If you enjoyed last week’s Carnival of Space – check out this week’s over at Kentucky Space!

The Key Stuff:

Woo hoo! New images of Mercury!
The way I’d introduce this and interpret it in the planetarium is just to ask questions about it, and collect visitor hypotheses. That’s all the scientists have right now: questions. They also have some hypotheses about bits of it, but they haven’t had time to think of ideas for everything, and even less to test or analyze those ideas.

Mercury Credit: MESSENGER

What’s up with those longitudinal lines?
Why are those rayed craters so bright?
Some of those craters are on the lines, why?
Is that Mercury’s North pole at the top?
What causes lines like that on other planets?

Here’s some background to help you with your analysis.

Rays:

As we know from the Moon, rays often emanate from craters – especially new craters. When the meteor impacts, it sprays up a bunch of regolith (surface rock/dirt) that falls down in a rayed pattern. Go stomp in a puddle. Watch what happens – that’s what I’m talking about.

Bright Craters:

Brighter craters are almost always newer. The rock is newly broken, showing “shiny” un-weathered, un-covered, un-eroded faces to the sunlight which bounces back at us.

North and South:

According to the MESSENGER press release, that is the North Pole of Mercury up there at the top with a crater on it.

Longitudinal Lines:

The MESSENGER team has floated the idea that these are rays from that Northern crater. They know more than me, but that seems to me like a long way for ejecta (the kicked up regolith) to go. A really long way. How hard would that impact have had to be? Would Mercury’s gravity be enough to pull that ejecta back?

Want More?

Emily promises to have a post up soon.
Phil’s already chatting about it.

My Source.

P.S. Phil’s wrong. It’s not a watermelon. It’s a pumpkin, and I have incontrovertable proof:

Mercury is a Pumpkin

You know how I warned you that if I wasn’t careful I was going to turn into the science music video blog? Well … I warned you. Here’s another (thanks Martian Chronicles).

Who says scientists aren’t cool?

If you’re not following Martian Chronicles, you should be. He just linked over to some hilarious NASA music videos.

Seattlites, and anyone who is visiting before March, I just have to say I am so proud of my institution.

We’re hosting Lucy (yes, the Lucy, the 3.2 million-year-old hominid fossil), exhibit to open on Saturday. Not only does the exhibit rock, effectively showing the region in which Lucy was found (Ethiopia), helping you discover for yourself why Lucy is such an important find, and majestically introducing you to Lucy herself … but our marketing department took a big step: the new tagline for Lucy’s Legacy:

“An ancestor to humans in the course of evolution.”

It says it, right on the posters! Phew. Step right up to the plate. There’s no controversy here. (I do have to admit, I might be misremembering the words slightly. I’ll double-check tomorrow.)

Don’t miss Lucy’s Legacy. Really, it’s beautiful and makes you stop and think … and when else are you going to see your great^160000 grandmother? (assuming 20-year generations)

In celebration of NASA’s 50th Anniversary, this week’s Carnival of Space is in the form of an acrostic.

H – Hills and what they have to do with moons are discussed by the Bad Astronomer over at Bad Astronomy

A – All’s quiet on the solar front, should we be worried? Alan Dyer of What’s Up Astronomy says “Nope.”

P – Posted by Space Video of the Day: the Falcon of SpaceX achieves orbit!

P – Poor Galileo – his saga is like a Mexican Soap Opera, or so claims Dr. Bruce Cordell of 21st Century Waves.

Y – Yummy planetary science from Maria Brumm and Green Gabbro.

B – Back in 1989 a program called Lunar Oasis was proposed, and David Portree examines it over at Altair VI.

I – Interstellar flight in a long-term context. Paul Gilster analyzes the survival of civilization and expansion into the cosmos over at Centauri Dreams.

R – Research the history of the NASA meatball and worm with Astroprof this week, in celebration of NASA’s 50th Birthday!

T – Trouble comes to Hubble, and Steinn Sigurðsson of Dynamics of Cats takes a look at what the problem is.

H – Huge telescopes held in place by magnetic flux pinning and other giant mirrors are approached by Next Big Future.

D – (the) Death of a Martian moonlet is exposed by Ryan Anderson Briony of Martian Chronicles.

A – Approaching martian winter, Ray Villard of CosmicRAY talks about Phoenix’s limited future and extensive past discoveries

Y – You know analogies always help, so Wayne of Idea Festival reviews J. Richard Gott’s discussion of the Space Colonization Imperative, and how it’s similar to basketball and the Titanic.

