8 News NOW

Asteroid 1998 QE2, 24 May, 5x120 second exposures stacked in ImageJ and MAX Z-project applied. R filter, iTelescope T9,	Animated GIF from the 5 frames

I may be wrong in my assessment of the ability of iTelescopes to track Asteroid 1998 QE2 with automated tracking, it might be just a tad too fast at closest approach on May 31. Will try a couple of approaches over the next few days and see if I can catch its rotation period (if the Moonlight isn't too much of an issue, but closer to maximum approach I can use shorter exposures).

The limit was either a remnant of the old Flickr or was summarily droppled. Hooray!

When I first saw that Flickr was giving me 1TB of free storage, I got excited and immediately started building my rocket photo archive. Then I hit the 300MB/month limitation. This threw some cold water on my excitement but I thought...there's always next month. Overnight, my interest was waning about the prospects of loading all my photos. This morning, fellow rocketeer Sascha Grant threw another bucket on me by pointing out that, with a 300MD/month limit, it would take almost 300 years to fill it up.  After coffee and breakfast I perked up a bit when I realized that I don't have anywhere near that much rocket data. I looked at the photos just on this computer and found that it will take me a mere 9 months to load my rocket photos. Assuming no growth that is. I don't even want to check my other computer. I have again realized there is still no hope. So, I will try to load new photo sets and maybe some select older ones. Like maybe all my Red Glare albums. Starting next month.

Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope are making weather maps of an exotic class of exoplanets called "hot Jupiters." What they're finding is wilder than anything we experience here in our own solar system.

Well, it appears Flickr has suspended its upload limits, at least for now. I managed to get all the rocket and space photos from this computer onto Flickr - all 3057 of them. Yay. The process was a little finicky. Bulk labels were intermittently applied, photos were left out of sets when uploaded, and a handful of photos refused to update.  In at least once case, I must have hit a button twice because 2 sets of the photos were put in my photostream. No big deal since I will never use a TB of data. In case you are interested, I recommend you explore via my sets vs. trying to slog through the forever-scrolling interface.

The photos on my other computer will take longer since I have less hands-on time on it.

Anybody know how accurate the splining is given the data sets available?

From the JPL site:

These polar maps show the first global, topographic mapping of Saturn’s moon Titan, using data from NASA’s Cassini mission. To create these maps, scientists employed a mathematical process called splining, which uses smooth curved surfaces to “join” the areas between grids of existing topography profiles obtained by Cassini’s radar instrument. The topography maps at bottom focus on the polar regions (north at left, south at right) in stereographic projection. The top maps show the 2-D radar data in gold and black, with topography data color-coded by elevation. The bottom images are from the new topography map, with contour lines added at 656 feet (200 meters) apart in elevation.

Visible are deep basins at 72 degrees south latitude and 20 degrees east longitude, and a wider basin at 68 degrees south latitude and 105 degrees east longitude.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and ASI, the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the US and several European countries.

Greenbelt MD (SPX) May 24, 2013
On May 20, 2013, NASA and NOAA satellites observed the system that generated severe weather in the south central United States and spawned the Moore, Okla., tornado. The tornado that struck Moore on the afternoon of Monday, May 20, was an F-4 tornado on the enhanced Fujita scale, according to the National Weather Service. F-4 tornadoes have sustained winds from 166 to 200 mph. This tornado

Irvine CA (SPX) May 24, 2013
Two hungry young galaxies that collided 11 billion years ago are rapidly forming a massive galaxy about 10 times the size of the Milky Way, according to UC Irvine-led research published Wednesday in the journal Nature [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12184.html]. Capturing the creation of this type of large, short-lived star body is extremely rare - the equiv

Pasadena CA (JPL) May 24, 2013
Three NASA-built instruments that are integral components of the next in a series of U.S./European ocean altimetry satellites have arrived in France for integration with their spacecraft in preparation for a 2015 launch. Jason-3 will extend the two-decade series of satellites that are tracking global sea level changes and enabling more accurate weather, ocean and climate forecasts. The thr

