I have the cover feature of July’s Sky At Night Magazine with an article entitled ‘Return to the Moon’, about NASA’s Constellation programme and the plans to send astronauts back to the Moon. In the feature I look at the how the programme is progressing, the various stages in a Constellation lunar mission, as well as how some of the key bits of new/proposed hardware and rocket technology compare to their counterparts of the Apollo era. Meanwhile if you want to look back on Apollo’s great achievements, what better place to start than the BBC’s own archive of footage about the first manned Moon missions.
New S@N Magazine article: ‘Return to the Moon’
Published Thursday, 25 June, 2009 media Leave a CommentTags: Constellation programme, NASA, Sky At Night Magazine
Well you wait for noctilucent cloud season to start and then they appear three nights in a row! I missed Tuesday night’s display so here are some images (click them to enlarge) captured from Bristol from Wednesday (17th) night between 10:30 and 11:45 local time. The clouds last night were full of contrast and were tinged with the classic electric blue colour. An impressive sight looming over the horizon, like something from a movie. If the last few weeks of displays are anything to go by this is going to be a good summer for NLCs.
A wider angle looking at the whole display:
A shot with a zoom lens to reveal some of the fine detail in the clouds:
Getting up to grab a glass a water at 3:30am this morning I popped my head out the window to hear the dawn chorus. I’m glad I did, as it gave me my first sight of noctilucent clouds this year. These ‘night-shining’ clouds appear to glow as the rising or setting Sun scatters off tiny ice particles within them.
Noctilucent cloud patterns at dawn. Credit: WillGater.com
They are found much higher in the atmosphere than ‘normal’ clouds, typically around 80km or so. You can often see them in the summer months about an hour after sunset and before sunrise. They appear whiteish blue and don’t appear silhouetted against the bright dawn or twilight sky like lower clouds tend to be (some high cirrus clouds can often look similar to them though). Sometimes they show beautifully intricate glowing patterns and other times simple swirls.
Type II NLCs towards the bottom of the image. Credit: WillGater.com
To find out more about NLCs there is some excellent information on Les Cowley’s great site and more on the different forms of NLC here. I’ve put two pictures I captured of this morning’s impressive display in the post above. So if you are up early or are enjoying a twilight walk, keep an eye out for these impressive and ethereal clouds.
Part II of the S@N Magazine vodcast from JENAM…
Published Thursday, 4 June, 2009 media Leave a CommentTags: JENAM, Sky At Night Magazine
…is now online. In this last episode of the special report from the 2009 Joint European Astronomy Meeting, we meet the prototype rover model for the European Space Agency’s ExoMars mission.
SM4: peering over the shoulders of giants
Published Friday, 22 May, 2009 Hubble Space Telescope , NASA , space shuttle Leave a Comment
With the Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-125) and her crew now waiting for the right conditions to come home and land after repairing and upgrading Hubble, I thought now would be a good time to look back at what has happened over the past ten days or so. Servicing Mission 4, to Hubble, has been nothing short of spectacular – with risky spacewalks, dramatic repairs and a real sense of cutting edge space exploration. Spaceflight author Andrew Chaikin has recently blogged on why he felt “amazed, inspired–and grateful” watching the Hubble Servicing Mission unfold, and it’s really worth reading his thoughts here. This mission has been especially exciting and indeed has been different – both in terms of the added public interest and in how the community of space and astronomy enthusiasts has followed along.
To me this has been largely, if not wholly, because of the constant stream of images, tweets, blogs and live video streams that NASA has been sending out on a frequent basis. With video cameras in the astronauts’ helmets we’ve been able to literally peer over their shoulders and watch live what they were doing up there on Hubble. This really hit home to me, a couple of days ago, when I saw a video that was filmed in the cockpit of the Shuttle Atlantis, as the astronauts parted ways with Hubble. The video gives a real sense of what it’s like to be working on the deck of the Shuttle and, as Phil says, there’s something about the clear audio which greatly adds to this. It’s a must see. Stuart has the story of the video here.
For my part I’ll be remembering and reliving the exploits of this incredible mission through the many pictures taken by the astronauts. I’ve put a few of my favourites in this post, but there are hundreds out there. Click on the images, in the post, to get the NASA high res. versions. And why not let me know what your favourites are in the comments below, or on my Twitter feed.
