The growing wildfires in Southern California are a serious cause of concern for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Mount Wilson Observatory. See the amazing photo from the International Space Station to get an idea of the size of these incredible fires. Recently, both JPL and Mount Wilson have been threatened by a massive, one-hundred and five thousand acre fire named the Station Fire. Click here to see the Incident Information Site for the latest reports on the fire situation in Pasadena. Recent updates on JPL’s website states that the laboratory is no longer under threat from the encroaching fire, but things do not look so good for the Mount Wilson Observatory. A prime staging area used by firefighters to battle the Station Fire has been abandoned at the foot of Mount Wilson and crews have begun an aerial assault on the fire in an effort to save the Observatory.

nightShifted Astronomy sends its best wishes to the men and women fighting these terrible fires and hope that they can save the historic Observatory as well as the people and homes in the surrounding area.

• Jet Propulsion Laboratory updates can be found here.
• Mount Wilson Observatory updates can be found here. (Server Link Updated)

UPDATE 1 SEP 09: The servers at Mount Wilson Observatory have gone out possibly due to broken telephone lines between the facility and the nearest hub. Updates are now being provided through servers at Georgia State University. Complete coverage of the raging wildfires can be found at KTLA.com.

Image Credit: NASA/International Space Station

After a series of delays due to bad weather and technical difficulties, the Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-128) successfully launched from Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday night. My original intent was to live blog the launch, but work commitments prevented me from writing a decent post to cover it. Now, to give you an idea of how far behind I am, the launch occurred on Friday night, and Discovery docked with the International Space Station yesterday morning. That means that I’m about three days behind on my space news, so bear with me! Discovery comes to the International Space Station with a delivery that includes the COLBERT treadmill and the Leonardo cargo pod which contains over 8 tons of fresh supplies and new equipment. The shuttle’s arrival is especially significant in that is the 25th anniversary of the spacecraft’s maiden voyage on August 30th, 1984. On that date, the Shuttle Discovery launched into orbit and deployed a solar panel very similar to the ones installed on the International Space Station.

The International Space Station is one of the brightest objects in the night sky and is especially bright with a Space Shuttle docked. Some amateur astronomers have taken incredible photos of the shuttle docked at the station, but most people will settle for a quick glimpse of the largest man-made orbital structure in history. There are several ways to find out when the ISS and STS-128 will be overhead in your area. For those with Starry Night, you can select and track the orbital path of the ISS and use it to plan your observing sessions. For the rest of you, I highly recommend Heavens Above.com. It will help any curious amateur plan for the next ISS/Discovery pass with relative ease. Most of the time, the ISS will appear briefly over the horizon in a low-arch. It takes good planning to ensure that you watch for the pass in the right direction and the right time of day to avoid excess sunlight or light pollution. I only mention sunlight because most passes I saw in Texas were low on the horizon during sundown.

If you’re interested in tracking the ISS/STS-128 combo with your own tracking software, you can download the latest Two-Line Elements (TLEs) here.

These are the TLEs as of 31 August 2009 @ 2035 EST

ISS
1 25544U 98067A 09242.83739583 .00006862 00000-0 51743-4 0 5175
2 25544 51.6405 283.6299 0009257 35.7867 323.9873 15.73845540617709
STS 128
1 35811U 09045A 09242.61309212 .00069540 13944-4 73780-4 0 121
2 35811 51.6460 284.8487 0033899 94.5710 43.1354 16.08927954 226

Image Credit: NASA/Starry Night Professional

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has taken some incredible photos of the Apollo 14 landing site where Alan Shepard became the first man to golf on the Moon. Shepard and Edgar Mitchell landed in the Antares Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) on February 5th, 1971 in a rocky region known as Fra Mauro. Moon landing enthusiasts may remember that Fra Mauro was the intended landing site of Apollo 13 before the oxygen tank ruptured and forced the spacecraft to return home. At the time of the Apollo 14 landing, the astronauts were unable to locate the Cone Crater while walking on the ground because of a lack of distinguishing landmarks. The IMAX film Magnificent Desolation addressed the dangers of walking far away from the lunar landing sites because of the inability to judge the height and depth of the terrain due to its monochromatic appearance. Shepard and Mitchell believed themselves to be relatively close to the crater when they decided to stop their search, but it wasn’t until decades later that we discovered exactly how close they were (65 ft)! The detail captured in these photos is surreal! At first glance, they appear to be the usual photos of the Moon’s barren surface, but closer examination reveals the Antares lander along with the tracks made by the astronauts on during their search for the nearby Cone Crater. I got chills when I first saw these images. We have hundreds of photos of astronauts walking on the Moon, but to see the tracks and the hardware of such a historic event in high resolution photos from orbit is a new kind of awesome. Click the thumbnail of the lunar surface on the right for a high resolution, labeled version of the image. Click here for an ultra high resolution version of the image. Beware that the image is very large (1.5 MB) and will take a long time to download on slower network connections. Fra Mauro can be difficult to spot by itself with a telescope, but nearby Copernicus Crater makes finding the Apollo 14 landing site much easier. Click here (250 KB) to view a Starry Night screenshot that will help you pinpoint the photographed area.

