work accessible to the general public.
~ Dr. La Rocca, Coordinator of ASTRA gridification

_________________
The post in this comment space is an introduction to the post in the next comment space, below.

[Allegro]

This post was introduced in the post ^ above. Refer musical scales and modes.

_________________
GÉANT and ASTRA - recreating ancient instruments

Computers linked across high-speed research networks were used to run a data-intensive modelling program to recreate the sounds of ancient instruments.

For centuries, the Epigonion and the Barbiton have been confined to history books, unheard since their heyday in Ancient Greece. However, these vanished musical instruments have now been brought back to life thanks to pioneering research.

The ASTRA (Ancient instruments Sound/Timbre Reconstruction Application) project aims to reconstruct the sound or timbre of ancient instruments that no longer exist. Using the high-speed GÉANT and EUMEDCONNECT networks and advanced computer modelling technology, researchers can create models of ‘lost’ instruments based on archaeological data, such as fragments from excavations, written descriptions and pictures.

The Challenge

To recreate the sounds of ancient instruments using highly data intensive physical modelling programs.

The Solution

Using GÉANT as the underlying layer, harness the power of grid computing to deliver extreme computing power, greatly accelerating the modelling process and making ASTRA’s work viable. ASTRA uses GÉANT IP connectivity service.

Key Benefits

ASTRA has brought to life ancient musical instruments such as the Epigonion and Barbiton to produce a fascinating insight into the past, highlighting the vital role of research networking in collaborative research.

Read the pdf full case study

Partners in the ASTRA project:
Lost Sounds Orchestra
EUMEDCONNECT2
GARR
EGI.eu
EUMEDGRID
GILDA

[Allegro]

Time-Lapse: Everest | Phil Plait
Bad Astronomy | Sunday, June 30, 2013, at 8:00 AM


^ View from a height. Photo by Mike Saikaly, from the video.

I’ve been poking around the web lately looking at one time-lapse video after another, and I swear, the list of amazing work grows as fast as I can watch them. As I mentioned before, it’s getting to the point where the viewpoint taken by the photographer needs to be unique—we’re not wowed by just stars rising and setting anymore. The location, the angles, the lighting, the subject, the music: It all plays in to the experience.

Given all that, you must watch this: “Everest”. Yes, as in Mt. Everest. This is extraordinary.



Breath-taking! [Haha!] I live at an elevation of 1700 meters, and I’ve been up as high as 3700, where the air is thin enough (about 2/3 pressure as at sea level) that just moving around for some people is difficult. Photographer Elia Saikaly went up to 8000 meters to shoot that video, staying awake into the night while other, more sane climbers, were sleeping. At that height, air pressure is a mere one-third what it is at sea level, and climbers, not surprisingly, call it the “death zone”.

Read Saikaly’s account of his travels to scale Everest. It’s harrowing, and amazing, and wonderful. Climbing such mountains is incredibly dangerous, and some people undertake it foolishly. But the ones who prepare, study, practice, and understand what they are doing: I salute them. The spirit it takes to explore is an astonishing thing, and I’m glad so many possess it.

[Allegro]

Weekend Auroras Fill the Sky!
Universe Today, Nancy Atkinson | July 1, 2013


^ Swirling aurora over Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Credit and copyright: Colin Chatfield/ Chatfield Photography.

I was personally so pumped to have seen the Aurora Borealis over the weekend in Central Minnesota! It was a beautiful display of a green and white glow with high, towering, bright spires. Unfortunately, I was in the car at the time, and I definitely need to upgrade my camera to be able to take images of the aurora. But lucky for us, astrophotographers from both hemispheres captured gorgeous shots of the Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis.

According to SpaceWeather.com, the Earth passed through a region of south-pointing magnetism in the solar wind on June 28, “and the encounter set off one of the finest geomagnetic storms of the current solar cycle.”

This shot from Colin Chatfield shows the awesome auroral scenes over Saskatchewan.


^ The northern lights on June 28/29, 2013 as seen from the Wintering Hills WInd Farm near Drumheller, Alberta. Credit and copyright: Alan Dyer/Amazing Sky Photography.

James Stone from Opossum Bay, Tasmania captured this video of the Aurora Australis:



To see some images from the southern hemisphere, Ian Musgrave has put together a great collection at his Astroblog site.

[Allegro]

Highlights mine.

_________________
Astronomers Capture Images of Herschel Telescope Heading Toward its ‘Graveyard’ Orbit
Universe Today, Nancy Atkinson | July 1, 2013


^ The dark lines in this image point to the Herschel Space Telescope, which was imaged on June 27, 2013 as it was moving away from its mission orbit around L2 to a heliocentric parking orbit, after the spacecraft was decommissioned. Credit and copyright: Nick Howes and Ernesto Guido, using Faulkes Telescope North in Haleakala, Hawaii.

