Tag Archives: Mars

In the Sky This Week – October 15, 2019

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This entry is part 118 of 118 in the series In the Sky This Week

Saturn and Jupiter are excellent observing targets all week after sunset – Jupiter is getting lower towards the horizon each evening. I’m also noting that it’s getting darker earlier each evening. The Moon appears in the predawn sky this week, moving from west to east; the waning gibbous Moon appears high in the western sky before sunrise on Oct. 15 & 16th. On Oct. 17 and 18th, the waning gibbous Moon appears near the star Aldebaran in the southwestern predawn sky. The third-quarter Moon appears high in the southern predawn sky near the star Pollux on Oct. 21st. Mars appears low in the eastern sky just before sunrise. Orion was again impossible to miss high in the southern predawn sky. Betelgeuse Betelgeuse is generally the ninth-brightest star in the night sky and second-brightest in the constellation of Orion (after Rigel). It is a distinctly reddish, semiregular variable star whose apparent magnitude varies between +0.0 and +1.3, the widest range of any first-magnitude star. At near-infrared wavelengths, Betelgeuse is the brightest star in the night sky. It has the Bayer … Continue reading →

In the Sky This Week – October 8, 2019

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This entry is part 117 of 118 in the series In the Sky This Week

This week is World Space Week! Held annually every October 4-10th, it is the largest space event on Earth, with more than 5,000 events in over 80 countries. The theme for 2019 is: “The Moon: Gateway to the Stars.” “The General Assembly declares 4 to 10 October World Space Week to celebrate each year at the international level the contributions of space science and technology to the betterment of the human condition” – UN General Assembly resolution, 6 December 1999 Saturn, Jupiter and the Moon continue to be excellent observing targets all week after sunset. The waxing gibbous Moon is in the southwestern sky at midnight on Oct. 8th. At midnight on Oct. 11th, the waxing gibbous Moon is high in the southern sky. The full Moon appears in the southeastern sky at midnight, Oct. 14th. Mars appears a bit higher each morning in the eastern sky just before sunrise.   Constellation Pegasus Pegasus is a constellation in the northern sky, named after … Continue reading →

In the Sky This Week – October 1, 2019

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This entry is part 116 of 118 in the series In the Sky This Week

Saturn, Jupiter and the Moon will be excellent sidewalk astronomy targets all week. The Moon appears near both Jupiter and Saturn during this week. The Moon leaves Saturn and Jupiter behind by the beginning of next week, but this sky is still great for doing observing sessions! Mars emerges from the glare of the Sun and appears low in the eastern predawn sky just before sunrise. The Pleiades are high (and hard to miss) in the eastern predawn sky. The constellation Cassiopeia appears in the northwestern predawn sky, and in the northeastern sky after sunset. M103 – Open Star Cluster in Cassiopeia Messier 103 (also known as M103, or NGC 581) is an open cluster where a few thousand stars formed in the constellation Cassiopeia. This open cluster was discovered in 1781 by Charles Messier’s friend and collaborator Pierre Méchain. It is one of the most distant open clusters known, with distances of 8,000 to 9,500 light-years from the earth and ranging about 15 light-years apart. There are about 40 member stars within … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Words that Change Reality

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This entry is part 37 of 186 in the series Across the Universe

My columns for The Tablet often act as a diary of sorts, recording important events in science or in my own life. Such is this column, which first ran in September, 2006. We first ran it here in 2015. Ten years ago last month [as of 2006 – now 23 years ago!], Dave McKay and his colleagues at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston announced that a meteorite, believed to have come from Mars, showed evidence of microbial life. Their interpretations are still widely disputed by the meteoritics community. But, oddly, their announcement resulted in one major change of attitudes. Before, there were still skeptics who were not sure that those rocks came from Mars; now, as the skeptics argue about the putative biogenic grains found in it, no one doubts the Martian origin anymore! Some of us can only be skeptical of one thing at a time, I guess. Still, what you call the meteorite doesn’t really change its … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Martian Sunrise

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This entry is part 82 of 186 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: Help My Unbelief

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This entry is part 34 of 186 in the series Across the Universe

This column was published in The Tablet in August, 2007, and first ran here in 2015 We believe in things we don’t see — like electrons, or black holes — because they let us make sense of things we do see. But sometimes we don’t believe, even when we see. The question of what we believe, and why we believe in it, struck me particularly at the [2007] annual meeting of the Meteoritical Society. A French mathematician has analyzed the dates meteorites have been seen to fall over the past 200 years and found clear trends, at the 90% confidence level: more meteorites than usual tend to fall every 3 years, every 10 years, and every 17 years. His analysis is standard, straightforward stuff; but I don’t believe it. Nor did anyone else in the audience. Two hundred years just doesn’t seem long enough to show such periodicities. And we’ve been burned before with theories that had only a 10% … Continue reading →

In the Sky This Week – June 4, 2019

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This entry is part 99 of 118 in the series In the Sky This Week