T – To NASA! 50 years of exploration and collectibles, discussed by none other than collectSPACE.

O – On counting stars and cells – Ethan Siegel of Starts With A Bang wonders which is bigger, the number of stars in a galaxy, or the number of cells in the human body

Y – Yikes! Watch out for unruly astrophysicists wielding calculations over at the Lounge of the Lab Lemming (by Dr. Lemming)

O – Oh my, iPhone apps galore – including an awesome Starmap & Planetarium app reviewed by Flying Singer in Music of the Spheres.

U – Universal Babe (I mean, A Babe in the Universe!) discusses Hubble’s difficulties this past week.

D – Decelrating oddly, the Pioneer spacecraft are veering off course. Twisted Physics’ Jennifer Ouellette looks at why.

E – ESA’s new Planck spacecraft‘s plant (oops, typo) plans to look at the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation is discussed in detail by dj at OrbitalHub.

A – Accretionary Wedge, the carnival from the Geoblogosphere was hosted this past week. Check out GoodSchist’s artwork about Geology in Spaaaaace.

R- Research meets poetry with “Endeavour Calls” by Stuart Atkinson of The ‘Verse.

N – Nuclear decay rates, are they related to the distance to the Sun? Ian O’Neill of astroENGINE tackles this question, by looking at the Cassini mission.

A – “Action on Asteroids!” says Alan Boyle in Cosmic Log.

S – Shubber Ali of Space Cynic is interviewed on The Space Show.

A – Anniversaries (specifically NASA’s) are celebrated over at Potentia Tenebras Repellendi by Alexander Declama

! – !! I wish I had an “M” for Emily Lakdawalla’s Monday Mercury MESSENGER Madness in the Planetary Society Weblog!!

That’s it for this week! Tune in somewhere else to next week’s Carnival for more – or go to Universe Today’s Carnival of Space page to learn what it’s all about. Thanks for your entries, and thanks for your help, Fraser!

I get asked this question regularly. I wish I could just say “learn enough about telescopes and the night sky so you can answer that question yourself,” but that advice is ignored because it is unsatisfactory. If you press me for an answer, this is what you’ll get.

Half of this is from guest blogger Keith Enevoldsen (my dad!) who didn’t know he was writing for this blog when he wrote these words, but it is sound advice and well worded.

Your First Telescope:

Whatever you do, don’t buy a scope that “looks like a telescope.” What I mean is, if it looks like a long thin tube, or you can picture Galileo using it, it’s the wrong thing. You want something short and fat. “Willowy,” “elegant,” and “sleek” are not the right words to describe the right telescope.

This is wrong (image courtesy of _guu_)

This is right (image courtesy of vbloke)

Price:

Telescopes less than about $200 generally have poor optics. If you want to go much below about $200, then get some quality binoculars instead.

AstroScan:

My favorite beginner telescope is the Astroscan from Scientifics. It is about $200. It’s cute and fun and simple. It has a very wide field of view (as opposed to very high magnifying power) and a ball-shaped bottom, so you can point it by simply moving it with your hands — no fiddly knobs and no computer to figure out. It’s easy to take camping where skies are dark. You just plop it on the ground or on a table or on the hood of your car. You can get a tripod for it if you want one, but you don’t need one.

AstroScan (image courtesy Scientifics Online)

Orion StarBlast:

The other decent scope in that price range is the Orion StarBlast. It’s basically an AstroScan in a different shape. The mount is very easy to manipulate – just grab and point. It has a more complex finder-scope on the side than the AstroScan, which means it’s easier to mess up, but it is also slightly easier to use than the AstroScan’s sight.

I also have to admit that Orion got me with this one. They donated a StarBlast to PSC. I was quite skeptical at first, since I love the AstroScan, and I didn’t believe that anything could measure up. After I used it a few times I was sold. It’s a good scope. If I were buying a new scope, I’d buy an AstroScan, but this would be a close second.

Orion StarBlast (image courtesy Orion)

Both of these scopes are compatible with all the normal-sized eyepieces available on the market. Most telescopes you get from a department store use a different sized opening, so you need to use their eyepieces, and you can’t slowly upgrade over time.

Binoculars:

Good binoculars and a tripod are usually the best option for beginning stargazers, but the scopes we mentioned are pretty close to just as good. We use the Meade Travelview 7x50s (about $30) here at Pacific Science Center, though anything that seems decent will work – even little birding binocs. If you want to be a little bit careful about your binoculars, get a pair of 7x50s from a company that you’ve heard of.

