www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ELZD3fhRFw

Read the original here:

Southeast Ohio Astronomical Society – Video

Every now again I get surprised by a photo, showing me something I didnt know about. And I love it even more when that surprise is from an object I thought I knew!

So check out this incredible image of the nearby galaxy Centaurus A, a nearby galaxy harboring a whole slew of surprises:

[Click to galactinate, or get the 4000 x 4000 pixel version, or, if you're feeling frisky, cram this onto your hard drive: an image that's 8500 x 8400 pixels and 29 Mb in size! And trust me: you want to.]

Isnt that stunning? This picture was taken by the MPG/ESO 2.2 meter telescope in Chile, and once you get over its beauty youll realize this galaxy is, frankly, seriously messed up.

Cen A is about 12 million light years away and has roughly the same mass as our Milky Way, containing a few hundred billion stars. The underlying glow of those stars is what makes that round background fuzz in the image, and takes on the familiar elliptical shape of many such galaxies. [Note: All the individual stars you see here are in our on galaxy, since we're inside the Milky Way looking out to Cen A. Also, the little circles next to bright stars are reflections inside the camera itself, and aren't real.]

But check out that wide swath of dark stuff across the middle! That blocks the light from stars behind it, so its a cold certainty thats a dust lane: a thick, flat disk of complex molecules commonly seen in galaxies. But its commonly seen in spiral galaxies like ours, not elliptical ones like Cen A. So somethings weird right off the bat. And note how the ends of the disk seem bent in opposite directions; on the right its bent down, and on the left its bent up.

Most likely, this is because Cen A ate another galaxy. Literally: a galaxy collided with it in the recent past well, like in the past few dozen million years and that galaxy was probably more like our own, rich with dust. As it was absorbed, the dust was stripped from it and settled into that disk. The warping at the ends is a gravitational effect, most likely a distortion from the collision itself. We see it in other galaxies that have nearby companions.

When you observe Cen A using a radio telescope it gets weirder: two huge jets of material are being shot out of the core. The image here shows those jets (click to embiggen). Cen A is a very strong emitter of radio waves; in fact thats why its called Cen A: the brightest radio source in the constellation of Centaurus.

The source of those jets is a gigantic black hole in the core of the galaxy. All big galaxies have one, but Cen As is 55 million times the mass of the Sun nearly 14 times the mass of the black hole in the center of our own galaxy! So its a bruiser. Unlike our Milky Ways black hole, the one in Cen A is actively feeding on material. A huge amount of gas is falling into it. As it does, it forms a flattened disk which gets very, very hot. Millions of degrees hot. Swirling magnetic fields and other forces focus the material into those twins beams which scream out from the disk and create the radio waves. We call these active galaxies.

Read the original here:

The long reach of the Centaur’s dark heart | Bad Astronomy

A little while back, I was at Utah State University to give a public talk about the threat from asteroid impacts and what we can do to stop them (PLUG ALERT: if you want me to come talk at your venue, my agent would love to hear from you).

While I was there I was interviewed by Utah Public Radio, and that interview is online.

I was also chatted up by the local TV station, KSL. I think it went OK, and they put it online as well:

[You may have to refresh this page to get the video to load.]

While I rather wish I had stated succinctly that even the basis of the “Mayan 2012 doomsday” nonsense is itself a gross misinterpretation of Mayan history, culture, and calendar, I think I was pretty clear. I have to walk a fine line sometimes: debunking crap doomsday scenarios like 2012 while also warning of real dangers like asteroid impacts while neither over- or understating that danger. Its a delicate balance.

A balance, Ill note, which is apparently completely lost on some of the commenters on the KSL website who are saying Im totally wrong and that the doomsday is coming in December [Note: I checked just before posting this, and most of the really over-the-top comments have been deleted, and I thank the forum moderators for that]. The sheer blind eye some have toward reality is stunning.

I know some people have deep beliefs they hold true, and are willing to deny whats right in front of their face if they have to. I also know its the Internet out there, where people dont read past the first line or watch a video past the first few seconds. Still, the denial and to be blunt dickery is breathtaking. One person actually said they hoped the Universe kills me so they dont have to listen to my “drivel” [that was one of the comments deleted, BTW].

Of course this isnt the first time Ive had someone wish me dead, or that Id shut up. Duh. But what I find fascinating is the irony. One complaint I hear about critical thinking is that it takes away hope, takes away beauty, and replaces them with despair and the ugly nature of reality. And yet here we see people shredding their critical thinking to hold fast to a doomsday scenario that is as ugly as it is hopeless.