Mars continues to dim in the west-northwestern sky after sunset, and Mercury appears low near the horizon all week. A thin crescent Moon appears near Mars on June 5th, and moves towards the south each day. The Moon appears by the star Regulus on June 7th and 8th. Saturn, Jupiter and the star Antares have been slowly crawling across the southern sky for several weeks; Antares sets a bit earlier each morning. Venus appears very low on the horizon just before sunrise all week. Earthshine Earthshine is visible earthlight reflected from the Moon’s night side. It is also known as the Moon’s ashen glow or as “the new Moon with the old Moon in her arm.” Earthshine is most readily visible from a few nights before until a few nights after a new moon, during the (waxing or waning) crescent phase. – Wikipedia The next few days will be the ideal time to try and catch a glimpse of Earthshine!   The Moon is a … Continue reading →

In the Sky This Week – May 21, 2019

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This entry is part 97 of 118 in the series In the Sky This Week

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is Unraveling! As I was writing this post, I came upon this story on SpaceWeather.com: Around the world, amateur astronomers are monitoring a strange phenomenon on the verge of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot (GRS). The giant storm appears to be unraveling. “I haven’t seen this before in my 17-or-so years of imaging Jupiter,” reports veteran observer Anthony Wesley of Australia, who photographed a streamer of gas detaching itself from the GRS on May 19th -SpaceWeather.com I realized I should probably headline this topic when I immediately stopped what I was doing, and went upstairs to tell my wife about it! Jupiter returns the the evening sky, rising in the southeastern sky around 10:30 PM. The Moon dances with Saturn and Jupiter for the next several days in the predawn sky: Mars will soon be lost on the glare of the sunset in the west-northwestern sky. Globular cluster Messier 68 The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope offers this … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Father of the Future

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This entry is part 187 of 186 in the series Across the Universe

This column first ran at the end of May, 2018, in The Tablet. Why I wound up with two columns in May that year is mysterious to me… The summer of 2018 marked the 200th birthday of Father Angelo Secchi, the Jesuit priest often called the Father of Astrophysics. In May I participated in a celebration of his work held in his home town of Reggio Emilia, northern Italy. Speakers covered topics drawn from his life and career, starting with a wonderful biographical sketch by Ileana Chinnici, a historian of astronomy at the Palermo Observatory (and an adjunct Vatican astronomer).  Like Galileo, Secchi had a knack for the popularisation of science, and for becoming embroiled in political controversy. The revolutions of 1848 forced Secchi to flee Rome for two years – he spent the enforced sabbatical at Stonyhurst College and at Georgetown University – and he was nearly forced to leave again after 1870 by the manoeuvrings of enemies in the … Continue reading →

In the Sky This Week – May 14, 2019

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This entry is part 96 of 118 in the series In the Sky This Week

The weekend is over, and I’m still having trouble believing my wife and I were Science Co-Guests of Honor at MARCON 54 – a science fiction convention in Ohio. I told the head of programming that I felt like I’d violated some sort of protocol by not having been a “Fan GoH” first. On Saturday morning, my wife and I, and a couple other convention attendees helped judge participants of the Ohio State Science Fair for awards from the SOLAE Foundation. Some of these middle school and high school students were simply amazing! I was completely stunned at some of the concepts and technologies these students were working with; I seriously felt like a mental midget compared to some of these teens! Br. Guy Skyped-in to MARCON for a discussion Saturday evening; with a frog in his throat from a cold, he related a hilarious story about his travels and a visa SNAFU, and made us all long to witness the majesty … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Dramatic Science

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This entry is part 65 of 186 in the series Across the Universe

This column first ran in The Tablet in April 2008. We ran it here in 2016. From a glass-enclosed visitor’s gallery at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, I watched three technicians, encased in white suits, slowly affix bits of equipment to a large aluminum frame, the platform of an SUV-sized rover to Mars. Two sets of steering rockets were already attached; two large metal spheres painted black and gold were seated nearby. “Those are the fuel tanks, right?” I asked my friend Steve, an engineer on the project who guided my tour. “Like the ones that blew up the Mars Orbiter in the 1980s?” Every piece has a necessary function, and every piece has a history of what can happen if it goes wrong. Even with a recent string of triumphs, Mars probe failures still outnumber the successes. Each piece is added in a carefully scripted order, with a quality-control specialist looking on: the torque wrench must not overtighten … Continue reading →

In the Sky This Week – April 9, 2019

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This entry is part 91 of 118 in the series In the Sky This Week

This Friday, multiple planetariums and observatories in Michigan will host evening astronomy outreach events during Statewide Astronomy Night (SWAN) – the Warren Astronomical Society among them. Observing is planned at all sites, and while activities and presentations may vary between sites, all will be held rain or moonshine! Saturn, Jupiter and the star Antares appear in south-southeastern predawn sky all week; I saw Jupiter this morning as the sky began to brighten. The star Vega is high and bright in the east-northeastern sky in the early morning. A very thin waxing crescent Moon appears near the star Aldebaran and Mars in the western sky after sunset on Apr. 9th. The first-quarter Moon appears near the constellation Gemini southwestern sky after sunset on Apr. 12th. Elliptical Galaxy IC 1101 IC 1101 is a supergiant elliptical galaxy at the center of the Abell 2029 galaxy cluster, approximately 320 megaparsecs (1.04 billion light-years) from Earth. … IC 1101 is among the largest known galaxies, but there is debate in the astronomical literature about how to … Continue reading →