FIND THE PLEIADES: When in Iceland, where do you look for the Pleiades? Scan the photo for hints as you scroll down for the answer:

Through a gap in the Northern Lights, of course.

Sean Scully took the picture on Sept. 6th just outside of Akureyri, Iceland. "The sunsets are now early enough that the sky is dark after 10 p.m. and we can see the auroras again." This display was caused by a solar wind stream buffeting Earth's magnetic field.

Good news: the solar wind is still blowing and more auroras are possible tonight. Sky watchers in Alaska, Canada, Iceland and Scandinavia should be alert for Pleiades peeking through the green.

http://spaceweather.com/

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PILLARS OF FIRE: "In Greek mythology, Hercules built pillars to hold up the sky and thus freed Atlas the Titan. I used to think it was just a beautiful legend," says Mila Zinkova of San Francisco, California, "until I witnessed the pillars myself." She found them beneath the setting sun on Sept. 1st:

Photo details: Canon XTI, 300 mm; 1/4000s, f/10, ISO100

"The sun held up by pillars?" asks atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley. "We might say 'Nonsense, it's only a mirage.' But which is the mirage and which is the real sun? Layers of different temperature air have distorted the sun's rays and produced several solar images. All of them are illusions. Even the top bright one is raised up in the sky and flattened."

"Philosophers ponder what is real, relax instead and enjoy the spectacle!"

http://spaceweather.com/

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The Fire Cracker Galaxy - NGC 6946 by Dietmar Hager

The FireCracker Galaxy - NGC 6946 by Dietmar Hager

It's time to take a look back to what was happening 210 years ago on the night of September 9th. Sir William Herschel was at the eyepiece of his telescope in Slough. While he was viewing in real time, what he was viewing occurred more than 10 million years ago - the fireworks that ignited in NGC 6946

Opportunity Twitters Self Portrait

Opportunity self shadow portrait. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell

The Mars Exploration Rovers are now tweeting on Twitter, and Opportunity recently shared what she's been doing since climbing out of Victoria crater via a shadow self portrait. After seeing a one-time electrical spike on Opportunity's left front wheel, mission managers decided to have the rover climb out of the crater and get back on level ground. Opportunity is now examining some fist sized rocks, or cobbles, that might be ejecta from far away craters. Spirit, over on the other side of the Red Planet is weathering out the end of the southern hemisphere Martian winter. Another Twitter report from the rovers said that Spirit's solar array energy is now up slightly from 235 to 245 watt hours. Power levels will have to rise a little more before Spirit can resume exploring actively

Rosetta Flies By 'Diamond in the Sky' Steins

Mosaic of images from Rosetta's fly by. Credit: ESA

ESA's Rosetta spacecraft successfully flew by the asteroid 2867 Steins, coming within 800 km (500 miles) and gathering images and data on the irregularly shaped rock in space. "Steins looks like a diamond in the sky," said Uwe Keller, Principal Investigator for the OSIRIS imaging system on board the spacecraft. Watch a movie of the flyby here. Visible in the images are several small craters on the asteroid, and two huge ones. While the wide-angle camera worked perfectly during the flyby, the narrower and higher resolution camera switched itself off and into safe mode a few minutes before closest approach, but switched back on after a few hours. "The software switched off automatically," said Gerhard Schwehm, Rosetta mission manager. "The camera has some software limits and we'll analyze why this happened later."

"Eight Minutes of Terror": Solar Physicists Find a Supersonic Way to See the Transition Region

Solar physicists will have the unprecedented opportunity to peer inside one of the most mysterious regions in the Sun's atmosphere. Separating the chromosphere (at a temperature of a few thousand Kelvin) and the extended corona (at a temperature of over a million Kelvin) is a very thin layer about 5000 km above the photosphere (a.k.a. the Sun's "surface"). The transition region dictates the characteristics of the hot plasma passing from the Sun into space and is right at the start of the solar-terrestrial chain, controlling space weather. We are unable to directly observe the transition region as it doesn't radiate in wavelengths observable from the Earth's surface, but it does emit UV radiation observable from space. So a group of solar researchers are packing some very sensitive instrumentation into a sounding rocket that willvery briefly take some snapshots of the transition region. But they will have to be quick, from instrument deployment to re-entry, only eight minutes will be allowed to take the necessary UV spectroscopic observations…

Goodbye Jules Verne: ATV Undocks From Station

The scene inside ESA mission control as the ATV backs away from the station (ESA)

Europe's most advanced robotic spaceship, the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), has effectively ended its 6-month mission to the International Space Station (ISS). It successfully undocked today (Friday) at 21:29 GMT to begin its slow 3 week journey toward the Earth's atmosphere where it is set for re-entry on September 29th. This was the first ever ATV to be launched and was named after the 19th Century novelist, Jules Verne; another four ATVs are scheduled for construction. Jules Verne's re-entry is set for night time over an uninhabited region of the Pacific Ocean and NASA will use this opportunity to monitor the fireball so the characteristics of re-entering spacecraft can be studied…

Kuiper Belt Object Travelling the Wrong-Way in a One-Way Solar System

A strange Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) has been discovered orbiting the Sun in the wrong direction. The object, designated as 2008 KV42 but nicknamed Drac (after Dracula, as vampires are fabled to have the ability to walk on walls), has a highly inclined orbit of 103.5°. Drac is a rarity as very few objects in the Solar System have retrograde orbits; in fact this kind of orbit is usually exclusive to Halley-type comets that have orbits that take them very close to the Sun. Drac on the other hand travels through the Kuiper Belt in a stable orbit at a distance of between 20-70 AU from the Sun. This finding has puzzled astronomers, but Drac may provide clues as to where Halley-type objects originate…

Black Holes Can Only Get So Big

Black holes are thought to exist throughout the universe, with the largest and most massive found at the centers of the largest galaxies. These supermassive black holes have been shown to have masses upwards of one billion times that of our own Sun. But an astronomer studying black holes says there's an upper limit to how big a black hole can get. Priyamvada Natarajan, an associate professor of astronomy and physics at Yale University has shown that even the biggest of these gravitational monsters can’t keep growing forever. Instead, they appear to curb their own growth – once they accumulate about 10 billion times the mass of the Sun.

