Casual Astronomy, Spaceflight News and Lower California Weather

Hey LC - bright sunshine out now! Lovin' it, but I'm ready for the rain.

My star gazing event guy sent me an email yesterday about the bright triangle in the sky of Venus, Jupiter and the moon. I was closing my window last night when I noticed the triangle, then sat down to look at my email, and there was his email! What a coincidence! It sure was clear out last night!

I wonder how much rain we'll actually get...

Wish I had something interesting to add but haven't seen the night sky the last 3 days! Perhaps tomorrow night.

Good soaking here tonight...much needed. I did notice a few nights ago (friday perhaps) that the aforementioned objects were in close proximity. The moon was a very thin crescent. Nice view.

Thanks for teaching us!

Oh, and thanks for the pic on my blog. Looks like the pups were having a blast!

4. LowerCal

LOL
That was fun. Haven't see it in a while.

dropping by
Just to wave and say HI, Hope you have a great day

I saw the lovely trio on Sunday night, briefly. Also was surprised seeing the crescent moon on Saturday night - not really paying attention but it couldn't be missed in the peachy glow of soon-after-sunset as I happened to be driving straight at it, lol
Watching Jupiter inch its way west (so to speak) over the last few months has been a pleasant reminder of how the orbs orbit.

'k, how much rain did you get?

I've seen a lot of discussion of Coastal Eddy around various southern Cal blogs lately. For those not familiar, I found a good illustration of Coastal Eddy. Not new, but good detail. With your blog theme, this seemed like a good place to put it.

Hey, LC, is there any reason why the NASA - CIBER Launch is being done at White Sands instead of Virginia?

13. LowerCal

Hmmm...A Black Brant! I'd love to see that. Built a model of one many years ago. Was pretty zippy.

My favorite model, by contrast was an Honest John Missile. Was big and slow moving, with a long burning motor. Fun to watch. Helped my daughter with it for school when they were studying rockets. One Saturday all the kids & parents got together at the school to launch their rockets. People freaked when we walked out there carrying a 3 foot missile, OD green with all the official markings.

They loved watching it though.

Good Morning,
Glad someone got a picture of the cool "Cheshire Cat" moon with Venus and Mars. Looked spectacular coming out of work.
They don't allow us to bring cameras so I miss a lot of neat twilight shots. Somehow made it home looking out my side window most of the drive to admire it.
Have a great day full of wonders!

Here's some great animated sat shots of the white sands getting blown so hard some were picked up & carried off the other day.

I have a something for yas. Remember comet Garradd from way back when? Okay, not that long ago. Anyway, They say, over at apod, that it is visible with binoculars in the early morning. And it has three tails! They have a link there to a comet chasing site that I don't think I've seen before.
Hey, somebody's up that early.

Saw Mars!
:o)

APOD for March 5 is a time-lapse of Earth at night as filmed from the space station.

ATREX Overview
Launch Madness at Wallops in March - "Five in Five"


Launch madness will hit the east coast in March as NASA launches five rockets in approximately five minutes to study the high-altitude jet stream from its Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

The Anomalous Transport Rocket Experiment (ATREX) is a Heliophysics sounding rocket mission that will gather information needed to better understand the process responsible for the high-altitude jet stream located 60 to 65 miles above the surface of the Earth.

The high-altitude jet stream is higher than the one commonly reported in weather forecasts. The winds found in this upper jet stream typically have speeds of 200 to well over 300 mph and create rapid transport from the Earth's mid latitudes to the polar regions. This jet stream is located in the same region where strong electrical currents occur in the ionosphere. It is therefore a region with a lot of electrical turbulence, of the type that can adversely affect satellite and radio communications.

The sounding rockets being used for the mission are two Terrier-Improved Malemutes , two Terrier-Improved Orions and one Terrier-Oriole.

The five rockets will release a chemical tracer that will form milky, white tracer clouds that allow scientists and the public to "see" the winds in space. In addition, two of the rockets will have instrumented payloads, to measure the pressure and temperature in the atmosphere at the height of the high-speed winds.

Is LC on a walkabout? A sabbatical?

(in my best Dr McCoy impression)

Dammit Jim! We need him here!

There is an asteroid approaching!

Link

(credit to Finn for finding this)

I'm just glad they didn't say it was coming in December!
There would be complete and utter chaos!

Hope everything is okay with you!

Story Linked from a wunderblogger in Dr. Ricky Roods current entry.




The tectonic' effects of the collision of one spherule with another during the cosmic impact. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of California - Santa Barbara)


New Research Supports Theory of Extraterrestrial Impact
ScienceDaily (Mar. 5, 2012)