A pair of astronomers has proved that we haven’t seen the last of the Herschel Space Observatory! On June 17, 2013, engineers for the Herschel space telescope sent final commands to put the decommissioned observatory into its “graveyard” heliocentric parking orbit, after the liquid helium that cooled the observatory’s instruments was depleted. Now, Nick Howes and Ernesto Guido from the Remanzacco Observatory have used the 2 meter Faulkes Telescope North in Hawaii to take a picture of the infrared observatory as it is moving away from its orbit around the L2 LaGrange Point where it spent the entirety of its mission.

Howes told Universe Today that their observations not only improve future chances of it being seen, but also will help astronomers in that the observatory won’t be mistaken for a new asteroid.

“We saw a potential issue here,” Howes said via email, “as the spacecraft would be in a slow tumble, receding from its stable L2 orbit, subjected to solar radiation pressure. And as ESA’s ground stations were no longer communicating with it, so we wanted to basically check the orbits and make sure that for future science, it was not mistakenly detected as an asteroid.”


^ The Herschel Telescope was imaged by Nick Howes and Ernesto Guido using Faulkes Telescope North in Haleakala, Hawaii, on June 26, 2013.

When Howes and Guido realized that JPL’s Horizons coordinate system — which generates coordinates for objects in space like Herschel — would be suspending coordinates for the observatory from the end of June, they quickly and urgently used the information they had on Herschel’s movements to make their observations.

“The ephemeris from JPL and the Minor Planet Center varied,” Howes said, “and appeared to show quite different long term positions, so we took the initiative to try to help make sure this orbit was better understood. We knew ESA’s scientists had a pretty good handle on the position, but were perplexed by the variance in the coordinates being generated by the two ephemeris systems.”

Radiation pressure and a host of other factors would have and will continue to affect the position of the spacecraft, but with it getting fainter by the day, Howes and Guido made the effort by taking two nights of observations to try and find Herschel as it drifted away from L2.

“Imaging a several metre wide spacecraft at over 2.1 million km from Earth in an orbit that was not quite precise, and a tumbling spacecraft is not an easy task, at the faint magnitudes it theoretically could have been at,” said Guido, who helps manage the Remanzacco Observatory in Italy. “And while we found what we thought could be it on the first night, our calculations would need to be verified by observing it on a second night to validate that it was indeed Herschel.”


^ The orbit of Herschel during its mission. Credit: ESA.

Howes, who’d written about Herschel when working in science communications for ESA, contacted several of the mission team via emails, who gave valuable advice on the effects of the final orbital burn.

“We effectively had three possible locations to hunt in,” Howes said, “and luckily, as rain at one of our telescope sites stopped our plans for the third run, and nothing showed up in our first coordinates, we managed to get it in the second set of images, exactly where we thought it could be, with the correct data for its motion, position angle and other orbital characteristics. Ernesto worked on the data reduction for these images, and after about 30 minutes of frantic discussion, said ‘I think I’ve found it.’”

The team have filed their data with the Minor Planet Center, and have worked closely with astronomers at Kitt Peak, who also imaged the Observatory, further refining the observing arc, passing their coordinates even on to astronomers in Chile, with significantly larger telescopes to get even more images of it.

The Faulkes Telescope Project is based at the University of South Wales, and the telescopes are operated by the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network. The telescopes are also used for educational purposes, and schools using the Faulkes Telescope will be able to follow Herschel as she leaves her orbit to wander around the Sun. It will return to our neck of the Solar System around 2027/2028 (astrometry measured by Howes and Guido is factoring in radiation pressure, so the values are approximate), when it will return at around magnitude 21.7.

“We’ve engaged schools in this project as it’s great for learning astrometry, and photometry as well as a fun thing to do, and they’ve also been making animations from our data.”

Howes and Guido hope that the updated information will help others keep an eye on the telescope in the future. “It’s been an exciting week, and we wanted to say thank to you ESA for building such a magnificent telescope,” Howes said. “We just wanted to give it a good send off!”

_________________
I’ve had these bookmarked since entertaining research about satellites, spacecraft, antennas, observatories and telescopes.

Graveyard orbit
Spacecraft cemetery

[8bitagent]

I was looking at these photos earlier, marveling at how creatures on this planet blow away anything Hollywood effects could imagine
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmen ... -2#slide-1

And while new impossibly strong telescopic imaging and orbiters can show us mindblowing imagery far beyond our relative space,
all one has to do is lie on their backs and look up at the night sky to know how mindshattering huge everything is.

That's why I seriously do not get humans and their made up relationship drama, social strife, smart phone and text addiction, religious guilt, petty bickering, etc. Just lie on your back and look at the stars. You don't even need drugs.