May 7, 2007: This week, asteroid 1862 Apollo is flying past Earth.
Closest approach: 11 million kilometers on May 8th at 1500 UT.
Discovered in 1932, Apollo was the first asteroid recognized to cross Earth’s orbit. It measures 1.7 km wide and has a tiny 75 meter wide moon. In the nights ahead, southern hemisphere astronomers with big backyard telescopes … Read the rest of this article
More than a year ahead of schedule, a team of independent experts has approved all ten new technologies developed for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Many of the technologies are revolutionary and have never before been used on any satellite or space telescope. The early approval can reduce the risk of … Read the rest of this article
Today NASA released stunning new images of Jupiter and its moons taken by the New Horizons spacecraft. Views include a movie of a volcanic eruption on Jupiter’s moon Io; a nighttime shot of auroras and lava on Io; a color photo of the “Little Red Spot” churning in Jupiter’s cloudtops; images of small moons herding dust and boulders through Jupiter’s … Read the rest of this article
Lightning is more than light and noise: It’s an intense chemical factory that affects both local air quality and global climate. But how big is the effect? Researchers aren’t sure. To answer the question they’re developing a new technique to estimate the factory’s output.
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If successful, the method will be … Read the rest of this article
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Pasadena, Calif. – New measurements of Mars’ south polar region indicate extensive frozen water. The polar region contains enough … Read the rest of this article
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NASA has established a requirements baseline for the Orion crew exploration vehicle, bringing America’s next human spacecraft a step closer to construction.
The Orion Project completed its system requirements review in cooperation with its prime contractor, Lockheed Martin, March 1. The review marked the first major milestone in the Orion engineering process and provided the foundation for … Read the rest of this article
The human eye’s capability of discerning patterns in detailed scenes or images (where sometimes such patterns do not exist) is well known. A recent personal instance involving the Moon and a southern hemisphere feature which, while real, took the shape of a readily recognisable Earth-bound object is a case in point.
I was testing a newly introduced black and white … Read the rest of this article
“On Dec. 14, 2006, we observed at least five Geminid meteors hitting the Moon,” reported Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office in Huntsville, AL. Each impact caused an explosion ranging in power from 50 to 125 lbs of TNT and a flash of light as bright as a 7th-to-9th magnitude star.
Lunar impacts since Nov. 2005. Numbers 14-16 and … Read the rest of this article
Below are audio recordings of the lectures for Prof. Richard Pogge’s Autumn 2006 Astronomy 161 class at The Ohio State University. Lecture notes are available on the class webpage. All lectures were recorded live in 100 Stillman Hall on the OSU Main Campus in Columbus, Ohio.
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Solar System…Read the rest of this article
Videos on this page come from a number of sources, but primarily Google and YouTube. This page provides recent videos about the European Southern Observatory.… Read the rest of this article
The Sun Now (Visible light)
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The Sun Now (H-Alpha light)
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Aurora Oval
(Northern Hemisphere) |
Aurora Oval
(Southern Hemisphere) |
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