This time it was a Kayak trip to meet up with the Friends of Torrens Island for a picnic at the historic Quarantine Station.

Great fun and lots of yummy scones were had by all.

Eric Berger reports on doubts about the SLS project: Expensive NASA rocket draws skepticism - Houston Chronicle.

I wish Chris Kraft had started saying these things a year or so ago when it could have impacted the heavy lifter "debate" in Congress:

"I'm very skeptical about the heavy-lift rocket," said Chris Kraft, NASA's first manned spaceflight director and the director of flight operations during the Apollo 11 mission.

"I believe everybody at NASA, except those at the top level, thinks that's the case. The people at the division and branch level all believe there are better ways to get going."

(Kraft expressed similar views on the SLS in December.)

There are viable low cost alternatives to the SLS, which will eventually go off the rails:

Using existing launch vehicles, proponents say, would save tens of billions of dollars in development costs, not to mention the high operations costs of an ongoing heavy-lift rocket. They note that the Saturn V rocket, which blasted astronauts to the moon, was canceled because it was too expensive to maintain.

[...]

"Everyone knows there is a train wreck on the horizon, and sooner or later it will become apparent we can't afford SLS," said Virginia-based space consultant James Muncy. "It's eating all the money we should be spending actually exploring."

A couple of stories (via spacetoday.net) about NewSpace developments at Mojave Air & Space Port and Spaceport America:
/-- Mojave becoming aerospace epicenter - Bakersfield.com
/-- Mojave, New Mexico spaceports find complementary roles - Bakersfield.com

A news report about Mojave and the Stratolaunch project, which has started construction of facilities there: The race to send civilians to space - KGET TV 17 (via spacetoday.net) -

I know I’ve been writing about the Sun quite a bit lately, but I have a followup to yesterday’s cool video of the big solar flare… and you’re gonna like it.

I was fooling around with helioviewer.org, watching the flare in different wavelengths of light detected by NASA’s Solar Dynamics observatory, when I switched to 17.1 nanometers — in the far ultraviolet. At that wavelength, the glowing plasma that flows along the Sun’s magnetic field lines is very bright. The images were so beautiful, so incredible, I made a video animation of them, covering the time range of January 26, 2012 at midnight to January 28 at noon (UTC), which includes the huge X2 solar flare that erupted on the 27th. The video shows huge loops of magnetism on the Sun’s surface, glowing plasma flowing along them… and then 48 seconds in the flare changes everything. Watch:

Holy wow! Isn’t that awesome? Make sure you watch in in HD, and make it full screen to get the whole effect.

What you’re seeing is Active Region 1402, a sunspot cluster. This is a tangled collection of magnetic field lines piercing the surface of the Sun. Like a bar magnet, there are two poles to each loop, a north and a south pole. The gas on the surface of the Sun is so hot it has electrons stripped off, so it’s strongly affected by the intense magnetic field, and flows along these towering loops, which can reach heights of 300,000 km (180,000 miles) in this region.

The loops are tied to the plasma, too, and this material is twisting and roiling as it rises and sinks. The lines get tangled, and like a short circuit they can snap and reconnect. When they do, they release vast amounts of energy as a solar flare. In the video you can see the messy, disorganized loops getting more and more tangled up. Then KABLAM! The flare itself is not visible because it happened too quickly to be seen on this timescale (see the video yesterday for that). But you can see the effect on the magnetic field loops! They suddenly become far more organized, tight, and calm.

The Sun is fiendishly complex, and astonishingly beautiful. Clearly, to our brains, these things are connected. Remember, too: this beauty, this magnificence, is brought to you by science. Without our curiosity and our need to understand the Universe better, you would never have been able to watch in awe as superheated plasma arcs dwarfing the Earth itself grew and collapsed on the surface of a star one hundred fifty million kilometers away.

Think of that the next time someone says science takes away the beauty and mystery of life.

Credit: NASA/SDO/Helioviewer.org

---

Related posts:

- The Sun’s still blasting out flares… BIG ones
- The Sun aims a storm right at Earth: expect aurorae tonight!
- Awesome X2-class solar flare caught by SDO
- Gorgeous flowing plasma fountain erupts from the Sun

• Oddroc of the day: Kinder Surprise Rocket, on Sascha Grant's Flickr photostream
• Armadillo flies STIG-A to 137kft, makes "hard landing", RLV and Space Trasnport - via Jeff Foust via NM Spaceport Authority; propulsion...check...parachute's....D'OH! (noting the STIG-A v. Stiga naming issue remains)
• Big A$$ rocket of the day: Steve Bayak's and Dan Michael's Upscale Fatboy; no link, join Facebook and friend Dan; "A central N2000W, three (3) M1315W's, three (3) M1297W's & three (3) K700W's. An average of 11936ns @ lift-off, for a total of 57,551ns! At 5:1, we are good for 536.45 lbs. of rocket!! This rocket will weigh between 375 to 400 lbs." - Red Glare XII, be there or be square!

Riverside CA (SPX) Jan 30, 2012
Does antimatter behave differently in gravity than matter? Physicists at the University of California, Riverside have set out to determine the answer. Should they find it, it could explain why the universe seems to have no antimatter and why it is expanding at an ever increasing rate. In the lab, the researchers took the first step towards measuring the free fall of "positronium" - a bound

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jan 30, 2012
Some images of stark Martian landscapes provide visual appeal beyond their science value, including a recent scene of wind-sculpted features from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The scene shows dunes and sand ripples of various shapes and sizes inside an impact crater in the Noachis Terra region of southern Mars. Pattern

Munich, Germany (SPX) Jan 30, 2012
Astronomers have combined observations from the LABOCA camera on the ESO-operated 12-meter Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope [1] with measurements made with ESO's Very Large Telescope, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, and others, to look at the way that bright, distant galaxies are gathered together in groups or clusters. The more closely the galaxies are clustered, the more ma

Washington DC (SPX) Jan 30, 2012
A new series of tests on the engine that will help carry humans to deep space will begin next week at NASA's Stennis Space Center in southern Mississippi. The tests on the J-2X engine bring NASA one step closer to the first human-rated liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen rocket engine to be developed in 40 years. Tests will focus on the powerpack for the J-2X. This highly efficient and versa

