The other day while at the gym, the TV was showing CNN. I couldn’t see the screen clearly, but the segment was about unusual clouds in New York… and how some people saw Michael Jackson’s face in them. At the time I thought the segment was serious, but in fact it was Jeanne Moos doing her gag schtick, as you can see on You Tube:

If you’re wondering about the actual MJ shot, here you go:

That’s a screen grab from the video. I suppose it looks a bit like Jackson, though, like most examples of faces in the clouds, it looks more like Lou Ferrigno. Or maybe a zombie. Take your pick.

Incidentally, the clouds in question here are called mammatus, and are actually quite common here in Colorado, and I’ve taken a lot of pictures of them, like the one shown here. I remember the first time I ever saw mammatus clouds; I was in Maryland and the remnants of a hurricane had swept through. The clouds were like little bulbs hanging down, and I had never seen anything like it before… so I’m not surprised that people freaked out a little.

But I wonder, just how many people really did think this was a sign of some sort?

Sham-on!

Tip o’ the sequined fedora to Skeptical Teacher.

LRO first light image from the Sea of Clouds. Larger verison below. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State University

Let me try this again!  I originally had this for yesterday, however it seemed to disappear, don’t know what happened.  It was there really! Oh well.

So the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter cameras were turned on and sent the first images back from the moon.  The area is known as the Mare Nubium (Sea of Clouds).

There are a couple images, including the one above, you can see larger versions by clicking here for the one above and here for the other.

Some of the lunar features look exaggerated, this is due to the shadows as the images were taken near the terminator between day and night on the surface.  Each of the images shows an area of 4,524 feet wide and features as small as just under 10 feet can be discerned.

To see even more from the LRO, go to the LRO page at NASA.

I can rant and rail against homeopathy, how it’s useless, how it’s nothing more than water, how there is no real methodology or mechanics behind it, how it’s been shown over and over not to have any efficacy over the placebo effect…

… but sometimes simple mockery is the best way to sway people’s hearts.

Tip o’ the 30C vial to Bruce hood at SuperSense.

Planck is equipped with a passive cooling system that brings its temperature down to about -230°C by radiating heat into space. Three active coolers take over from there, and bring the temperature down further to an amazing low of -273.05°C, only 0.1°C above absolute zero - the coldest temperature theoretically possible in our Universe.

A study to be published by an international team of scientists in the July 2 edition of Science Express describes 16 pulsars discovered by Fermi based on their pulsed emissions of high-energy gamma rays. A pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star, the dense core left behind after a supernova explosion. Most of the 1,800 known pulsars were found through their periodic radio emissions.

Mark Lemmon, a professor of atmospheric sciences who has been involved with Mars missions for years, says last year's Phoenix Mars Lander mission keeps revealing secrets about the planet, answering some questions but raising other big ones. He is one of several authors detailing the Phoenix discoveries.

Few scientific topics capture people's imaginations as well as black holes. The mere mention is often enough to interest and captivate an audience. But how much do scientists actually know about these astronomical anomalies? How are they related to quasars, x-rays, and galaxies? And of course, if they swallow light, how can we see them? This article will help put many pieces of the puzzle together, resulting in a clear image explaining all about the nature of black holes.

The International Space Station (ISS) is about to make a remarkable series of flybys over the United States. Beginning this 4th of July weekend, the station will appear once, twice, and sometimes three times a day for many days in a row.

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Saturn has been a popular celestial body to photograph among The Imaging Source astronomy cameras’ users, and we have indeed seen many remarkable pictures of that planet here. Alan Friedman recently sent us one of his Saturn images which can be called a master piece.

In this picture, Alan marked three of Saturn’s satellites, namely Dione, Tethys, and Rhea.

More info on this picture is available at

http://www.avertedimagination.com/img_pages/saturn20090415.html

Thank you Alan!

What must aliens think of us when they pick up our TV signals?

Abstruse Goose decided to figure it out:

I wonder what Lrrr from Omicron Persei 8 would say?

Tip o’ the brain slug to David Woods.

