Tag Archives: space

Asteroid Impact Drill

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Every two years scientists, space agencies and civil protection organizations gather for five days of asteroid impact drills. This week marks the seventh Planetary Defense Conference, held virtually to comply with pandemic considerations. From April 26 – 30, 2021 fictitious asteroid PDC 2021 measures are live streamed by ESA (European Space Agency). Fascinating stuff, well worth consideration. Below. link to asteroid impact drill overview from NASA, followed by several links to watch in real time from ESA –

Planetary Defense Conference Exercise – 2021 (nasa.gov)

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Check out this week’s asteroid impact exercise | Human World | EarthSky

Your Sky Tonight

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One of humanity’s greatest challenges is ambivalence toward night skies. Technology and light pollution erode inclination to gaze upward after sunset. Astronomical observations are the fabric of humanity, defining ancient monoliths, pyramids, temples and settlements. The cosmos gave us navigation, seasons, moon phases, the calendar and inexplicable feats of ancient architecture. Today, GPS points North, few know that “star” is actually Mars and Betelgeuse might as well be Beetlejuice. Sigh.

Rudimentary sky basics needn’t be elusive – ponder Time and Date night sky map and planets. Linked below –

https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/night/

Enter your location, voila! An instant interactive sky map tracks anything you fancy. View live, adjusted for current weather conditions. Scroll left or right to adjust time of day. Click on the Sun, Moon or planets, follow their path in relation to location and time of day. Curious about meteor showers like the Leonids peaking in a few days? Click on https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/meteor-shower/leonids.html

Time and Date is a valuable, uncomplicated resource. Give their night sky map a try.

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Explore the Night Sky

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Adrian Mauduit at Night Lights Films launched a mesmerizing timelapse endeavor titled Explore the Night Sky. From Night Lights Films –

“Welcome to this new series of educational videos about the cosmos titled ‘Explore the Night Sky’. They consist of short episodes focusing on one celestial object or phenomenon that can be observed from Earth. They are kid friendly and their purpose is to make people discover the sky at night while encouraging science education and promoting the fight against light pollution. In this episode, we feature the open star cluster ‘Pleiades’, aka Messier 45, M 45 or the ‘Seven Sisters’ through a series of time-lapse sequences taken in various locations around the Earth (Norway, Switzerland, Spain, Chile). A lot of people have seen this small patchy group of star without realizing it contains about 1000 of them! Learn more about it by watching the rest of this mesmerizing film.”

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC0CLzCpM6nuLSAi1JNBjkA

Cosmic wonder is a gift. No better way to embrace wonder than by following Adrian Mauduit.

No Telescope? No Problem

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On April 29th behemoth asteroid 1998 OR2 will make closest approach to Earth at a safe distance of approximately 6 million kilometers. Traveling through the cosmos at 31,320 km/h, 1.8 km wide, 4.1 km long 1998 OR2 reigns as largest near Earth asteroid flyby of the year. There’s no chance of planetary impact and sadly no chance of seeing it without a telescope. Fear not, the Virtual Telescope Project hosts free online viewing starting April 28, 2020.https://www.virtualtelescope.eu/webtv/

Ghostly image of a large boulder in space.

Radar image of asteroid 1998 OR2, acquired April 18, 2020. According to current estimates, this space rock is probably at least a mile wide (1.8 km) and maybe 2 1/2 times that long (4.1 km). Image via Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

First glimpses of large asteroid due to pass soon

Pale Blue Dot Revisited

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Thirty years ago today, February 14, 1990 – NASA spacecraft Voyager 1 looked back from Saturn to capture the Pale Blue Dot.

An image of bluish space, with streaks of sunlight crossing it, and with a single dot - Earth - within one of the sunbeams.

In this image from Voyager 1 – acquired on February 14, 1990, from a distance slightly past the orbit of Saturn – Planet Earth is visible as a bright speck within the sunbeam, just right of center. Earth appears softly blue. It occupies less than a single pixel in this image and thus is not fully resolved. Image via NASA.

