Category Archives: Astronomy

Planet Hunters pass 20M classifications

The Planet Hunters citizen science program hits a large numeric milestone: 20 million classifications and counting! – Planet Hunters

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Planet Hunters has just crossed the 20 million classification mark, a milestone to be celebrated! Thinking back to this time three years ago, the  the Zooniverse development team and Planet Hunters science team  were hard at work on the design and building of the site.  We didn’t know if people would come to the website to help find planets by reviewing Kepler light curves; we were showing graphs of a star’s brightness over time, not the beautiful galaxies in  the stunning images on Galaxy Zoo.  Since the day the project launched in December 2010, we’ve been blown away by the response. It’s been truly overwhelming. I know I couldn’t  have comprehended reaching 20 million classifications back then, and here were are with over 260,000 volunteers worldwide participating in Planet Hunters!

Comet ISON starting to light up

Comet ISON is brightening up enough to see it with binoculars: Spaceweather.com – Nov.9.13 –

COMET ISON NOW A BINOCULAR OBJECT: Comet ISON is brightening as it approaches the sun. Multiple observers now report that it is a binocular object. “I finally saw Comet ISON for the first time using small binoculars!” says pilot Brian Whittaker. He was flying 38,000 feet over the Mediterranean Sea on Nov. 8th when he took this picture showing where to look:

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“It was faint, but is predicted to brighten and move each day,” he adds. “Exciting! “

“I have made my first confirmed binocular sighting of C/2012 S1 ISON as well,” reports Pete Lawrence of Selsey UK on Nov. 9th. “ISON’s head appears small and stellar through a pair of 15x70s optics.”

Continue…

 

10-year-old discovers a supernova

Nathan Gray, a Canadian youngster of 10, spots a supernova: 10-Year-Old Nathan Gray Discovers 600 Million-Year-Old Supernova – ibtimes.com.

His sister Kathryn had found a supernova when she was 10 as well: 10-year-old Canadian youngest ever to discover supernova: For amateur astronomers, discovering a supernova is a significant and rare feat. For a 10-year-old amateur to do it — well, that’s astronomical. – Toronto Star – Jan.4.11.

 

A quintet of Saturn moons

The ESA posts a great picture of a Quintet of Moons:

The image description:

Five moons pose for the international Cassini spacecraft to create this beautiful portrait with Saturn’s rings.

This view, from 29 July 2011, looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from just above the ringplane.

At the far right, and obscuring Saturn itself, is the planet’s second largest moon Rhea, which spans 1528 km. Rhea is closest to Cassini in this composition, at a distance of 1.1 million kilometres. Its heavily cratered surface bears witness to a violent history, with many craters overlapping or erasing the traces of older impact events.

The nearly 400 km-wide Mimas lies just beyond, and seemingly levitates just above Saturn’s innermost rings. The outline of the moon’s large, distinguishing crater Herschel is partially covered by Rhea, but can just be made out along with numerous smaller craters.

Brightly reflective Enceladus appears above the centre of the image and lies beyond the rings, at a distance of 1.8 million kilometres from Cassini. Although not visible in this image, icy Enceladus is covered with a network of frozen ridges and troughs, with plumes of ice particles jetting from fissures in its southern hemisphere.

To the lower left, tiny Pandora, just 81 km across, appears skewered by Saturn’s outer rings – in fact, it orbits between the planet’s A and F rings.

Last but not least, the irregularly shaped Janus lies at the far left of the image, several shadowy surface markings corresponding to large impact craters.

The Cassini–Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA and ASI, the Italian space agency. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington DC, USA.

 

Video: The Sounds of Interstellar Space

The latest NASA ScienceCast is titled The Sounds of Interstellar Space:

For more about space “sounds” see the Natural Radio subsection of  HobbySpace Radio. See also the Natural Space Music section, which offers resources for music created in combination with space radio sounds. Prof. Don Gurnett, who is mentioned in the above video, has had his recordings of space sounds included in a number of works such as the Terry Riley composition titled Sun Rings .