Moscow (RIA Novosti) May 24, 2013
Russia's Bion-M1 biological research satellite, which recently carried rodents, microorganisms and plants on a month-long space flight, successfully accomplished its mission, an official said on Wednesday, despite the death of most of the animals on board. "The spacecraft did not show any noticeable failures and has accomplished its program in full," said Vladimir Sychev, deputy director o

Paris (ESA) May 24, 2013
ESA has inaugurated a new hub that will strengthen Europe's contribution to the global hunt for asteroids and other hazardous natural objects that may strike Earth. Near-Earth Objects, or NEOs, are asteroids or comets with sizes ranging from metres to tens of kilometres that orbit the Sun and whose orbits come close to that of Earth. There are over 600 000 asteroids known in our Solar S

Pasadena CA (JPL) May 24, 2013
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has used the drill on its robotic arm to collect a powdered sample from the interior of a rock called "Cumberland." Plans call for delivering portions of the sample in coming days to laboratory instruments inside the rover. This is only the second time that a sample has been collected from inside a rock on Mars. The first was Curiosity's drilling at a targ

Bartow, Fla. (UPI) May 23, 2013
A Florida girl expelled from school after her science experiment exploded will be going to space camp with the help of a former NASA manager, officials said. Kiera Wilmot, 16, was accused in April of igniting a chemical explosion at her high school, leading to her arrest and suspension from school, but authorities dropped criminal charges last week. News of the incident reached 1

Washington (UPI) May 22, 2013
U.S. researchers say they've discovered what may be the world's largest methane seep on the ocean floor, where life thrives under extreme conditions. A marine research expedition sponsored by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration located the seep deep in the western North Atlantic Ocean, far from the life-sustaining energy of

Quito, Ecuador (UPI) May 23, 2013
Ecuador's first satellite, launched last month, has collided with debris from an old Russian rocket but it is unclear if it has been damaged, officials say. The Pegasus nanosatellite, designed and built in Ecuador, was launched into orbit April 25 by China. The Joint Space Operations Center in the United States, which monitors all artificial Earth-orbiting objects, said there had

Pasadena CA (JPL) May 24, 2013
Saturn's moon Titan might be in for some wild weather as it heads into its spring and summer, if two new models are correct. Scientists think that as the seasons change in Titan's northern hemisphere, waves could ripple across the moon's hydrocarbon seas, and hurricanes could begin to swirl over these areas, too. The model predicting waves tries to explain data from the moon obtained so far by N

Durham NC (SPX) May 24, 2013
Duke University engineers have developed a novel method for producing clean hydrogen, which could prove essential to weaning society off of fossil fuels and their environmental implications. While hydrogen is ubiquitous in the environment, producing and collecting molecular hydrogen for transportation and industrial uses is expensive and complicated. Just as importantly, a byproduct of mos

Manoa HI (SPX) May 24, 2013
In the tropics at heights more than 10 miles above the surface, the prevailing winds alternate between strong easterlies and strong westerlies roughly every other year. This slow heartbeat in the tropical upper atmosphere, referred to as the quasibiennial oscillation (QBO), impacts the winds and chemical composition of the global atmosphere and even the climate at Earth's surface. The puls

Leeds, UK (SPX) May 24, 2013
Researchers at the Universities of Leeds and Chicago have uncovered an important mechanism behind the generation of astrophysical magnetic fields such as that of the Sun. Scientists have known since the 18th Century that the Sun regularly oscillates between periods of high and low solar activity in an 11-year cycle, but have been unable to fully explain how this cycle is generated. I

Huntsville AL (SPX) May 24, 2013
Engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., recently flipped an adapter - no easy feat when you're talking about 1,000 pounds of aluminum - furthering progress toward Exploration Flight Test (EFT)-1 in 2014 and providing early experience for Space Launch System (SLS) hardware ahead of the rocket's first flight in 2017. The flip is an important step in finishing the ma

