| Astronomy News - February 2010 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Hello, and welcome to the monthly astronomy news page! Of course the main goal of the Austin Planetarium is fund raising to make possible building a planetarium in Austin. But we thought it would be nice to also start offering some astronomy information. After all, a planetarium is all about the fun of astronomy and astronomy education. This page offers some limited information about astronomical events for the Austin area this month. Sections that will always be included on this page are:
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An almanac, like the famous Farmers' Almanac, is an annual publication with all kinds of data on weather or on the calendar. Astronomical almanacs show data like the rise and set times of the Sun and Moon for a given date. With the advent of computers and the internet, we can now generate data on the fly and display them in a variety of useful formats. So, instead of data for an entire year, often an astronomical almanac shows data for one day. This is exactly what we're showing in the table to the right: The Austin Planetarium Alamanac! The data displayed is for right now and updates automatically. Of course the Sun and Moon rise and set times do not change during the course of a day, but the illumination changes continuously. That may surprise you, but in 28 days, the Moon goes from New (zero percent illumination), to Full (100%) and back to new again. So in 14 days, we cover 100%, or about 7% per day. Divided by 24 hours in the day, the illumination changes 0.30% each hour! Additionally we are also showing a picture of what the illumination actually looks like, and we're also displaying when the next Lunar event takes place. |
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Monthly Calendar 
We have a couple of great opportunities to see the ISS right here in Austin this month. There is no need to find a dark location, your yard or balcony will do just fine, as long as you can see the proper area of the sky. The ISS will appear as a very bright star and will cross the sky in about 3 minutes. If you have never seen our largest artificial neighbor, be sure to check it out one night or morning; you won't be disappointed. If you click on the dates you will get a pop-up with a small sky-chart: the path of the ISS is drawn as a line.
We have written before about the little-rover-that could, but amazingly, this is still going on. Of course we are referring to the rovers on Mars: Spirit and Opportunity. Originally they were designed to operate for a mere 90 days, but after six years they are still running around on the surface of Mars. So let's have an update. Spirit Spirit is still alive, but unfortunately, it is slowly "falling apart" so to speak. Several months ago it came stuck, and despite the best efforts of the NASA engineers, they have been unable to release the Spirit rover. So, now, the rover has been turned officially in a stationary science platform. Spirit's first task is to attempt to position itself so it will be able to survive the upcoming winter. But, as a science platform, it still will be able to do work, and send the results home to us. In principle the rover can be active like this for many months if not several years. But that is all contingent with repositioning the rover, because in winter, when sunlight is becoming less and at a lower angle, the current position of its solar panels would not generate enough electricity. So, keep your fingers crossed! Opportunity Opportunity is in a better condition, and is still driving around. As a matter of fact Opportunity is on its way to a crater called "Conception". This crater is relatively new, with estimates as "young" as only a 1000 years. But when we are speaking in terms of geology, 1000 years is indeed like the blink of an eye. Opportunity has traveled a whopping 12 miles in the 6 years on Mars, and the 'blog' of Opportunity would be many dozens of pages long if you would print it. You can take a look here on the almost daily updates. Of course the fact that these two rovers have been at it for so long has not gone unnoticed. Take a look at the following XKCD comic. Enjoy! 
On the day we write this, the anniversary of the Columbia disaster, there is another sad update to note, namely
that the Moon mission that NASA planned, has been pulled. So, at least for the foreseeable future, NASA will not be
returning to the Moon. In addition, the Shuttle fleet has only a couple of launches to go and then they will be retired.
That all sounds pretty sad, but potentially this can be a huge break as well. One of the things NASA is eyeing, is the possibility of renting space planes out of the private space industry. If that industry would receive that type of funding, we would be looking at a game changer indeed. One problem though: those conpanies aren't ready yet. So, I guess, we'll simply wait and see where this all ends. There is a potential of the Shuttle be given an extended life, but that will be expensive and difficult, because the construction of external fuel talks has already been halted and dismantled. Starting that back up would be very expensive. And the retired shuttles? Well maybe we need to display one right here in Austin. Now THAT would be cool... |
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This page is maintained and developed by Torvald Hessel and Steve Rung. |
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