Planets conjunction 09-Oct-2015

The planets are aligned very nicely this morning (09-Oct-2015) with the crescent old moon in the East. Venus and Jupiter (which starred earlier this year) together with Mars in the Leo constellation. You can almost draw a straight line between the planets as they are all lay on the same plane the ecliptic.

This month events are (I added illustrations for event with more than 2 celestial objects)
9-Oct-2015 - Venus Old Moon Mars and Jupiter
17-18/Oct - Jupiter and Mars less the 30' apart (less than a full moon width)
27-28/Oct - Jupiter Venus and Mars creates a close traingle
3/Nov - Venus and Mars together
7/Nov - Jupiter, the old Moon Venus and Mars




7-Nov-2015
Here is an illustration

The old Moon, Jupiter Mars and Venus 7-Nov-2015 simulation

27-Oct-2015
Here is an illustration

Jupiter Mars and Venus 27-Oct-2015 simulation

9-Oct-2015

Planets' conjunction 09/10/2015

This is an illustration of the View from Israel. US watchers will see the moon further down and closer to Mars.

The brightest planet is Venus and the second one is Jupiter. Mars is quite dim but you will able to see its red tint in the photos. Mercury rises as well but it is very low and dim so you need a dark place with no obstructions in order to see it.

Planets' conjunction 09/10/2015

 And here is a wider photo in which the entire Leo constellation is visible.  I used Canon 700d with 28-80 lens and was able to capture the entire LEO group (Leo-B Denebolla is at the bottom left)

 This photo is not related but I wanted to see if my knew wide Lens can capture the entire winter hexagon. It can! From Sirius through Rigel and to Castor and even Capella is there, but this is a matter for another post

Pluto and New Horizons

New horizons is finally arriving distant Pluto. After almost ten years the flyby is just hours away early on July 14th 2015. The spaceship will neither land on Pluto nor orbit it, but will pass in a mere distance of 11,000KM from its surface giving us unprecedented details and information about it.

I am updating this post frequently both with new photos and images but also with historic information. Don't miss the chance to find Pluto yourself looking at two original images from the Lowell observatory

14/7/2015 - Today is the day
Want to be super updated?
Check NASA-TV and @NASANewHorizons on twitter
As expected NASA released a very good photo just before the PR. While new data will arrive only in about 12 hours after the flyby you can have a small taste with thie fine photo

Pluto from 76000Km. NASA

Latest briefing from NASA (short 15-20 min Video, updated daily).

Recent update

13/7/2015 - Find Pluto yourself!!

This is Clyde Tombaugh who discovered Pluto in 1930 when he was 24 years old.

Clyde Tombaugh. Source: Lowell observatory

Finding Pluto was not easy and required to scan thousands of photographic plates to notice small differences. Although there were no airplanes or satellite it was a hard task. Today computers are doing it in seconds. Here are the two original photos. Clyde Tombaugh had a special instrument on which he could flipped two photos. and if he looked carefully enough he would see a difference. Most photos has no difference and even if they had, most of them were specks of dust. But eventually one was a new planet. You can try for yourself using the following two photos. Where is Pluto? (Click on the photo to see it bigger and easily change to the second photo. Try go back and forth between the two). Answers at the end of the article but do try to find yourself!

Where is Pluto 1 (Lowell Observatory)

Where is Pluto 2 (Lowell Observatory)

12/7/2015 - Why Pluto is not a planet anymore
The decision to move Pluto out of the planet's list is because several reasons:
1) Its orbits is very elongated  and inclined to the ecliptic
2) There are many small bodies like it in the Kuiper Belt
3) He is not big enough and is more to be considered as a binary system together with Charon
However the IAU (International Astronomical Union) had some hard time to define the exact rules in its 2006 conference. For further reading you can look at my review of Mike Brown's "How I killed Pluto" book.

13/7/2015 - Chasms on Charon

The newest photo of Charon is very interesting. A possible impact craters and a huge chasm relatively larger and deeper than the grand canyon.

כארון 11/7/2015 - 4 מיליון קילומטטר. נאסא

What happens during the flyby?

