AstroNews January 2001

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The Pleiades star cluster is also near Jupiter. Below them the winter constellation Orion is rising. Orion's belt points left to Sirius the Dog Star (the bright star in Canis Major). From there drift up to Procyon, which rises before the Dog and has a name that means just that.

Folks in ASIA, AFRICA, AND EUROPE will get a TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE on January 9 (did you know that lunar eclipses always fall on FULL MOON?).  Be sure to look because this is the last one until May 2003! Consult any major astronomy website for details or check here:
http://www.skypub.com/sights/eclipses/lunar/0101totallunar.html

SETI@home SEARCH FOR ET

2.5 million folks are using SETI@home across the world. All in the hopes of finding signs of life out there.... somewhere. Now SETI@home version 3.03 is available both for Mac and Windows, and soon for all other supported platforms.

If you have SETI@home, please upgrade to version 3.03, as it will soon become mandatory. If you haven't tried your luck at ET hunting, go for it!!

GET SETI@home version 3.03:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu

NEW GLOBALCOM RATES FOR 2001!

ASTROTIP

Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" will return to theaters this year, beginning with a special screening at the 2001 Berlin Film Festival.

The RE-MASTERED VERSION will then be re-released in several countries, including Japan, France and the United Kingdom, on March 7, the second anniversary of the director's death.

Wednesday February 7th, 2001 will be Sir Arthur C. Clarke Day in Washington, D.C.!!! A series of events honoring Sir Arthur C. Clarke will be followed by an evening reception at the Smithsonian to show the movie "2001" in its full 70 mm format plus greetings from Arthur C. Clarke. More details are here:
http://www.clarkeinstitute.com/

A re-release all over the United States is expected later in 2001. Don't miss it!

If you enjoy REALISTIC space movies, HOBBYSPACE has a great list of "Hard" Science-Fiction movies, i.e. strong technical realism, about relative near term space exploration of our solar system. Here it is:
http://www.hobbyspace.com/Movies/

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2001: MOVIE VS. REALITY

The American Film Institute ranked "2001" 22nd among the 100 best American movies. Kubrick's visionary tale about a manned flight to Jupiter -- edited from its original length -- has become a cinematic classic and launched a new genre of quality space films, even if humans are still years away from visiting the planets.

While "2001" provided an exciting vision of the future, it was not an accurate picture of what space science would become. The movie's portrayal of transportation advances, for instance, has not happened. We reached the moon in 1969, and now we have no capability to go back.

The movie underplayed communications advances. The net and it's information overload were not even conceived of. Assuming that the computer HAL had the capacities of a human brain, our supercomputers are at about 1/1000th of that right now.

And the discovery of extrateresstrial life? Well aside from the continuing search via projects like SETI (and it's spinoff SETI@home which any netizen can join in), as well as the continued sighting of aliens in cinema, we are still not sure if and when we will get a call from ET.

Scientific American 2001 Scorecard:
http://www.sciam.com/2001/0101issue/0101cyber.html

2001: Then - and Now:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=271

THE BIG ONE

Another spacecraft named after the Italian-French astronomer Jean- Dominique CASSINI, who discovered four of Saturn's major moons (Iapetus, Rhea, Tethys, and Dione) has just swung by Jupiter on it's way to Saturn. Maybe you know the name Cassini because he also discovered that Saturn's rings are split largely into two parts by a narrow gap -- known since as the "Cassini Division." In any case, mark you calendars for July 2004, that's when Cassini reaches Saturn!

In a BONUS for both missions, Galileo and Cassini are JOINTLY OBSERVING Jupiter during the "Millenium Flyby" of the Cassini spacecraft. A coordinated study plan is using the opportunity of having TWO DIFFERENT VANTAGE POINTS to gain new infos about Jupiter.

So for the first time ever, two spacecraft are simultaneously exploring an outer planet. One spacecraft is inside Jupiter's magnetic envelope, the other outside where it can observe the powerful solar wind pressing on the envelope.