Moffett Field CA (SPX) Jan 30, 2012
NASA's Kepler mission has discovered 11 new planetary systems hosting 26 confirmed planets. These discoveries nearly double the number of verified Kepler planets and triple the number of stars known to have more than one planet that transits, or passes in front of, its host star. Such systems will help astronomers better understand how planets form. The planets orbit close to their host st

Moscow (RIA Novosti) Jan 30, 2012
NASA has refused to participate in an experiment designed to show if U.S. radars could have had an impact on Russia's troubled Phobos-Grunt Mars probe, the deputy head of the country's space agency, Roscosmos, Anatoly Shylov said on Thursday. "Roscosmos filed an official request to the U.S. side to participate in the investigation, but they refused," Shylov said. The official also sa

Washington DC (RIA Novosti) Jan 30, 2012
US Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich has promised to build a moon base by 2020 if he becomes the next U.S. President in November, the Former Speaker of the House of Representatives said in an address to a crowd of over 700 people on Florida's "Space Coast" on Wednesday. "By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American," Gi

Heidelberg, Germany (SPX) Jan 30, 2012
Scientists have found that micron-size particles which are trapped at fluid interfaces exhibit a collective dynamic that is subject to seemingly unrelated governing laws. These laws show a smooth transitioning from long-ranged cosmological-style gravitational attraction down to short-range attractive and repulsive forces. The study by Johannes Bleibel from the Max Planck Institute for Inte

Moscow (AFP) Jan 27, 2012
Russia is set to pospone the next two manned launches for the International Space Station (ISS) for several weeks due to technical problems with the Soyuz spaceship, an industry source told Interfax Friday. The source told Interfax that the Soyuz TMA-04M vessel had not withstood tests to its pressure chamber ahead of the planned mission on March 30 and the first flight would be postponed to

Cape Canaveral, Florida (AFP) Jan 27, 2012
Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney tried to boost support on Florida's "Space Coast" Friday ahead of next week's key primary, promising business would play a bigger role in future missions. Romney criticized US President Barack Obama, who during his first term in office ended the space shuttle program, for lacking a clear vision for the future of space exploration - a failing which

Washington (AFP) Jan 27, 2012
An asteroid about the size of a bus shaved by Earth on Friday in what spacewatchers described as a "near-miss," though experts were not concerned about the possibility of an impact. The asteroid, named 2012 BX34, measured between six and 19 meters in diameter (20 to 62 feet), said Gareth Williams, associate director of the US-based Minor Planet Center which tracks space objects. The aste

Moscow (UPI) Jan 27, 2012
The launch of a Russian rocket meant to put a Dutch communications satellite into orbit has been postponed indefinitely for technical reasons, officials said. It was the second delay for the Proton-M launch, first scheduled for Dec. 26 but postponed for technical issues, RIA Novosti reported Friday. "Today we are planning to carry out operations to dismount the Proton-M rocket fr

Paris, France (ESA) Jan 30, 2012
Astronomers studying the Vela pulsar wind nebula with ESA's INTEGRAL observatory have successfully resolved its morphology in the hard X-ray band, for the first time. This pulsar-powered nebula is the most extended individual source yet observed at these energies. The study exploited a special imaging technique to reveal a new component of the source that likely consists of highly energetic elec

Moscow (RIA Novosti) Jan 30, 2012
Russia is preparing a Proton-M carrier rocket for the launch of the U.S. Sirius FM-6 telecoms satellite, Federal Space Agency Roscosmos said on Thursday. "The launch is tentatively scheduled for February 2012," Roscosmos said. The assembly of the upper stage of the rocket and the testing of a Briz-M booster is being carried out at the Baikonur Space Center in Kazakhstan. The Si

Boxton MA (SPX) Jan 30, 2012
NASA could test its payloads on Earth under realistic flight conditions before sending them into space by using a technology flown by Draper Laboratory last month. Using the GENIE (Guidance Embedded Navigator Integration Environment) System, Draper recently fully controlled the Xombie suborbital rocket built by Masten Space Systems during a closed loop tethered flight at the Mojave Air and

Photographer Alistair Chapman traveled to Tromso, Norway — 300 km north of the Arctic Circle — to capture video of the aurorae from the recent spate of solar storms. What he caught on camera is remarkable: shimmering, waving, dancing lights moving in real time!

[Make sure you set it to 720p; Chapman says higher-def footage is coming soon.]

That’s amazing. Aurorae video is generally done with time lapse to show the movement, which is usually slow. I’ve often wondered just how fast the movement really is; I always figured fluctuations in the solar particle density, speed, and magnetic fields would produce real-time changes in the lights, but I’d never seen anything like this! After a search of YouTube I actually found several more.

I know some people will think this is fake, and I had my skeptic hat on while watching it. Note that in most time lapse you can see the stars move; in this they don’t, indicating (unless it’s a complete fake) short periods of time during the filming. Given that, plus the existence of other video like it, I’m thinking this is real.

Mind you, the movement you’re seeing isn’t a physical motion. It’s not like solid curtains of material are flapping. The lights are caused by atoms in the upper atmosphere getting hit by subatomic particles blasted out by the Sun, caught by our Earth’s magnetic field, and funneled down into our air. These particles dump energy into the atoms, moving the electrons up in energy (called excitation). The electrons then jump back down, emitting light in the process (de-excitation). As I said in an earlier post, it’s like needing energy to jump up stairs, but releasing it as you jump down.

Different atoms have different energy levels for the electrons — think of it as more or less spacing vertically between steps in a staircase — so the energy emitted is different, resulting in different colors emitted. That’s why we see green, red, purple… they come mostly from oxygen and nitrogen in the air. So as the magnetic field fluctuates, the particles are sent shooting down in different places, giving the appearance of motion while the atoms themselves don’t move.

The physics is complex and interesting, but the beauty of these lights is, to use another term, magical. Not in the fantasy sense, but in the sense of the emotional response we have to them. They are simply breathtaking in these videos, and are a wonderful by-product of our tempestuous Sun.

Tip o’ the lens cap to sunspotter.