[Update: Ken Bowley on Facebook clued me in that the LRO camera has a page where you can see the raw images, and zoom in — WAY in — on the image strips. They have 73 cm resolution, folks. Yikes.]

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has returned its first images from the Moon! Woohoo!

Check. It. Out!

Whoaaaa.

This image, taken in the Mare Nubium region of the Moon, shows a heavily cratered area. The scale here is amazing: the whole image is 1400 meters across, or just under a mile. That’s like looking out your airplane window… if you were over the frakking Moon! Even in this compressed image (click to embiggen) features just a few meters across are distinguishable. See that perfectly circular crater just to the right and a tad below the middle of the picture? It’s about 60 meters across, just a bit bigger than two tennis courts end-to-end. It would easily fit in a football stadium.

Holy Haleakala.

It’s a little difficult to interpret the image; for example, near the bottom in the middle I thought for a moment I saw a crater chain. I don’t think that’s real; our eyes tend to pick out linear features even when they aren’t there. Too bad, because that would be cool; crater chains form when an asteroid or comet breaks up before it hits, and we do see them on pretty much every cratered object in the solar system. You can also get them near a larger impact, when junk ejected from the crater splashes out and lands nearby.

I guarantee we’ll see lots of such chains as LRO snaps more pictures. Awesome.

Check this one too:

This image has the same scale as the other, and shows a region of low hummocks undulating across the Moon. I don’t have much to say scientifically about this particular picture, but I will say that it is eerily beautiful, and completely enthralling. I wouldn’t mind having that framed over my desk!

So there you go, folks. If you want to explore the Moon, all you have to do is sit back and wait for the images to roll in. And remember: when it settles into its final orbit, the pictures LRO takes will have a resolution of 0.5 meters, or 18 inches!

Wow. I cannot wait to see more.

P.S. If you liked this article, you might like this one as well where I dissect an image of the Moon taken from the space station.

Peter H. Smith, a scientist with the UA Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and the mission's principal investigator, is the first author of "H2O at the Phoenix Landing Site" in Science. There are 35 co-authors from six countries on the paper. Smith and his group of scientists and students used the lander to investigate the role of water and ice on Mars, as well as the changing weather patterns.

As the moon rotates beneath LRO, LROC gradually will build up photographic maps of the lunar surface.

According to Discovery News, NASA has a "Plan B" program in case something happens with the Constellation program. It’s an alternative way to get back to the Moon, and they made a video for it.

There are some obvious advantages with taking Shuttle parts and using them in a new program. For one, the technology already exists and has been tested in well over 100 launches. For another, the machinery and manpower already exist as well, which would save billions of dollars in new development and training.

But I’m a little nervous seeing things like the same external tank being used that sheds foam on launch (in the video, the hardware mounted on the ET is protected by a fairing, but still, that doesn’t thrill me), and is prone to hydrogen vent leaks, like the leak that has delayed Endeavour’s launch for weeks. Second, the solid rocket boosters as they exist now are not the best tech; they are expensive and cost a lot to refurbish.

Now, it’s easy for me to poopoo this; it’s always easier to cast stones after the fact. Maybe this is a better idea than Constellation, and maybe not. I’ve never liked the Shuttle Orbiters; they are hugely overbuilt and extremely expensive. They are exquisite and amazing and all that, but from a cost/benefit point of view they’re a colossal waste of money. We need cheaper access to space! So not having an Orbiter on this Plan B Moonship is a good start.

I’ll be honest: I have not been able to follow all the intrigue going on with Constellation right now because it’s complex and there are machinations afoot that are complicated. But I find it extremely odd that — with only a handful of Shuttle launches left before an at least four year gap in being able to get people into space — NASA is still presenting plans for a Shuttle substitute. Seriously, NASA: this should’ve been in the bag five years ago. Ten. Then we wouldn’t be facing a lengthy gap where we have to rely on foreign partners to get to space, and domestic companies that, while their futures are very bright, do not have the capacity to launch people into space and won’t for several years.

