Archive for June, 2010

PostHeaderIcon Soil on Mars Honors Around the Americas

Happy Homecoming Ocean Watch, you now have a soil on Mars named after you. That’s right. A little patch of dirt* on Mars is now named “Ocean Watch.”

Wait, what’s Ocean Watch?

Pacific Science Center and Sailors for the Sea have just completed Around the Americas: a science outreach project to sail all the way around both North and South America (including through the Nortwest Passage). The boat they sailed was called Ocean Watch, and they did all kinds of fun science and activities with people at every port of call.

Mission:

Around the Americas is a 25,000 mile sailing circumnavigation of the American continents with the mission of inspiring, educating, and engaging citizens of the Americas to protect our fragile oceans.

Back when I was a kid the Northwest Passage didn’t exist, so this would have been impossible, and now not only is it possible, but my friend Zeta sailed through it. This wasn’t that long ago either … the ice really is melting.

Ocean Watch arrived back in Seattle today (June 17, 2010).

What does that have to do with Mars?

Nothing. But Dr. Amy Knudson from the Planetary Science Institute was volunteering with Pacific Science Center during the exhibit Facing Mars, and she works with the Mars Exploration Rovers doing soil analysis among other things. She was asking if we had recommendations for naming little things on Mars. The names had to be nautical, so I told her about Around the Americas and Ocean Watch. A few weeks later she returned, telling us that she’d proposed the name for one of the patches of soil she was analyzing and it had been accepted!

She’s just sent me some photos of Ocean Watch on Mars as taken by Opportunity (also known as Mars Exploration Rover B). She is continuing to name other soils and rocks after Around the Americas’ ports of call.

Show Me the Dirt*!

Ocean Watch (a soil on Mars) - field of view approximately 1/2 meter by 1/2 meter.
Photo credit: D. Savransky and J. Bell (Cornell) / JPL / NASA

Opportunity took this picture on Sol 2225 (martian day 2225) with its panoramic camera. This image is approximately true color, and shows a small impression where Opportunity’s instrument rested during the soil analysis.

Nothing has been released about the analysis of this soil yet – so your best guess about that texture is just great. Be the scientist – what do you think those “bubbles” are? Are they depressions or spheres? Are they hard? Soft? Are they just shapes in the sand that are easily disrupted or are they harder? Look at how they are different when they’ve been pressed by the instrument. Does that help you determine what they’re like? What might have caused them?

Ocean Watch soil through Microscopic Imager (3cm by 3cm)

Using the microscopic imager Opportunity took a close up picture of the soil before deploying the “IDD” – the “Instrument Deployment Device” – also known as the arm.

Ocean Watch with impression (3cm by 3cm)

Using the microscopic imager Opportunity took another close up picture of the soil AFTER deploying the arm. You can see where the instrument rested in the upper right of the picture. Some of the little bubbles or depressions are flattened, and others have been entirely squished.

Naming on Mars

If you follow the rover missions you’ll have heard of rocks and landforms on Mars named things like “Chocolate Hills,” “Concepcíon,” “Columbia Hills,” “Endurance,” or “Jenny.” Naming of objects in the solar system has to go through the International Astronomical Union (IAU), which can take years. In order to stay sane and not constantly have to say to each other “let’s take a look at that rock” or “shall we drive to crater 001-5BX?” the technicians and scientists working with the Mars rovers assign their own names to these items. Ocean Watch is such a name. I find it likely that many of these names will stick – having been used for years by the time the IAU has time to choose official names – but some will be changed, and some are of locations too small for anyone to care about once the rover has driven on. Ocean Watch is a very small patch of soil (about 1/4 of a square meter), so who knows what will happen.

For now though, a little patch of a distant planet holds a name that reminds us of the fragility of our own planet, and honors the excitement of doing science and science outreach.

Want More?

More information about this soil will eventually be posted in the MER Analyst’s Notebook.

*Technically I wouldn’t use the word “dirt” because that tends to imply organic content … but, forgive me this time.

Thank you, Amy.

~ A l i c e !

. Savransky and J. Bell (Cornell) / JPL / NAS

PostHeaderIcon Summer Solstice Sunset – 2010

  • When: Monday, June 21, 2010 at 9:11pm (so come at 8:30pm)
  • Where: Solstice Park (or, if you’re not in Seattle, wherever you have a view of the western horizon!)
  • Who: Everyone welcome, as usual.

Sunset on June 11, 2009 Credit: Jason Gift Enevoldsen

Come watch the summer solstice sunset at Solstice Park in West Seattle on Monday. We’ll see if the sunset lines up with the placed marker. I’ll be there even if it is cloudy because sometimes the Sun peeks through just as it begins to set, but if it is driving rain I’m staying home with a cup of tea.

If it is clear we’ll bring a telescope or two to take a look at the Moon after the Sun goes down – and Mars and Saturn if we stay until it is dark enough. We will not be able to see the comet – that rises a little before 3am, and I plan to get some sleep before Tuesday. You’re welcome to look for the comet on your own though!

