All the Best Bits » Astronomy

San Francisco Bay Area from the ISS

Phillip Alvelda — Sat, 03 May 2008 21:32:00 +0000

Here’s a neat image of the Bay Area taken from the International Space Station. I particularly like the visible outflow from the receding tide through the Golden Gate as well as the visible colored salt ponds in the south bay.

In this photograph of the San Francisco Bay area taken from the International Space Station during Expedition 4, the gray urban footprint of San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, and their surrounding suburbs contrasts strongly with the green hillsides. ISS004-E-10288 (April 21, 2002, 105 mm lens) Click on the image for full-resolution version.

Shuttle and ISS

Phillip Alvelda — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 03:38:00 +0000

Earth As Seen From Mars

Phillip Alvelda — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 15:26:00 +0000

Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

The Last Twelve Lunar Eclipses

Phillip Alvelda — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 17:10:00 +0000

Here’s a nice montage of the 12 most recent Lunar eclipses from APOD. Click on the image for a higher-res version.

Twelve Lunar Eclipses
Credit Tunç Tezel (TWAN)

Explanation: Welcome to the extra day in the Gregorian Calendar’s leap year 2008! To celebrate, consider this grid of lunar eclipse pictures – starting in leap year 1996 and ending with February’s eclipse – with the date in numerical year/month/day format beneath each image. Mostly based on visibility from a site in Turkey, the 3×4 matrix includes 11 of the 13 total lunar eclipses during that period, and fills out the grid with the partial lunar eclipse of September 2006. Still, as the pictures are at the same scale, they illustrate a noticeable variation in the apparent size of the eclipsed Moon caused by the real change in Earth-Moon distance around the Moon’s elliptical orbit. The total phases are also seen to differ in color and darkness. Those effects are due to changes in cloud cover and dust content in the atmosphere reddening and refracting sunlight into Earth’s shadow. Of course, the next chance to add a total lunar eclipse to this grid will come at the very end of the decade.

For another nice series of images highlighting the Moon’s libration (wobble and variation in orbit ) see my related post entitled “Our Constant Moon?“

Lunar Eclipse Tonight

Phillip Alvelda — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 20:40:00 +0000

Don’t miss tonight’s Lunar Eclipse. Otherwise you’ll have to wait at least three more years to see another one.

More details at NASA.

Twinkle Twinkle Little Variable Stars

Phillip Alvelda — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 17:23:00 +0000

My astrophysics professors always TALKED about variable stars and how particularly important the Cepheid and RR Lyrae variables have been in helping establish interstellar and intergalactic distance scales. They would show “Light Curve” graphs like this one from McMaster University in Canada that depicted the changes in stellar brightness over time.

I realized intellectually, that many of the variable stars had periods on the order of a day and rather large changes in magnitude, but for some reason, nobody had taken any decent movies to really highlight the ubiquity or true visual impact of these stars. But contrast this traditional static image of the M3 Globular Cluster

with this relatively recent four-frame movie take by Krzysztof Stanek and Andrew Szentgyorgyi over the course of one night in 1998 on the 1.2 m. telescope at F.L. Whipple Observatory in Arizona.

Wow. That really gets the idea of variable stars across. And now with the temporal information across field of view, you start to notice other things that weren’t obvious before, and that leads to new questions such as, “…so why to several of the stars separated by many light years seem to flash in synchrony? What is the mechanism for synchronization?”

If you like that action, you’ll love what the forthcoming LST telescope will turn out. Stay tuned for more.

Images courtesy (APOD)

ISS over Italy and Greece

Phillip Alvelda — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 00:50:00 +0000

Courtesy of NASA.

Fire on Land and In The Sky

Phillip Alvelda — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 17:23:00 +0000

Here’s a cool photo of an exploding volcano (Tungurahua, located in Ecuador) under the Pleiades star cluster from Universe Today. Click on the image to see the full-resolution version (it’s worth it!).

More Rooms With a View on the Space Station

Phillip Alvelda — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 06:42:00 +0000

From APOD,

The International Space Station Expands Again
Credit: STS-117 Shuttle Crew, NASA

Explanation: The developing International Space Station (ISS) has changed its appearance again. During the past week, the Space Shuttle Atlantis visited the ISS and added pieces of the Integrated Truss Structure that mirrored those added in September 2006, including a second impressively long array of solar panels. The entire array of expansive solar panels are visible at the edges of the above image taken by the Shuttle Atlantis Crew after leaving the ISS to return to Earth. The world’s foremost space outpost can be seen developing over the past several years by comparing the above image to past images. Also visible above are many different types of modules, a robotic arm, another impressive set of solar panels, and a supply ship. Construction began on the ISS in 1998.

Twilight Turtle: a Planetarium Night Light

Phillip Alvelda — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 04:35:00 +0000

Too cute for words. Start conditioning those young scientists early!

Buy Twilight Turtle here on Amazon.