A 16-member international team of researchers that includes James Kennett, professor of earth science at UC Santa Barbara, has identified a nearly 13,000-year-old layer of thin, dark sediment buried in the floor of Lake Cuitzeo in central Mexico. The sediment layer contains an exotic assemblage of materials, including nanodiamonds, impact spherules, and more, which, according to the researchers, are the result of a cosmic body impacting Earth.
These new data are the latest to strongly support of a controversial hypothesis proposing that a major cosmic impact with Earth occurred 12,900 years ago at the onset of an unusual cold climatic period called the Younger Dryas. The researchers' findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Conducting a wide range of exhaustive tests, the researchers conclusively identified a family of nanodiamonds, including the impact form of nanodiamonds called lonsdaleite, which is unique to cosmic impact. The researchers also found spherules that had collided at high velocities with other spherules during the chaos of impact. Such features, Kennett noted, could not have formed through anthropogenic, volcanic, or other natural terrestrial processes. "These materials form only through cosmic impact," he said.
The data suggest that a comet or asteroid -- likely a large, previously fragmented body, greater than several hundred meters in diameter -- entered the atmosphere at a relatively shallow angle. The heat at impact burned biomass, melted surface rocks, and caused major environmental disruption. "These results are consistent with earlier reported discoveries throughout North America of abrupt ecosystem change, megafaunal extinction, and human cultural change and population reduction," Kennett explained.
The sediment layer identified by the researchers is of the same age as that previously reported at numerous locations throughout North America, Greenland, and Western Europe. The current discovery extends the known range of the nanodiamond-rich layer into Mexico and the tropics. In addition, it is the first reported for true lake deposits.
In the entire geologic record, there are only two known continent-wide layers with abundance peaks in nanodiamonds, impact spherules, and aciniform soot. These are in the 65-million-year-old Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary layer that coincided with major extinctions, including the dinosaurs and ammonites; and the Younger Dryas boundary event at 12,900 years ago, closely associated with the extinctions of many large North American animals, including mammoths, mastodons, saber-tooth cats, and dire wolves.
"The timing of the impact event coincided with the most extraordinary biotic and environmental changes over Mexico and Central America during the last approximately 20,000 years, as recorded by others in several regional lake deposits," said Kennett. "These changes were large, abrupt, and unprecedented, and had been recorded and identified by earlier investigators as a 'time of crisis.' "
Other scientists contributing to the research include Isabel Israde-Alcántara and Gabriela Dominguez-Vásquez of the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicólas de Hidalgo; James L. Bischoff of the U.S. Geological Survey; Hong-Chun Li of National Taiwan University; Paul S. DeCarli of SRI International; Ted E. Bunch and James H. Wittke of Northern Arizona University; James C. Weaver of Harvard University; Richard B. Firestone of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Allen West of GeoScience Consulting; Chris Mercer of the National Institute for Materials Science; Sujing Zie and Eric K. Richman of the University of Oregon, Eugene; and Charles R. Kinzie and Wendy S. Wolbach of DePaul University.
That's aprrox half of the Precession Time cycle, or 26,000 years for a complete circuit.

LOL

I wasn't really worried about the asteroid, although now I might be a tad worried about the Sats getting hit. But you know how excitable folks get with all the 2012 talk.

Good to know that all is well.

Thanks once again for the links LC!

Hiya - TV alert!
There's going to be what looks like a pretty good show on extraterrestial life on the Science channel on Tuesday night (and part 2 the week following). Here's Nick Sagan talking about it (and showing how cool it was to have Carl Sagan as a dad :) ). It's got scientists and scifi writers - how bad can it be?

From solarham.com
http://www.solarham.com/




Aurora over Canada:

The incoming CME shock that was detected very early this morning before sunrise, provided a nice treat for Sky Watchers in parts of North America. Olivier Du Tra in Cochrane, Alberta, Canada captured some amazing images including this one. "Red aurora's were going off like CRAZY! I could see RED with the naked eye (which was a first for me)". Visit this website link to view more of his amazing pictures.

sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov


A solar wind stream flowing from this coronal hole could reach Earth on March 16-17. Credit: SDO/AIA.

We had beautiful skies tonight, and lowering humidity. I went over to get the mail, and as I was walking home I looked up - well! It was quite a sight, that Venus and Jupiter. I really don't think I've ever seen them brighter. Just splendid.

And, as ever, good to have your site to come to and double-check my perceptions!

Finally got some time to check the blogs, saw your heading and immediantly went outside.
They are bright. Thought it was two incoming planes at first.

Im not sure if this is 100%, but the "creep" factor and recent events on SOL are kinda, .."freakkkkkkyyyyyyyyy"........

Low in the West.

The Venus and Jupiter conjunction is seen from France this week.
Photograph by Laurent Laveder, TWAN

A interesting one here LC.

Another Comet?

Tue, 13 Mar 2012

SOHO and STEREO are reporting another Kruetz comet moving toward the Sun. It is expected to make its closest approach to the Sun tomorrow, March 14. If it survives perihelion and is bright enough, we would see this comet appearing in the upper right side of the Sun and moving down over the disk. Current estimates are that this comet is smaller than Lovejoy. At this time we do not know the time of perihelion passage.



We have a daily eclipse of the Sun by the Earth (at 0630-0730 UTC tomorrow), and a momentum management burn tomorrow at from 1845-1915 UTC. During both periods the images of the Sun may be absent.

..let's get America's Future back on track and into Orbit..,"kick dem tire's and light dem fire's"


Young and Crippen STS-1 April 1981


Orion: Exploration Flight Test-1 Animation (with narration by Jay Estes)

This animation depicts the proposed test flight of the Orion spacecraft in 2014. During the test, which is called Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1), Orion will launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., perform two orbits, reaching an altitude higher than any achieved by a spacecraft intended for human use since 1973, and then will re-enter and land in the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of the United States. Narration by Jay Estes, Deputy for flight test integration in the Orion program.

:)

Hello LowerCal,

I noticed that beautiful scene last weekend while on the balcony in Marco Island over looking the Gulf of Mexico.. it was beautiful!
At the time I did not realize what I was looking at until I got back home!


Just wanted to pop in here and wish you a

Happy St Patti's Day!


St Patricks Day Graphics