Still, I’d rather have alternatives discussed now rather than build an expensive and untested rocket that might prove to be another ISS or Shuttle program: bloated and unable to do most of what was initially promised.

And let me say that this very fact ticks me off. I want access to space, and I don’t want a lot of corporate maneuvering and political sideshowing. But with hundreds of billions of dollars at stake and a government agency in charge, it’s what we get.

I still support a return to the Moon… if done correctly. But it’s things like this that make me wonder if this whole thing is a good idea on paper, but an impossibility in reality.

Tonight on Showtime, Penn & Teller take on astrology! You can take a peek at the show online here (with the bad words edited out), or you can watch the show at 10:00 p.m. Eastern time.

I happen to know that a certain Beloved Internet Personality who blogs about astronomy and Doctor Who is on the show briefly as well. Well, it’s probably a good episode anyway, so you should order Showtime and watch it, and buy the DVDs as well.

Bonus ironic pun: the episode is directed by Star Price. Siriusly.

So, if you are totally convinced that astrology actually works, despite an entire Universe of evidence stomping on your face telling you you’re wrong, then you can give P&T a piece of your mind personally, since they’ll be at TAM 7. You can yell at them then… but be prepared to have Penn enthusiastically join that Universe of evidence.

And don’t forget:

A lot of books are coming out right now to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11. One of the best, called Voices from the Moon, is by my friends Andy Chaikin and Victoria Kohl.

Andy is familiar to Apollonuts: he wrote A Man on the Moon, considered by many (including me) to be the bible of Apollo, and he knows all the Apollo astronauts and their stories. I have a copy of Voices, and it’s a GORGEOUS book, loaded with extremely high-quality images of the missions, punctuated with wonderful stories from the astronauts themselves (hence the title).

The Hive Overmind has put up a gallery of beautiful images from the book, just to give you a taste of what’s there. If you’re looking for a gift for yourself or the space enthusiast in your life, this is the one to get.

• tomorrow will be muddy but hopefully road will dry out and we'll start flying serious rockets - Sat/Sun should be huge / amazing #ldrs28
• first day of LDRS 28 = mud & chaos - most fliers can't get to field - only ~5 rockets flew before noon - rained again this afternoon #ldrs28

On Sol 1948 (June 26, 2009), the IDD placed the Mössbauer (MB) spectrometer on the target called "Cyclops_Eye_3" for a multi-sol integration. On Sol 1952 (June 30, 2009), the rock abrasion tool (RAT) was calibrated. Then, a RAT grind-scan was performed on a surface target in preparation for brushing that target.

• Martian Zambonis?
  This image of Mars' south polar area shows an amazing series of elliptical rings. Could these have been made by a Zamboni on Mars driving around and around on the ice? No, of course not! But the answer in some ways more fun.
• Gullies on Southwest Slope of Ring Trough in Noachis Terra
  Geologically young gullies are a prime target for the HiRISE camera. Gullies are located in a variety of settings and are found all over Mars.
• Layering and Faulting in Melas Chasma Layered Deposits
• Light and Intermediate Toned Material Near Morava Valles
• Light Toned Rugged Intercrater Area in Viking Images 637A36 and 635A94
• Faulting in South Polar Layered Deposits

French astronomy amateur , Laurent Langelez, took this ISS image on 28.96.09.

We have translated his email into English as below:

ISS passed above at 4:26 with magnitude of 3.4.

Kits: Barlow x 1.6 &  DMK 31AU03.AS
UV-IR Filters
254 mm Telescope and rear guide 80 mm

Gain of camera is set to 550, and exposure time is 1/1250s.

Processed 13 images to get this picture and applied 200% zoom with Registax5

Due to appear tomorrow in the journal Nature, the discovery has been made by an international team of researchers working with XMM-Newton data, led by Sean Farrell from the Centre d'Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements, now based at the University of Leicester.

