December 2009

As you know, besides February a month has either 30 or 31 days. This is no coincidence of course, because our Month is derived from the period of the Moon. Even the name "Month" comes from the word "Moon". The Moon cycle, the period of time from one full Moon to the next, is a little over 29 days: 29.53 to be exact. Another word for this period is the Lunar Month.

So, although the Lunar Month and the regular month are close, they do differ a bit, and this can cause some interesting little facts. If you look for example to this month's calendar you will see that we have a full Moon on December second, but also one on New Year's Eve! Yes, this month has two full moons. This is nothing truly spectacular about this, because every once in a while this happens, about every two and a half years. But, I guess, it was special enough to name this event, and the name is Blue Moon. Every once in a Blue Moon, you get a Blue Moon.

But, there is some confusion on the matter, because some time ago, Sky & Telescope printed an article with a completely different definition, and as it turns out, an improper definition. But taken the fact that this happened back in 1946, everyone had forgotten, until Star Date, the locally produced astronomy radio program, picked it up and broadcasted the wrong definition as well. There is even a wikipedia entry on this:

Sky and Telescope calendrical misinterpretation
The March 1946 Sky and Telescope article "Once in a Blue Moon" by James Hugh Pruett misinterpreted the 1937 Maine Farmer's Almanac. "Seven times in 19 years there were — and still are — 13 full moons in a year. This gives 11 months with one full moon each and one with two. This second in a month, so I interpret it, was called Blue Moon." Widespread adoption of the definition of a "blue moon" as the second full moon in a month followed its use on the popular radio program StarDate on January 31, 1980.

So, do we have a Blue Moon this month? Yess, and I am going to enjoy it, because the next one won't be until 2015.
Happy New Year every one!

Special Event

Wow, what a year 2009 has been for the Austin Planetarium! We raised more money then all other years combined. We went from one employee to three full time and two part-time. We expanded the board by two, and last board meeting installed a board comittee, which has as goal to search and select future board members, because we will be expanding further over the coming year. We also moved offices, from the donated office by NAKA, we moved inbto two offices which are donated by the Center of Space Research of UT Austin. And a new website. And incredible building designs by DAVIS architects. And more advisors, and and...

A lot of this has been happening behind the scenes of course, because not all of them are terribly interesting to our readers, but when I look at the accumulated results, I can say that 2009 waqs a GREAT year for us, even in this economy. But, bigger and better things are to come of course! And this should happen, because we want to build a planetarium and science museum afteral.

So, what are our goals? Well, let me share a wish list with you. One of the things we have been talking about for a long time is to overhaul this astro news page. And yes, that is still on the books, and it will happen for sure in 2010. Additionally, in a week or so of writing this we will turn on our web-store. We fixed all the bugs, and we're ready to create an interesting store for you will all kinds of quality items either related to astronomy, or to the Austin Planetarium. We will also add pages specifically for (science) teachers, and add some Spanish content as well.

But that is the small stuff. The truly *BIG* work is going to be working on securing a location where we will build the Austin Planetarium. Needless to say, when we finally have a "flag in the ground" so to speak, we will be a huge step further. On the same level of achievement would be the announcement of a primary donor, and with that the name of the facility. And I can tell you that things are looking very promising right now.

So, please keep telling other folks in and around Austin about our project, sign up for our news letter, and ask others to do the same. Soon, we will have new bumper stickers that I hope will be seen all around town, because don't you agree it is about time that Austin has a planetarium? We sure think so! Let's make 2010 the year of the Austin Planetarium!

October 2009

As you may have seen from our front page, we are actively rewriting the Austin Planetarium website. (Click image on the right for a larger preview) The current web design is actually 99% the old website of more than a year ago, with the new logo worked in and an updated menu but the content has not changed. The new website will have a much expanded scope in content, and detail much more precisely the Austin Planetarium project. For example, we will be talking in much more detail what kind of Science Museum we're envisioning or what we mean by "Technology Center".

You may wonder if the Astro News will be changing as well. The answer is yes, but not right away. The first focus for the web rewrite is the main content of the site, and we're leaving the Astro News pretty much as it is right now. However, we do have BIG plans for the Astro News. One common complaint is that it is very difficult to find older articles. The Astro News has been written since August 2004, which means we have a total of more than a hundred articles! Another 'problem' is that this page has become rather long to put all in one page. We added the ISS flyover data as well as the Almanac, and things have become rather crowded.