If they actually applied a bit of skepticism, theyd see the 2012 doomsday garbage for what it is. But they cleave unto it as fervently as a drowning man to a life preserver.

I dont think I have anything particularly profound to add to this; Im just shining a light on it for you to see. Be aware of this, and always remember peoples ability to be paradoxical and completely embrace a nonsensical danger while denying the real one.

Read the rest here:

If the Mayans were right, it was probably about Internet comments | Bad Astronomy

Go here to read the rest:

Sunday solar eclipse visible from national parks

The view from the International Space Station is always pretty cool, but when an astronaut points the camera at the Earths horizon and takes a series of short exposures, adding them together gives a view right out of Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s:

[Click to psilocybinate.]

Whoa, man!

Astronaut Don Petit took the pictures to make this composite. Basically, its a series of eighteen 30-second exposures added together so the motion of the ISS around the Earth makes the stars trail, the cities blur, and your mind expand, dude.

The brown and green glow over the horizon is the atmospheric aerosol layer; molecules that absorb sunlight during the day and release that energy at night. The red glow above that puzzles me; Ive written about it before. It might be a reflection of lights from inside the space station, but I suspect its actually the aurora; it follows the curve of the Earth, and as you can see from the star trails the camera was pointed toward the poles the direction youre likely to see an aurora.

You can see faint star trails above the bright ones too, with a different center of curvature those probably are from an internal reflection. Either that or the camera got moved, but that seems unlikely! Several people pointed out to me that the fainter trails above the stars are from the solar panels. I shouldve realized that myself!

This picture is one of several posted to Flickr, including this one which looks like its from the last scene of “2001: A Space Odyssey”. But theyre all worth looking at, if only for their alien beauty.

After all, the photographer was literally high when he took them!

Image credit: NASA

Read the original:

Psychedelic space station stars and cities | Bad Astronomy

I do a roughly monthly segment with astronomer Seth Shostak on Big Picture Science, a radio show/podcast done by The SETI Institute. This month, Seth and I talked about the American Airlines dustup when they were planning to run an interview with reality-impaired antivaxxer Meryl Dorey. This story is a great victory for reality, and Ive already written about the back story.

Never forget: this antivax issue is more than important: it is literally life and death. Because of lowering vaccine rates, pertussis outbreaks are so prevalent health officials in the state of Washington have declared it to be an epidemic. The governor has had to dip into emergency funds to the tune of $90,000 to finance an information campaign to get the word out.

But the money is secondary to the idea that babies and people with immune deficiencies are at risk of dying from a disease that is essentially totally preventable if everyone got their vaccinations and boosters.

I cannot state that any more simply. The antivax crowd says vaccines cause autism, vaccines cause neurological problems, vaccines hurt your immune system. None of that is true. The real danger is when people believe the antivax propaganda. Infants too young to be vaccinated themselves rely on herd immunity if enough people are vaccinated the disease has no place to live. And when we as a community dont vaccinate, people get sick, and some people including those infants, usually just a few weeks old die.

Talk to your board-certified doctor, and if they say its OK, get vaccinated. You may save more than one life doing so.

Related Posts:

– Followup: Antivaxxers, airlines, and ailments – UPDATE: partial Complete success with American Airlines! – Whooping cough outbreak in Boulder – Stop antivaxxers. Now.

Excerpt from:

Big Picture Science: Antivaxxers (and updates) | Bad Astronomy

When Im getting the mid-afternoon drowsies, and looking for a comfortable, warm, cozy place to take a nap, what could possibly be better than the impact crater-scarred surface of the Moon?

This may be the greatest blanket throw in the history of blankets. Who wouldnt want to cuddle up in a little regolith?

And ZOMFSM and it comes with matching pillows! And theres a floor cushion!

Supermoon, indeed.

Tip o the spacesuit visor to Design for Mankind via Jeri Ryan on Pinterest.

Related Posts:

– WANT Part XII: Earth Globe Fire Pit – WANT Part XI: To boldly slice – WANT Part X: The TARDIS. A REAL TARDIS! – WANT Part IX: Levitating TARDIS edition – WANT Part VIII: Zen and the art of Apollo maintenance – Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnt!!! – Want: Part 6 – Want: Part V, lunar furniture edition – Want: Part IV – Want: Part III – Want: Part II – Want

Read more:

WANT Part XIII: Moon throw | Bad Astronomy

I worked with Hubble Space Telescope data for about ten years, and one of the most amazing things about that was seeing the images fresh off the mirror. Knowing that no human on Earth had ever seen that particular object that sharply was a thrill.