---

Related posts:

- Two lovely aurora time lapse videos
- Time lapse: The Aurora
- Water falls, moonbow shines, aurorae glow
- JAW DROPPING Space Station time lapse!

Music making apps for the iPhone/iPod Touch keep getting better. In the last few weeks I've gotten several new ones that really raise the bar (all available on iTunes):

Music Studio 2.0 - This seems to be the most full-featured iOS "DAW" right now, integrating audio and MIDI recording like a mini version of Sonar X1 (though still not nearly as full-featured). The audio recording is new in the recent 2.0 version. At about $14, this is one of the more expensive apps I have ever bought, but for what it can do, it's quite a bargain. The MIDI instrument samples are not fantastic quality (file size for one thing), but they are pretty good, and you can always export the MIDI (and WAV) tracks for further work on PC or Mac-based recording software.

Strumstage - This is the most naturally playable guitar app yet (although iShred and Guitar Studio are close). The key here is that there are only three large "frets" that are used to choose from a palette of seven pre-selected chords (many pre-defined palettes, plus you can define your own). Since it's easy to finger the chords, you can concentrate on strumming or picking. Take a look at this video to see what I mean. It also has drum and bass backing parts you can choose from a small list (the bass notes key off the chords you are playing). You can spend another couple of dollars and download additional guitars and rhythm kits inside the app.

Animoog - From the makers of classic Moog synthesizers, this app creates some amazing sounds and is almost infinitely controllable. Check out the demo video (makes me wish I had an iPad but it works fine on my new fourth generation iPod Touch). This is a $30 app which I got for 99 cents during its 30 day introductory period. Check out the demo videos on this page.

Ah yes, that new iPod. That has really increased the average cost of these apps. But (rationalization alert!) I had been wanting to get a new iPod Touch for at least a year - higher res display, faster processor, more memory (64 GB), cameras, and especially a built-in microphone. Just being able to record a song idea without having to find and plug in an external microphone is a major advantage.

Every one of these tools (ok, toys) has at least one song hidden in it, waiting for me to carve it out, like a statue from a block of marble.

...you can kayak down your street.

Big storm just flooded the street, took out our power.

(l-r) Acaba, Padalka and Revin

(l-r) Shkaplerov, Burbank, Ivanishin, Kuipers, Kononenko and Pettit

Solved by Jeff at 2:35 ET

Happy Saturday, everyone.  I hope you’re all feeling fine and frisky and ready to solve today’s riddle.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I get to play with you today; I’ve had nothing but trouble the past few days trying to go online/stay online.  Have you ever had days like that?  Almost before I get online I find myself shot out into the ozone somewhere – wondering what happened.

Enough of me whining… let’s play riddle!  I have a fun one for you to kick around today, but don’t kick too hard.  Today’s riddle answer is in the real world.

This is a modern discovery.

Maybe we should reread our James Joyce.

Today’s answer could be a bit of a shock to you.

This might prove useful if you’re planning a polar expedition.

Think soft, white cheese.  Yes, I said cheese.

While you’re at it, think about sea gulls, too.

And that’s that.  Not many written clues this week, so pay close attention to the images.  Remember, if you’ve already solved a couple of riddles this cycle — but still want to give it a shot — you can email your guesses to me.  If you solve the riddle in my email I’ll credit you in the comments, but the riddle will remain open to play.  Good luck!

• Can a lighter-than-air spacecraft enter orbit?, High Power Rocketry - Intriguing concept.  JPA is more qualified than I on all all accounts, so I won't bother rambling about it. The website as an .pdf and animation describing the concept.
• NASA Wallops Flight Facility in 2011, RLV and Space Transport - Includes a link to the .pdf-format recap of the year at Wallops. Includes ULSI support and the Wallops Rocketry Academy for Teachers and Students.  I had forgotten that the Shuttle could have been diverted to Wallops in an emergency. 
• NEWS FROM THE FUTURE – Drone Pilot Discovers “River of Meat Blood”, MAKE - A Dallas area hobbyist spotted a river of blood flowing from a meat packing plant. I saw this story a few days ago but, when I went to read the entire report, I found it had been pulled. Apparently, the authorities are investigating.  MAKE has a photo that was ostensibly taken by the drone in question.  Have we seen the progression from citizen journalism to citizen surveillance?  High tech neighborhood watch.

This is a great step forward for science. Here is the Google Plus post where I found out about this great initiative:

From the CosmoQuest website:

Our goal is to create a community of people bent on together advancing our understanding of the universe; a community of people who are participating in doing science, who can explain why what they do matters, and what questions they are helping to answer. We want to create a community, and here is where we invite all of you to be a part of what we’re doing.

There are lots of ways to get involved: You can contribute to science, take a class, join a conversation, or just help us spread the word by sharing about us on social media sites.

Like every community, we are constantly changing to reflect our members. This website will constantly be growing and adding new features. Overtime, we’re going to bring together all the components of a research learning environment (aka grad school), from content in the form of classes, resources, and a blog, to research in the form of citizen science, to social engagement through a forum, social media, and real world activities.

The science you have the chance to help with is being developed by scientists all over the world. We are partnering directly with NASA missions to develop citizen science projects that help expand what science they can accomplish. We’re working with Mercury MESSENGER, the Dawn Mission, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, New Horizons, and the Space Telescope Science Institute to build a series of projects that map the surfaces of rocky worlds and explore the atmospheres of planets and small bodies the solar system over.

You don’t have to be a genius with a PhD to do science. We provide tutorials with every project that should make it possible for anyone to contribute. We also offer a variety of educational programs so that you can learn as much as you want about the science you’re aiding. We also want teachers and amateurs doing EPO to receive the professional development they need to use CosmoQuest to teach astronomy to students and the public. To help us reach these goals, we’re partnering with the Galileo Teacher Training Program and Astronomers without Borders – one of our goals is to reach out to amateurs and get them the materials and training needed to use CosmoQuest in their outreach.

CosmoQuest is a place to do, to learn, and to collaborate.

Where would you like to explore today?

Join us in the forums, and share your ideas for our future.