Montreal (UPI) May 23, 2013
Scientists say they've found bacteria growing in the Canadian arctic at temperatures below freezing, nearly as cold as the surface of Mars. Growing at just 5 degrees Fahrenheit, the coldest temperature ever reported for bacterial growth, the bacterium offers clues about some of the necessary preconditions for microbial life on other worlds, such as Saturn's moon Enceladus and Mars, wher

This image shows a cutting-edge solar-electric propulsion thruster in development at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., that uses xenon ions for propulsion. An earlier version of this solar-electric propulsion engine has been flying on NASA's Dawn mission to the asteroid belt. This engine is being considered as part of the Asteroid Initiative, a proposal to robotically capture a small near-Earth asteroid and redirect it safely to a stable orbit in the Earth-moon system where astronauts can visit and explore it. This image was taken through a porthole in a vacuum chamber at JPL where the ion engine is being tested. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Western horizon as seen from Adelaide this Friday at 5:45 pm ACST on 24 May, when Venus and Mercury are closest. Similar views will be seen from the rest of the southern hemisphere at the equivalent local time. Click on any image to embiggen	Western horizon as seen from Adelaide at 5:45 pm ACST on Sunday 26 May, when all 3 planets are within a circle 3° across.
Eastern horizon as seen from Adelaide at 5:45 am ACST on 20 April 2026, when Mercury, Saturn and Marsare within a circle less than 2° across.	Western horizon as seen from Adelaide at 6:23 pm ACST on 8 September 2040, showing all 5 bright planets and the crescent Moon..

The weather seems to be fining up, so there is a good chance we will see the main part of the planet dance under clear skies.

This Friday evening (24 May) Mercury and Venus are closest, then on Sunday evening and Monday evening (26 and 27 May respectively), Mercury Venus and Jupiter are are within a circle 3° across (that's the distance covered by three out-stretched fingers).

For more details, viewing hints and an animation, see my Planet Dance post.

The line-up is the best until 2026, when Mercury, Saturn and Mars are within a circle less than 2° across. Then in 2040, all 5 of the bright planest are close together in the evening twilight, with lots of close approachs of pairs of planets, a real planet dance to look forward to.

Hubble and the Large Binocular Telescope teamed up to take a new and very close look at the well known planetary nebula M57 or The Ring Nebula.

It looks like the “Ring” is just a matter of perspective and it really is more like looking down a barrel.

A closer look at the colorful interior.

Check out the details at NASA.

Well, I thought I'd try uploading a header photo...maybe that wouldn't count in my upload limit. It worked. Hmm. That doesn't make sense, let me try uploading more rocket photos. Wow, I'm up to 1,674 photos. Maybe they suspended the upload limit.or, maybe, this is a bug. Shhh. Anyway, if you're bored, check out my latest uploads.

Man, it's a lot of work to upload, add titles, comments and tags etc. It took me 4 hours to set up about 1,500 photos. Phew!

8 News NOW

A: Strap a rocket or two to it. Alcohol, lots of alcohol, may be helpful too. Watch French bicyclist François Gissy ride his rocket bike to a reported world record speed of 163 mph.

I've been reading about and playing with space stuff again recently. There are so many great astronomy and space apps on the iPad (more later maybe), and so much interesting SF and non-fiction space stuff to read. Going Interstellar, edited by Jack McDevitt,  is a mix of SF stories and non-fiction articles related to interstellar flight, all written with the constraint that only “known physics” could be assumed. This means no warp drives or space-time worm holes, but fusion and anti-matter based propulsion and advanced AI are OK, even though a huge amount of “it’s just engineering” remains before such systems could possibly be built. And for anti-matter propulsion, even if you can build the reactors and starships, the energy costs and logistics of generating, collecting, and containing large amounts of anti-matter are non-trivial to say the least!

This limitation means that the starships in the fictional stories are limited to something like 0.2c (20% of the speed of light). While this is fast, a journey to Gliese 581 (20.1 light years) is going to take 100 or so years, so we are talking “generation ships,” or possibly some sort of hibernation technique to allow humans to survive the long journey (unless the travelers are technologically enhanced or even non-biological, advanced AI’s or hybrids of some sort). “Known physics” still allows a lot of room for imagination. The best story in the book is Michael Bishop’s Twenty Lights to “The Land of Snow,” in which a group of 990 Tibetan Buddhists sets off with the Dalai Lama to found a new homeland on a planet in the Gliese 581 system.