Not every Hubble observation gets turned into a gorgeous image, though. A lot of them dont need to be for scientific publications, for one thing, and for another not every observation is of a targeted object for a specific purpose. Because of that, there are probably hundreds and hundreds of amazing objects galaxies, nebulae, star clusters buried in the data, waiting to be found.

Thats where you come in: the folks at the European Space Agencys Hubble HQ are holding a contest they call Hidden Treasures. You can look through the Hubble observation archive for images and tweak them using online tools they provide, or you can really roll up your sleeves and use professional astronomical software to prettify the images. Theyve made a video explaining the Hubble archive, which may help.

The contest has nice prizes (an iPod Touch, an iPad, and other “goodies”), but you have to hurry: it ends May 31. I know, Im late to the game here, and I apologize. But if this sounds like something youd like to do, go dive in! I can tell you as someone with (a lot) of first-hand experience here: its huge fun. And who knows? You might find something beautiful, something interesting, or even something no one has ever seen before.

Related Posts:

– When beauty and science collide – A spiral that can beat you with two arms tied behind its back – Happy 22nd, Hubble! – Desktop Project Part 26: Carina will keelhaul your brain

See the original post here:

Help find Hubble’s Hidden Treasures | Bad Astronomy

You are looking at the Sun’s Evil Eye. Or the Death Star ready to shoot its planet-destructing laser. Or Jean Grey turning into the Phoenix. Actually, I really don’t care about what the hell is going on hereit just looks amazing.

And the fact is that, even while this M4.7-class solar flare ended before any coronal mass ejection happened, it doesn’t make it look less scary. According to NASA, “this image is shown in the 131 Angstrom wavelength, a wavelength that is typically colorized in teal and that provided the most detailed picture of this particular flare.”

So. Pretty. [NASA Goddard Flickr]

Go here to read the rest:

NASA Captures the Sun's Most Striking Photo Yet [Astronomy]

A hundred million light years away, two gorgeous spiral galaxies are locked in an embrace that may end with them merging, a dance spread across a hundred thousand light years in space and a hundred million years of time.

[Click to galactinate, and yeah, just do it. The hi-res version is big and lush and lovely indeed.]

This image, taken by frequent BABlog contributor Adam Block, shows this cosmic waltz in lovely detail (another wonderful image is available via the ESO as well [UPDATE: ... and from Gemini, with a diagram of the two and a nice explanation]). The two galaxies (NGC 5426 on the left, and NGC 5427 on the right) are just starting this eons-long encounter, but affects are already visible. You can see tendrils of material stretching from NGC 5426 to its companion, drawn out by the force of NGC 5427s gravitational attraction.

Inside the galaxies, you can easily see the pink glow of gas clouds, disturbed by the interaction, starting to furiously churn out hot young stars. Actually, stars of all masses are born in these clouds, but its the rare massive stars that have the most impact. They blast out ultraviolet light which makes the gas glow, and will explode as supernovae, lighting things up even more.

In galactic collisions like this the outcome can be difficult to ascertain. Perhaps theyll pass this one time and do so with sufficient velocity to make this a one-eon stand, continuing on into the night. Or, if their relative speeds arent enough, theyll pull apart, only to be drawn inexorably together once again. Even then they may pass, but this time in an ever-decreasing arc, until finally they merge into one bigger galaxy. Although this plays out over far too long a timespan to watch in real time, we see so many colliding galaxies that its like having snapshots at all different stages of evolution (see Related Posts below for lots of collidey goodness).

The general steps here are known, but the specific outcome of this particular encounter is still to be seen.

And well see something like it up close, if not for quite some time: the Andromeda Galaxy will one day collide with our Milky Way, and when that happens well be able to see what a galactic collision looks like from the inside. Buy your tickets now. The show begins in just a billion years or two.

Image credit: Adam Block/Mount Lemmon SkyCenter/University of Arizona

Related Posts:

See the rest here:

The start of a long, long dance | Bad Astronomy

The Tamil Nadu Science and Technology Centre will be organising a three-day Summer School on Astronomy and Astrophysics for students studying in classes VII to IX.

The programme will be held during May 17 to 19, between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. at the B. M. Birla Planetarium, Periyar Science and Technology Centre, Gandhimandapam Road, Guindy.

