| FLYBY ALERT!
Space shuttle Discovery launched on May 31st. Get your flyby
alerts from Space
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DOUBLE FLYBY ALERT:
This morning at 7:42 EDT, space shuttle
Discovery undocked from the International Space Station (ISS), setting
the stage for a rare sky watching event. Tonight many people will
be able to see the two spaceships gliding among the stars as side-by-side
points of light. Check our Satellite Tracker
to see if your hometown is favored with a flyby.
VENUS EMERGES:
On June 9th, Venus passed behind the sun, an event astronomers call
"superior conjunction," and now it is emerging again.
A coronagraph onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)
has caught first sight of the planet, post-conjunction:
A coronagraph is a device that uses an opaque paddle to block the
glare of the sun, producing an artificial
eclipse. This allows SOHO to see stars, planets and comets blindingly-close
to the edge of the sun. Human eyes have no such blocking mechanism,
so we won't be able to observe Venus until late July when
the planet has substantially distanced itself from the sun. At that
time, Venus will appear in the sunset sky as a bright and silvery
evening star. Thank you, SOHO, for the
preview!
MARSWORM:
What digs and squiggles through the ground on Mars? It would have
to be a Marsworm:
Not really. It may look like a worm, but the segmented
object at the foot of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander is actually a metal
spring. It sprung
loose and fell to the ground when Phoenix's robotic arm unfurled
shortly after landing. The spring is no longer an essential component;
it was part of a mechanism holding the arm's biobarrier in place
during the voyage from Earth to Mars. Now that the biobarrier has
been unpeeled, allowing the sterile arm to move freely, the spring
is no longer required and the ground is a fine place for it. Meanwhile,
the only thing digging on Mars appears to be Phoenix itself: updates.
3D BONUS:
Put on your 3D
glasses and take a
closer look at the masquerading spring. Pat Vantuyne of Belgium
created the anaglyph by combining right- and left-eye images from
Phoenix's stereo camera. more anaglyphs: Arctic
Vista, Mars
Yeti, One
small step..., Vines,
Scoop
Two.
May
2008 Aurora Gallery
[Aurora Alerts] [Night-sky
Cameras]
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