I also recently re-read Ender’s Game, where starships are still sub-light-speed, but there exists an advanced communication system captured from the enemy aliens. The “ansible”  somehow (quantum entanglement? It is never explained) allows instantaneous communication across interstellar distances. This supports the key plot point of a fleet of starships sent toward the enemy’s home world years before anyone knew who would command them. When Ender Wiggin finally arrives at the Earth orbiting Battle School to learn how to save the day, there needs to be a way for his commands to reach Earth’s faraway fleet with no light-speed delay.

All of this got me thinking about dark matter and the question of “known physics.” Of course SF authors have always felt free to assume that new and convenient features of the universe will eventually be discovered so that faster-than-light travel  and other amazing feats can be accomplished. The convenience of writing away the problem you need to solve is one of the luxuries of fiction. Quite possibly boring old Einstein is right and c is the ultimate speed limit. But once upon a time, there was phlogiston theory, which explained combustion in terms of a special essence contained within materials that burn. Chemistry and oxygen eventually provided a better explanation. And what about the ether? In the nineteenth century, physicists quite logically assumed that light waves would require a medium, much as do sound and water waves. Michelson, Einstein  and others showed that no such medium existed nor was needed.


“Dark matter” really sounds like phlogiston or the ether to me. A placeholder until some new Einstein comes up with a better explanation. Will that explanation allow matter or energy to travel faster than the speed of light? Not necessarily. Einstein was a pretty sharp dude and plenty of experiments have shown that going faster than c is pretty damn hard if not impossible.  I’m just saying that it’s quite likely that the physics we have now is nowhere near the final word on how the universe really works. It’s a very good approximation, as was Newton’s mechanics for most of the problems anyone could think to ask until around 1900, and still good enough for most purposes. Einstein’s special and general relativity theories are minor corrections for most mechanics problems even today (even for most orbital mechanics, but not quantum mechanics). Any “bigger and better” physics that may arrive in coming years will still have to reduce down to what we have now for most circumstances. But with any kind of luck, someone will figure out how to build some special circumstances into the back ends of starships, and when the new physics kicks in, we’ll be able to get to Gliese 581 in time for dinner.

Dance of the Planets: An Evening Under the Stars

FREE ADMISSION
Saturday, June 1, 2013
8:00 PM – 10:00 PM

Location
Pier 1 at Brooklyn Bridge Park
Brooklyn, NY 11201

“Dance” under the stars and join professional and amateur astronomers for a free evening of urban stargazing. It’s an outdoor party beneath the Brooklyn Bridge and the twinkling canvas of the night sky, and a night to explore and discover the vast wonders of the cosmos. Bring your telescope if you have one, or use one of the dozens we’ll have on hand.

Enjoy conversations with leading astronomers and live music to celebrate the astronomical event “Dance of the Planets,” at this communal stargazing experience. The festivities will feature astronomy groups from around the Tri-State Area, family-friendly activities, twilight sailing of the Schooner Mystic Whaler, refreshments, local food trucks, and more.

Repost from: WorldScienceFestival.com.

This video is a montage of various views of a SM-3, fired from the USS Lake Erie, successfully intercepting a target missile that had been launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility, Barking Sands, Kauai, Hawaii. The best segment is the slow motion 'pad cam' starting at 3:10 in. To learn more, visit http://www.mda.mil/system/aegis_bmd.html.

The evening sky facing north-east in Darwin on May 22 at 19:00 pm ACST showing the waxing Moon just about to cover Spica (alpha Virginis). (similar views will be seen from other locations north of Bundaberg at a similar local time eg 20:05 AEST Cairns). The inset shows a telescopic view of the Moon at 19:00 ACST, with Spica about to go behind the Moon.