Topics such as fundamentals of celestial coordinate systems, solar system, studies on the Moon, birth and evolution of stars, galaxies, cosmology, telescopes in astronomy, etc., will be taught. The course also has practical sessions for observing stars, planets, deep sky objects and the Sun, using modern telescopes. Only 50 students will be admitted on first-come-first served basis.

For registration and further details, contact 2441 0025.

Continued here:

Three-day course on Astronomy

Did the universe have a beginning? When was it, and what was it like? What are the stars? How distant are they? Why do they shine? How and when did the Earth form? Are there other worlds like Earth in the universe? Do they, too, have life?

We are living in a Golden Age of astronomy, where some of the oldest and most profound questions of philosophy long thought unanswerable are finding resolution.

The Apollo era created new interest and capabilities to answer these questions, and our next forays into the solar system led us to Venus, Mars and Jupiters moon, Europa. Our searches there have led to a scientific bounty, but also mild philosophical disappointment: so far, there is no sign of life on these worlds, or even conditions where much life from Earth could thrive.

Astronomers have not given up on these nearby bodies as potential hosts for life, but in 1992 a new avenue of discovery opened when Alexander Wolszczan, now an Evan Pugh professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State, discovered planets orbiting the distant corpse of a burnt-out star the first exoplanets ever found outside our own solar system. Three years later, a Swiss team led by Michel Mayor, an astrophysicist and professor emeritus at the University of Geneva, discovered a giant gas planet like Jupiter orbiting scorchingly close to a nearby star. The methods that professors Wolszczan and Mayor helped to pioneer rapidly led to the discovery of many more of these distant planets. Over the next five years, the number of known exoplanets would approach 40 and astronomers would begin to measure the

sizes and compositions of these alien worlds.

The promise of research for finding Earth-like exoplanets has been realized rapidly over the past decade. Ever-smaller and balmier exoplanets have been continuously discovered in systems reminiscent of our own solar system. The past few years have been especially exciting, as the first exoplanets have been directly imaged, and exoplanets not much larger than Earth have been detected around the nearest stars.

The Kepler spacecraft has discovered thousands of exoplanets throughout our galaxy. As astronomers pore over this bounty they hope, and cautiously expect, to find the sort of exoplanet Kepler was specifically designed to reveal: an Earth-sized body (a terrestrial planet) around a sun-like star with an orbital distance implying a surface temperature compatible with liquid water (within the habitable zone). This discovery may be only months away.

And what of life? The search for extraterrestrial intelligence has been scouring the skies for radio and

Editors note:The Focus on Research column will highlight different research projects being conducted at Penn State. The bimonthly columns will feature the work of researchers from across all disciplines at the university.

Coming up next:A look at the new Center for Sport Concussion Research and Service at Penn State.

Continue reading here:

This is Golden Age of astronomy

Because you simply cannot have enough incredibly beautiful photographs of aurorae in your life, heres one taken near Tromso, Norway, on March 28, 2012 by photographer Helge Mortensen:

[Click to coronalmassejectenate, and you should.]

What a shot! Dead center in the picture is the Pleiades, the small cluster of bright stars. The bright object is the Moon, and to the lower right is Venus. If you look carefully, just above the horizon, lies Jupiter. To see it, start at the Pleiades, let your eyes move down and to the right to Venus, then keep going; Jupiter is in line with the clouds, just at the edge of the aurora itself.

I love how that one long swooshing ribbon of aurora cuts across the whole picture. See how it looks broader to the left, then narrower as you follow it to the right? Thats almost certainly perspective making it looks smaller. Its probably something like 100 kilometers (60 miles) above the Earths surface and follows the Earths curve. The far end of it, near the horizon, is much farther away than the part at the upper left.

And despite all the drama occurring in the sky, my eye keeps getting drawn to the water. In this 10 second exposure, the slow movement of the water softens its appearance. Funny, too: I saw a face in the water and chuckled, then noted that Mortensen got a note from a friend who saw the face as well or maybe a different one. But the one I see is pretty obvious. Do you see it too?

Mortensen has many more beautiful shots of aurorae on his 500px page, so head over there and soak up the glory of the active sky.

Image credit: Helge Mortensen, used by permission.

Related Posts:

– The green fire of the aurora, seen from space – Januarys aurora from way far north – Faith and begaurora – The rocket, the laser, and the northern lights

Read this article:

Fire, water, and ice | Bad Astronomy

Originally posted here:

East Lince Astronomy Club observe Virgo cluster

The sky is not as it seems.

Certainly, gazing upon it on a clear night you see so much: stars, planets, the glow of hot gas here and there but theres also darkness. Look at the Milky Way, its stream split down the middle by a rift of black. Gape at a gaudy nebula, and youll see it pocked here and there by pools of black.

