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BEWARE THE MARS HOAX:
If you have marked your calendar for August 27th to remind yourself
to watch Mars swell to the size of a full Moon, go back and add
these words: Mars Hoax! Contrary to a widespread email
alert, Mars will not come close to Earth on August 27th and it can
never rival the full Moon in the night skies of our planet. Science@NASA
has the full
story.
JUPITER MOON MOVIE:
Four hundred years ago when Galileo discovered
the moons of Jupiter, the satellites appeared in his primitive telescope
as tiny, almost infinitesimal specks of light pirouetting around
the giant planet. Their discovery transformed 17th century cosmology
and made Galileo famous, but he never saw them as anything more
than star-like pinpricks. The "Galilean satellites" were
second-class citizens in the heirarchy of known worlds.
What would Galileo say now?
On August 16th, Philippine astrophotographer Christopher
Go used a modern 11-inch Celestron telescope to photograph Io
casting its shadow on Ganymede. Click on the image to launch the
movie:
"I captured this rare event through a hole in the clouds,"
says Go. "It was a lucky clearing!"
In the movie, Io and Ganymede reveal themselves as fully-formed
worlds with surface markings and a spherical shape. Io's circular
shadow cuts a dark swath across Ganymede, transforming that giant
moon (it is larger than Mercury) into a succession of crescents
rarely seen by observers. Indeed, as far as we know, no telescope
on Earth or space has ever photographed one of Jupiter's moons casting
its circular shadow so clearly across another.
"While imaging the shadow transit, I took the time to photograph
Jupiter itself," says Go. "The Great Red Spot, an anticyclone
twice the size of Earth, was very
prominent."
At this point, one imagines Galileo would jump up and exclaim--"bring
me a telescope!" If only we could. August 2009 is a superb
time to watch the giant planet. Jupiter is at its closest to Earth
and outshines every star in the night sky. Backyard optics reveal
giant storms, clouds, moons, moon shadows and occasionally an explosive
surprise. The place to look is here.
PERSIAN DAWN:
This morning in Iran, Venus and the Moon got together and with their
combined luminosity rivaled the city lights of Tehran itself. Oshin
D. Zakarian sends this photo from a hilltop overlooking the city:
 .
"The elegant crescent Moon was only 3o
away from dazzling Venus in the morning sky," says Babak Tafreshi
who admired the view alongside Zakarian. "The pair were visible
even through
clouds."
Scenes like this are worth waking up for. The next
Venus-Moon pairing is less than a month away--on Wednesday morning,
Sept 16th. Get a reminder call from Spaceweather
PHONE.
more images: from
Tunç Tezel of Pamukkale, Turkey; from
Amir H. Abolfath of Persepolise, Fars, Iran; from
Danny Ratcliffe of Deception Bay, QLD Australia; from Mohamad
Soltanolkottabi of Esfahan, Iran; from
Babak Tafreshi of Lavasan, Alborz Mountains, Iran; from
Ugur Ikizler of Mudanya - Bursa / Turkey; from
Achim Schaller of Marzell, Black Forest, Germany;
2009
Perseid Photo Gallery
[Science@NASA: The
Perseids are Coming, Horse
Flies and Meteors]
2009
Noctilucent Photo Gallery
[previous years: 2008,
2007, 2006,
2005, 2004,
2003]
Explore
the Sunspot Cycle
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