The waxing Moon passes in front of the bright star Spica in the constellation of Virgo on the evening of May 22. Spica is a bright white star visible to the unaided eye (magnitude 1).

The occultation will only be seen from north-eastern Australia, anywhere north of a line running just below Darwin to Bundaderg.

Every where else will see Spica dramatically close to the Moon, it is well worth watching even if you don't have an occultation. In Adelaide and Alice Springs the Moon is less than half a lunar diameter from Spica, and in Brisbane it floats just above the surface, almost grazing. Nambour sees a graze starting at 20:01 AEST.

From Darwin the star disappears behind the dark limb of the Moon at 19:17 ACST, and reapppears at 19:43 ACST. From Rockhampton the star disappears behind the dark limb of the Moon at 20:35 AEST, and reapppears at 21:11 AEST. From Cairns and Townsville the star disappears behind the dark limb of the Moon at 20:05 AEST, and reapppears at 21:07 AEST.

With the Moon nearly Full, this event is really best seen with binoculars or a small telescope (especially for the reappearance of the star on the bright limb of the Moon). If you have a tripod or other stand for your binoculars, it will be much easier to observe. Otherwise try and stabilise your binoculars on the back of a chair, or a car roof or something similarly solid. Set up about half an hour before the occultation to watch the star dissapear (so you are not mucking around with equiment at the last moment).

The Full Moon is Saturday May 25. Mercury returns to the evening sky. Venus, Jupiter and Mercury meet in the evening twilight. This will be the closest bright planet grouping until 2026. Saturn is high in the evening skies with the Moon close to Saturn on the 23rd. See an Emu in the sky.


Sky on Wednesday May 23 looking north-east as seen from Adelaide at 21:00 local time in South Australia. The left inset shows a telescopic view of Saturn at this time. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time (click to embiggen).

The Full Moon is Saturday May 25.

Saturn is now easily visible above the eastern horizon before midnight in the constellation of Libra. Saturn climbs higher in the evening sky during the week, becoming easier to see. On Thursday the 23rd the Moon is close to Saturn.

Saturn, Arcturus and Aldebaran from a broad triangle above the eastern horizon.

Opposition (when Saturn is biggest and brightest as seen from Earth) was on April 28. However, Saturn will be a worthwhile evening target for telescopes of any size for several months. The sight of this ringed world is always amazing.

Mars is lost in the twilight.

Evening sky looking west as seen from Adelaide at 17:45 pm local time on Thursday May 23. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local times indicated here.  Click to embiggen.

There will be a beautiful meeting of  three bright planets  in the twilight this evening, the closest meeting of three bright planets until 2026.

Mercury  returns to the evening skies this week week, but is very low in the twilight. You will need a level, unobscured horizon to see it (see below).


Venus climbs higher in the evening twilight. It is still quite close to the horizon, and you need a clear, level horizon like the ocean to see it at its best. As the week progresses it climbs towards a meeting with Jupiter, making a fine sight in the twilight (see below).

Jupiter is visible low in the early evening and rapidly descends into the twilight, heading towards a rendezvous with Venus and Mercury this week. Jupiter is setting progressively earlier, by 6:40 pm local time, so the giant world is now not really possible to follow in a telescope (see below).

On Friday 24 May Venus and Mercury are closest. On 26 and 27 May (Sunday and Monday), these three bright planets will be inside a circle 3 degrees wide (that's three finger-widths wide). On the 27th, Mercury and Jupiter will be at their closest. On the 28th, Venus and Jupiter will be at their closest. On 31 May the planets from a straight line.

You don't need a telescope to see this fine display, just your eyes. For more charts and observing hints (and an animation) see my Planet Dance page.

The south-eastern horizon, around 9:00 pm local time in Australia. Can you see the Emu? Click to embiggen.

Now that the Moon is past full and the evening sky is dark it is a great time to find the constellation of the Emu. Now you are saying: ‘Emu – but there is no Emu!’ However, the Emu is one of the indigenous Australian constellations. And interestingly, it is a "dark" constellation, one that is made up entirely of dark dust lanes!

