Where's Saturn? Is that a UFO--or the ISS? What's the name of that star? Get the answers from mySKY--a fun new astronomy helper from Meade. ASTEROID FLYBY: Mark your calendar: On Jan. 29, 2008, asteroid 2007 TU24 flies past Earth. There's no danger of a collision, but the 400m-wide space rock will be close enough (1.4 lunar distances) to photograph through backyard telescopes as it speeds through the constellation Cassiopeia glowing like a 10th magnitude star. NASA radars will be monitoring the asteroid's approach beginning Jan. 23rd. [ephemeris] [orbit] HUBBLE TRANSIT: One of the spots on photo of the sun is not a sunspot. It's the Hubble Space Telescope. Can you find it? Photo details: Canon 5D, 4" Takahashi FSQ-106 refractor, f/20, 1/6000s Celebrated astrophotographer Thierry Legault took the picture on Dec. 8, 2007, from Jacksonville, Florida. Legault is well-known for another, earlier photo of the International Space Station (ISS) and space shuttle Atlantis crossing the sun in 2006. Unlike the crisp silhouette of the ISS, however, Hubble's shadow is barely a speck. The key difference is scale: ISS masses almost half a million kilograms with solar arrays nearly as wide as a football field. Hubble weighs in at 11,000 kg packed into a volume not much larger than a Greyhound bus. How do you catch such a small object in a split-second transit of the sun? Legault reveals his secrets here. MERCURY FLYBY: "Discoveries are at hand!" So say members of the MESSENGER science team after 500 megabytes of data have been safely downloaded to Earth following the spacecraft's Jan. 14th flyby of Mercury. This picture of a crater field was taken from a range of 3100 miles: Note the linear crater chains on the right created by ejecta from the main impact on the left: diagram. Researchers are only beginning to sift through more than 1200 photos covering a hemisphere of Mercury never seen before. Highlights so far include the first complete views of giant Caloris Basin, one of the biggest impact features in the solar system, a strangely fractured double-ringed crater, and a beautifully-shadowed image of the crater Sholem Aleichem. Stay tuned for updates! Comet 17P/Holmes Photo Gallery [World Map of Comet Sightings] [sky map] [ephemeris] [3D orbit] [comet binoculars] |