Link: http://cosmoquest.org

Filed under: Planets, Space Fotos Tagged: bad astronomy, Citizen Science, CosmoQuest, Google Plus, Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite(LCROSS), Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mercury MESSENGER, NASA, New Horizons, Open Science, open source software, philip plait, public citizen, ray sanders, science portal, Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), the Dawn Mission

On this date 45 years ago, (January 27, 1967) the space program lost three of its finest in a tragic cabin fire of Apollo 1.

Apollo 1 was to be the first manned mission of the series of missions that would take the US to moon.

Lost that day, but not forgotten:

Command Pilot: Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom
Senior Pilot:  Edward H. White II
Pilot:  Roger B. Chaffee

...Rob McNaught was measuring the orbit of 2012 bx34 using T17, the refined obit from Rob and others helped Goldstone to take radar images of it.

Schnitzel was great though, we were celebrating EldestOnes birthday (he's an odd number old, not a prime number, but the sum of the first and second digits you get an even number which is half MiddleOnes age, and twice the sum of the first and second digits of MiddleOnes age).

Strangely enough, video conferencing on an Android phone doesn't work too well when you are eating dinner.

A "ring of fire" solar eclipse is coming to the USA this spring. It's the first annular eclipse visible from the contiguous United States in almost 18 years.

I was browsing the 'Coming Soon' section on the Estes website and ran across their new 29mm motor retainer. A pair will list for $8.99.  I guess that will save you from cutting and grinding a pair from a 3/4" compression coupling ($3.67 at Home Depot).  Actually, for a couple of extra bucks a rocket, it might be worth avoiding the mess. Ground PVC shaving get everywhere.

• Atlas 5 rockets smash into bridge - Space.com (Well, they were in a barge at the time.)
• Remembering the Apollo 1 Fire (Infographic) - Space.com
• Rocket (and sci-fi) girls have invaded the rocketry forums
• Tank Girl on TRF
• Dr. Amy Mainzer (and other female scientists) also on TRF
• Hot Ladies of Sci-Fi on YORF
• The Seven Best Auroras From the Biggest Solar Storm in Seven Years - Gizmodo

Carnival of Space #233 is now Up at Riding with Robots. There's Death Stars, Star factories, the mysterious atmosphere of Titan and much, much more. Pop on over and have a read.

Strong winds polished the snow of southwestern Alaska and stretched marine stratocumulus clouds into long, parallel streets in early January, 2012. After crossing Bristol Bay, the winds scraped the clouds across the tall volcanic peaks of the Aleutian Islands. As the wind impacted the immobile mountains, the airflow became turbulent, swirling in symmetric eddies and carving intricate patterns into the clouds on the leeward side of the islands. At the top of this image, the bright white color indicates a thick layer of snow overlying the land of southwestern Alaska. The pristine white is broken by the rugged Ahklun Mountain Range in the east, which is partially covered by a bank of clouds. Off the coast of Alaska, sea ice floats in Bristol Bay, cracked and chipped by the flow of the waters which lie underneath. A few cloud streets – parallel lines of clouds – can be seen in the far northwest over land. The clouds increase over the sea ice and become thick over open water, where row upon row of clouds lie close in perfectly parallel formation. The Aleutian Islands stretch from northeast to southwest across the image. Sea ice, which is bright white here, lies on the windward side of the islands. A few of the tallest volcanic peaks can be seen rising from the icy islands. The character of the cloud streets change as they impact the Aleutians, especially near the center of the image, where two rows of beautifully symmetric swirls of eddies in the clouds stretch across the sky. These swirling formations are known as von Karman vortex streets. This true-color image was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Terra satellite on January 11, 2012. Image Credit: NASA/GSFC/Jeff Schmaltz/MODIS Land Rapid Response Team

Description:

In astronomy, the Pleiades, or Seven Sisters (Messier object 45 or M45), is an open star cluster containing middle-aged hot B-type stars located in the constellation of Taurus. It is among the nearest star clusters to Earth and is the cluster most obvious to the naked eye in the night sky. Pleiades has several meanings in different cultures and traditions.

The cluster is dominated by hot blue and extremely luminous stars that have formed within the last 100 million years. Dust that forms a faint reflection nebulosity around the brightest stars was thought at first to be left over from the formation of the cluster (hence the alternate name Maia Nebula after the star Maia), but is now known to be an unrelated dust cloud in the interstellar medium that the stars are currently passing through. Astronomers estimate that the cluster will survive for about another 250 million years, after which it will disperse due to gravitational interactions with its galactic neighborhood.

Additional Info:

18 exp. x 300 ‘ISO 1600
Canon 450D Jap REFRIGERACION
SW 200/1000
Nq6pro
Kit lunatic pursuit
DSS
1.7 Core Pixinsight

Submitted by:

Alcarreño (Raul Villaverde)

Location:

Ocentejo (Guadalajara)-Spain-

Date:

October 02 2011

Filed under: Deep Space, Space Fotos Tagged: Alcarreño, Las siete hermanas, M45, Maia Nebula, Messier object 45, Ocentejo (Guadalajara)-Spain, open star cluster, Pleiades, Raul Villaverde, Taurus Constellation

Had a great Australia Day, lazed around a bit, played Master Labyrinth with the younger boys, swam, had friends over, then walked up to the end of the street to take pictures of Venus, the thin crescent Moon and the Australia Day Fireworks (click on images to embiggen them).

Didn't see C/2003 T12 though, it's probably around magnitude 12.

Seems like this is becoming a regular feature for those things I found interesting....but not interesting enough to make a dedicated post.

• Project High Jump Boosted Dart - High Power Rocketry (Discussion, photos, video...CATO.)
• Nuclear Katyusha Launching - Next Big Future (NBF reviews his proposal for a one pulse, Orion-style nuclear powered rocket.  It would be constructed in, and launched from, a 3.5km deep hole in a salt dome.  A 150kT nuclear bomb would accelerate the ship to escape velocity.  Interesting, but not likely to ever happen. "Launch people and delicates the regular way. ")
• NASA Aerospace Advisory Panel's annual report - RLV and Space Transport (Evidently the NASA safety bureaucracy  isn't happy with the Commercial Crew Program.  Clark points our that both the Atlas V and Falcon 9 will have dozens of flights under their belt before a human climbs aboard.  Unlike the Shuttle or SLS.)
• Project Bifrost: Return to Nuclear Rocketry - Centauri Dreams (Sounds like another study on the state of nuclear rocketry today; building on Project NERVA, which was finally canceled in 1972.  The question remains whether we as a society are ready for nuclear powered rockets.)
• Dale Windsor is rumbling about bringing back LawnDart Rocketry.  Note the new URL as Sunward bought his old one after it lapsed: http://www.lawndartrocketry.info/. He says, "Lots of new stuff in the pipeline (can you say X-planes?), though I'm reluctant to make any announcements."