"Dark" constellations are unique to the Southern hemisphere. In South America they had the constellations of the Tinamou (and Emu relative) and two llamas making up the constellation the Indigenous Australians called the Emu*.

See the Emu now?

The Emu consists of the Coal Sack, the dark dust cloud that nestles in the crook of the Southern Cross (the head of the Emu), and a dark dust lane that stars near the Pointers (alpha and beta Centauri) and runs down to the curl of stars that forms the body of Scorpio. This is the neck and wings of the Emu. A second dark dust lane forms the lower body and legs.

Being made of dark dust lanes, it is almost impossible to see in any city. However, here in the suburbs, if I let my eyes adapt for several minutes I can make it out. And of course in the country it is almost immediately obvious. Once you spot it, you will wonder why you never saw the Emu before. The best time too look currently is about an hour and a half after sunset, when the Emu is nearly vertical and easier to recognise. Later, it stretches over the Southern sky more or less side on, so it is less impressive.

*There is more than one Emu, another Indigenous group identifies Orion as an Emu.

There are lots of interesting things in the sky to view with a telescope. Especially with Saturn so prominent in the sky.  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. Especially during the school holidays.

Printable PDF maps of the Eastern sky at 10 pm AEST, Western sky at 10 pm AEST. For further details and more information on what's up in the sky, see Southern Skywatch.

Cloud cover predictions can be found at SkippySky.

Click through to see the Paper Kosmonaut's fleet of paper rockets...and spacecraft, subs, busses...

Western horizon as seen from Adelaide at 5:45 pm ACST on 24 May, when Venus and Mercury are closest. Similar views will be seen from the rest of the southern hemisphere at the equivalent local time. Click on any image to embiggen	Western horizon as seen from Adelaide at 5:45 pm ACST on 26 May, when all 3 planets are within a circle 3° across.
Western horizon as seen from Adelaide at 5:45 pm ACST on 28 May, when Venus and Jupiter are closest.	Western horizon as seen from Adelaide at 5:45 pm ACST on 31 May, when all the planets are in a straight line.

Over the next week there will be a beautiful sight as the three planets Mercury, Venus and Jupiter dance around each other in the twilight.

You don't need a telescope to see this, just your eyes. The conjunction is quite close to the western horizon though, you will need a level, clear horizon to see it at its best. Ocean or desert is best, or somewhere high.

The planets will be between 4 finger-widths (4 degrees) and a bit over a hand span (7 degrees) above the horizon half an hour after Sunset. A hand-span is the with of your hand making a "stop" sign when your arm is held out straight in front of you.

Although half an hour after Sunset is the best trade-off between visibility and hight above the horizon, I found I could see Venus and Jupiter at least 25 minutes after Sunset, you might like to try looking earlier too. Successful photography will have to wait until the sky is somewhat darker so the planets are not washed out

Mercury and Venus are closest on 24 May All 3 planets are within 3 degrees of each other on 26 and 27 May, then  Jupiter and Mercury are closest on 27 May, Jupiter and Venus are closest on 28 May. Finally all 3 form a straight line on 31 May.

The simulations exaggerate the size of the planets. This photo is more like what you will see only the planets are brighter and clearer with the unaided eye.

Venus and Jupiter as seen from Adelaide on 17 May, 2013. Imaged with a Canon IXUS, 1/4 sec exposure, ASA 400 3x Zoom at 5:55 pm ACST. Jupiter is the dot at the top right, Venus is bottom left, indicated by the yellow lines. You will need to click on the image to embiggen to see Venus clearly.



A video of the encounter is below:

I've been a Flickr user for many years but, because of the limits on free accounts, pretty much only used it to look at the eye candy (including harvesting material for the Dungeon). Today, Flickr rolled out a new version, which included the following free account upgrades:

What do I now have with a free Flickr account? 