But what is inky pitch to our eyes glows with a cold light to those attuned to it.

Tell me, what do you see here?

The bright star is obvious enough, but you can also, dimly, see a feathered stripe of black splashed across the vista, blocking, absorbing the light from stars behind it. Details are muted, structure difficult to ascertain, and you strain to see features that your brain cannot interpret.

But thats with your eyes. Try again, look at it, but this time, widen your view. See it now?

Well done! Where before you saw material absorbing light, now it emits! Of course, unbeknownst to you, you had some help: the ESO APEX telescope in Chile. It sees into the far, far infrared, where light is so stretched out it is entirely invisible to humans. In fact, the wavelength of light is so wide there that if it were a vibrating string, you could physically see the crests and troughs, since each would be separated by the next by nearly a millimeter. The light your eye can see has a wavelength only a thousandth that wide.

When APEX looked at this ribbon of dark, frigidly cold dust, it sees the material glowing. What we see as dark, it sees as bright. You can even compare the two directly, using a slider over the two versions of this picture, unveiling precisely what your now-expanded vision can take in.

See the original post here:

The darkness and the light | Bad Astronomy

Alan Friedman is a photographer who takes amazing pictures of the Sun. While others were out celebrating Cinco de Mayo this past weekend, he was outside taking another jaw-dropping image of the nearest star in the Universe:

Yegads! Click to ensolarnate, and he has a greyscale version, too.

I love the detail and texture of his images. He has an excellent telescopic setup which yields the superb resolution, and he employs an old trick to get the texture: he inverts the image of the Suns disk, making black stuff look white and vice-versa. This is a technique thats been used by astronomers for decades to enhance images; our eyes see details better that way. When Alan does it, I swear it makes the Sun look like a 1.4 million-kilometer-wide shag rug.

All the way on the left, just on the Suns edge, you can see a group of sunspots just rotating into view. Thats Active Region 1476, and Alan provided me with a clear picture of them (no tom-foolery) which Ive put here. That monster group is about 100,000 kilometers (60,000 miles) across, so when I saw them I immediately suspected trouble.

and sure enough, they had a medium-sized eruption just this morning. At 13:00 UTC they blasted off an M1.4 class flare; big enough to potentially cause some radio disruption and maybe some aurorae. NASAs Solar Dynamics Observatory got a dramatic view of the eruption:

Flares this size are relatively common; there was one in late March for example. Bigger ones happen less frequently, though again we did see one 50 times this powerful in March as well! Well have to see if todays eruption will cause any aurorae, and either way, we should keep our eyes on AR1476.

Image credit: Alan Friedman, used by permission. Tip o the Sun visor to Camilla Corona SDO on Google+ for the video.

Related Posts:

– NASAs guide to solar flares – The Sun unleashes an X5.4 class flare – The Suns Angry Red Spot – The boiling, erupting Sun (to this day my favorite photo by Alan!)

Read this article:

Solar Cinco de Mayo | Bad Astronomy

I write a sporadically monthly column for Blastr, the science/science fiction web news portal for the SyFy channel. My latest is about asteroid mining the company Planetary Resources announced recently they have big plans to Go Where No Mine Has Gone before, and I give it the once over.

As I said when I wrote about this earlier, Im enthusiastic about it, but Id like to see details. But Ill say that the first few steps the company wants to take make a great deal of sense to me.

And hey, if you speak French je ne pas parles merci bleh bleh PeeWee the French newspaper 20 Minutes has an interview with me about all this as well. I think I come off sounding really smart, because I cant understand a word of the interview.

More of my Blastr articles are listed below, too. I seem to have a predilection for destruction. Hmmm. Maybe Ill write about unicorns and rainbows next.

Oh, wait.

Related posts:

– Blastr: In which I vaporize the Moon – Blastr: Invasion Earth! – Blastr: So, you wanna blow up the Earth? – Blastr: My Favorite TV Scientists – Blastroid – Blastr: Other than that, Spock, how was the movie? – Blastr: I Was A Zombie For Science – Big budget movies that got their science right – Master of Blastr

See the rest here:

Asteroid, mine | Bad Astronomy

My willingness to fight has seen some major impediments in the past few weeks. The increase in antireality nonsense seems like a growing tsunami. Antivax health threats. Global warming denial on a major (and heavily funded) scale. The ugliness yesterday in North Carolina.

