Perseid Peak Performance

The All Sky camera network captured over 183 multi-station Perseid meteors Saturday night. Some truly spectacular events — see images below.

 The Perseids have been observed for at least 2,000 years and are associated with the comet Swift-Tuttle, which orbits the sun once every 133 years. Each year in August, the Earth passes through a cloud of the comet’s debris. These bits of ice and dust — most over 1,000 years old — burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere to create one of the best meteor showers of the year.

MSFC Watches the Transit of Venus

The transit of Venus on June 5th this year sparked much attention worldwide. Astronomers and the general public alike gathered around telescopes or grabbed their solar filter glasses to observe this rare alignment of the Sun, Venus and Earth. Members of the Natural Environments Branch brought together their telescopes to have a viewing party at Marshall Space Flight Center; fortunately, the weather cooperated, allowing for some great views of sunspots and Venus.

 

Crowds gathered at Marshall Space Flight Center to catch a glimpse of Venus transiting the Sun. Jody Minor stands in the background with his solar telescope showing viewers features on the Sun’s surface, while the telescope is in the foreground has Sun and Venus projected on a screen (image credit: Rhiannon Blaauw).

 

Venus transits have been studied for centuries, with important scientific information being extracted from them. There is evidence of observations in Assyrian archeology from 1500 BC, but it was not until 1639 AD when a transit was correctly predicted and observed. Jeremiah Harrocks of England used this transit to estimate the distance between Earth and the Sun, coming up with 59.4 million miles, which may sound like a far cry from the actual 93 million miles; however, it was the most accurate figure at the time. Each predicted and observed transit since then (1761, 1769, 1874, 1882, 2004) provided more new fascinating finformation about Venus, such as discovering it has an atmosphere (the bending of light rays around Venus in the 1761 transit). With the next Venus transit set to occur in 2117, one can only imagine what technology will be developed by then and what our transit images will look like.

 

This image, by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, shows Venus on June 5th 2012 approaching the disk of the Sun (image credit: NASA/SDO, AIA).

More NASA images can be found:
https://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/venus_images.html

Bright Fireball Over Georgia

The NASA Meteoroid Environment Office can confirm a bright fireball observed by several eyewitnesses in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee on Mar. 7, 2012 at 10:19:11 p.m. EST. The fireball was observed by three NASA cameras located at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., Tullahoma Tenn., and Cartersville, Ga. The meteor was first recorded at an altitude of 52.7 miles (84.8 km) southeast of Tunnel Hill, Ga., moving slightly south of west at approximately 15 km/s (33,500 mph). It was last seen 14.4 miles (23.2 km) above State Road 95 south east of Rock Springs, Ga. A map of the trajectory is available here: http://www.billcooke.org/events/NGA_2012Mar08/GeorgiaTracks.jpg. The yellow line is the initial automatic meteor trajectory solution. The orange line is the manual (refined) meteor trajectory.

Below are video still images and a short video captured from the cameras at the Marshall Center in Huntsville, Ala. and Cartersville, Ga. 





Credits: NASA/MSFC/Meteoroid Environment Office

The Worm Moon?


The next full Moon is on Thursday, March 8, 2012.  The Moon will be 180 degrees away from the Sun in Earth-based longitude at 4:40 am EST, and will appear full for about three days around this time, from Tuesday evening through Friday morning.

The full Moon in March is known by many names: the Worm Moon, Sap Moon, Crow Moon, Crust Moon, Sugar Moon, and Lenten Moon.  According to the Farmer’s Almanac, the native tribes of what is now the northern and eastern U.S. named this the Worm Moon after the earthworm casts that appear as the ground thaws.  The more northern tribes knew this as the Crow Moon, when the cawing of crows signaled the end of winter.  Other northern names are the Crust Moon, because the snow cover becomes crusted from thawing by day and freezing at night, or the Sap Moon as this is the time for tapping maple trees.  Europeans called this the Lenten Moon.

