Where have we been?

Here’s a great graphic I picked up from Geekation. There’s a lot of information here. Click on the image to access the details – It’s worth it.

This fascinates me as I remember the first Sputnik launch in 1957. All this has happened in my lifetime!

It’s certainly changed our picture of the solar system.

Thanks to: Where have we been? A very cool picture of where we have sent probes throughout the solar system.

Rings around Uranus

We don’t often get to see images of Uranus – and certainly none like this.

Uranus and Miranda (Credit: Mike Brown/CalTech)

The astronomer Mike Brown took the photo a few days ago using one of the 10-meter twin telescopes at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii.

It’s an infrared image and clearly shows the rings which were discovered as recently as 1977. Several moons are also obvious – the brightest at top left being Miranda.

Mike Brown is the author of How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming. It tells the story of his work leading to the discovery of the then 10th planet. This was one of the factors leading to reclassification of planets and to Pluto’s demotion.

Thanks to Skymania: Now hotshot Mike grabs Uranus.

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Seven years of discovery

While the Shuttle launches and the International Space Station get the media attention I am always impressed by the deep space research that is quietly going on.

This weekend NASA’s Dawn spacecraft will (hopefully) go into orbit around the asteroid Vesta. This photo of Vesta was taken by the spacecraft last weekend.

With a diameter of about 500 km Vesta is the second largest asteroid in the solar system. Dawn will spend one year orbiting Vesta and will then travel to the largest asteroid (1000 km diameter) Ceres. There it will spend 5 months in orbit carrying out similar studies.

Because these asteroids may have remained intact since formation of the solar system they should reveal information dating back to that time. They also have differences (Vesta formed a few million years before Ceres) which will also be illuminating.

This diagram shows the trajectory of Dawn’s trip, together with dates.

See also:
Dawn Spacecraft Poised to Enter Orbit at Vesta Asteroid: Scientific American.
All eyes on Vesta
Looming Larger: Dawn Approaches Vesta, Enters Orbit July 15-16

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Earth and Moon from Mercury

Earth and Moon from MESSENGER
Credit: NASA/JHU APL/CIW

Another one of those amazing phoitographs of the earth taken by a spacecraft. This time from Messenger. The earth and the moon as seen from Mercury.

From APOD: 2010 September 1 – Earth and Moon from MESSENGER.

Explanation: What does Earth look like from the planet Mercury? The robotic spacecraft MESSENGER found out as it looked toward the Earth during its closest approach to the Sun about three months ago. The Earth and Moon are visible as the double spot on the lower left of the above image. Now MESSENGER was not at Mercury when it took the above image, but at a location from which the view would be similar. From Mercury, both the Earth and its comparatively large moon will always appear as small circles of reflected sunlight and will never show a crescent phase. MESSENGER has zipped right by Mercury three times since being launched in 2004, and is scheduled to enter orbit around the innermost planet in March of 2011.

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Twinning with Venus

Saw this on Universe Today and thought it was quite nice (Nancy is Now on Venus).

It’s actually an article about naming craters on Venus. But what struck me is that the crater Nancy it discussed is on a plain called the Hinemoa Planitia.

I just wasn’t aware of the connection with New Zealand. Does that give us some sort of twin status?

For non-locals here is  a brief description of The Legend of Hinemoa from Te Ara, An Encyclopedia of New Zealand

“Tutanekai lived on Mokoia Island, Lake Rotorua, where of an evening he and his friend Tiki used to play – the one on a “horn”, the other on a “pipe”. The sound of this music could be heard across Lake Rotorua at Owhata and it charmed the beautiful and noble-born Hinemoa who lived there. When Tutanekai visited the mainland with his people, he met Hinemoa and they fell in love. The young man had perforce to return to his village, but the lovers arranged that every night he would play and that Hinemoa would follow the sound of his music to join him.

