Back in 2017 I color enhanced one of my photos of the moon to see if I could pick up the subtle hues due to the different minerals as I had seen some posts in forums. I decided to redo this experiment, but this time with a photo of the Super Blue Moon from August last year. I figured starting off with a brighter and sharper photo will yield better results.
Using a photo editor I duplicated the layer and boosted the color saturation. Then I blended both layers together to get a nice result. The reason why I don’t simply boost the saturation in the original image is that doing so also increases the “noise” in the image. Keeping a grayscale and a color layer separate preserves the details while enhancing colors.
The result is often referred to as the Mineral Moon because the difference in orange and blue hues are due to the different concentration of minerals in the regolith. Blueish areas are high in titanium, possibly as high as 10%, compared to on Earth where titanium is approximately 1% of the soil content. The orange, brown areas have higher iron content.
The newer and brighter impact craters are even more contrasting over the dark areas formed by old lava flow during the early formation of the Moon.
Who knew that with nothing more than a DSLR and small telescope from a backyard you can map the geology, age and minerals on the Moon. If you have a good photo of the Moon on your computer, give it a try!
We’re heading into the peak of Solar Cycle 25, which should happen sometime in 2025, and active solar region 3536 produced on December 31st, the most powerful recorded solar blast since 2017, measured at X5. Don’t let the size of the sunspot fool you, it has been crackling with multiple C class flares since it appeared on the limb of the Sun. Flares are classified in increasing strength as A, B, C, M or X according to their X-ray emissions. X-class flares can cause disruptions in communication and GPS guidance here on Earth.
The Sun on January 4, 2024
The above photo was taken with my Skywatcher 80ED apochromatic doublet telescope paired with a Canon 80D DSLR. Four different active solar regions are identified on the photo.
So far none of the ejecta from active region 3536 have struck Earth, but as this active region is still showing beta-gamma magnetic configuration there’s still a high chance of more flares.
On April 8, 2024 a total solar eclipse will be visible for people in Mexico, USA and Canada. The Moon will pass between Earth and the Sun, and those in the path’s of Moon’s shadow will be able to see an eclipse. I created the video below using Stellarium to show the shadow’s trajectory from west to east.
The 2024 astronomy calendar is now published. Backyard astronomers can look forward to several celestial events, like the April 8 total solar eclipse, and the partial lunar eclipse on September 18th. Our favorite gas giants will be at opposition, this year in the following order: Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, and Jupiter.
If you’re a fan of shooting stars, and want to catch bits of Comet Thatcher burn up in the atmosphere, you won’t want to miss the Lyrid meteor shower this April. The Lyrids are one of the oldest known meteor showers, dating back to ancient China and they can produce up to 20 meteors per hour at their peak. The meteor shower is caused by leftover debris from Comet Thatcher, a long period comet (415 year) that has only been observed once since discovery in 1861, and is scheduled to return no earlier than 2283.
But how can you enjoy this celestial spectacle if you live in the city, where light pollution can wash out the night sky? Here are some tips to help you catch a glimpse of the Lyrids this year.
The best time to watch the Lyrids is between midnight and dawn on April 22nd to 23rd, when the shower reaches its maximum activity. However, you can also see some meteors a few days before and after this date, as the Earth passes through the debris trail left by comet Thatcher.
The Lyrids appear to radiate from the constellation Lyra, which rises in the northeast after sunset and climbs high in the sky by dawn. You don’t need to look directly at Lyra to see the meteors, but it helps to find a spot where you have a clear view over the eastern horizon.
To avoid light pollution, try to get away from bright streetlights, buildings, and cars. You can also use an app like Dark Sky Finder or Clear Sky Chart to find a dark location near you. If possible, drive or bike to a park, a hill, or a rural area where you can see more stars. As luck would have it the Moon, only at 10% illumination, will set just before midnight, removing one pesky light source.
Once you find a good spot, let your eyes adjust to the darkness for at least 15 minutes. You don’t need any special equipment to watch the Lyrids, just your eyes and some patience. Dress warmly, bring a blanket or a chair, and maybe some snacks and drinks to keep you comfortable.
If you’re not too sure where to look, the bright star Vega should help guide you, located East about 45 degrees over the horizon.
You can also setup a camera on a tripod with a wide angle lens, taking multiple long exposures of about 20 seconds. Place the radiant of the meteor show on the edge of the frame to capture longer trails.