And even though weve had some great victories, its still an endless road, always uphill, always against the wind. Despair seems inevitable.

But then, but then, this:

Made for the Canadian Paralympic Committee, that may be the single greatest ad ever made. I suddenly find myself able to stand, dust myself off, and get back on the road.

Unstoppable. As we must be.

Tip o the starting gun to Laughing Squid.

See the article here:

Unstoppable | Bad Astronomy

The Point is a web-based talk show on the Young Turks YouTube channel where various issues are discussed by panelists. They have people send in short videos making some salient point, then panelists discuss it. Cara Santa Maria the senior science correspondent at The Huffington Post guest-hosted the show this last week, and asked me to send in a video for discussion. I talked about asteroid mining, which started an interesting discussion.

For more information about asteroid mining and Planetary Resources, you can read my recent post about them.

The video embedded above is set to start at my segment, but Ill note that my friend Chris Mooney was the first video they discussed, talking his new book “The Republican Brain”. Chris is always careful when he discusses this topic, knowing it will be misinterpreted willfully or otherwise, which of course it has been. But I do have to point out one thing that bugged me: noted science author K. C. Cole was on the panel, and I agreed with much of what she said. But when talking about Chriss book, she brought out the “Well, theres antiscience on the left as well” meme, and that argument really irks me.

Yes, there does exist antiscience bias on the left as promulgated by antivaxxers and alt-medders and I have to debunk that way too often as well but its not nearly as far-reaching as antiscience on the right. Its not a party platform, for one thing, and for another there simply isnt nearly as much or as focused as it is on the right. Read this link for more about this (especially before you leave a comment here hint, hint).

Still, it was an interesting discussion on The Point, and Id like to thank Cara for inviting me. And as to her question at 35:43 yes. Yes, I am.

Related Posts:

– Breaking: Private company does indeed plan to mine asteroids and I think they can do it – Space firm about to make a big announcement. I take a stab at what it is. – TED talks now on Netflix including mine

Original post:

The Point on asteroid mining and antiscience | Bad Astronomy

This is a cool picture:

What youre seeing is from the NASA/ESA satellite Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO. It stares at the Sun all the time, monitoring its activity. This image, from May 3, 2012 is from the LASCO C3, one of the cameras on board. It has a little metal paddle (called an occulter) to block the ferocious light of the Sun; thats the black bar and circle. The white outline is the position of the Sun and its size in the image.

You can see an emerging coronal mass ejection on the left: thats the bulb-shaped thingy. Its actually an incredibly violent expulsion of a billion tons of subatomic particles hurled away at high speed due to the explosive discharge of the Suns magnetic field but thats not why I posted this picture.

You can also see streamers coming from the Sun; those are places where particles flow freely into space from the Sun. Basically, the magnetic field of the Sun trails into space in those locations, allowing the wind to escape. But thats not why Im showing you this picture, either.

Look on the left. See that weird dot with the horizontal line through it? Thats Jupiter! The line is not real; its where the camera got overexposed by the planet (digital detectors like your phone camera convert photons of light into electrons, and if a source is too bright, the electrons overflow the pixels like water from a bucket. The way the camera works, the electrons flow along the horizontal grid of pixels, creating these lines. This is called “blooming”).

Jupiter has been gracing our sky for months, but has been getting further west every night, closing the apparent distance between it and the Sun. Its on the opposite side of the Sun from us, at a distance of almost 900 million kilometers (550 million miles). When two objects get close in the sky, its called a conjunction. When its a planet on the far side of the Sun, its called superior conjunction. Just sos you know.

Anyway, I just think this is neat. Jupiter is roughly one-billionth as bright as the Sun, yet there it is in the picture! And even though SOHO is designed to look at the Sun, Jupiter is so bright its overexposed. Imagine if the spacecraft moved a bit and the Sun were to peek out from behind the occulter which can happen. SOHO goes into “safe mode” when that happens, shutting down systems that might get damaged. Every astronomical satellite has contingency plans like that, since its hard to send a repair service to most of em. Generally its fixable by sending software commands to the spacecraft once the underlying problem has been ascertained.

If you want, SOHO has images online that are updated constantly. Go see what the Sun is doing now! Over the next few days Jupiter will get closer to the Sun, then pass very close to or even behind the disk. LASCO 2, another camera on SOHO that has a smaller field of view but a bit more resolution, should show the moons too when Jupiter moves into its field. Ill post again when that happens. Thatll be even neater.

Image credit: NASA/ESA/SOHO

Read the original here:

Jupiter, acting all superior | Bad Astronomy