Category Archives: Planet

Transit of Mercury CHEOPS and Exoplanets

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Drawing Yes, indeed I felt lucky to see the transit of mercury on November 11th. Black clouds full of heavy rain were in constant supply all morning. My PST telescope and drawing materials were in and out in the hope of a break in the weather. It was my intention to use the drawing to help explain the transit of Mercury, CHEOPS and Exoplanets. As you can see from the drawing above (which is not rotated) I got my first view of the tiny planet at 12:51. I sketched one black dot on top of my previously drawn solar disc. Then the rain bucketed down like rods with a big wind attached. Next chance came at 13:33 a second black dot added to the effort. Then it rained cats and dogs till 14:26 when my final opportunity gave me a third mercury dot to add to the sketch.  Most Irish observers had a similar story and images of this unique … Continue reading →

‘Hot Jupiter’ Exoplanet Found with 18-Hour Orbit

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Astronomers have found an exoplanet that orbits its host star every 18 hours – a new record! Exoplanet NGTS-10 b has twice the mass of Jupiter, and orbits so close to its class K6V orange dwarf host star that the star’s gravity will flatten the planet into an oblate spheroid. The planet is classified as a “Hot Jupiter” – with the star-facing side of the planet being incandescently bright! Using data from the announcement paper on arXiv.org and The Extrasolar Planet Encyclopaedia, I added the star and exoplanet into SpaceEngine and took some screenshots; I actually spent quite a bit of time fooling around in this system… I took some artistic liberty with the comet-like tail and wide auroras, but I figured being cooked by the star’s heat, and blasted by the star’s stellar wind will cause the planet’s atmosphere to expand WAY out and be blown away, so why not?! Over 4000 exoplanets have been confirmed as of this … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Martian Sunrise

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This entry is part 84 of 190 in the series Across the Universe

This column first ran in The Tablet in August, 2008; we first ran it here in 2016 A friend has a home on the western shore of Lake Huron, with a glorious view of the lake from her living room window. She tells how once she showed the sunrise over the lake through that window to her visiting four year old grandson. The boy took in the colorful display with rapt amazement. The next morning, she heard a shout from the living room. “Come quick, grandma!” cried the little boy. “It’s doing it again!” The [2008] discovery by the Phoenix spacecraft of ice in the Martian soil had all the inevitability of the sun rising yet again. But the scientists who found it were just as thrilled as that four year old boy. For thirty [now going on 40!] years we’ve known there must have been water on Mars. The spacecraft that orbited the planet in the 1970s sent back images … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: New Worlds

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This entry is part 27 of 190 in the series Across the Universe

First published in The Tablet in June, 2007; we published it here in 2015 In early 2007, a team lead by Stéphane Udry of the Geneva Observatory announced the discovery around the red dwarf star Gliese 581 of a planet that is only eight times the mass of Earth and about 50 per cent bigger in radius. Orbiting close to its sun, its year is less than two weeks long; but because that star is so small and dim compared to ours, temperatures on the planet should range between zero and 40 degrees Celsius (about 30 to 100 Fahrenheit). Room temperature. Water should be liquid there, perhaps covering its surface with oceans ripe for life. At least, I hope it’s covered in oceans. Swimming would be easier than walking on a planet where the gravity is three and a half times that of Earth. The star is only 20 light years away from us; robot spaceships in the next 100 years … Continue reading →

Space Camp Joy

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Children spinning their little handmade Saturn models with joy !! At Easter  I ran a small space camp for children. It was over three mornings in Louisburgh Co Mayo.The venue was Books at One, the local community bookshop.  We packed a lot of things into the three mornings, in fact, I had too much planned. Better too much than too little in my experience. Space Camp joy abounded ! Day 1 Space Camp We built paper rockets that we blew into space (in the room). I have a  box of interesting forever goodies. These are intended to be made into something at some time. In the box, I found some triangular stickers. These had rocket holograms on them !! Perfect for rocket fins, the kids agreed and they loved them. The stickers came from Recreate Ireland which encourages creativity through reuse. We checked out the news on The Planetary Society’s Light Sail 2 project. New information for  the children so … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: One Fix Leads to Another

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This entry is part 21 of 190 in the series Across the Universe

First published in The Tablet in February, 2007; we first ran it here in 2016. I’ve moved it to March, this year, to fit the Lenten season. With my colleague Dan Britt from the University of Central Florida, for several years I’ve been measuring the densities and porosities of meteorites. The densities of different meteorite classes can be compared with their parent asteroids, to see how loosely packed they are; and the porosity of these rocks is an indication of how thoroughly their fabric has been cracked by the shock of the impacts that shattered those parent bodies. We started with the collection I curate at the Vatican; but there are many meteorite types that are underrepresented there. When I came to New York [in 2007] for a year’s sabbatical at Fordham University, I had hoped to extend our data by looking at the nearby American Museum of Natural History’s extensive collection. But things got off to a slow start. … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Europa

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This entry is part 58 of 190 in the series Across the Universe

