Hello, astro-nuts!

It pretty much rained or it was cloudy all weekend, so needless to say I didn't get to do much stargazing. There were two starparties I was aware of that seemed to have had mixed results. The AOS Starfest in Roxbury, NY and the Harrisburg Astronomical Society Star Party at Cherry Springs State Park near Galeton, PA (which now has wi-fi, by the way!). AOS party goers reported fabulous skies Friday night, while much of the weekend was clouded out at Cherry Springs (just a few clear spots now and then, however). The Herschel telescope captured its first image of a deep-sky object, and NASA may have figured out the problem behind Endeavour's hydrogen leak.

Check This Out!

For the first time ever, a couple had a weightless wedding this past weekend. Noah Fulmor and his fiance Erin Finnegan were married on Saturday aboard a modified Boeing 727-200 aircraft named G-FORCE ONE. The craft is operated by Zero Gravity, and the ceremony was officiated by second generation astronaut and explorer, Richard Garriott. During the eight-minute ceremony, the couple and their wedding party said their vows while flying like Superman and doing flips like gymnasts in the plane's "zero-gravity playroom". The interior is decked with padded floors and walls, as well as plenty of cameras to record the special event. Zero-G operates weightless flights for many different events, but this was the company's first zero-gravity wedding! Flights with Zero-G start at $4,950 per person...would you hop aboard?

Sunday marked the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere; typically this means that it was the longest day of the year. In Norway, this meaning is quite literal. This is the time of year when the "midnight sun" appears. At latitudes just above the Arctic Circle, the sun came up, and will stay up until mid-July.

Saturn's August 11th equinox is almost upon us, and in anticipation, the Cassini spacecraft has sent back some incredible, never-before-seen imagery of Saturn's rings. These images are of events that can every 15 years, around the time of the equinox. Events such as Saturn's moons eclipsing each other and casting shadows on the rings. The equinox occurs twice in a Saturn year, or once every 15 Earth years. The reason for the interesting shadows has to do with the sun's angle relative to the ring plane of Saturn.

Astronews!

As you may know, the Herschel and Planck spacecraft were launched back in May. The first images captured by Herschel have come back to Earth, and as luck would have it, they are of one of my favorite Messier Objects; M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy, in constellation Canes Venatici. Herschel took the first images using its Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS) instrument. Charles Messier first observed the object around 1773 and it lies about 35 million light-years away; it was the first galaxy discovered with a spiral structure. The image was taken at 70, 100 and 160 microns after Herschel's cryocover (essentially its lens cap) was opened. Herschel is the first space-based observatory to cover the entire wavelength spectrum from the far Infrared to the sub-millimeter band (60-670 micrometers). Herschel's main mirror is 3.5 meters across (making it the largest space telescope), and is the first of its size to be made from silicon carbide. Herschel carries three main instruments that will aid it in its observations: the aforementioned PACS instrument, a high-resolution heterodyne spectrometer (HIFI) that sees in far infrared, and an imaging Fourier transform spectrometer (Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver or SPIRE). The telescope will be in operation for about three years, and scientists are counting on many new discoveries, and new information about well-known objects.

The launch of space shuttle Endeavour has been scrubbed twice now because of a gaseous hydrogen leak; it was originally supposed to launch back on June 13th. Apparently the problem was due to a slightly misaligned plate that links the hydrogen gas vent line with the external fuel tank. The first time the leak occurred, it was thought to be the same type of bad vent seal that scrubbed the Discovery launch back in March. After the same leak occurred a second time, it became apparent that a more intense scrutiny of the hydrogen vent system was necessary. A different type of seal would be used that should provide a much better fit and is less susceptible to temperature-related shrinking and expanding that can lead to leaks. A small leak is acceptable, but the threshold for hydrogen concentrations is 40,000 parts per million; amounts beyond that are grounds for cancelling countdown. Testing by way of refilling the external tank will be performed over the next week or so. If the test is successful, the planned July 11th of the shuttle should still be on target. The reason for the long hiatus between launch attempts was not only because of the LRO launch last week, but because of temperature constraints related to the orbit of the International Space Station.

Keep your eyes to the sky and enjoy the view!
~Lisa C.

Posted by Lisa Beightol on Monday, June 22, 2009 9:17 AM
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post A Comment

Share this: