In the Sky This Week – February 12, 2019
My wife likes to alter her science student's misconceptions about what a "scientist" is, and teaches them that anyone can be a scientist! This is especially true for her female students - many of whom never thought about a career in science. Feb. 11th was International Day of Women and Girls in Science, and it was trending hard on Twitter; it was great to see all the different organizations honoring their female scientists!
Saturn and Venus are low, Jupiter and the star Antares are high(ish) in the southeastern predawn sky; Venus continues to move down towards Saturn on the horizon.
Saturn, Venus, Jupiter and the star Antares in the southeastern predawn sky. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.
There's quite a show high in the south-southwestern sky on Feb. 12th! You may note Mars and Uranus nearly on top of each other in the image below:
South-southwestern sky on Feb. 12th. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.
Mars will be less then a degree from Uranus on Feb. 12th,! I expect to post images about this next week.
Mars and Uranus will be less than 1 degree apart on Feb. 12th high in the southwestern sky. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.
On the evening of Feb. 13th, the Moon will be about 2 degrees from the star Arcturus.
The Moon and the star Arcturus will be about 2 degrees apart on Feb. 13th -high in the southern sky. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.
The Sun!
Bob Trembley with his 40mm PST at New Baltimore Burke Park 8/12/2012, Image credit: Bob (I didn't catch his last name) with his antique film camera.
Members of the public who have seen a prominence on the Sun through my solar telescope are always amazed; it has been my experience the most people don't give the Sun a second thought. "Is it sunny out?" seems to be their only concern.
It's not hard to understand why... unlike everything else in the sky, you can't (well, shouldn't) look directly at the Sun with your unaided eyes, and coverage of the Sun in school science texts tends to be... well... a little less thorough than I'd like to see.
This is why I lecture about the Sun, it's an amazingly complex celestial object - beautiful, and sometimes terrifying! The video below is of me giving my Sun lecture to the Warren Astronomical Society in 2017.
NASA's Living With a Star program provides missions to improve our understanding of how and why the Sun varies, how the Earth and Solar System respond, and how the variability and response affects humanity in Space and on Earth.
One of those spacecraft is the The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) - in Earth orbit, continually watching the Sun in multiple frequencies. The SDO website has a huge image gallery, and has a page showing near real-time images of the Sun. I use SDO images and animations in every one of these posts.
The Sun Now - from the Solar Dynamics Observatory website.
Each year, the SDO team releases a "best of" video - this is my favorite:
The Moon will be at first quarter on Feb. 12th. - visible high in the southern sky in early evening, it should be a great observing target this week. The rest of the week, the Moon will be a waxing gibbous, visible to the southeast in early evening, and up for most of the night.
The Moon from Feb. 12-18, 2019. Visualizations by Ernie Wright.
Beautiful ISS lunar transit today afternoon at 16:43. Got really lucky with clouds, it was a gamble though, kind of racing with clouds.
Took enough videos for lunar mosaic picture as well.https://t.co/BsRUFKUsdg@Space_Station #Astrophotography @VirtualAstro #Moon #Lunar pic.twitter.com/20Lxx8hnVo— Szabolcs Nagy (@metrolinaszabi) February 10, 2019
The Sun has been spot-free for 12 days; coronal holes appear at both northern and southern poles - the southern pole is enormous! SpaceWeather.com says: "Solar wind flowing from a south polar hole in the sun's atmosphere might graze Earth's magnetic field on Feb. 13th or 14th. If so, Arctic sky watchers will get a nice Valentine's gift from the heavens as geomagnetic unrest sparks auroras--possibly pink."
Some prominence activity over the last couple days - the left edge has some nice loop activity.
The solar wind speed is 393.4 km/sec (⭡), with a density of 7.1 protons/cm3 (⭡).
Animated LASCO C2 Coronograph showing the solar corona above the Sun's limb (the white circle). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
You can create your own time-lapse movies of the Sun here: AIA/HMI Browse Data.
You can browse all the SDO images of the Sun from 2010 to the present here: Browse SDO archive.
Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:
| Asteroid |
Date(UT)
|
Miss Distance
|
Velocity (km/s)
|
Diameter (m)
|
| 2019 BK4 |
2019-Feb-06
|
4.2 LD
|
9.2
|
13
|
| 2013 RV9 |
2019-Feb-06
|
17.9 LD
|
5.9
|
68
|
| 2019 BB5 |
2019-Feb-07
|
11.1 LD
|
6.4
|
16
|
| 2019 CH4 |
2019-Feb-07
|
19.7 LD
|
13
|
31
|
| 2019 BA5 |
2019-Feb-08
|
13.9 LD
|
9.2
|
32
|
| 2019 CE3 |
2019-Feb-08
|
16.1 LD
|
9.4
|
32
|
| 2019 CB2 |
2019-Feb-10
|
2.7 LD
|
13
|
23
|
| 2019 CN2 |
2019-Feb-11
|
1.5 LD
|
7.9
|
8
|
| 2019 CY2 |
2019-Feb-12
|
8 LD
|
13.1
|
16
|
| 2019 CG4 |
2019-Feb-12
|
1.8 LD
|
7.9
|
6
|
| 2017 PV25 |
2019-Feb-12
|
7.3 LD
|
6.1
|
43
|
| 2013 MD8 |
2019-Feb-19
|
15.1 LD
|
13.6
|
51
|
| 2019 CY1 |
2019-Feb-20
|
3.3 LD
|
13.4
|
27
|
| 455176 |
2019-Feb-20
|
19.2 LD
|
26.5
|
269
|
| 2016 CO246 |
2019-Feb-22
|
15.8 LD
|
5.5
|
23
|
| 2019 BF1 |
2019-Feb-24
|
11.2 LD
|
9.1
|
119
|
| 2019 CK1 |
2019-Feb-24
|
16.4 LD
|
10.2
|
32
|
| 2019 CJ |
2019-Feb-25
|
7.4 LD
|
4.8
|
26
|
| 2019 CF4 |
2019-Feb-26
|
15.6 LD
|
3.7
|
14
|
| 2018 DE1 |
2019-Feb-27
|
19.8 LD
|
6.5
|
28
|
| 2016 FU12 |
2019-Feb-27
|
15.4 LD
|
5.2
|
15
|
| 2019 CT4 |
2019-Mar-02
|
6.3 LD
|
12.3
|
52
|
| 2019 CW |
2019-Mar-04
|
19.2 LD
|
11.6
|
65
|
| 2015 EG |
2019-Mar-04
|
1.2 LD
|
9.6
|
26
|
| 2012 DF31 |
2019-Mar-09
|
9.1 LD
|
15.3
|
47
|
| 2019 CM4 |
2019-Mar-11
|
13.8 LD
|
12.1
|
91
|
| 2013 EG68 |
2019-Mar-13
|
19.3 LD
|
17
|
37
|
| 2012 VZ19 |
2019-Mar-13
|
7.7 LD
|
8
|
27
|
| 2019 CL2 |
2019-Mar-19
|
10.3 LD
|
7.5
|
69
|
| 2016 GE1 |
2019-Apr-04
|
3.9 LD
|
10.1
|
17
|
| 2014 UR |
2019-Apr-09
|
13 LD
|
4.6
|
17
|
| 2016 GW221 |
2019-Apr-09
|
10.1 LD
|
5.3
|
39
|
Notes: LD means "Lunar Distance." 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance between Earth and the Moon. Table from SpaceWeather.com
Potentially hazardous asteroids: 1947 (last updated Dec. 26, 2018)
Minor Planets discovered: 789,069 (last updated Oct. 30, 2018)
On Feb. 11, 2019, the NASA All Sky Fireball Network reported 4 fireballs.
(4 sporadics)
In this diagram of the inner solar system, all of the fireball orbits from Feb. 11, 2019 intersect at a single point--Earth. Source: Spaceweather.com
Fantastic photo of the #Meteorite Dropping #Fireball that occurred over #Cuba on Friday, February 1st, 2019: https://t.co/HC9v1HO3YP pic.twitter.com/lCsAXUHoGs
— AMSMETEORS (@amsmeteors) February 12, 2019
And THIS - she missed it!
