Send your name to Mars with NASA

Add your name to a digital list which will be launched into space on board the Orion test flight in December.

October 2014 | Active weather systems

1/10/ 2014 | The Outer Planets from Richard Pearson on Vimeo.

I would like to thank professor Kunio Sayanagi & Trevor Barry for all their help while making this program. We do not often hear about the outer planets, now is a good time because there is interesting things happening in the weather systems of the planets Saturn & Uranus which is causing excitement among planetary astronomers. In addition, the planet Neptune was at opposition on 1 September 2014 and Uranus will be at opposition on 7 October. A planet is at opposition when it lies opposite to the Sun in the sky, and is therefore best placed for observation.

Here is a link to The William Herschel Museum web site | http://herschelmuseum.org.uk/

A Spectacular Landscape of Star Formation

This image, captured by the Wide Field Imager at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile, shows two dramatic star formation regions in the southern Milky Way. The first is of these, on the left, is dominated by the star cluster NGC 3603, located 20 000 light-years away, in the Carina–Sagittarius spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy. The second object, on the right, is a collection of glowing gas clouds known as NGC 3576 that lies only about half as far from Earth.
          NGC 3603 is a very bright star cluster and is famed for having the highest concentration of massive stars that have been discovered in our galaxy so far. At the centre lies a Wolf–Rayet multiple star system, known as HD 97950. Wolf–Rayet stars are at an advanced stage of stellar evolution, and start off with around 20 times the mass of the Sun. But, despite this large mass, Wolf–Rayet stars shed a considerable amount of their matter due to intense stellar winds, which blast the star’s surface material off into space at several million kilometres per hour, a crash diet of cosmic proportions.
          NGC 3603 is in an area of very active star formation. Stars are born in dark and dusty regions of space, largely hidden from view. But as the very young stars gradually start to shine and clear away their surrounding cocoons of material they become visible and create glowing clouds in the surrounding material, known as HII regions. HII regions shine because of the interaction of ultraviolet radiation given off by the brilliant hot young stars with the hydrogen gas clouds. HII regions can measure several hundred light-years in diameter, and the one surrounding NGC 3603 has the distinction of being the most massive in our galaxy.
The cluster was first observed by John Herschel on 14 March 1834 during his three-year expedition to systematically survey the southern skies from near Cape Town. He described it as a remarkable object and thought that it might be a globular star cluster. Future studies showed that it is not an old globular, but a young open cluster, one of the richest known.
          NGC 3576, on the right of the image, also lies in the Carina–Sagittarius spiral arm of the Milky Way. But it is located only about 9000 light-years from Earth — much closer than NGC 3603, but appearing next to it in the sky.
NGC 3576 is notable for two huge curved objects resembling the curled horns of a ram. These odd filaments are the result of stellar winds from the hot, young stars within the central regions of the nebula, which have blown the dust and gas outwards across a hundred light-years. Two dark silhouetted areas known as Bok globules are also visible in this vast complex of nebulae. These black clouds near the top of the nebula also offer potential sites for the future formation of new stars.
          NGC 3576 was also discovered by John Herschel in 1834, making it a particularly productive and visually rewarding year for the English astronomer.

25 Years Ago, Voyager 2 Captures Images of Neptune

NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft gave humanity its first glimpse of Neptune and its moon Triton in the summer of 1989. This picture of Neptune was produced from the last whole planet images taken through the green and orange filters on the Voyager 2 narrow angle camera. The images were taken on Aug. 20, 1989, at a range of 4.4 million miles from the planet, 4 days and 20 hours before closest approach on Aug. 25. The picture shows the Great Dark Spot and its companion bright smudge; on the west limb the fast moving bright feature called "Scooter" and the little dark spot are visible. These clouds were seen to persist for as long as Voyager's cameras could resolve them. North of these, a bright cloud band similar to the south polar streak may be seen.

In the summer of 2015, another NASA mission to the farthest zone of the solar system, New Horizons, will make a historic first close-up study of Pluto. Although a fast flyby, New Horizons' Pluto encounter on July 14, 2015, will not be a replay of Voyager but more of a sequel and a reboot, with a new and more technologically advanced spacecraft and, more importantly, a new cast of characters. Those characters are Pluto and its family of five known moons, all of which will be seen up close for the first time next summer.

Image Credit: NASA

Jupiter’s magnetic field revealed

Max Planck researchers penetrate with computer simulations deep into the interior of the giant planet Jupiter.
Superlatives are the hallmark of the planet Jupiter. Thus, the magnetic field of the largest member is about ten times stronger... than that on Earth, and it is in the solar system at the cloud top by far the most extensive magnetosphere around a planet. Puzzling it seemed a long time that this field has a similar structure as that of our planet, although both celestial bodies in the interior are constructed entirely differently. A team under the leadership of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Göttingen have now succeeded with the most detailed computer simulations to explain the origin of the magnetic field deep within the gas giant.

The Realm of Comets

Hello and welcome to Astronomy & Space. In this program we take a look at the highlights of the August night sky.The maximum of the Perseid meteor shower takes place on the night of August 11th which are associated with comet Swift-Tuttle, and comet ISON looks like it will be a great sight in the December night sky. Our main theme is therefore the Realm of Comets.

Thank You,
Richard Pearson

The next episode of the Sky at Night will be Next Sunday 23:50 on BBC One except Scotland, Scotland HD

It's a golden era of exploration on Mars, with Nasa's space rover Curiosity finding out new and exciting things about the planet and which might offer the best chance of life elsewhere in our solar system.

The spacecraft Mars Express is also celebrating a decade at the red planet and Chris Lintott and Lucie Green pick out some of the highlights, including the 'face of Mars'.

Meanwhile Jon Culshaw explores the Moore Moon Marathon with astronomers in Chipping Norton.

Curiosity Mars Rover Gleams in View from Orbiter

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity appears as a bluish dot near the lower right corner of this enhanced-colour view from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The rover's tracks are visible extending from the landing site, "Bradbury Landing," in the left half of the scene. Two bright, relatively blue spots surrounded by darker patches are where the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft's landing jets cleared away reddish surface dust at the landing site. North is toward the top. For scale, the two parallel lines of the wheel tracks are about 10 feet (3 meters) apart.

HiRISE shot this image on June 27, 2013, when Curiosity was at an outcrop called "Shaler" in the "Glenelg" area of Gale Crater. Subsequently the rover drove away from Glenelg toward the southwest.

When HiRISE captured this view, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was rolled for an eastward-looking angle rather than straight downward. The afternoon sun illuminated the scene from the western sky, so the lighting was nearly behind the camera. Specifically, the angle from sun to orbiter to rover was just 5.47 degrees. This geometry hides shadows and reveals subtle colour variations.

The image is one product from HiRISE observation ESP_032436_1755. Other image products from this observation are available at http://uahirise.org/ESP_032436_1755.

HiRISE is one of six instruments on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Science Laboratory projects for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

Imperial College London plans ‘Mission to Mars’

Scientists have designed a concept mission to land astronauts on Mars.

The plan envisages a three-person crew journeying to Mars aboard a small two-part craft.

The craft would rotate to generate artificial gravity and use a heat shield to protect itself against solar flares.

The crew would then return to Martian orbit in a pre-sent craft fuelled using ice from beneath the planet's surface.

The concept, developed in conjunction with the BBC, is intended to spark further debate about the technical obstacles and risks that would have to be overcome in order to put humans on Mars.

Mars ‘A Dynamic World’

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