As to other celestial events between now and the full Moon after next:

In early March, Mercury is visible in the evening sky, reaching its greatest elongation on Monday, March 5, 2012.  In early March, Jupiter and Venus appear to move closer together, reaching their closest (called conjunction) on Tuesday, March 13, 2012, after which they will appear to move apart again.  Mars continues to ride high in the sky, rising around sunset and setting around sunrise, having been opposite the Sun (as seen from the Earth, called “opposition”) on Saturday, March 3, 2012.  Saturn rises later in the evening (around the time Venus and Jupiter set) and rides high in the early morning sky.  Saturn will be at opposition on Sunday, April 15, 2012.

Here are more specific dates and events:

On Monday, March 5, 2012, Mercury will be at its greatest elongation, and this will be the most favorable opportunity to look for Mercury in 2012 (for the northern hemisphere, at least).  Look for it about 45 minutes to an hour after sunset (around 6:45 to 7 pm in the Washington, DC area) very low on the western horizon.  Venus and Jupiter will appear close together higher in the sky.

Also on Monday, March 5, 2012, Mars will be at its closest to the Earth for this cycle.  Because the orbits of both Mars and the Earth are not perfect circles, there is a slight offset from when Mars is opposite the Sun on March 3rd and when it is closest to the Earth on March 5th.

On Saturday night/Sunday morning, March 10 to 11, 2012, the waning (i.e.,past full) gibbous (i.e., but still more than half full) Moon will form a triangle with the planet Saturn and the bright star Spica.  For the Washington, DC area, the Moon will rise at about 9:23 pm EST on Saturday and reach its highest point in the sky at 3:40 am EDT on Sunday (note the one hour shift to Daylight Savings Time).

We “spring forward” into daylight savings time on Sunday, March 11, 2012, giving us an “extra” hour of sunlight in the evening but shifting the time of sunrise back to within a few minutes of when sunrise was in late Decemberand early January.  These are not the latest sunrises of the year.  The latest sunrises will come in late October and early November, just before we “fall back” to standard time.

On Tuesday, March 13, 2012, Venus and Jupiter appear closest to each other in the evening sky (called conjunction), about 3 degrees apart.

The Vernal Equinox on Tuesday, March 20, 2012 marks the beginning of spring. The equinox is at 1:14 am EDT, so for those in MDT and time zones further west the first day of spring is on Monday, March 19, 2012.

On Sunday evening, March 25, 2012, look for the crescent Moon in the western sky after sunset.  Jupiter will be about 3 degrees below the Moon and Venus will appear about 8 degrees to the upper left.  For the Washington, DC area,sunset is at 7:25 pm EDT and moonset is at 10:32 pm EDT.

On Monday, Mar 26, 2012, the Moon will have shifted to about 4 degrees left of Venus, with Jupiter about 11 degrees to the lower right from Venus. Venus is bright enough to be seen in broad daylight if you can find it.  Using the Moon as a guide, you should be able to find Venus before sunset. For the Washington, DC area, sunset is at 7:26 pm EDT and moonset is at 11:27 pm EDT.

On Tuesday, March 27, 2012, Venus reaches its greatest elongation, setting as long after sunset as it will for this appearance.  Since Venus orbits closer to the Sun than the Earth does, we always see it either as the Evening Star or as the Morning Star.

On Tuesday evening, April 3, 2012, Venus will appear to the left of the Pleiades star cluster.  Especially with binoculars or a small telescope, this bright plant should appear swimming in a sea of stars.

The full Moon after next will be on Friday, April 6, 2012.

 

NASA Cameras Catch Speeding Fireball

There was a bright fireball visible over north Georgia, eastern Tennessee, and South Carolina at 7:02:36 PM EST last night. All 4 NASA meteor cameras in the SouthEast picked it up 48 miles above the town of Rossville, just south of Chattanooga, moving at 9 miles per second (32,400 mph) slightly north of east. The meteor appears to have ablated (“burned up”) at 23 miles altitude SW of of Ocoee, TN. Though unusual, it is unlikely that this object produced any noticeable meteorites on the ground.

Orbit indicates that this meteor was asteroidal in origin, with an aphelion (farthest point from the Sun) in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

 

 

Asteroid 433 Eros Approaches Earth


Credit:  NASA/MSFC/Meteoroid Environment Office/Rhiannon Blaauw

Asteroid 433 Eros made a close approach to Earth the morning of January 31st coming within 0.17 AU (15 million miles) of our planet. In this set of images taken that morning, the bright moving dot near the center of the field is the 21 mile long Eros. Somewhere on that tiny point of light rests a United States spacecraft — Near Shoemaker — which touched down on the asteroid’s surface on February 12, 2001 after completing 230 orbits around Eros.
 