Enjoy the show! The Lyrids are known for producing bright and fast meteors, some of which can leave persistent trails in the sky. You might also see some fireballs, which are very bright meteors that can light up the whole sky.
The Lyrid meteor shower is a wonderful opportunity to connect with nature and marvel at the beauty of the cosmos. Don’t let the city lights stop you from experiencing this amazing event. Happy stargazing!
The folks at JPL created a short film showcasing Perseverance’s critical descent phase for the Mars landing. If everything goes according to plan, we shall have a new rover on Mars at 3:40pm EST on February 18, 2021.
Perseverance is currently “cruising” at 84,600km/h through space with Mars as a target. To give you an idea of what kind of speed that is, here are a few benchmarks:
The fastest commercial jet: the Concord flying at Mach 2.04 is just under 2,200km/h
Space Shuttle re-entry speed: 28,100km/h
Voyager 1, leaving our solar system : 61,500 km/h
Parker Solar Probe (fastest man-made object) : +250,000km/h
Perseverance was launched on July 30th, 2020 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, on top of a Atlas V-541 rocket.
Animation of Mars 2020’s trajectory around Sun, Data source: HORIZONS System, JPL, NASA
The only way the rover will be able to decelerate from its current cruising speed is by plunging into the Martian atmosphere at the right angle and using the atmospheric friction to slow it down. That “7 minutes of terror” is the time the rover will spend on re-entry, from approaching Mars at the right angle, to landing in the desired spot on the Martian surface.
Lots of steps need to go right, timed correctly to have a successful landing. Only 22 of the 45 landers sent to Mars have survived a landing. The US is by far the country with the most success (sorry Russia, you’re space program is awesome, but you suck at landing on Mars)
Glancing up at the night sky that February 18, 2021 evening will be very easy to spot Mars, but also the Pleiades star cluster (Messier 45). Mars will be about 5 degrees north of a almost half-illuminated moon. And if you keep looking higher up by 10 degrees you’ll see the famous open star cluster nicknamed the Seven Sisters, also used as the Subaru emblem.
Shooting wide angle long exposures of the sky is always fun, because you never quite know what you will get. On an August night I decided to take a few 20 seconds exposures of the constellation Perseus hoping to catch a few open clusters. However got surprised by the faint glow of Messier 33 (Triangulum Galaxy) in the photos. This is the furthest object that can be observed to the naked eye, located 2.7 million light years away, and part of the Local Group which includes Andromeda and our Milky Way.
Constellations Perseus and Triangulum (Benoit Guertin) – CLICK FOR FULL SCREEN
4 x 20 seconds
ISO 6400
17mm F4.0
Canon 80D
August 30, 2019
A few days prior to the holiday break there was news of Betelgeuse dimming to an all-time low, potentially signaling the start of the process that will transform this star into a Supernova. What? Wait a minute… A star in our own galaxy exploding? But that hasn’t been observed since 1604!
Remnant of SN1604 – last galactic nova (NASA)
There are plenty of novas at any point in time, they just happen to be in galaxies far away (cue Star Wars intro). During those few days or weeks of otherworldly explosions these stars become the brightest object in their host galaxies.
SN2018ivc in galaxy NGC 1068 (Credit: Bostroem et al., 2019.)
So if we can see them when they are millions of light years away, what would an exploding star just 700 light years away, like Betelgeuse, look like?
Well if we base ourselves on SN1604 it will be visible to the naked in eye for three weeks, including during daytime. SN1604 was 20,000 light years away, while Betelgeuse is at a fraction of that, so most experts anticipates that it would be as bright as a full Moon.
Now before we go crazy anticipating when Betelgeuse, a red super-giant, will explode, let me present some information to put everything in perspective.
Betelgeuse is a red super-giant of class M1-2 in the constellation Orion, 2nd in brightness just after Rigel. Betelgeuse is one of the largest start we can see when glancing up at the night sky. If Betelgeuse was our Sun, it would engulfed all planets up to Jupiter. Stars of that size aren’t like the nice Smith Ball of fire we imagine our Sun to be. They are more like a loose ball of foam, constantly bubbling and bloating from the incredible heat created in the inner core. If you are starting to think unstable, you are partly right.
Betelgeuse is also a well documented variable star, meaning it periodically varies in brightness.
