AstroNews June - July 2001Astronomy, space and ET news. http://www.kahl.net/astro
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Vol.3, No.6 & 7 |
AstroNews June - July 2001Astronomy, space and ET news. http://www.kahl.net/astro
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Vol.3, No.6 & 7 |
STARGAZING SPECIAL
Up This Month =========== STARGAZING! Look
up! Because that's what STARGAZING is all about. To get started all you
need is a clear night and the darkest spot you can find. Telescopes and
binoculars are optional. With only your eyeballs you do all kinds of fun
things: learn about constellations, find planets, sketch the moon phases,
ponder the vastness of space...
So what's there to see this summer? VENUS and JUPITER are early morning companions low in the east beginning a couple of hours before sunrise. Did you notice that MARS outshines everything in the evening sky (except the Moon)? Mars is fairly low in the south as darkness falls, and looks like a vivid orange star. To its right is Antares, a star that's about the same color. Would you rather see shooting stars? Now is a very good time! The annual PERSEID meteor shower is one of the most reliable and rewarding skywatching events. The Perseids began in mid July, and activity will peak on August 12, when dozens of shooting stars will be visible each hour from dark skies. The best times to watch will be the overnight hours on Aug. 11/12 and Aug. 12/13. Would you rather see human SATELLITES? Check the article HEAVENS ABOVE below. Want help getting started with stargazing? SPACE.COM has a great article
here:
And if you'd like to see what other STARGAZERS are doing, visit the
Stargazing Network:
Confused? Need a sky map? Try this one:
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Go shopping at KC TechShop!
Grab them at the TechShop:
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On July 20 the test flight of the Solar Sail Cosmos 1 took place. The launch
and sub orbital test flight of the Cosmos 1 didn't quite go as planned.
The spacecraft was launched from a Russian submarine in the Barents Sea,
but the Volna rocket failed to send the final command to separate the spacecraft
from the upper stage.
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SETI@home IS WAY COOL!
By now most of us have heard that SETI@home has 3 MILLION users who use this software to search for ET. You too can use your home computer to help in the search for extraterrestrials! How does it work? The SETI@home screen saver is a complicated piece of scientific analytical software. It performs a large set of mathematical operations on the data that you are downloading from the SETI program. SETI@home uses the largest telescope in the world, the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico, to continuously scan the sky for radio signals. So far, nearly all the sky visible from the Arecibo telescope has been scanned at least once. But still no signs of life. So if you want to help, maybe you can be the lucky one who finds ET! Get SETI@home version 3.03 NOW:
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ASTROTIPHEAVENS ABOVEWanna observe satellites such as the International Space Station and the Space Shuttle?A website called HEAVENS ABOVE provides times of visibility and detailed star charts showing satellite tracks. They are even generated in real-time and customized for your location and time zone! HEAVENS ABOVE
SKYWATCHWhat's the best deal on an annual guide to the heavens? SkyWatch! For only five bucks you get my absolute favorite guide to the night sky!This economical and easy-to-use guide is the perfect observing tool for the hobby astronomer. It has star charts, a Moon map, a gallery of stunning astro-images, articles on choosing telescopes, binoculars, and other gear, and much more. Get SKYWATCH:
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DISTANT DISCOVERIESMOONSHINE? EARTHSHINE!Studies of the MOON by NASA and the Western Center for Global Environmental Change give scientists another tool to measure CLIMATE CHANGE."EARTHSHINE" is the reflected glow of the Earth on the surface of the
Moon. It's how much light is being reflected off the Earth's atmosphere.
Leonardo da Vinci first explained the phenomenon of Earthshine. The moon acts as a giant mirror, showing the sunlight reflected from Earth. The brightness of Earthshine thus measures the reflectance of Earth, known as ALBEDO. By measuring the change in the Earth's albedo, scientists can track changes in the Earth's climate. |
BARGAINS IN THE AMAZONAmazon.com has an Outlet! The biggest bargains throughout the Amazon.com universe are here.
Support ASTRONEWS
by using this link:
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FAR OUT FACTSSPACE BUGSResearchers say they have found the first proof of life beyond our planet -- clumps of extraterrestrial bacteria in the Earth's upper atmosphere.Although the bugs from space are similar to bacteria on Earth, the scientists said the living cells found in samples of air from the edge of the planet's atmosphere are too far away to have come from Earth. Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, a Cardiff University astronomer, is convinced the space bugs provide strong support for the PANSPERMIA theory -- which suggests that life may have come from outer space in the form of germs or spores. Note: See the May 2001 AstroNews article "ARE WE ALL ALIENS?" for more
about PANSPERMIA
INTERPLANETARY INTERNETA proposal to the Internet Engineering Task Force (they sets standards for the Net) calls for terrestrial testing of interplanetary Internet protocols later this year, and a live test onboard the NASA Mars mission in 2003.The proposal calls for a network of Internets to facilitate communication among planets, satellites, asteroids, robotic spacecraft and crewed vehicles and create a stable interplanetary backbone network. The person heading up the project is none other than Vinton Cerf, creator of the TCP/IP standard--the foundation of communications on the Internet. Both NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are providing project funding. The project also includes members of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Mitre, Global Science and Technology, and SPARTA. Other parts of NASA have already begun experimenting with remote Internet communication, demonstrating last year that it could use standard Internet protocols to communicate with an orbiting spacecraft just like any other node on the Internet. Delays are inevitable. Light takes a little more than a second to reach the moon, 6 minutes to reach Mars and 9 minutes to reach the sun. But where there is a short-delay environment--around Earth, within a free-flying spacecraft, on and around another planet communications protocols closely related to terrestrial Internet counterparts can be used. Moreover, the organization of the network can change. Today, the quickest way to send a message to Mars would be directly, when Earth and Mars are close. Yet when the two planets are on opposite sides of the Sun, routing data through a third node--say at Mercury or Venus--would make the transmission more reliable. Cerf and the others propose a technology called "bundling" to connect Internets together. Such bundles of data will minimize the traffic between interplanetary Internet servers. Mars would be the first addition to the interplanetary Internet. By 2010, the group believes as many as seven satellites dedicated to communications could be in orbit around the planet. However, the proposal states that the ultimate test will be commercial applications: "While such developments may still lie decades in the future, the potential investment and benefits can be appreciated as we contemplate the explosion of new markets associated with the commercialization of the Internet." When that happens, the draft's authors state, the interplanetary Internet
should really take off.
LIFT OFF!
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