In the animation you will also notice over 20 streaks of light moving almost horizontally across the field of view. What we did not realize at the time of imaging was that Eros was at approximately the declination of geosynchronous communication satellites! These satellites are orbiting some 22,236 miles above the earth in the “Clark belt.” We were able to identify most of the satellites seen and found quite a variety.

Included in the video are Brazilian satellites (Brazilsat B2, Star One C2); American satellites (Galaxy 11); Canadian satellites (Nimiq 4, Anik F1); Venezuelan satellites (Venesat-1); weather satellites (GEOS 12); television satellites (DirecTV 1-R); radio satellites (XM 3, Sirius FM); and Internet satellites (WildBlue – 1).

NASA All Sky Fireball Network Watches the Skies

A meteor streaks across the skies above Huntsville, Ala. (NASA)

The night sky is constantly changing. The Earth rotates and revolves about the sun, creating a backdrop of stars that is always in motion. The moon grows large in the sky, and then smaller again, in a seemingly endless cycle. Now and then, brilliant streaks of light can be seen in the night sky, there and gone again in a split second. These “shooting stars”, also called meteors, are seen when bits of rock and ice, the leftovers from voyaging comets and asteroids, enter the atmosphere and ablate, or burn up. These tiny travelers, and the light they produce, are the concern of the NASA Meteoroid Environment Office, or MEO, at the Marshall Space Flight Center which is responsible for understanding the meteoroid environment spacecrafts may encounter during missions.

To more closely track and study bright meteors called fireballs, the NASA All Sky Fireball Network watches the skies with six specialized black and white video cameras set up in four states scattered across the Southeast and Southwest. The network’s multiple cameras provide overlapping views of the night sky, thus able to detect the same fireball to allow calculation of its location, speed, and orbit. The network, established by the Meteoroid Environment Office in 2008, sees several multi-station meteors (those detected by more than one camera) each night. The resulting fireball data — in the form of images, movies, diagrams, and text files — is posted online daily. The office uses this data to construct models of the meteoroid environment, something very important to spacecraft designers.

With cameras now in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and New Mexico, the NASA All Sky Fireball Network plans to expand into North Carolina and beyond in 2012. The ultimate goal is a network of about 15 cameras in the United States in science centers, planetaria, and schools. To engage students, and promote STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) disciplines in the classroom, the MEO has created a workshop for educators with information about meteors, a description of the network, and suggestions for how to use the data in the classroom.

 

Rare Double Quadrantid Meteor Sighting


The wide-field meteor camera at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center recorded these two simultaneous Quadrantid meteors on Jan. 4 at approximately 5 a.m. EST. Moving at 92,000 mph, the meteors flashed across the field of view in just over a second.


 



Credits: NASA/MSFC/Meteoroid Environments Office

Slow-Moving Meteor Paints the Night Skies

Early on the morning of Jan. 3, 2012, a beautiful meteor was seen traveling across the skies over Huntsville, Ala. Moving slowly at “only” 18.9 km/s — or 42,000 mph — the meteor was recorded at approximately 10:34:16 UTC in an allsky camera at the Marshall Space Flight Center. It started 88.5 km/55 miles up and was last detected at 79.8 km/50 miles up. The meteor had a mass of 22 grams and was about an inch in diameter — fairly big for a meteor — and its orbit went out to the asteroid belt.

The view below shows the meteor’s path captured by an allsky color camera, also located at the Marshall Center.

Image credits: NASA/MSFC/Meteoroid Environments Office/Bill Cooke and Danielle Moser

Geminid Over Las Cruces

Hazy skies did little to dim the brightness of this Gemind meteor, which graced the skies over southern New Mexico on the night of Dec. 14 around 7:28 p.m. MST. Moving at 80,000 mph, the 3/4 inch meteor — a piece of the asteroid 3200 Phaethon — flared brighter than the planet Venus before burning up 47 miles above the U.S./Mexico border.

Image credit: Marshall Space Flight Center, Meteoroid Environments Office, Bill Cooke