Meade Travelview 7x50s (image courtesy Meade)

What’s Good for Beginners To Look At:

Remember, the Moon is by far the best thing to look at in the sky. The Moon looks huge and fantastic with a wide-field telescope like the Astroscan — you can see the whole Moon and lots of craters. The Moon also looks pretty good through good binoculars. The Moon changes every day — you see different craters each day. You don’t need dark skies to see the Moon. You can see some other things with a backyard telescope (that you can’t see with binoculars), like the rings of Saturn, and nebulas, but almost everything is very tiny or very faint compared to the Moon.

If you want higher magnification, so you can clearly see the stripes on Jupiter, the icecaps on Mars, and the gap in the rings of Saturn, then you will have the problem of how to accurately point a telescope with high magnification, and how to continually move the telescope to counteract the turning of the earth. The best solution is to use a computer and a motor to point the telescope, but this gets expensive. But the cheaper manual fiddly knobs are a pain. Also, if you don’t use a computer to aim your telescope, you need to be sure you have a good finder scope mounted on the side.

This is why I recommend a wide-field telescope like the AstroScan (or good binoculars) for beginners.

Want More?

Sky and Telescope’s advice:

Basics of Telescope Buying
Buying a Telescope as a Gift

More detailed advice:

ScopeReviews

Keith & Alice Enevoldsen

I assume since you’re reading this, you like what I’ve been writing. Great. Here are two ways to support Alice’s AstroInfo.

This one directly supports AstroInfo, because it supports my organization and my organization pays me to write the articles that I also post here:

Support Pacific Science Center

This one supports that which AstroInfo stands for (cool astronomy education for anyone who wants it):

International Year of Astronomy: US Branch

International Year of Astronomy: International Umbrella Organization

The International Year of Astronomy is making a BIG push for astronomy education for the masses throughout the year of 2009. I’ve got a project and a half up my sleeve (you’ll be hearing about them as they occur), but IYA needs money and hours to make IYA as big as they want it to be.

… back to our regularly scheduled programming … up next – more details about Haumea (I hope).

In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m suspending podcasting for a while. If I hear an outcry I may bring it back, but until then you’ll have to call the planetarium hotline for your audio fix: 206-443-2920.

Note: this is NOT the same audio as AstroInfo, and it’s updated less often, but it’s something!

Updated September 18, 2008

Haumea:

Diameter: 1,320-1,550 km
Orbit Radius: 35.161-51.525 AU
Moons: Hi’iaka and Namaka
Composition: almost all rock
Discovered: 2003 Mike Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David Rabinowitz or Francisco José Aceituno Castro, Pablo Santos-Sanz, and Jose-Luis Ortiz
Resource: http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001649/, http://web.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/2003EL61/
Other Classifications: Plutoids, Trans-Neptunian Object, Kuiper Belt Object

Make-make:

Diameter: 1,600 km
Orbit Radius: 38.666-52.809 AU
Moons: ?
Composition: ?
Discovered: 2005 Mike Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David Rabinowitz
Resource: http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001553,
http://www.mikebrownsplanets.com/2008/06/whats-in-name.html
Other Classifications: Plutoids, Trans-Neptunian Object, Kuiper Belt Object

Eris:

Diameter: 2400 km
Orbit Radius: 38.17- 97.61 AU
Moon: Dysnomia
Composition: roughly half rock, half ice
Discovered: 2003-2005 Mike Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David Rabinowitz
Resource: http://www.planetary.org/explore/topics/trans_neptunian_objects/eris.html
http://web.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/planetlila/
Other Classifications: Plutoids, Trans-Neptunian Object, Kuiper Belt Object

Ceres:

Diameter: 950 km
Orbit Radius: 2.98 AU
Moons: none
Composition: rock with 17-27% water ice
Discovered: 1801 by Guiseppe Piazzi
Resource: http://www.planetary.org/explore/topics/asteroids_and_comets/ceres.html
Other Classifications: Asteroid

Pluto:

Diameter: 2,306 km
Orbit Radius: 30.164- 48.494 AU
Moons: Charon, Nix, Hydra
Composition: probably a mixture of 70% rock and 30% water ice
Discovered: 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh
Resource: http://www.nineplanets.org/pluto.html
Other Classifications: Plutoids, Trans-Neptunian Object, Kuiper Belt Object

Want More?

Planetary Names List of Dwarf Planets
Planetary Society List of Notable Trans-Neptunian Objects

Where’d I Get My Info?

Thanks to Mike Brown, Emily Lakdawalla, and Bill Arnett