Additionally, there are several more things we want to add to the site. We will add an astronomy dictionary, live pictures of the Sun, links to other astronomy websites like the astronomy picture of the day, etc. So, directly after we go live with the new website, we will begin overhauling your trusted Astro News site. And we love to hear from you! If you have some great ideas of what we should be adding to this site, please feel free to use the form below to contact us.

The new website will be going live sometime in October. We will send out an email to our newsletter subscribers when that happens. You can sign up for our newsletter by using the link at the bottom of any page on this website.

Special Event

The LCROSS, which stands for Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite, is scheduled to impact at the South Pole of the Moon on October 9th. LCROSS launched on June 18th this year along with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and its mission is to search for water at the lunar poles. You may have heard recently on the news that a new form of water was in fact found on the Moon. It seems to exist as a thin film all over the dust layer that blankets the Moon. LCROSS will be looking mainly to see if water exists in craters that are permanently shadowed.

LCROSS is actually two pieces. The first piece will separate from the second some time before impact. The first piece will stay on its collision course with the Moon, while the second piece changes its trajectory enough to avoid impacting at the same time as the first. After impact NASA scientists expect a large plume of lunar dust to be ejected upward. The second piece will fly through that dust cloud and use instruments on board to determine if water is present in the dust. After it sends its findings back to Earth, the second piece will make its own impact on the Moon, creating another dust plume. Scientists expect to be able to see these dust plumes from Earth and space-based telescopes as well.

Click here to go to the LCROSS mission home page maintained by NASA.
September 2009 As you may have seen from our front page, we are actively rewriting the Austin Planetarium website. (Click image on the right for a larger preview) The current web design is actually 99% the old website of more than a year ago, with the new logo worked in and an updated menu but the content has not changed. The new website will have a much expanded scope in content, and detail much more precisely the Austin Planetarium project. For example, we will be talking in much more detail what kind of Science Museum we're envisioning or what we mean by "Technology Center".

You may wonder if the Astro News will be changing as well. The answer is yes, but not right away. The first focus for the web rewrite is the main content of the site, and we're leaving the Astro News pretty much as it is right now. However, we do have BIG plans for the Astro News. One common complaint is that it is very difficult to find older articles. The Astro News has been written since August 2004, which means we have a total of more than a hundred articles! Another 'problem' is that this page has become rather long to put all in one page. We added the ISS flyover data as well as the Almanac, and things have become rather crowded.

Additionally, there are several things we want to add to the site. We want to add an astronomy dictionary, live pictures of the Sun, links to other astronomy websites like the daily astronomy picture of the day, etc etc. So, directly after we are going live with the new website, we will be starting overhauling your trusted Astro News site. And we love to hear from you! If you have some great ideas of what we should be adding to this site, please feel free to use the form below to contact us.

August 2009

Last month we talked about the new LRO orbiter that is currently circling our Moon, and snapping pictures with greater resolution than ever. Some of the images we were all waiting for, were the images of the Apollo landing sites. The resolution of the camera places the Apollo artifacts easily in range, and perhaps this is a way of convincing some people that we really did visit and walked on our celestial neighbor.

Well, the first pictures are in and they are, without a doubt, quite stunning. Not only can we see artifacts like landers and such, but even tracks in the lunar surface! We have placed some of the images below; please click them to visit the official LRO site to see more.

     

Special Event

You may not have noticed unless you have been paying close attention to the brightness numbers in the table above this article on the International Space Station (ISS). In that case you may have noticed that the ISS has become a lot brighter since we started reporting on the station's visibility for Austin. Another thing you may have noticed is that it looks like that the station is much more often visible then it used to be. well, one is true, and the other we (the authors of this column) are to blame.