Explore Earth's Satellites with Google Earth

It's getting crowded out there: active and inactive satellites are tracked (Google/Analytical Graphics)

OK, I've just wasted an hour in simulated space, checking out some of the active and junked satellites orbiting our planet. Google Earth can be an addictive thing at the best of times, but when 13,000 of the satellites in Earth orbit can be viewed by a new plug-in for the program, you may find yourself hooked for longer than usual. The United States Strategic Command keeps very close tabs on what is orbiting our planet and where they are at any given time, and now with the help of Google Earth, you can explore the satellites, plot their orbital trajectories and see just how crowded space can be. Never before have geostationary communication satellites been so interesting!

New Report: LHC Switch-on Fears Are Completely Unfounded

Large Hadron Collider. Credit: NY Times

We don't mean to beat a dead horse – both Fraser and Ian have already covered this topic quite thoroughly — but just in case anyone still has any fears about the Large Hadron Collider meaning the end of the world, a new report published today provides the most comprehensive evidence available to confirm that the LHC's switch-on, due on Wednesday next week, poses no threat to mankind. A copy of the report is available HERE. In a nutshell, it says nature's own cosmic rays regularly produce more powerful particle collisions than those planned within the LHC, and nothing bad has happened to Earth from those quite natural and frequent events. The LHC will be studying nature's laws in controlled experiments. So just relax and watch the LHC rap video.
Click to continue…

Sleek, Sexy Spacecraft to Launch Next Week

GOCE: Spacecraft of the future is here! Credit: ESA

This has to be the sexiest looking spacecraft ever built by humankind. No, it's not a starship or battle cruiser (although it does look a little like the Eagle spacecraft from the old television show Space: 1999). This sleek, slender, sexy, shiny and sophisticated spacecraft is an Earth-orbiting satellite that will investigate our planet's gravitational field and map the reference shape of our planet – the geoid - with unprecedented resolution and accuracy. GOCE, or the Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer is scheduled to launch on Wed. September 10 at 16:21 CEST (14:21 UTC). Why such a sleek design? As GOCE Systems Manager Michael Fehringer says, "Form follows function not only in the world of fashion! To fly low and avoid air drag, the bestshape for the satellite to be is long, slender and absolutely symmetrical along the direction of flight."
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Podcast: Science Fiction at Dragon*Con with Plait and Grazier

Dragon*Con Logo

Pamela left Fraser behind (with sorrow) and took on Dragon*Con and the facts (or lack there of) in Science Fiction. Helping her out were special guests Phil Plait and Kevin Grazier.

Click here to download the episode.

Or subscribe to: astronomycast.com/podcast.xml with your podcatching software.

Science Fiction at Dragon*Con with Plait and Grazier show notes.

Carnival of Space #69

Earthrise. Image credit: NASA

This week, the Carnival of Space is over at Free Space, the blog of Irene Klotz, a correspondent with Discovery News.

Click here to read the Carnival of Space #69

And if you're interested in looking back, here's an archive to all the past carnivals of space. If you've got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to carnivalofspace@gmail.com, and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community - and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out, let me know if you can be a host, and I'll schedule you into the calendar.

Finally, if you run a space-related blog, please post a link to the Carnival of Space.

Phoenix Probe Says Both Yes and No to Water on Mars

Phoenix's thermal and electroconductivity probe. Credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech/U of AZ

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has a fork-like conductivity probe on it's robotic arm, and results from the instrument are presenting a bit of a quandary for mission scientists. The thermal and electroconductivity probe has sensed humidity rising and falling in the air the near the lander, but when stuck into the ground, its measurements so far indicate soil that is thoroughly and perplexingly dry. "If you have water vapor in the air, every surface exposed to that air will have water molecules adhere to it that are somewhat mobile, even at temperatures well below freezing," said Aaron Zent, lead scientist for the probe. While Phoenix has other tools to find clues about whether water ice at the site has melted in the past, the conductivity probe is the main tool for checking for present-day soil moisture.

Atlantis Rolls to the Launch Pad

Space Shuttle Atlantis on the pad. Credit: NASA

Thursday afternoon space shuttle Atlantis rolled out to Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, making it's slow 5.1 km (3.2 mile) journey along the crawlerway from the Vehicle Assembly Building. NASA mission managers cleared the shuttle’s move after a weather briefing on the status of Tropical Storm Hanna which determined the storm would remain far enough off shore to not cause any problems for the shuttle exposed out on the pad. Atlantis' seven-member crew are set for an equipment test Friday at Kennedy in preparation for their mission to service NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The telescope hasalready rewritten the books on astronomy and will remain operational for at least another five years following the upgrades. Atlantis is targeted to launch Oct. 8 on mission STS-125. However, another hurricane, Ike, lurks out in the waters of the Atlantic, and could cause problems. But NASA is betting it won't turn north and head for Florida.
Click to continue…

http://www.universetoday.com/

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