Did we mention that Jupiter is BIG? OK, how big is it? 1300 times Earth's volume. 11 times Earth's radius. It's so big, a storm on Jupiter called THE GREAT RED SPOT is big enough to swallow the Earth - three times!!

A storm three times as big as Earth? Yes, and this storm that has persisted for at least 100 years, perhaps as long as 300 years! And it rotates counter-clockwise every six days.

Has it changed at all? Well the Red Spot region has changed in one notable way over the years: In old Voyager and Galileo imagery, the area surrounding the Red Spot is dark, indicating relatively cloud-free conditions. Now, some bright white ammonia clouds have filled in the clearings. This appears to be part of a general brightening of Jupiter cloud features that has taken place over the past two decades. The tops of the Red Spot clouds are somewhat higher than those in most other locations on Jupiter, and the red colors are suggestive of jovian "air" being brought upward into view from greater depths.

What will it be like to live in the Jupiter system? Sky-gazers floating in the atmosphere of Jupiter will have a more interesting life than we do on Earth. Earthlings have only one moon to gaze upon, one that is not always visible. Jovian citizens have their choice of 4 major satellites and an array of tiny ones on which to train their telescopes at night. Not to mention that Great Red Spot passing by!

One last comment... since this is our "Space Odyssey Special." Where did Dave Bowman and the computer HAL and the rest of the Discovery crew fly to? Jupiter of course! 2001: A Space Odyssey has great special effects, especially for a movie from 1968. But if you want to see some really great Jupiter special effects, watch the sequel, 2010 Odyssey Two!

OK, enough talk, take me to the photos and videos of Jupiter!

JPL Picture Archive with Cassini/Galileo images of Jupiter:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/pictures/jupiter

Galileo Project Home:
http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov/

AMAZON DOT COM

Get some science or technology books or videos for you or as a gift!
Just use this link:

SATURN NOW HAS 30 MOONS

The new satellites can be split into two 'groups' -  one group appears to have retrograde orbits (like those of the moon Phoebe) and the other group forms a new prograde cluster (they go around the planet in the same sense that it spins).

Saturn thus seems to resemble Jupiter, which also has one prograde and one retrograde cluster of moons.
 
 

ARTHUR C. CLARKE IN SPACE

Well, not really he himself. Just a message penned by Clarke and a DNA sample extracted from his hair. Clarke is one of 55,000 people taking part in a project organized by Houston-based Encounter 2001 LLC to send a message into deep space for anybody out there who may be interested.

A giant "solar sail" will carry the craft on a 13.5-year journey beyond Pluto and on into deep space toward the stars.

The timing is also off by a couple of years - this space odyssey lifts off in 2003.

"Fare well my clone!" is the brief handwritten message which Clarke will send along with the DNA sample and a photograph of himself to any extraterrestrials who may intercept the craft.

The project will cost about $25 million, which Encounter 2001 hopes to recoup through sponsorship deals.

Clarke is best know for writing 2001 (which he wrote after the movie came out, because the movie was based on his short story "The Sentinel"). He also wrote nearly 100 other scifi books. Clarke lives in Sri Lanka and is currently bedridden from post-polio syndrome (Clarke had polio in 1959). But did you know he is the guy who dreamed up the idea of communication satellites (imagine a world without satellite TV!), the champion of the idea of the space elevator, and the advocate of Space Guard - a program to protect Earth from asteroids and comets.

Here's a funny anecdote from Arthur "when I flew into the United States in 1969, the immigration officer looked at my passport and said: “I won’t let you in until you explain the ending of the movie.” My usual answer is: see the movie, read the book — and repeat the dose as often as necessary.

Let us end this 2001 SPECIAL with a quote from the old chap: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

ARTHUR C. CLARKE FOUNDATION
http://www.acclarke.co.uk/
 
 

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