The following info-graphic says it all. Many measurements with all the instruments on board. Just before the flyby a short transmission of the latest photos to Earth, probably for the PR section, and then 4 to 6 intensive hours of work, and only at the end a transmission of just a fraction of the data is planned. Want to see more? Check the eyes on NASA site

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11/7/2015 

This 6Million KM photo of Pluto shows interesting feature. What is the Polygon?.

Pluto from 6 Million KM. NASA

Here is more or less the same photo but from 4 Million km.

Pluto from 4 Million KM. NASA

Pluto and Charon. NASA

Here is an example of how demanding is the communicating task. The entire NASA's Goldstone station is communicating with New-Horizons. check yourself in DSN now. It changes during the day, but that is a good example.

All antennas at Goldstone are pointing toward New-Horizons

9/7/2015 - The heart of Pluto

We love these photos. We can imagine things, and this shape is called the heart of Pluto. does it look like a heart? Not really, but our mind tends to look or familiar features so even this approximation is enough. The "Heart" length is about 2000km and is probably new layers of frost gases such as Methane. The dark feature left to the heart is called "The whale". 

Pluto's heart. NASA

Would you think that it is a hear if you saw this photo first? I am not sure

Pluto's heart. NASA

The superb space blog - Universe Today gave a list of all not required things in the spaceship. usually objects to give some emotional aspect to the mission. Here is the summary from UT site (with permission)

1. Some of the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh making him the human that reached the further away from earth,
2. A CD with 430,00 names of people who registered at NASA site. I am not one of them, but this has become a routine so check out and list your name in future missions.
3. Another CD with images of the entire mission's members.
4. A quarter from Florida. If ET will need to call home.
5. A flag of Maryland
6. Two flags of the USA
7. A small piece of Spaceship 1
8. A stamp from 1991 with the caption: Pluto - not researched yet

The spaceship itself looks like a big piano. Here are two photos from two different angles

New Horizons. NASA

New Horizons. NASA

So where is Pluto? You will find it much easier in these photos

Pluto - the moving dot. Lowell observatory

Pluto - the moving dot. Lowell observatory

 

The movement of the planets

What are planets? Planets are moving stars. While most of the stars are fixed in the sky rotating as a whole unit and never changes their location relative to each other, the planets are different and may appear in different places in the sky, not the whole sky but rather a thin band which is called the Zodiac. From very ancient times, people notice that there are 7 stars which move, and the Greeks called them planets (which mean wanderers). These ancient 7 "classical planets" were the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Earth of course was in the middle of the universe, still and not moving, and Uranus and Neptune too faint to see.
Today there is a formal definition of planets, There are exp-planets (Planets orbiting stars other than the sun), and many planets has planets of their own (moons). However, Planet is still moving in the sky and it is very easy to observe this movement with your own eye just like our ancient predecessor thousands of years ago.
To observer the movement of the planets you will need to identify them. It is not hard since planets are quite bright, being easily noticed in the sky (especially Venus and Jupiter), and also because they are not part of any constellations in the zodiac. If you have troubles try using software such as stellarium or applications for you iPhone or Androids mobile devices. In order to see the movement you will have to choose a reference start, a bright star which is close to the planet and you can measure the distance between them.
The planets which are closest to the sun, Mercury and Venus are moving fast. However Mercury is hard to find so leave it alone. Jupiter and Saturn moves slow so it takes at least two weeks between observations to see noticeable change.
The following photos present Jupiter and Mercury near one of their conjunctions. I used Jupiter as a reference star to demonstrate the movement of Mercury. Jupiter is also moving but in a period of 5 days its movement is negligible. Let's start with the photos. Jupiter is always the left dot and mercury is seen much below it.

Jupiter and Mercury day 1

After a day Merucry is still below Jupiter.

Jupiter and Mercury day2

After another day, Merucry and Jupiter are almost at the same height. The photo was taken in twillight so it may be hard to see both planets which appears as pale white dot. Try to enlrage the photo to see better.

Jupiter and Mercury day3

After another day Mercury is higher than Jupiter.

Jupiter and Mercury day4

And after another day, Mercury is much higher than Jupiter.

Jupiter and Mercury day 5

After another day Mercury and Jupiter were too far to take a photo together.