Because of the often heated nature and the fringe science associated with the discussion of the Apollo Moon Hoax Theory, I debated on whether I was going to mention the topic in this post. I am somewhat reluctant to post anything about the discussion because of what normally accompanies it, but ultimately decided to touch briefly on what I feel this photo offers to the discussion. It’s no secret that some people find it easier to believe that a global conspiracy played out in the 1960s that convinced the world that Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, but was all played out in a movie studio hidden away in the desert. Astronauts, astronomers, scientists, engineers, and other high ranking government officials were supposedly involved in a scheme designed to convince the Soviet Union that we could reach the Moon despite the fact that we theoretically couldn’t do it. In reality land, the whole thing is one big fluff story meant to discredit the amazing work of the men and women at NASA during the Apollo Program and to generate publicity for a group of people who have lost their grip on reality.

Each time a piece of evidence is presented to Apollo Hoax advocates, they counter with additional claims of fraud and deceit. I’m sure that this photo will be no different. Don’t be surprised to see conspiracy theorists crying foul over these photos and claiming that NASA has doctored them as part of the continuing conspiracy. It’s just part of a normal, vicious cycle that will ultimately have no end. Even if we return to the Moon and find our old Apollo hardware perfectly preserved, there will still be detractors who are convinced that everyone is lying to them. I don’t have the time, patience, or expertise to counter every potential argument about the Apollo Moon landing. Instead, I direct you to Phil Plait’s original Bad Astronomy website (before he went off the deep end) for a complete breakdown of the Apollo Moon Hoax claims.

Image Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University

NASA is preparing to launch the Space Shuttle Discovery next week on another resupply mission to the International Space Station. STS-128 cleared a Flight Readiness Review yesterday and is scheduled to launch Tuesday, August 25th at 1:36 a.m. from Kennedy Space Center. The crew traveled to Kennedy aboard T-38s late last night in preparation for their Aug 25 launch. In addition to two refrigerator sized containers of new equipment, the Space Shuttle Discovery will carry the Leonardo supply module, new ISS crew member Nicole Stott, and last but not least, the COLBERT treadmill to the station. COLBERT is an exciting addition to the station because of the important social and cultural significance it holds.

The treadmill is named after Stephen Colbert, the host of The Colbert Report on Comedy Central and it comes as a result of NASA’s competition to name a new space station node. Ultimately, Colbert’s name won, but NASA decided to ignore the results of its own contest and name the component Tranquility instead. As a sort of pseudo-compromise, the newest piece of exercise equipment was named COLBERT. COLBERT stands for Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill and it will be the second treadmill installed on the space station. According to the NASA mission overview, the treadmill will initially be installed in the Harmony module and will take the astronauts about 20 hours to set up. That’s a far cry from the 30 minutes to an hour that it takes to assemble a treadmill from Sears.

I’ll be watching the STS-128 mission with great interest both because of the COLBERT treadmill and because of the Space Shuttle retirement time frame. As you may know, the Space Shuttle Program that has dominated American space exploration for the past three decades is quickly approaching its penultimate mission and will soon make way for the Constellation Program or variant. Space Shuttle missions are usually visible with the naked eye so if you’ve never seen one, I urge you to take this upcoming opportunity to view the shuttle and station as they pass overhead. I will provide tracking and observation data for both the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station once the August 25th launch is complete. You’ll also be able to get maps and two-line elements (TLEs) for tracking software on many astronomy and satellite enthusiast websites.

Image Credit: NASA

I’m a few days late getting to this story, but you’ll have to bear with me as I’m still getting caught up on all the space and astronomy news since my move to Ohio. NASA’s amazing Spitzer Space Telescope recently detected the remnants of a collision of two planetary bodies around a small star called HD 172555 in the Constellation Pavo. Astronomers estimate that the collision occurred a few thousand years ago between an object the size of Mercury and another roughly the size of the Moon. Spitzer was able to detect the remnants of the two worlds and pockets of refrozen lava scattered across the star system. The force of such an impact would be so strong that it would literally melt the surface of these two colliding bodies. The resulting destruction would be beyond anything that our race has ever experienced.

Detection of the particles was conducted using a spectrograph to detect the different chemical light fingerprints left behind by the collision. This wave chart shows what scientists used to detect the remnants of the collision. It may be difficult for a layman (including myself) to fully comprehend the data at hand, but it is relatively easy to get a general idea of how the scientists researching this star system were able to detect the collision. Each chemical compound leaves a different fingerprint which the telescope can separate from other compounds. Melted glass, lava, and other chemicals left floating in space after the collision effect the light transmission from HD 172555 to our own solar system and were ultimately detected by Spitzer.

An exoplanet collision such as the one around HD 172555 is extremely interesting because it gives us a window into the history of our own planet. In the accretion disc theory, our solar system’s history is littered with massive collisions such as the one around HD 172555. These collisions played an important role in the formation of the planets in our solar system. In fact, it is widely believed that a Mars-sized object collided with and was vaporized by a primordial version of our own planet. The resulting collision created a cloud of dust that eventually condensed and became our Moon. Unfortunately, the Constellation Pavo is only visible to people in the Southern Hemisphere, so don’t expect to get out your telescope in Ohio or Texas and see this curious star. For those in the Southern Hemisphere, HD 172555 is located very close to Delta Pavonis.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

While many people in the United States are watching the formation of the first tropical storms of the 2009-2010 hurricane season, scientists working on the Cassini-Equinox (formerly Cassini-Huygens) mission are analyzing an India-sized storm cell on Saturn’s moon Titan. The storm cell was discovered in April 2008 at the Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii and appears to cover a “tropical” area of the moon that is not known for generating excessive cloud cover. These storms are way cool because they are believed to cause a significant amount of methane rainfall and play a significant part in the geographical formations on the planet’s surface. Imagine a hurricane of liquid methane washing up on the shores of Ft. Lauderdale and you’ll have an idea of what these storms are like.

For years, Titan has been a source of inspiration and curiosity. Many scientists and science fiction writers have written about what it would be like to exist on the surface of Saturn’s largest moon. Covered by a dense atmosphere of methane and nitrogen, it is believed that Titan’s storm regularly rain down liquid methane into massive lake and river formations. This interaction of methane on Titan is particularly fascinating as it gives us an opportunity to see the existence of a chemical compound in a uniquely alien environment. Astronomers have theorized that Titan is very similar to primordial Earth and often look to it for ideas about the history of our own planet. In 2005, the Huygens probe separated from the Cassini orbiter and traveled through the dense Titan atmosphere; ultimately returning photos of the planet’s surface.

Titan is one of the few Saturn moons that can be seen with a small telescope. With an apparent magnitude of 8.6, it is one of the brightest in the Saturn system. Unfortunately, Saturn is below the Northern Hemisphere horizon. It rises around 9:00 a.m. and is best visible around 3:15 p.m. when the Sun is still high in the sky. It will return to the night sky in late November.

In non-astronomy related news, I would like to take a moment to send my condolences to the residents of The Promenade at Beavercreek Apartments in Beavercreek, OH not far from where I work. One of the luxury apartments was gutted by a massive fire this afternoon. I only mention it because this happened very close to where I live and work. I can only imagine the horror that these people experienced as they sit around watching helplessly as the fire consumed their homes. This fire was much more massive than the photos and news recordings make it out to be. I saw it on my way home from work and it was terrifying to see the fire coming up from over a treeline from so far away. My thoughts are with the families that lived there.

Image Credit: NASA

Discovering some new, distant object hidden in the vast expanse of outer space has been a dream of mine for a long time. I can only imagine what it would be like to be the first human being to lay eyes on a new planetary nebulae or a new comet. Some amateur astronomers have the discovery of dozens of objects credited to their names while most are like me: not one discovery to my name. We can now add a new object to the list of those discovered by amateur astronomers: the Soap Bubble Nebula in Cygnus. This is a fantastic discovery and I was disappointed to see that Fox News appears to be the only major news source that has covered the nebula’s discovery. New Scientist, which always does a wonderful job of covering space-related discoveries, ran this piece in July. It is not every day that a new nebula is discovered, and this is something I feel should have gotten a little more attention.

Officially designated PN G75.5+1.7, the Soap Bubble Nebula or “Cygnus Bubble” (pictured above) was discovered by professional astronomer Dave Jurasevich at Mount Wilson Observatory and two amateur astronomers: Mel Helm and Keith Quattrocchi. You can see from the photo that it is almost a perfectly symmetrical sphere and really does look like a soap bubble. It is nestled in the heart of a beautiful diffuse nebula in the Constellation Cygnus not far from the Crescent Nebula (NGC 6888 … pictured right). The nebula’s location and its apparent magnitude are what scientists believe contributed to it going unseen for so long. The Crescent Nebula is a beautiful cloud formation and often steals the show in this region of the sky. I tried to browse through several photos of the nebula and surrounding diffuse nebula regions for the new bubble, but ultimately came up empty.

The Constellation Cygnus, or “The Swan” is famous for being home to the bright star Deneb as well as the North American Nebula (NGC 7000), the Pelican Nebula (IC 5067), and the Crescent Nebula. It is high in the eastern sky just after sunset. You won’t be able to view the Soap Bubble Nebula with a backyard telescope, but dark skies and a narrow band filter can help you spot the Crescent Nebula.

Image Credit: T. A. Rector/University of Alaska Anchorage, H. Schweiker/WIYN and NOAO/AURA/NSF, NASA

There’s a new rocket in town! At Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), the Ares I-X, a test model of the proposed Constellation Program rocket that will carry the Orion CEV into orbit has been completed and is on track for an October 31 launch. It is the first new space vehicle to be constructed in the VAB in 25 years! Ares I, also known as “The Stick”, is a two-stage rocket based on designs that combine modern technology with modified Apollo-era propulsion systems. The completed rocket stands at 325 feet tall and is quite an impressive sight; standing almost twice as high as a Space Shuttle launch stack.

Program setbacks and a spiraling budget aside, safety of the Ares I’s design has been a paramount concern since it was revealed. The slim construction, weight of the Orion CEV, and the length of time between designing the Space Shuttle’s solid rocket boosters and the Ares launch vehicles have caused great concern for critics and advocates of the new program. A report early in the concept phase of constructions theorized that the Ares I would suffer from severe vibration problems that would ultimately render the vehicle unusable. The October 31 launch will send the Ares I-X into a suborbital arc that will hopefully give NASA scientists an opportunity to gather valuable data about the rocket’s stability as well as a chance to test out its safety and recovery system. NASA hopes that the Ares I-X flight will provide the data necessary to make the vehicle safe enough to achieve a human flight rating. A NASA fact sheet outlining the entire Ares I-X test flight is available here (1MB PDF).

With the mounting criticism of the Constellation Program’s spiraling budget (which isn’t large compared to the Apollo Program), there is a very real possibility that Ares I-X may never actually launch. We can only hope that advocates for space exploration in the halls of Congress give NASA what it needs to successfully complete the program and help us escape from low-Earth orbit. I personally see at least one launch of the Ares rocket stack happening, but I’m not sure if the program has enough momentum and support from the U.S. Government and the general public to actually launch a human being into orbit. My question, however, is that if the Constellation Program will ultimately not carry us into space…then what, if anything, will?

Image Credit: NASA

Planetary nebulae such as the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293), Ring Nebula (M57), and the Blue Snowball (NGC 7662) are popular targets for amateur astronomers at public star parties. This is often because bringing out small details in deep space objects like distant galaxies and dark nebulae can be very difficult unless you’re using a large aperture telescope or doing astrophotography. Planetary nebulae are great targets for amateurs, but they’re not immune to challenges as they can be difficult to find because they look comparable to bright stars at lower magnifications. When I show a target such as NGC 7662 to a star party visitor I try to explain as much of the science behind the object as I can. I believed that it’s one thing to see an object and be wowed by its size, beauty, distance, or other attributes, but I think that it helps to invoke a deeper emotional response and helps people to connect more with the universe if they understand the natural processes that led to the object’s creation. In the case of planetary nebulae, the process is relatively simple. These amazing formations are clouds of gas that are the remains of dead stars. In essence, they are the ghosts of solar systems that have come and gone.

Until now, only planetary nebulae that have formed from the remains of stars with masses comparable to our Sun or smaller have been discovered by astronomers. The lack of similar nebulae around stars with heavier masses created a conundrum for researchers. If these nebulae are the remains of expelled gas from dying stars then where are the planetary nebulae around the larger mass stars? Scientists working on the Magellanic Cloud Emission Line Survey (MCELS) in Australia have discovered 15 “super” planetary nebulae in the Magellanic Clouds that may answer that question. Typical planetary nebulae form around stars that are 0.3-1.0 times the mass of our Sun, but some of these new discoveries are estimated to contain 2.3 times our Sun’s mass! The MCELS researchers were so shocked by the discovery that they actually held back their findings for three years to ensure that the objects were in fact, planetary nebulae.

You won’t be seeing these super planetary nebulae on display at your local star party, but that’s not a reason to worry! There are a variety of planetary nebulae that amateurs can find with small telescopes. I’ve seen the Cats Eye Nebula and the Blue Snowball repeatedly in my Orion 3″ refractor. If you are just starting off and want to see some impressive planetary nebulae, then I recommend starting with easy targets such as the Ring Nebula in Lyra, and the Helix Nebula in Aquarius. The Ring Nebula has an apparent magnitude of 9.6 and is almost straight up in the southeastern sky after sundown. The Helix Nebula has an apparent magnitude of 6.5 and is above the horizon in the Southeast after 11:00 p.m. eastern standard time.

Image Credit: NASA/The Hubble Space Telescope

Regular readers know that I’m not a NASA hater, but it’s difficult to hide the fact that NASA has made human space travel a touchy subject over the past few years. Despite its incredible success with unmanned projects like the Mars Exploration Rovers, Cassini-Huygens to Saturn, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and others, NASA is facing increasingly vocal critics of its Constellation Program as well as its plan to end United States involvement with the International Space Station in 2015. It isn’t as if NASA hasn’t faced criticism for of the program since its inception, but things are starting to get heated both in public discussion and in Congress. I believe that the agency has accomplished some amazing feats through its history, but can we really blame the sharks for circling after NASA has repeatedly failed to produce a successor to the Space Shuttle Program despite spending billions on research and development? Remember how the VentureStar Program and the prototype Lockheed Martin X-33 were destined to be mankind’s gateway to the stars? I’m sure that whatever aerospace museum inherited the prototype models for VentureStar are appreciative of the billions spent on research and development for their exhibit.

The news about NASA and its human space exploration initiatives is not all doom and gloom. The Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program is a somewhat intelligent idea by NASA to get aerospace companies involved with the International Space Station and planetary exploration initiatives. In the COTS program, NASA encourages private companies to development launch and recovery systems with promises to contract those systems for use in International Space Station projects. Some prominent names in the COTS world include Rocketplane Kistler, SpaceX, and the Orbital Sciences Corporation.

While these are all great companies that have built impressive hardware and are making progress toward commercial space operations, there is one company that always gets me excited about the future of space travel and you may have heard of them before: Bigelow Aerospace. Nestled in the heart of the Las Vegas desert, Bigelow Aerospace is a private company that successfully launched two inflatable “Genesis” modules into orbit in 2006 and 2007. These modules were compressed into a lightweight delivery system and sent into orbit aboard Russian Dnepr missiles. Now, a Bigelow representative has approached NASA with a lightweight alternative to the bulky Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle. Orion Lite would be a crew command module similar to the Orion CEV but much lighter and could be launched on top of an Atlas 5 rocket instead of the proposed behemoth Ares V. Bigelow’s capsule is stripped down and designed for low-Earth orbit operations, but could be modified by existing Orion technology to reach the Moon and Mars.

It is possible that Orion Lite’s ability to ride on an Atlas 5 rocket could eliminate the need for Ares V development, but it is not the only proposed alternative launch system. My personal favorite is an initiative called DIRECT. Founded by a former Boeing engineer, DIRECT is a program that aims to build a launch system derived from existing Space Shuttle technology. The launch system would use the exact same solid rocket boosters (SRBs) and external fuel tank, but would place the Orion CEV on the tank’s forward quarter as opposed to the piggyback style configuration o the Space Shuttle. The direct system is an excellent concept design that allows for numerous configurations and future system upgrades. Unfortunately, I don’t think that DIRECT has ever been given any serious consideration as an alternative to Constellation.

Image Credit: The Direct Launcher Group, Bigelow Aerospace, Lockheed Martin