Let's start with the brightness of the station. The ISS has indeed become significantly brighter, simply because the station has expanded so much over the years. We started reporting on the ISS sightings in September of 2006. The brightest the station ever became in 2006 was a magnitude of -0.9 on the 17th of November. Remember, magnitude is a little bit of a strange scale, because the smaller the magnitude, the brighter the object. A good analogy is winning first prize in a contest. The first prize is better then second or third, so again, the smaller number the better the achievement. The same holds true for magnitude: the smaller the number, the brighter the object. To put the magnitude for the space station better into perspective, Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, shines at a magnitude of -1.4, and thus was brighter then the ISS in those days, because -1.4 is smaller then -0.9. If we want to express this in brightness, Sirius was about one and a half times as bright, because each step in magnitude is about 2.5 as bright. Two magnitude differences would be 2.5 * 2.5 = 6.25 as bright.

But if we look at the table above, the brightest viewing we have for the ISS this month is a whopping -2.7, and last month the station was shining at -3.3. So since November 2006 the station has become more then seven times as bright! Compared to Sirius, the ISS can be more then five times as bright. Quite a difference indeed!

As stated, this is purely because the station has grown so much. Of course we have been adding modules to the station, but most importantly we installed the full solar panels to generate the power that the station needs, and these solar panels are HUGE. Take a look at the amazing image below. This was taken through a telescope last July, right at the moment when the ISS crossed in front of the face of the Sun. You can see indeed how large the solar panels are, and if you look carefully you can even see the Space Shuttle attached to the station.

Photo by Theirry Legault

Then left to explain is why it looks like that the station seems to be more often visible. As stated, that is completely our doing. We decided that when we started to report on the visibility of the Space Station, to only report the nice and bright ones, because we did not want to disappoint our readers with very poor or short viewings. For this reason we decided to only list the viewings of magnitude zero or brighter. Indeed they used to be pretty rare, but now because the station is so much brighter most viewings meet our criteria. Mystery solved!

July 2009

Even to this day, there are people that firmly believe we never visited the Moon. They claim that the entire Moon landing was faked, and that it was all staged somewhere in a Hollywood studio. This is commonly reffered to as the "Moon Hoax", and I am in the good company of the Bad Astronomer Phil Plait if I state that I am "Skeptical of Denialism"

Now, of course, some people will never be convinced of the truth no matter how much evidence is staring at them. There are still people that believe the Earth is flat, and that the Sun revolves around the Sun and not vice versa! But we do have a great opportunity to settle this issue, and maybe convince a denier or two.

Late last June, a new space craft arrived in orbit around the Moon. This is a mission launced by NASA and its name is LRO, which is short for the Lunar Reconneaissance Orbiter. This craft will do a lot of cool and spectular things (like crashing things into the Moon), but the main thing we want to talk about here is the camera that is on board, specifically the Narrow Angle Camera (NAC). This camera will be able to take very detailed images of the Moon. As a matter of fact the images will be so detailed, objects as small as half a meter (about 18 inches) can be spotted. This means that we should be able to see materials left behind by the Apollo Astronauts! Parts of the landers should easily be visible, as well as several Lunar rovers. And although this month is July, and we celebrate the founding of our nation on the 4th, there is a disappointment. The flag placed on the Moon by the astronauts, is too small to be seen.

For more information on:
  The Moon Hoax
  NASA, LRO Home page

Special Event

Image courtesy NASA

This month marks the 40th anniversary of Buzz Aldrin’s and Neil Armstrong’s historic first steps on the Moon. After a heated space race with the Soviets, America finally achieved the dream to put a man on the Moon. Of course we all know the story by heart, but since Apollo 17, we have not put any more people on our celestial neighbor.

Even though NASA (or any other space agency) has not put any more people on the Lunar surface, we have sent a lot of spacecraft to the Moon for research purposes. With the imminent retirement of the Shuttle fleet, there is talk once again about sending people to the Moon. This time the idea is building a permanent presence.

The idea behind a Lunar base would be that the Moon has a much lower gravity, so it is much easier to launch something from the Moon then it is to launch from Earth. For example, if we want to build a space ship capable of flying people and cargo to Mars, we would save an enormous amount of energy, if we can build and launch this from the Moon.

Maybe in the next decade or two, we will finally reach the times that have been so long predicted in Science Fiction books and movies alike. Maybe one day, when I go on vacation I have the choice between Hawaii, Europe, or the Moon. I know what I would choose!