Apollo One, AS-204, lost January 27, 1967

Lt. Col. Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, USAF
Lt. Col. Edward H. White II, USAF
Lt. Roger B. Chaffee, USN

Challenger, STS-51-L, lost January 28, 1986

Francis R. (Dick) Scobee, Commander
Michael J. Smith, Pilot
Judith A. Resnik, Mission Specialist
Ronald E. McNair, Mission Specialist
Ellison S. Onizuka, Mission Specialist
Gregory B. Jarvis, Payload Specialist
Sharon Christa McAuliffe

Columbia, STS-107, lost February 1, 2003

Rick D. Husband, Commander
William C. McCool, Pilot
Michael P. Anderson, Payload Commander
David M. Brown, Mission Specialist
Kalpana Chawla, Mission Specialist
Laurel Blair Salton Clark, Mission Specialist
Ilan Ramon, Payload Specialist

Over on TRF, Crazy Jim is describing how to build Wildman's minimum diameter Space Cowboy kit.  This 54mm fiberglass kit features surface mounted, diamond airfoil fins.  These fins are capable of handling any 54mm motor with no added fiberglass reinforcement.  The kit reportedly will break Mach 2 and hit 20k ft. The methods of prepping the fins and tube are interesting and should be applicable to any MD kit, even the cardboard and wood variety.

Comet C/2003 T12 enters the field of view of the STEREO H1B imager on 16-01-2012. Image processed with ImageJ from raw images from SECCHI/STEREO. An animation is at the end of this post.

While my internet was in abeyance, a remarkable story played out in the STEREOHUNTER community.

Comet Al noticed a reasonably bright comet coming out from the Sun and alerted the group, William Thompson back tracked it in the COR2B images.

An orbit was initially worked out by Man-To Hui from the H1B images and Ranier Kracht refined them with the COR2B images, then found that the comets orbit matched that of C/2003 T12 (SOHO-673 observed in C3).

I love this group, the guys are backtracking now to see if they can pick it up in earlier appearances in STEREO, Comet Al may have picked up the 2007 return.

Anyway, the comet will soon be appearing in the evening sky (from about the 26th on it should be high enough above the horizon at astronomical twilight), how bright it will be is a matter of speculation. It might be unaided eye visible, or binocular only (or more likely telescope only). I'll be out having a look as I have the ocean as my western horizon.

If you want to look, Ranier's orbital elements are below:

Ecliptic  Osculating Elements (J2000.0) at JD 2455952.500000  Date:   2012/01/26:00:00:00.00 
Body            e        i            w             Node            q                JD-Tp
 
CK03T120   0.775932114   11.4780256   217.5091602   176.4741890     0.575542927      -0.4140515

A chart suitable for printing (click to embiggen) showing the track of the comet over the next few days as seen at astronomical twilight in southern Australia. The chart shows the western horizon and the rectangle the field of view of the iTelescope T12 and 14 instruments.






Animation from 16-01-2012 to 17-01-2012 showing comet C/2003 T12 in STEREO H1b, you can just see a faint tail.

Back in 2008 we wrote a 10-pages test concerning The Imaging Source cameras DMK 21AF04.AS, DBK 21AF04.AS and DMK 41AF02.AS which was published in "Sterne und Weltraum" No. 6/2008. We had much fun working with these cameras, and really good results. So we were very interested how much better the new generation DMK/DBK 21AU618.AS utilizing ICX618 chips would be compared with the previous DMK/DBK 21AF04.AS models. We did a through test (9 pages) on this, which was published in "Sterne und Weltraum" No. 12/2011.

One of the results was, that the new DMK 21AU618.AS has drastically improved IR-sensitivity. Living in a region with bad seeing conditions this is a big advantage, because IrRGB composites will deliver better results in bad seeing. Though IR theoretically has lower resolution, it is less affected by atmospheric turbulence. Of course IrRGB will not reach the level of best amateur Images, but is better than no picture at all. So we decided to publish an example to show what is possible under moderate seeing conditions, even if this is not perfect.

All four Jupiter images in the picture were taken with DMK/DBK 21 cameras, the upper two images dating 2011/10/03 with the new 618-chips. Ir was taken using Baader Ir-passfilter 2458385 on DMK 21AU618.AS, RGB was taken in one Video using Baader Ir-blocking Filter 2459207A on DBK 21AU618.AS. Luminance and colour were added in Photoshop. Videos were processed and sharpened using Giotto, 70% of 3000 frames were selected by sharpness an stacked, Mexican Hat filter was applied to the results. Giotto did the job in 10 minutes, and delivered results not significantly worse then other "not easy to use" software produced in 2 hours. Optics was a 30cm SC with Celestron 2x Barlow. We took care that no light was spoiled, an matched exposure time an framerate to 1/30s 30fps (colour) and 1/60s 60fps (monochrome). Seeing was moderate, the RGB-image was of poor quality and unusable without the Ir-Luminance, the IrRGB result is "better than nothing" still acceptable.

Peter Wellmann

Aside: It's been a while since I posted because I somehow messed up my blog code over Christmas and I needed time to work out what was going wrong. I seem to have fixed it so I'm back.

