Jupiter Venus and Mercury

An interesting stellar conjunction is about to happen, starting from 20th of may until the 27th of May 2013. Jupiter, Venus and Mercury will be close to each other in the west, immediately after sunset.
Conjunction between two planets are very common and even between three planets are not rare. Conjunction are always a nice sight to watch and no equipment is needed. Look here for photos of a previous conjunction between Jupiter and Venus and try to think of a great photographs opportunists near your house.


This is what you will see on May 21st. Mercury is only 5 degrees above the horizon and Jupiter is 13. Jupiter is going down and down and Venus and Mercury up. Watch for several nights to see how the planets move.

Jupiter Venus and Mercury May 21st 2013

And here is a real photo from 22-May-2013. Jupiter is in the top, Venus and Mercury in the bottom.

Jupiter Venus and Mercury 22-May-2013

This is the planets position on May 26yh. Mercury is now the highest of the planets.

Jupiter Venus and Mercury May 21st 2013

Jupiter will continue to go down until it will disappear from the evening sky and become a morning start, while Venus is about to dominate them for the coming months.

Carnival of space #301

Welcome to another edition of Carnival of Space! And in this issue we have the following articles

From The Chandra telescope - There are just too many things over our heads so actions are required in order to avoid collisions in space

From Here,There and Everywhere we learn that not all lightnings are equal. Ever heard of "dark lightnings"?

From the Meridian journal we learn about new discussion of a manned Mars mission by 2030.

From Nextbigfuture - Ohio State University has performed some computational studies of molten salt reactors for NASA space applications.They looked at 4 MW thermal and 60 MW thermal reactors and flow dynamics and basic design. Molten salt reactors are an appealing technology for space because of their high temperature and low pressure operation, controllability, and high fuel burn up, among other features.

Also from Nextbigfuture - Northop Grumman completed a lunar lander study for Golden Spike.

And the last piece from Nextbigfuture- Spacex Grasshopper moved to New Mexico so it can fly higher and farther

Everyday Spacer - What Would You Do With a Million Dollars? Please give this some serious thought because it could happen to you! If it does, you will either be prepared to tell someone what you will do with the money or you will not. If it happens, who do you think will get that reward?

And another one from Everyday spacer: Around Town, End of May 2013 Around Town posts feature ‘quickie’ notes about activities that you can do locally or online. We want to let you know about as many different things out there that you can do – often, right where you are – and sometimes just for taking the time to go look. Remember… It’s all about action!

It is impossible to end this carnival of week with the expensive cover versions ever recorded. Chris Hadfield recorded a cover for the famous David Bowie hit: "Space Oddity". Words somewhat changes and there are not two voices, but that is a great tribute to summarize Chris's 5 months in the ISS. Read more about the recording on Universe Today (who neglected to send an article, but I add anyway and hope they don't mind).

My personal opinion is that the ISS is a highly costs project with limited benefits and that its part in NASA budget is too large. As much as I like the cool movies from there I do wonder, is there a purpose for that huge giant structure in space? It started over 20 years ago, and it seems that now we are facing the question: "What to do with it?". IMHO, funding more planetary missions will give more value of NASA budget". What do you think?

Partial Lunar eclipse 25-Apr-2013

Truth is, I had no expectations from yesterday partial lunar eclipse. It was as partial as partial can be and only 1.5% of the moon surface was in the earth full shade (Umbra). The rest was in the Penumbra and 1.5% was not even in any shade... Anyway, an eclipse is an eclipse and I was curious to see how such a partial eclipse will look like. It turned out to look very good even to the naked eye, the shaded moon was obvious even in the penumbral phase. After the eclipse I observed Saturn which was near the moon.
First a photo of my tools of the trade:

Astronomy - tools of the trade

Here are some photos from the eclipse

Partial lunar eclipse - Penumbarl phase

Partial lunar eclipse - Beginning

Partial lunar eclipse - getting better

Partial lunar eclipse - noticeable

Partial lunar eclipse - Greatest

Partial lunar eclipse - fading

Partial lunar eclipse - little bit less

Partial lunar eclipse - the end

And here is tiny photo of Saturn from the same evening

Double Iridium Flare

Iridium flares are bright flashes of light caused by sunlight reflected from any of the Iridium satellites. We wrote about how to see the ISS an another satellites before, but this time I will present a photo of a double Iridium flare. It seems odd since the satellites are spread evenly across the sky, so how come there will be two flares in less than 2 minutes in the exact same place? The answer is that one of the satellites is active and the other one is an old one or a backup one. This is the case with the pair Iridium14 and Iridium62 satellites who gave the double flash seen below.
The exposure is for 13 seconds. I couldn't take longer exposure because there were high clouds reflecting some remaining sun light (the photos were taken shortly after sunset). Seems I missed a few seconds from the second flare (the lower) I've cropped the relevant part and stacked two photos together. I hope you will like the result:

Double Iridium Flare