This column first ran in The Tablet in February, 2009; we ran it here for the first time in 2016. Under the dim light of a distant sun, a cold white ball smaller than our Moon orbits a huge gas planet, garishly striped with colored clouds. Galileo first saw this jovian moon – to be named “Europa” by his rival, Simon Marius – on January 7, 1610. In 1805, Laplace had worked out Europa’s mass (using an elaborate theory of the moons’ orbits), and other 19th century astronomers timed the way the Jupiter moons shadowed each other to estimate their sizes. By the end of that century clever instruments allowed Pickering to estimate its brightness. All the information was there. From these data, any schoolchild could have calculated that Europa was less dense than rock, more dense than ice, and brilliantly white. But no one actually put all that information together until 1908, when Pickering finally noted the low density and … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: The best way to travel

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This entry is part 19 of 190 in the series Across the Universe

First published in The Tablet in January, 2007; we first ran it here in 2015.  Dark and dreary, January is a time to take off to new and exotic climes; or at least, to daydream about such trips. My own January voyage was a visit to my old hometown, snow-dusted Detroit, to attend a science fiction convention. But a panel discussion at that meeting, “Travel Destinations of the Solar System,” challenged us to imagine really exotic localities. Where among the planets would we love to go? And what it would be like to be standing there, in person? Panelist Bill Higgins, a radiation physicist at Fermi Lab in Chicago [and occasional blogger here at The Catholic Astronomer!], regularly presents spaceflight results as a NASA “Solar System Ambassador” at events like this. He described how Pluto and its moon Charon orbit each other while locked in a spin state that keeps each body always facing the other. “What if we could … Continue reading →

Hunting for Saffordites East of Mt. Graham and the Vatican Telescope. pt. 2

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This entry is part of 2 in the series Hunting for Saffordites

In my previous post, I discussed tektites – a byproduct of asteroid impacts, and obsidian, which can sometimes look like tektites. Finally, to my trips to the location of the Saffordites. The area where I have hunted is east of Mt Graham and southeast of the city of Safford in southeast Arizona, several hours east of Tucson. It is a fairly flat area and the known area where Saffordites have been found covers many square miles, maybe tens or hundreds of square miles. Since these are many million-year-old weathered volcanic rocks, they may have been transported to their present location, so their source is unknown. As it turns out, this location is on my way to observing at the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope on 10,000-foot Mt. Graham, but that is another story. Above are three pictures taken just before we started looking for Saffordites. On the left is me with Twink Monrad, a closeup of snow on Mt. Graham, and a view of one … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Stardust messages

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This entry is part 18 of 190 in the series Across the Universe

First published in The Tablet in January, 2006; we ran it here in 2015. Thirty [now more than 40!] years ago, when I was a doctoral student at the University of Arizona, our campus in Tucson lay beneath the landing path of the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base and every few minutes our planetary science classes would be interrupted by the roar of a jet fighter. But an occasional plane would cross overhead with a different sound… an odd, almost quiet whine. Looking up you’d see the large black cruciform, long straight wings and a thin fuselage, of a U-2 spy plane. For twenty years they’d flown photography missions over Soviet Russia and other cold war hotspots. But one U-2 was different. Rather than spooky black, it was painted pure white. And instead of air force emblems, it flew NASA insignia. A visitor to our Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, Don Brownlee from the University of Washington, explained those flights to us. … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Desert or a dessert?

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This entry is part 17 of 190 in the series Across the Universe

First published in The Tablet in January, 2005, just after the Huygens probe landed on Saturn’s moon Titan. We ran it again here on January, 2015. This text is based on what I submitted, which was edited for length when it was printed.   The most remarkable thing about the images from Saturn’s moon, Titan, which ESA’s Huygens probe has just sent us, is how “familiar” they look. They remind me of Nadar’s 19th century Collodion “wet plate” photographs taken from a balloon above Paris. Black and white, a bit fuzzy, these patterns of light and darkness can be grasped and processed by imagination and memory until we impose meaning on them. I picture myself floating through the clouds, gazing across at an intricate pattern of riverbeds cutting through rough light-colored mountains, flowing down to a flat, wine-dark sea. If these are riverbeds – and they certainly look like textbook examples of the many-branched “dendritic channels” made by rainfall flowing down hills … Continue reading →

NASA’s New Web-Based Solar System Orrery

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NASA has introduced a web-based orrery showing a real-time simulated view of our solar system, with planets, moons and spacecraft shown where they are right now. Go to solarsystem.nasa.gov and click on the solar system icon in the menu. The orrery is a lightweight, mobile-friendly version of NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System software. “This snapshot of our solar system focuses on active NASA planetary science missions and select ESA missions. Showcasing the entire operating NASA fleet is too much of a data wallop at the moment (but we are working on it). International missions such as Japan’s Akatsuki (orbiting Venus) and ESA’s BepiColombo (en route to Mercury) are not yet available.” The orrery is a WebGL application – it’s performance will be better on systems with accelerated graphics. Related Tweet: Go to https://t.co/abXYSA6T9t – hit the hamburger menu – and hit Orrery. New WebGL experience from the ‘Eyes….’ team. Lots more to come from the new engine behind it – but … Continue reading →