I wanted to do a quick post about something I was reminded about on Twitter earlier. Moon Games is a series of photographs by Laurent Laveder which use perspective to play with the Moon when it is near the horizon. Each photograph appears to show a foreground person interacting with the Moon as if it were next to them. I first saw Laurent's images when they used a hula-hoop to illustrate an eclipse for APoD back in 2006. There are some really nice compositions and I particularly like the one with a figure trying to lasso the Moon and this one where someone appears to be painting it. If you haven't seen them before, they are well worth a look. - taken from Astronomy Blog (www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/)

• Starships Inc. status update - RLV and Space Transport (They plan to launch sub-orbital nanosats this year and orbital payloads within a year. I love F-104s. Update via NASA.)
• 50-man Space Base Crew - Beyond Apollo (Another unrealized space station plan.)
• Rocketarium released four oddrocs - X-shaped Vorlon's in 18mm and 24mm, a hexagonal saucer and an octagonal saucer.  The Vorticos spin on the way up and autorotate down without inverting.  These sound interesting but I get my saucer and spinning fixes from Art Applewhite.
• While talking about Art, I see he is offering his 36" Delta Saucer as a kit.
• There is a TRF thread discussing an interesting failure mode seen in a CTI reload. The rocket will boost, quickly burn out and then there will be a second boost phase.  The thread has 2 videos and a discussion of the phenomena. While there, check out the cook futuristic HPR design.

On Friday evening, shortly after I did Skype Interview with Leslie Hayes, my internet connection crashed. It feebly revived itself once or twice, but basically, while Comet Al has recovered comet C/2003 T12 and aurora roared across the sky, I've been right out of it.

Not that I haven't been busy. I have an article up at The Conversation, I've been the expert adviser for an article in Cosmos, I have an article coming out in next months Australian Sky&Telescope.
And now that the internet is back, I've done a Skype Interview with Francis Walsh and I can at last download all the pictures I've taken with iTelescope.

Of course, now we have EldestOne's birthday to contend with, so don't expect a blizzard of posts.

David Appell, PhD and independent science journalist, has penned an article about the Space Elevator, partly based on his experience attending last year’s Space Elevator conference in Redmond. At some point, it’s supposed to appear in the UK Magazine “Physics World” but you can read it now on his website.  It’s a fairly comprehensive article. And the [...]

At the last build session, Warthog asked about the status of my F-104 Starfighter.  I respond that it suffered some damage on the last flight and that some of the plastic joints needed to be re-glued.  Today, I pulled it out to do the minor repairs.  Well, it appears that I had already repaired it.  Sigh, the mind is the second thing to go (and I can't remember the first thing).  What I did do is add a separate shock tether for the tail section. So, in the spring I'll fly her on a G138-4 and recover her on two 'chutes.  The fast short burn will hopefully minimize the soaring action and lead to a slower horizontal velocity at apogee and the two 'chutes will minimize the chances of the wings being sheared off by the shock cord.

Hey! How can I be expected to remember the status of each of the 220 rockets in my active fleet?

http://www.auroraskystation.com/live-camera/9/

Aurora happening now (9:24 am ACDST)

Venus is easily visible in the western evening sky and is visited by the Moon on the 26th and 27th. Jupiter dominates the evening sky in the north-west once Venus has set, and is visited by the Moon on the 30th. Mars enters the evening sky, but is best visible in the morning sky heading towards Saturn, which is near the star Spica.

Morning sky looking east as seen from Adelaide at 3:00 am local daylight saving time on Sunday January 29 showing Mars and Saturn. The inset Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time. The inset shows the appearance of Saturn and it's Moons at this time. Click to embiggen.

The First Quarter Moon is Tuesday January 31. This is the second First Quarter Moon this Month. We might call this a "Blue" First Quarter Moon.

Mars is high in the northern morning sky. After so long in the constellation of Leo, Mars now enters the constellation of Virgo, heading towards Spica and Saturn. Mars has now entered the evening sky, rising around 10 pm (local daylight saving time), but will be relatively low above the late evening horizon for the rest of the week.

Saturn is above the north- eastern horizon, not far from the bright star Spica. Saturn is now high enough in sky in the early morning for telescopic observation.

Mercury is now lost in morning twilight.

Evening sky on Saturday January 27 looking west as seen from Adelaide at 9:00 pm local daylight saving time in South Australia showing Venus in Aquarius, with the crescent Moon beside it and Jupiter not far away. The inset shows the appearance of Venus at this time. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time (click to embiggen)

Bright white Venus is readily visible in the evening western twilight sky from around half an hour after sunset for somewhat over an hour and a half. Venus is near the thin crescent Moon on the 26th and 27th.

Venus is in Aquarius this week. It is almost on top of phi Aquarii (magnitude 4.2) on the 26th. You will have to wait until quite late in the twilight to see this star appear.

Jupiter was at opposition, when it is biggest and brightest as seen from Earth, on Saturday the 29th of October.

However, Jupiter is still a great binocular and telescope object and will be for many weeks to come. Jupiter is visible for most of the night in the north-western sky, setting half an hour after midnight.

Evening sky on Monday January 30 looking north as seen from Adelaide at 9:00 pm local daylight saving time in South Australia showing Jupiter and the waxing Moon. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time. INSET: Jupiter and its Moons as seen telescopically at this time, (click to embiggen)

In the evening Jupiter is readily visible in the northern-western sky, from about twilight. It is coming closer to Venus, and the pair look very nice in the western evening sky.

Now is a still good time for telescopic observation of this massive world (although the window for observation is narrowing), or follow its moons in binoculars. For good telescopic observation Jupiter is best from 9 pm - 11 pm.

Although Jupiter is the most prominent now, there are lots of interesting things in the sky to view with a telescope. If you don't have a telescope, now is a good time to visit one of your local astronomical societies open nights or the local planetariums.

Printable PDF maps of the Eastern sky at 10 pm AEDST, Western sky at 10 pm AEDST. For further details and more information on what's up in the sky, see Southern Skywatch (this will be up dated to February a little later).

Cloud cover predictions can be found at SkippySky.

I referenced this photo when it was featured on Space.com. I love the composition.

• 1958 - Missile Designed with HITCO in Mind - High Power Rocketry (Ad from an early composites company.  The original is for sale on EBay.)
• Strange Forgotten Space Station Concepts That Never Flew - Wired (via Clark Lindsey)
• I was going to post about the current auroral activity, which NOAA says is the strongest since 2003. However, Space.com is annoying me and NOAA's site is unreachable back up. UPDATE:  I decided to post a link other than those noted before. Here's what NASA had to say about today's CME event. M8.7 Solar Flare and Earth Directed CME.
• Apogee video on how to fix a zippered tube.  I don't need no steenkin' video to fix my zippers, but this serves as a good reminder about Tim's cool video series. 
• Romanian Rocketry; They are also on Facebook and have a YouTube Channel.