Workers removing the Ground Umbilical Carrier Plate on the shuttle external fuel tank. Image credit: NASA/Jack Pfaller

The hydrogen leak keeping the shuttle Endeavour  and STS-127  on the ground was determined to be a misalignment in a couple of plates on the External tank.  On June 24, the plates were removed and the problems were thought to be corrected.  The only way to be sure is to refill the External tank.  I had a couple of comments a while back wondering why the leaks could not be found before, and the answer has to do with the fact the tank has to be nearly full inorder for the vent valve to cycle.

This morning the “fix” was put to the test and by all accounts everything looks good.  While more details will be forthcoming the early press release is very positive.  Looks like STS-127 is ready to fly!

Here’s the press release:

Space shuttle Endeavour’s tanking test officially began at 6:52 a.m. EDT at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. No abnormal gaseous hydrogen leaks were detected during the test, which involved filling Endeavour’s external fuel tank with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen just as it is on launch day.

At about 9 a.m., the liquid hydrogen tank was 98 percent full and the “topping” mode began. A vent valve at the top of the hydrogen tank began cycling, as planned, to disperse excess gaseous Hydrogen through a vent system that carries it safely away from the launch pad. At that point during two June launch attempts, a gaseous hydrogen leak was detected outside the Ground Umbilical Carrier Plate, or GUCP, where the vent line is attached.

NASA Television will air a news conference at 1 p.m. with Space Shuttle Program Launch Integration Manager Mike Moses and STS-127 Launch Director Pete Nickolenko. Watch it live at http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

It has been a while since we received deep sky images last time. Ralph Ford, based in Redondo Beach, CA, took the following Messier astronomical objects  with his DMK 21AU04.AS astronomy camera and sent them to us last month.

Messier 13

Messier 57

I took the enclosed images with a DMK 21AU04.AS camera mounted to a 16″ F/46 telescope.  The images were stacked and processed with RegiStax, each frame being a 4 second exposure.  While the field of view is only 6.5 X 4.9 seconds, the large aperture produces bright images with short exposures.

Thank you Ralph for the nice pictures and the  info on them!

Ulysses, the joint ESA/NASA solar orbiter mission, finally ended yesterday when ground controllers sent commands to shut down the satellite's communications. The event marks the conclusion of one of the longest and most successful space missions ever conducted.

Named the Spitzer Adaptation of the Red-sequence Cluster Survey, "SpARCS" detects galaxy clusters using deep ground-based optical observations from the CTIO 4m and CFHT 3.6m telescopes, combined with Spitzer Space Telescope infrared observations.

The Shadow of Mimas shows up against the mother planet (Saturn). Click for a bit larger version. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Here’s a nice “natural” color image of Saturn and the shadow of the moon Mimas.

I had a dickens of a time finding Mimas (below the dark band and just a bit right of center). The screen on this laptop is pretty cruddy and didn’t help matters.

You have to look pretty close to see the faint rings too; their shadow however shows up great.

Anybody know a good way of cleaning the screen without scratching it?

Gotta run, thunderstorms are about to hit.

From the Cassini website:

The shadow of the moon Mimas has just slipped off Saturn’s rings and onto the planet in this Cassini spacecraft image.

The shadow is visible as a short dash below the rings’ shadows on the planet. At this exposure setting, the rings are too dim to be seen easily. As Saturn approaches its August 2009 equinox, the planet’s moons cast shadows onto the rings. To learn more about this special time and to see a movie of a moon’s shadow moving across the rings, see Moon Shadow in Motion.

This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 61 degrees above the ringplane. Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on April 30, 2009 at a distance of approximately 1.4 million kilometers (870,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 80 kilometers (50 miles) per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

The top mosaic (A) is an enhanced-color view of the planet created from images taken through the WAC's eleven color filters during MESSENGER's first and second flybys of Mercury. White areas are those that MESSENGER has not yet observed. The bottom half of this image (B) is a map of major terrain types on Mercury.

The research, funded by the UK's Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, is good news in our quest for life on Mars, as the shorter the time period since the last warm weather on the planet, the better the chance that any organisms that may have lived in warmer times are still alive under the planet's surface.