Recorded Brightness of Betelgeuse Over the Years (credit: AAVSO)
So while it is at an all-time low compared to its known ~425 day cycle, it also has a ~5.9 year cycle, and this episode just happens to be a combination of both lows. So no need to panic… for now.
Betelgeuse will one day end as a type II supernovae, probably not for another 100,000 years. Until then we can all glance up during these cold winter nights at how easily the Orion constellation can be spotted and enjoyed. The three bright stars marking the belt and the hour-glass figure is easy to find. Take a few moments to look at Betelgeuse as on a galactic scale it will be gone tomorrow.
Betelgeuse Red Super Giant in Orion (Benoit Guertin)
Its inevitable, what goes up must come down. On average there is one large piece of equipment that re-enters our atmosphere every week. Some are controlled and planned decommissioning of satellites after their useful life. They are purposely commanded for re-entry and burn-up in the atmosphere to avoid adding debris to our already crowded space orbits or worse, cause a collision with another satellite creating an enormous field of debris. Other objects that re-enter are left to fall on their own such as discarded rocket bodies and old satellite that ceased to operate long ago or malfunctioned and can no longer be controlled.
Tiangong-1 : First Chinese space station launched in 2011
This coming March the 8,500kg (18,700lbs) Tiangong-1 Chinese space station is coming back to Earth. Launched in September 2011 and used for two manned missions, it suffered a malfunction and the Chinese have not been in control of it since 2016. The space station has been in a decaying orbit ever since, and now below the 300km altitude where Earth’s atmosphere is causing the space station to slow down due to aerodynamic drag it will soon make its re-entry.
Delta 2 rocket fuel tank surviving re-entry near Georgetown, TX, on 22 January 1997
Now there is no need to panic. Most of Earth is ocean, and we’ll probably not see anything let alone have a piece of it land in a city. However as this is a fairly large body, there is a good chance not all pieces will burn up and some may make it to the surface.
This isn’t the first time a space station makes a re-entry. The American Skylab at 77 tons re-entered in 1979, and Russian Mir (120 tons) made its re-entry in 2001.
For the Mir re-entry, Taco Bell even got it onto the re-entry buzz by anchoring a large
Taco Bell target for Mir re-entry (2001)
target off the Australian coast along the planned re-entry track, and should Mir crash into it there would be free tacos for all Americans. The fast food chain even took out an insurance policy just in case it would happen.
In early January 2018, Tiangong-1 is orbiting at an altitude of around 270-290km (to put that into perspective, ISS is at a 400km orbit) and in a 45 deg orbit, hence the re-entry will be within those latitudes. The green area in the map below is where Tiangong-1 could make a re-entry, and also marks where the re-entry could be observed.
It’s still too early to determine the time and location of potentially crash site, as Earth’s atmosphere is influenced by space weather and swells based on our Sun’s moods, which alters the drag force on the space station. However various space centers and organizations will continue to track the space station the coming weeks to improve the prediction.
You can follow everything at Aerospace.org for up to date information and predictions.
What could the re-entry look like? Below is a video shot by NASA of the Japanese Hayabusa spacecraft during a controlled re-entry on June 13, 2010
The big news this week is the first recordings and observations of an interstellar object. Of the 750,000 asteroids and comets that have been cataloged up to now, every one of them originate from within our solar system. This object detected by the Pan-STARRS1 telescope and named A/2017 U1 or “Oumuamua”, a Hawaiian word for scout or messenger from the distant past, came from another part of our galaxy. Based on measurements made from multiple ground-based telescopes it is believed to be rather long and of a deep red color . Below is an artist’s rendering of this extra-solar visitor. While a comet would have generated some type of coma or tail travelling near the Sun, no such activity was recorded, hence it’s believed to be an asteroid-type object.
Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
Measurements over multiple nights allowed to establish the trajectory, which clearly shows that it did not originate from the Oort cloud or other asteroid/comet rich fields surrounding the Sun. While the discovery was made only on an October 19 image, its closest approach to the Sun was September 9th.
Diagram showing the trajectory of A/2017 U1 (ESO/K. Meech, et al.)
Now I thing they got it all wrong. What they picked-up was the Red Dwarf mining ship swinging by our neighborhood!
Welcome to a journey into our Universe with Dr Dave, amateur astronomer and astrophotographer for over 40 years. Astro-imaging, image processing, space science, solar astronomy and public outreach are some of the stops in this journey!
Ben Backyard Astronomy 