Image purported to be of a large object near 89 Leo, allegedly taken on January 9, 2012 using the GRAS (now iTelescope) scopes. The alleged coordinates are RA 11 34 21 DEC 03 03 35, click on image to embiggen for detail. However, it is a photshopped copy of one of my images from 18 September 2010.


As you may know, one of my images of comet 103P (Hartely 2) has been taken, had a fake planet added to it, and the doctored image has been circulating as evidence of Nibiru (or at least a Heavy Mass Object, whatever that is). Now, while I’m annoyed that someone has fraudulently modified one of my images, I’m more interested in using this as a teachable moment.

What lessons can we learn from this, and what resources are there for people to learn about the sky and help them interpret images posted on the web?

Before we start, here’s a list of freeware programs you can use in our exploration of astronomical images on the net:

GIMP Free image processing program
Celestia 3D Solar Simulation program
Stellarium Planetarium program
Cartes du Ciel Free sky charting software
WikiSky
Astrometry.net Astronomy image analysis prgram
Aerith Comet location and information
Minor Planet Center Comet and Asteroid Ephemeris


Part 1: How can we tell the Image of the purported Heavy Mass Object/Nibiru is a fake.

Evaluating images takes some degree of astronomical knowledge and some degree of experience with astrophotography, but I’m going to start with some simple clues that you can get with very basic knowledgee of the solar system. First off, let’s look at the image circulating on the web that claims to be of 89 Leo with a planetary object in it (image at the head of the post, click to embiggen).

With no knowledge of where or when the image was taken (or of the fact that it is a Photoshopped version of one of my images), what clues are there that this is a fake:

First Clue to Fakery: The object is a crescent. I’ve already alluded to this in my previous post, but to re-iterate, this object is supposed to be outside Earth’s orbit. It is impossible for an object outside Earth’s orbit to show a crescent. See the diagram just above, to visualise this.

Second Clue to Fakery: Have a look at the image to the left (it's my original image, it's also in the image at the head of the post), see the long fuzzy blob there, that’s a comet.

The comet’s image has trailed as when you take long exposures, things like comets, asteroids and planets move with respect to the background stars. In this case, I actually took 4x90 second images and stacked them up to improve the brightness, because I aligned all the images so that the stars were in focus, the comet shows as a trail, you can see here where I have stacked the same batch of images on the comet rather than the stars the comet is clear and the stars are trailed (but for the purposes, we don’t need to know that at the moment).

Looking back to the comet you can see the faint tail pointing off to the bottom. Now, one of the important things about comets is that the tail points away from the Sun. With the dust tails things are slightly more complex, as the tail curves, and if the comet is directly in Earth’s orbital plane the comet can hide the dust tail, (see here for a complex tail of comet 2009 P1 Garradd), but the point is that the tail will not be pointing AT the Sun.

Relationship of the orbit of comet 103P Hartley 2 with regard to the Earth and the Sun. 103P is outside and above Earth's orbit, so any object near 103P in the T05 imager must be outside Earth;'s orbit and hence not a crescent. Simulation in Celestia, click to embiggen.

Why is this important? Because look at the crescent object. The Sunlight must be coming from the bottom left to illuminate the object to give it a crescent shape.

But the comets tail means that the Sun must be towards the top right. The crescent object has been pasted in without any regard to the Sun’s location. You can use Celestia, and this set of elements for 103P, to play with the comets orbit to demonstrate this to your satisfaction.

Still another clue comes from the object being a crescent. As we saw above, the crescent is facing the wrong way with regard to the Sun, but it is also too far away from the Sun. Thin crescents as seen in the doctored image (and crescent Mercury, crescent Venus and the Crescent Moon), can only show up when the body in question is nearly between us and the Sun.

The thin crescent moon can be as far away as 25 degrees, Venus 23 degrees. However, this object is fully 115 degrees from the Sun on 9 January (if it was actually near 89 Leo, it's a bit further way using the real location) , which would mean it could not be a crescent. Thus it cannot be an actual object, but something pasted in later (here's an example of my animations of the phases of Venus).

Third Clue to Fakery: As mentioned above, when taking long exposures (6 minutes in this case), solar system object are trailed because they move with respect to the distant stars. The comet has trailed out into a rod shape because of this movement. Now look at the crescent, it is crisp without any trailing. Any solar system object closer than Neptune will show significant trailing (and even Neptune will show some trailing). So this can’t be an image of an actual solar system object, but a pasted in image.

103P Hartley as viewed against the background constellations on 18 September 2010, as seen form Earth. Simulated in Celestia (click to embiggen)

Those are all fairly simple ways you can check that an image is fake with relatively little astronomical knowledge. Let’s look at some ways to check that require a bit more expertise.

Is the Image actually in Leo? The text on the image purporting to show the alleged HMO states that the image was taken of 89 Leo on the 9th of January, 2012. How can we check this? Well, aside from the fact that it is identical to an image I posted on the 20th of September 2010 (apart from the added crescent object), we can use a number of clues. Once again, the comet is our guide.

The area around PGC 71451, as seen in WikiSky (left) and from my image of 18-09-2010 (which is identical to the image claimed to be from 9 January 2012, except for the added crescent object). The boxes surround PGC 71451 in both images. You can see that my image (and by extension the photoshopped image) is identical to the Wikisky field. I've had to rotate my image slightly to match the orientation in WikiSky. Click to embiggen.

First, head over to Seiichi Yoshida's Aerith (or cometography), and look at the list of bright observable comets. Note that there are no comets in Leo at the moment. So the image can’t be in Leo. So where is it?

Next head over to Astrometry.net. I usually use Astrometry.net for identifying fields in the STEREO spacecraft imager, but you can use it to identify other astrophotos as well. You will need to login using your Google or Facebook ID, upload the original image (restricting the search to Leo otherwise the run will take 24-48 hours), and you will get no matches. Run it again restricting to Andromeda, and it will match to the section of Andromeda where the galaxy PGC 71451 is. It’s not an image taken in Leo.