“Tutanekai kept up a nightly serenade but Hinemoa’s people, suspecting something was afoot, had hidden all the canoes. The maiden, however, was not to be deterred and, selecting six large, dry, empty gourds as floats, she decided to swim to the island. Guided by the strains of her loved one’s music, Hinemoa safely reached the other shore and landed near a hot spring, Waikimihia, in which she warmed and refreshed herself – the pool is on Mokoia Island to this day. Just at that moment Tutanekai sent his servant for water. This man disturbed the girl who, pretending to be a man, spoke in a gruff voice and, when she learnt his errand, begged for a drink from the calabash which she smashed as soon as she had had her fill. The servant then went back and reported to Tutanekai what had happened. He was ordered back again and again, each time with the same result, until all the calabashes were broken. The now irate young man himself went down to the pool and to his joy discovered Hinemoa. Like all good stories, the legend has a conventional ending – they lived happily ever after.”

by Judith Sidney Hornabrook, M.A., National Archives, Wellington.

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We don’t know!

Isaac Asimov via last.fm

I like the quote from Isaac Asimov which goes something like:

“The most exhilarating statement in science is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘Hmm, that’s funny’!”

Every researcher knows the feeling. When our experiments or observations produce the result we didn’t expect. That conflicts with our hypothesis – or even better conflicts with current theory.

Because we know this means progress. We have found something we can’t explain and that gives us a chance to discover something new.

Good scientists are not afraid to say “I don’t know!” Ignorance is nothing to be ashamed of. However, we should not be satisfied with it. So scientists usually add “Let’s find out!”

That’s why it is galling to hear opponents of science claim that we are an arrogant lot. That we claim to know everything. Or that we claim we can, eventually, know everything.

I confronted these sort of arguments recently in a discussion with some religious apologists (see Science and Religion: Theism and Explanatory Idleness). They were criticising scientific arrogance. Claiming that many scientists had a “science of the gaps” approach – assuming everything could eventually be explained by science alone.  I challenged the claim – asking for evidence of any scientist advancing the argument. And was told to google Dawkins!

Ah, the Dawkins who doesn’t exist but has been invented as an apologist voodoo doll (see The Dawkins Delusions).

Awesome pictures from the Enceladus flyby

It’s amazing how much we are finding out about other bodies in the solar system these days. And the images we get back from some of our robotic spaceships can be incredible.

Here’s one taken by Cassini during a deep swoop past Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. This is an intriguing moon because it is thought to contain an ocean of water below an ice surface. It is also very active with plumes of material shooting at least 1000 km into space. In fact, these plumes may be contributing material to Saturn’s rings.

The swoop, early this month, was the deepest yet brought the spacecraft to about 100 km from the moon’s surface. it also took the craft through the heart of a plume enabling further investigation of its compositions and density. Scientists thinks the heating and tectonic activity arises from tidal forces caused by proximity to Saturn. There is even speculation that this energy and the presence of liquid water could provide conditions for life on the moon.

Thanks to Emily Lakdawalla at The Planetary Society Blog.

Click on Enceladus flyby for a compostie animation of images of the plumes.

Galileo and Hollywood

I have always enjoyed Carolyn Porco‘s talks. She is the director of CICLOPS, the Cassini Imaging Science Team. Cassini is currently in orbit around Saturn.

In this talk given at the AAI 2009 Convention she covers some interesting topics (see video below). These include the question of science and atheism, can science determine if a god exists and the contribution of Galileo to the scientific method.  I think the latter subject is very important in the International Year of Astronomy. We keep being distracted from it by religious apologists whose only motive is to find excuses for the Church’s treatment of Galileo, in the process often distorting or denying Galileo’s scientific contributions. Porco also discusses problems with the modern-day public attitudes towards science.

The Earth and Moon – from Mars

The High Imaging Science Experiment orbiting Mars is producing some great images of the Martian surface (have a browse through the images at the website). But it’s also being used to image the other planets.

Here’s a shot of the Earth and Moon – taken from Mars!

(Source The Earth and Moon as Seen from Mars (PSP_005558_9040)).

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Moons of Saturn

Albert Einstein expressed his awe for the beauty of reality and humanity’s exploration of it in this manner:

“If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it”

“One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike – and yet it is the most precious thing we have.”

Many other scientists profess a similar passion. Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins are well known for their enthusiastic popularisation of science – for bringing the awe and understanding to the general public. Carolyn Porco is also a great populariser of science.