We received only 2 reports so far about the bright fireball spotted over Valencia, Venezuela last night. But we received a pretty unique video... pic.twitter.com/chTEU0FONF
— AMSMETEORS (@amsmeteors) February 10, 2019
Comet C/2018 Y1 Iwamoto captured by Gerald Rhemann on February 9, 2019 from Nerpio, Spain https://t.co/KCA8H6qlia pic.twitter.com/0EkI4ydGnM
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) February 12, 2019
See Comet Iwamoto’s dash through Leo, Cancer and Gemini before full Moon: https://t.co/TlPxs3vBNs pic.twitter.com/gHB9xvlaqy
— Astronomy Now (@AstronomyNow) February 12, 2019
This is the position of the planets and a couple spacecraft in the solar system.
-
- Position of the planets in the inner solar system, Feb. 11, 2019. Credit: NASA Eyes on the Solar System / Bob Trembley.
-
- Position of the planets in the middle solar system, Feb. 11, 2019. Credit: NASA Eyes on the Solar System / Bob Trembley.
-
- Position of the planets in the outer solar system, Feb. 11, 2019, highlighting 2014 MU69. Credit: NASA Eyes on the Solar System / Bob Trembley.
New Horizons - 2014 MU69 ( #UltimaThule) is Oddly Shaped
👋 There it goes! A new image sequence shows the last views of Kuiper Belt object #UltimaThule from our New Horizons spacecraft as it zoomed past: https://t.co/0TP2ABZOqr
(Don't worry, we looped it, so you can watch this oddly-shaped space rock over and over and over.) pic.twitter.com/kP6guj2SQv
— NASA (@NASA) February 10, 2019
New Data: Ultima Thule Surprisingly Flat: https://t.co/jsx1iK2bTN by @NASA, @jhuapl, @swri pic.twitter.com/D104nbDuN6
— Astronomy Picture Of The Day (@apod) February 11, 2019
OSIRIS-REx - Orbiting Asteroid Bennu Until Later this Month
At this point in my journey #ToBennuAndBack, I've traveled about 2.2 billion kilometers (1.4 billion miles) around the Solar System and will remain in orbit around asteroid Bennu until later this month.
Keep tabs on my journey here: https://t.co/rACre4nDe4 pic.twitter.com/MTohA4eywE
— NASA's OSIRIS-REx (@OSIRISREx) February 11, 2019
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter - Dune Fields on Mars
This image should be categorized as "Mars as Art."
In this image many sand dunes are visible. They have an elongated crescent form and are called "barchan dunes." They are formed by the continuous action of the wind, blowing in the same direction, giving this particular shape.Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
NASA Climate Science
Earth's global surface temperatures in 2018 were the fourth warmest since 1880. The past five years are, collectively, the warmest years in the modern record. https://t.co/tx8nop89Fn
— NASA Climate (@NASAClimate) February 6, 2019
-Data from the NASA Exoplanet Archive
In the THIS is Pretty Weird Department, we have this:
Astronomers may have seen a star collapse *directly* into a black hole without exploding! https://t.co/eClAAbkGRw#NowYouSeeIt… pic.twitter.com/0v7FV4NRaR
— Phil Plait (@BadAstronomer) May 31, 2017
And my immediate thought was:
A Type II civilization—also called a stellar civilization—can harness the total energy of its planet's parent star (the most popular hypothetical concept being the Dyson sphere—a device which would encompass the entire star and transfer its energy to the planet(s)). - Wikipedia: Kardashev scale
It'll be interesting to watch N6946-BH1 to see if it shows signs of the black-hole feeding.
Apps used for this post:
NASA Eyes on the Solar System: an immersive 3D solar system and space mission simulator - free for the PC /MAC.
I maintain the unofficial NASA Eyes Facebook page.
Stellarium: a free open source planetarium app for PC/MAC/Linux. It's a great tool for planning observing sessions.
Section header image credits:
The Sky - Stellarium/ Bob Trembley
Observing Target - Turn Left at Orion / M. Skirvin
The Moon - NASA/JPL-Caltech
The Sun - NASA/JPL-Caltech
Asteroids - NASA/JPL-Caltech
Fireballs - Credited to YouTube
Comets -Comet P/Halley, March 8, 1986, W. Liller
The Solar System - NASA Eyes on the Solar System / Bob Trembley
Spacecraft News - NASA Eyes on the Solar System / Bob Trembley
Exoplanets - Space Engine / Bob Trembley
The Universe - Universe Today
July 20, 2019 is the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon.