Astronomy and Space News for August 2011

August 28: A Supernova (2011fe) has been discovered in M101 (NGC 5457). The AAVSO would like any reports about this supernova from amateur astronomers.

August 26: In early June the Mars500 crew celebrated their one full year inside the modules simulating an interplanetary spaceship. They are now flying virtually back to Earth and due to a delay in communications, introduced to make the simulation more real, some material reaches the outside world slowly. As they get nearer to Earth the communications delay is reduced.

August 26: “We have learned to detect sunspots before they are visible to the human eye,” says Stathis Ilonidis, a PhD student at Stanford University. “This could lead to significant advances in space weather forecasting.”.

August 26: NASA’s Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL), mission to study the Moon is in final launch preparations for a scheduled Sept. 8 launch onboard a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

August 26: Two studies appearing in the Aug. 25 issue of the journal Nature provide new insights into a cosmic accident that has been streaming X-rays toward Earth since late March. NASA’s Swift satellite first alerted astronomers to intense and unusual high-energy flares from the new source in the constellation Draco.

August 25: Scientists using data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have discovered six “Y dwarfs”— star-like bodies with temperatures as cool as the human body.

August 20: Following their very successful multiwavelength observing campaign on the dwarf nova SS Cygni in 2010 April, Dr. James Miller-Jones (International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia) and colleagues have a follow-up multiwavelength campaign on SS Cyg scheduled. As before, they are requesting the assistance of AAVSO.

August 19: For the first time, a spacecraft far from Earth has turned and watched a solar storm engulf our planet. The movie, released today during a NASA press conference, has galvanized solar physicists, who say it could lead to important advances in space weather forecasting.

August 17: In a few years a NASA spacecraft will seek the building blocks of life in a shovelful of asteroid dirt. The OSIRIS-REx1 spacecraft, targeted for launch in September 2016, will intercept asteroid 1999 RQ36, orbit it for a year, and then reach out a robotic arm to touch its surface.

August 15: Astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson was on Bill Maher’s show a little over a week ago, and he had something to say about plans to slash NASA’s budget, including doing away with the James Webb Space telescope.

August 15: Great news about SETI – the SETI Institute which was shut down in April will start operations again soon as a result of receiving over $200,000 in donations from the public and other interested parties.

August 12: The Dawn spacecraft has completed a graceful spiral into the first of four planned science orbits during the spacecraft’s yearlong visit to Vesta. The spacecraft started taking detailed observations on Aug. 11 at 9:13 a.m. PDT (12:13 a.m. EDT), which marks the official start of the first science-collecting orbit phase at Vesta.

August 12: After a journey of almost three years, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has reached the Red Planet’s Endeavour crater to study rocks never seen before.

August 10: On August 12th and 13th, as the moon waxes full, the International Space Station will glide over US towns and cities during the peak of the annual Perseid meteor shower.

August 10: Nicholas Brown in Western Australia discovered a nova in Lupis on August 4.

August 6: The effects of the March 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that devastated areas of Japan can be seen as far away as Antarctica. Satellite images show new icebergs were created after the tsunami hit the Sulzberger Ice Shelf.

August 10: Jupiter’s swirling clouds can be seen through any department store telescope. With no more effort than it takes to bend over an eyepiece, you can witness storm systems bigger than Earth navigating ruddy belts that stretch hundreds of thousands of kilometers around Jupiter’s vast equator. The really interesting things–from the roots of monster storms to stores of exotic matter–are located at depth. So what lies inside Jupiter?

August 6: Comet Elenin is coming to the inner-solar system this fall/autumn. Comet Elenin (also known by its astronomical name C/2010 X1), was first detected on Dec. 10, 2010 by Leonid Elenin, an observer in Lyubertsy, Russia, who made the discovery “remotely” using the ISON-NM observatory near Mayhill, New Mexico.

August 5: NASA’s solar-powered Juno spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 9:25 a.m. PDT (12:25 p.m. EDT) Friday to begin a five-year journey to Jupiter.

August 5: Observations from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have revealed possible flowing water during the warmest months on Mars. Dark, finger-like features appear and extend down some Martian slopes during late spring through summer, fade in winter, and return during the next spring.

August 4: The prevailing theory on lunar formation is the giant impact theory which suggests the moon formed when a Mars-sized body slammed into the infant Earth. Simulations have shown that additional moons could have formed from the debris cloud, sharing an orbit with the one large moon that survives today.

August 4: For the third day in a row, sunspot 1261 has unleashed a significant M-class solar flare.

August 3: On August 2nd, the sun hurled a cloud of plasma (Coronal Mass Ejection – CME) toward Earth when magnetic fields above sunspot 1261 erupted.

August 1: NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has returned images of Vesta that were taken at a distance of 3,200 miles (5,200 kilometers). Images from Dawn’s framing camera, taken for navigation purposes and as preparation for scientific observations, are revealing the first surface details of the giant asteroid.