Starting on 5/20/2013, members with free accounts on Flickr will have:

• 1 Terabyte of space

• Upload and download in full original quality. Up to 200MB per image

• Ability to create “Collections”

• Post any of your photos or videos in up to 60 group pools

• Limitation of maximum image size available to others

So, I spent a couple of hours loading, tagging and organizing rocket photos. I then found another limitation of the free accounts...there is a monthly bandwidth limit of 300MB. Still, I now have over 500 photos there now. Take a look!  (I wish I had left some slack so I could add new material - vs. loading all old photos. At this rate it will be a long time before I have all my rocket sets uploaded!)

TRF member John ('JAL') Lee has completed and flown his awesome scale model of the PEPP aeroshell. The PEPP aeroshell is my favorite real flying saucer. NASA's Planetary Entry Parachute Program (PEPP) aeroshell tested parachutes for the Voyager Mars landing program. (ref Wikipedia). It flew 4 times between 1966 and 1967 and is now displayed in the White Sands missile garden.

John documented the lengthy build on TRF with the completed product debuting on page 8 of the build thread. His PEPP flew on 12 canted C6-0 motors. The cant simulated the angled nozzles on the PEPP's 12 Falcon motors. He successfully ignited all 12 motors using Quest Q2G2 igniters. The -0 delay was used to eject the parachute immediately on burn through. That was a good thing as it weather cocked badly and, even with no ejection delay, the 'chute failed to open before landing. Luckily, aeroshells naturally aerobrake and the rocket survived to fly another day. Good show, JAL!

I'll refer you to the thread linked above, the web and, of course, the Dungeon (via the post tags). Here are three photos. The last, originally shown on the DARS club's newsletter, shows his PEPP at ejection.

There is a minor geomagnetic storm on NOW (yes, it's still daytime) from a  glancing blow from a coronal mass ejection. If the activity lasts until nightfall, then Tasmania and Southern New Zealand may see aurora. However, the light of the waxing Moon will make seeing aurora difficult, and you will need to be in a dark sky site to have a chance of seeing aurora. Look to the south, looking for unusual colours or breams of light.

A second coronal mass ejection will impact us sometime after midday on Sunday May 19, quoting the Australian IPS space weather:

SUBJ: IPS GEOMAGNETIC DISTURBANCE WARNING 13/07

ISSUED AT 0300UT/18 MAY 2013
BY THE AUSTRALIAN SPACE FORECAST CENTRE.

A full halo earthward directed CME was observed on 17-May. This may increase geomagnetic activity to Minor Storm levels, with periods at Major storm level from mid 19-May and into early 20-May.  The magnitude of the storm will depend on the orientation of the magnetic field in the CME.

INCREASED GEOMAGNETIC ACTIVITY EXPECTED DUE TO CORONAL MASS EJECTION FROM 19-20 MAY 2013 ___________________________________________________________
GEOMAGNETIC ACTIVITY FORECAST
19 May: Minor Storm
20 May: Active to Minor Storm

Aurora could potentially be seen as far north as southern Victoria and Northern New Zealand.

Again, aurora could occur at anytime during these storm periods, Moonlight will interfere until Moonset in the early hours of the 20th. Dark sky sites are best, and you should be looking south for unusual colours or beams of light.

As you can see, the issue starts with a sparky launch by Steve Jurvetson. There are a lot of articles in this issue. The lead article, by Peter Alway, is about Mexico's SCT-1. As you would expect, it includes one of his signature, dimensioned line drawings so you can make one of your own. And, at a tad less than 15" in diameter, a full-scale model is a possibility. There is coverage of the International Space University's student launch. The site: KSC's Launch Complex 39A. How awesome is that?!? I had never heard of this (or had forgotten), but it appears that the Northern Illinois Rocketry Association holds their own mini-convention, NIRCON. There is a project article on one rocketeer's quest to break 20k' on a K motor and another on the short life of a cow rocket (not the animal, just the spots). Worried about rocket safety? There's an nice article on the less discussed dangers. It includes things like flying EZ-ups, the weather, critters, etc. We also find out how to build a fin jig from you kid's LEGO set (or your own for that matter) and how to successfully fly Quest D5 motors. Finally, there is a review of a book on the atmosphere and one dad's perspective on being a BAR.

See the plan here.