If you’re interested – here’s the timing of various celestial events on Saturday from Seattle, courtesy of the U.S. Naval Observatory Astronomical Applications Department:

Sun and Moon Data for One Day

The following information is provided for Seattle, King County, Washington (longitude W122.3, latitude N47.6):

Monday   21 June 2010          Pacific Daylight Time

SUN
Begin civil twilight       4:31 a.m.
Sunrise                    5:11 a.m.
Sun transit                1:11 p.m.
Sunset                     9:11 p.m.
End civil twilight         9:52 p.m.

MOON
Moonrise                   3:29 p.m. on preceding day
Moonset                    1:36 a.m.
Moonrise                   4:45 p.m.
Moon transit               9:29 p.m.
Moonset                    2:05 a.m. on following day

This event is my part of the NASA’s Solar System Ambassadors program, and thanks to West Seattle Blog for publicizing the last few!

Everyone is welcome, see you there!

~ A l i c e !

PostHeaderIcon Kepler Mission: Basic Background

Opening soon at the Willard Smith Planetarium will be Strange Planets, a show about how we detect planets around other stars. To whet your appetite – how about a few details about the Kepler Mission.

In short – the Kepler Mission is a telescope in orbit that is pointed at the exact same patch of sky for a period of four years (starting in 2009). It is detecting planets around other stars via the so-called transit method – watching as planets transit in front of their stars. By watching for five years it should be able to detect hundreds (if not thousands) of planets in Earth-like orbits, and therefore plenty of planets in their stars habitable zones.

Where is Kepler Looking?

Kepler is closely watching a little patch of sky by the constellation Cygnus, pointed along our little section of the Milky Way, carefully avoiding all the brightest stars.

From NASA: Kepler's Field of View (Angle 1)

From NASA: Kepler's Field of View (Angle 2)

The Kepler Technology

Advanced gyroscopes onboard Kepler keep it pointed in exactly the same direction so the scientists at JPL can get unwavering readings on each star in Kepler’s field of view. To detect planets and calculate their orbits with certainty Kepler will have to watch each planet transit two or three times at least. For a planet like Earth, in its star’s habitable zone, the orbit takes about a year. Different sizes and temperatures of stars have habitable zones at different distances, but the Kepler mission will be able to do a good job at detecting planets with orbital periods up to about two years.

Look at this beautiful picture of the Kepler CCD array (from NASA). Ooo! Shiny!

New News: Hundreds of Planet Candidates Found

Characteristics of Kepler Planetary Candidates Based on the First Data Set: The Majority are Found to be Neptune-Size and Smaller

(Submitted on 14 Jun 2010)

Abstract: In the spring of 2009 the Kepler Mission conducted high precision photometry on nearly 156,000 stars to detect the frequency and characteristics of small exoplanets. On 15 June 2010 the Kepler Mission released data on all but 400 of the ~156,000 planetary target stars to the public. At the time of this publication, 706 targets from this first data set have viable exoplanet candidates with sizes as small as that of the Earth to larger than that of Jupiter. Here we give the identity and characteristics of 306 of the 706 targets. The released targets include 5 candidate multi-planet systems. Data for the remaining 400 targets with planetary candidates will be released in February 2011. The Kepler results based on the candidates in the released list imply that most candidate planets have radii less than half that of Jupiter.

Comments: Paper to accompany Kepler’s June 15, 2010 data release; to be submitted to Astrophysical Journal
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:1006.2799v1

(added 6/15/2010 3pm)

Want More?

Kepler’s Website (Official Honoree of the Webby Awards!)

The New Worlds Atlas

The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia – a good resource for the latest exoplanet totals and discoveries.

~ A l i c e !

arXiv:1006.2799v1 [astro-ph.EP]

PostHeaderIcon Comet McNaught

I just got this in my e-mail. I can’t tell if this is a new “Comet McNaught” or a new approach by the same one we saw a couple years ago. This is a different comet than the “Comet McNaught” discovered a few years ago, but it was discovered by the same person! In any case – enjoy!

Space Weather News for June 8, 2010
http://spaceweather.com

NEW COMET McNAUGHT: A fresh comet is swinging through the inner solar system, and it is brightening rapidly as it approaches Earth for a 100 million mile close encounter in mid-June. Comet McNaught (C/2009 R1) has a vivid green head and a long wispy tail that look great through small telescopes. By the end of the month it could be visible to the naked eye perhaps as bright as the stars of the Big Dipper. Because this is the comet’s first visit to the inner solar system, predictions of future brightness are necessarily uncertain; amateur astronomers should be alert for the unexpected. Visit http://spaceweather.com for sky maps, photos and more information.

You are subscribed to the Space Weather mailing list, a free service of Spaceweather.com.

New subscribers may sign up for free space weather alerts at http://spaceweather.com/services/ .

~ A l i c e !

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