As Voyager 1 approached Saturn, mission control planned to conserve power by shutting down imaging cameras. Astronomer Carl Sagan had an idea – before shutdown look back at planet Earth. Six billion kilometers across the cosmos Voyager 1 immortalized the Pale Blue Dot.

Today, 30th anniversary of the Pale Blue Dot

On this 30th anniversary, every last one of us should take a moment to ponder Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot –

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” – Carl Sagan

Inouye Sun

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Highest resolution images ever taken of the Sun were released January 29, 2020 by astronomers at the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope. Inouye, the world’s largest solar telescope sits near the summit of Mount Haleakala on Maui. Construction began in January 2013. The distinguishing feature, a 13 foot primary mirror arrived in August, 2017. This week we have Inouye to thank for expanding solar horizons. A statement from NSF (National Science Foundation) –

“The images show a pattern of turbulent ‘boiling’ plasma that covers the entire sun. The cell-like structures – each about the size of Texas – are the signature of violent motions that transport heat from the inside of the sun to its surface. That hot solar plasma rises in the bright centers of ‘cells,’ cools, then sinks below the surface in dark lanes in a process known as convection.”

Square of tightly-packed caramel corn-like granules.

https://www.nso.edu/press-release/inouye-solar-telescope-first-light/

I can’t watch this video without grinning from ear to ear –

Erupting solar plasma drives space weather’s engine. Solar storms impact airlines, GPS, telecommunications and the power grid. To understand solar dynamics, is to understand space weather. High resolution Inouye images are touted as the greatest leap in humanity’s ability to study the Sun since Galileo.  Said Thomas Rimmele, Director of Inouye Solar Telescope –

“It’s all about the magnetic field. To unravel the sun’s biggest mysteries, we have to not only be able to clearly see these tiny structures from 93 million miles [150 million km] away but very precisely measure their magnetic field strength and direction near the surface and trace the field as it extends out into the million-degree corona, the outer atmosphere of the sun.”

Newest solar telescope releases its 1st images

Orbem Terrae

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Adrien Mauduit of Night Lights Films effortlessly sprinkles corners of imagination with stardust. Ponder Orbem Terrae ( Latin, loosely translated as orbiting Earth or the whole world). Mauduit’s unique artistry hums arias of wonder. Wrap yourself in Orbem Terrae-

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC0CLzCpM6nuLSAi1JNBjkA


“All the modern films taken at night usually capture this celestial course from a fixed point of the Earth. Thus you will most likely watch the moon or the milky way make their way across the firmament. In the Northern Hemisphere, it seems to move from left to right, and the opposite in the Southern Hemisphere. Nonetheless have you ever seen a film where the night sky is fixed and the Earth moves instead? Well, now you have!That was the whole point of this short time-lapse film that I dubbed ‘Orbem Terræ’, or orbiting Earth in latin. The goal is to bring a whole new perspective on how we actually move against the background sky! In this manner, some of the clips give a very cool effect where you almost feel like you’re on the International Space Station lokking down at the Earth. This ‘floating’ effect is admittedly unsettling though, as if we will fall into the abyss of the universe. However only now can you appreciate the true movement of rotation of our planet in the solar system. Some of the clips are also tilted, reversed and rotated on purpose to accentuate the effect, so much that sometimes, you have no clue what is up and what is down! It’s especially true for the scenes featuring water reflection!

To achieve this particular effect, it actually not rocket science. There exist simple devices that, if set in the right way, can follow and track a particular point of the sky by compensation for the rotation of the Earth. By mountain your camera on top of those ‘tracker’, you can now have a fixed sky, a rotating Earth effect, and some advantages as the cherry on top: more details in the night sky objects!

This short film is actually a compilation of all the best tracked shots I have acquired during the past 4 years. After all my different movies, I’ve been asked a number of times to put together this compilation, so here you go! They were taken all over the globe from Europe to South America, Africa to North America. It features some of the most detailed astrophotography sequences on the market for this quality output, including some never-seen-before ones! “ – Adrien Mauduit