Astrometry.net run demonstrating that the image is taken in Andromeda, not Leo. Click to embiggen.

Another clue is that on the 9th of January, the nearly full Moon was 60 degrees from 89 Leo. Any long exposures taken this close to the full Moon would be badly affected by moonlight, but this image is not contaminated with moonlight (see my image of the supernova in Leo taken on 10 January for how it would look).

Is it where I say it is (in Andromeda)? Well, we’ve already used Astrometry.net to locate the area, and WikiSky as well to confirm that it is indeed an image taken with PGC 71451 in it. Can we double check.

Yes, but the next bit is a bit more tricky. You will need a decent astronomy charting program which can allow you to add other bodies like comets (such as Cartes du Ceil), then head over to the Minor Planet Center, and generate an Ephemeris for 103P (Hartley 2) for 18 September 2010 by typing 103P into the entry box, add the coordinates to your charting program (the MPPEC gives a list of programs it can expert directly to) and Hey Presto! You will see 103P near PGC 71451, just as in my image. You can also use Stellarium, but you will need to download the pack of extra stars, or the images won’t match up. Because 103P is no longer bright, you will need to specially import the 1 line MPEC elements for 103P into Stellarium for it to show up.

Difference overlay of my image and the image allegedly in 89 Leon using the GIMP. (click to enlarge)

You can also use the GIMP (which I use a lot for astrophotography), to overlay my image and the doctored image. You can overlay them and use the difference command in overlay mode to show up differences. Note that the vast majority of the image is nulled out, except the added labels and (although this is a bit hard to see, so you will need to embiggen) the crescent object.

The comet is critical here as well. If this was someone else's image, the comet would have been in a slightly different part of the image, and not nulled out as it is here.

Summary: We have now demonstrated that-

a) The image purportedly of 89 Leo on 9 January 2012 is a copy of my image of of the comet 103P taken on 18-09-2010 near PGC 71451 in Leo.

b) The crescent object is a pasted in fake.

Part 2: What do I do now.

This was a bit exhaustive (and exhausting), but it’s shown how you can use several clues to determine if an image is faked. Of course, not all images claiming to be extraordinary events are faked, often they are simple mis-identification of things such as jet contrails, internal camera or telescope reflections, Venus and other bright stars taken out of focus and so on. But using the same principles (where was the image taken, how do solar system bodies line up) you can work out if what is being presented is something startling, or much more mundane.

Hot pixels seen in my and the doctored image that Don Gilson claims is a "structure". Left panel, hot pixels when the image is stacked on the stars, right image hot pixels when image stacked on the comet.

For example, in his youtube video dealing with the image, Don Gilson makes much of a series of dots in one part of the image, claiming it is a “structure”, but it’s just a series of hot pixels (pixels in the CCD chip in the camera that are jammed permanently on).

Because the image is constructed from a stack of 4 individual 90 second exposures, (re-calibrated between each exposure), the stars drift slightly between the exposures, so the hot pixels are not in the same place (in the companion image, constructed by stacking the frames on the comet, rather than the stars, the hot pixels trail horizontally). I also did a second image stacking the same frames on the comet, and you can see the pixels trail differently.

Hot pixels are the bane of astrophotographers (not only do they mess up pretty shots, they can be mistaken for asteroids), and there are a few groups of then in the image. However, you have to have a bit of experience with CCD astrophotography to recognise hot pixels.

With programs like Stellarium and Cartes du Ceil you can work out what you are looking at, Celestia allows you to simulate planetary systems and events. Using these is a lot of fun, and you will learn a lot about the sky and solar system while you are at it.

SpaceX just posted a simulation showing a 'next-gen' Falcon 9/Dragon capsule launching and then  autonomously returning  to its launch site.  This includes the capsule and both booster stages.  Cool concept.  And ambitious.  But that's one thing SpaceX isn't short of.

This may not make it to your workbench or range box, but I found it quite interesting. British company RTL Materials has developed “bistable reeled composites”, which roll like a tape measure but unfurl into a rigid round tube structure. Here's a demo by Mike Judson of Altius Space Machines. (via MAKE)

As a songwriter, there are many writers I admire and a lot of songs I've heard and said to myself, "I wish I wrote that." I just found a list I started some years ago. I hate top 10 lists, so here's more or less my top 13, excluding Beatles songs of which there are many I wish I wrote (yes, even "Get Back"). Not exactly in order, and I'm sure I've missed some obvious favorites. But I would have been happy to have written any of these songs.When I used to do gigs, my wife thought for years that I wrote "To Make You Feel My Love" and a couple of John Mayer songs. But I owned up and gave credit to Bob and John.

1. Something So Right (Paul Simon)
2. More Than You Know (Billy Rose)
3. Let’s Stay Together (Al Green, Al Jackson Jr., Willie Mitchell)
4. Your Song (Elton John-Bernie Taupin)
5. To Make You Feel My Love (Bob Dylan)
6. Stop This Train (John Mayer)
7. Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight (James Taylor)
8. Marie (Randy Newman)
9. America (Paul Simon)
10. Wild Horses (Mick Jagger-Keith Richard)
11. Crazy Love (Van Morrison)
12. Take It Easy (Jackson Browne, Glenn Frey)
13. Winning the Battle, Losing the War (Kings of Convenience)

While I aspire to writing the smart love song (see: Paul Simon), I can see I have a soft spot for the sappy love song too. Oh well.

During the incident where my images were appropriated and faked (see here, here and here), one of the more amusing incidents was when Don Gilson claimed that the fake planet was in my originals, but I had removed it under threat of the Queen and the CIA.

So this cartoon almost immediately came to mind (of course you have to click to embiggen for it to be legible, and of course it is copyleft me, 2012).

Why ponies? [shrugs] Why the Queen?

The solar image is a white light image taken on 29/9/2011 using my DMK 41AU02.AS, Meade AR6 150mm refractor, 2x barlow, 2" Herschel wedge, Baader Solar Continuum & an ND filter. The seeing on that day was the best I've ever had for solar observing.

David Mason, Maidenhead, UK