Here are potentially great movies about space and astronomy to see in 2012:

1. John Carter. The movie tells the tale of war-weary, former military captain John Carter, who is inexplicably transported to Mars where he becomes reluctantly involved in a conflict of epic proportions between the inhabitants of the planet. Movie is based on the Edgar Rice Burroughs classic novel.

2. Lockout. A man wrongly convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage against the U.S. is offered his freedom if he can rescue the president’s daughter from an outer space prison taken over by violent inmates.

3.  Prometheus.  The crew of the spaceship “Prometheus” explore and fight the allien civilization as part of a mission to uncover the origins of humanity.

4. The new Total Recall. This movie is an action thriller about reality and memory, inspired by the story by Philip K. Dick.  Colin Farrell is replacing Arnold Schwarzenegger.

 5. Gravity. Surviving astronauts of a space mission to repair the Hubble telescope in a damaged space station desperately tries to return to Earth.

 6. Iron Sky. The Nazis set up a secret military base on the dark side of the Moon in 1945 where they hide out and plan to build a powerful fleet and return to conquer Earth in 2018.

7. The Cosmonaut.  It’s the story of 3 soviet astronauts surrounded by events that happened over a 15 period.

Astronomy conversations

Twenty-five years ago the Internet as we now know it was in the process of being birthed by the National Science Foundation. Since then it’s been an information explosion. In last decades amateur astronomy also changed dramatically. Facility of using electronic mail, increased access to a huge information, and improvement of communication between people. On internet space  forums (discussion groups for astronomers) at all hours of the day you can share images, receive an equipment advice, debate the dark energy etc. Many online astronomy conversations groups exist. What is better place to start?

1. Cloudynights. One of the biggest discussion group Cloudy Nights provide a forum for reviews of telescopes and accessories, for commentary articles on the many facets of the hobby that touch equipment. Also it encourage and sponsore events and contests to get kids and beginners interested in the hobby.

2. Bautforum. The Bad Astronomy and Universe Today Forum. Here you can find tons of discussions on the universe, space exploration, astronomy equipment and more.

3. Astromart. More than 90 forums. More than 350 000 posts. Forums cover topics from general astronomy to stargazing and hunting optics. Registration of new account costs $12.00.

4. Astronomy.com. The worlds best selling astronomy magazine hosts a message board on many astronomical topics.

5. Astronomy forum. A surprisingly low-tech-looking  site that concentrates on content quality. There are even forums for regional astronomers: Canadian, Australian, UK, Chinese etc.

Do you have your favourite forum? Please leave a comment!

January 2011

A bright storm erupted in Saturn's atmosphere.

  February 2011

The nucleus of Comet Tempel 1

 March 2011:

1,235 candidate exoplanets discovered by Kepler's space telescope

April 2011: 

Faint emission nebula IC 410

May 2011:

Where are the most distant spacecrafts?

June 2011:

A Last Landing for Space Shuttle Endeavour

July 2011:

The surface of asteroid Vesta

August 2011:

Compact groups of galaxies Hickson 44 in Leo

September 2011:

Ice Holes on Mars

October 2011:

The entire surface of the innermost planet Mercury

November 2011:  

Features on the Sun's face

December 2011: 

Planet Kepler 22b - the closest match to Earth

Images: http://apod.nasa.gov/

Night sky (image: APOD)

The most interesting astronomy events in 2012 night sky:

January 3/4 – Quadrantids Meteor Shower.

The beggining of March – rare possibility to observe all 5 main planets during one night.

 March 3 - Mars at Opposition.

March 14 -  Venus and Jupiter Conjunction (3º).

March 20 – The March equinox occurs at 05:14 UTC.

March 31 – Earth hour – more than 5,200 cities in 135 countries worldwide will switch off their lights.

April 3 - Venus near stars cluster Pleiades.

April 15 - Saturn at Opposition.

April 21/22 - Lyrids Meteor Shower.

May 5/ 6 - Eta Aquarids Meteor Shower.

May 20 – Annular Solar Eclipse. It will be visible in southern China, Japan, the northern Pacific Ocean, and western United States.

June 4 - Partial Lunar Eclipse. It will be visible in Asia, Australia, the Pacific Ocean, and the Americas.

June 5 (6) - Transit of planet Venus Across the Sun. It will be entirely visible in eastern Asia, eastern Australia, and Alaska.

June 20 – The June solstice occurs at 23:09 UTC.

July 28/29 - Southern Delta Aquarids Meteor Shower.

August 12/13 – Perseids Meteor Shower.

August 24 - Neptune at Opposition.

 September 22 - September Equinox

September 29 - Uranus at Opposition.

October 3 – Mars and Regulus  Conjunction (1º).

October 21/ 22 - Orionids Meteor Shower.

November 13 - Total Solar Eclipse, visible in northern Australia and the southern Pacific Ocean.

November 17/18 - Leonids Meteor Shower.

November 27 – Venus and Saturn Conjunction (1º).

November 28 – Penumbral Lunar Eclipse.

December 3 - Jupiter at Opposition

December 13/ 14 – Geminids Meteor Shower.

December 21 – The December solstice occurs 11:12 UTC

Asteroid near Earth

The 400-meter-wide asteroid 2005 YU55 is currently flying near Earth at over 13 km (8 miles) a second. On Tuesday, November 8, 2011, at 6:28 p.m. EST (5:28 p.m. CST; 23:28 UTC), it will pass Earth, coming within 325,000 km (202,000 miles), closer than the Moon’s orbit. 

While 2005YU55 will stay a safe distance away, it is part of a crew of near-Earth asteroids. There are from 500 to 1000 near Earth asteroids, which diameter is estimated to be over 1 km .

It is the closest pass by such a large object since 1976. A similar event will not happen again until 2028. The closest recorded small asteroid to Earth during last decades is FU 162. The asteroid was discovered as it reached its closest approach to Earth on March 31, 2004. It traveled within … 6500 km of Earth’s atmosphere!

Origin of these near Earth asteroids is that asteroids are moved into the inner Solar System from asteroid belt through orbital resonances with Jupiter.

This close pass of asteroid near Earth will offer a great opportunity to get detailed radar imaging of YU55. It is part of the C-class of asteroids – very dark, like the colour of charcoal, and quite porous.

Asteroid 2005 YU55 was discovered in 2005 and orbits the sun in an elliptical path that extends from inside the orbit of Venus to just outside the orbit of Mars. The asteroid completes one trip around the sun every 15 months.

How to watch  2005 YU55?

Thousands of amateur and professional astronomers will observe this object near its closest approach to Earth. However, it is moving too fast on the sky for Hubble to observe it. The asteroid will pose a challenge even for amateur astronomers because it will be so faint and quick-moving. A small telescope with a mirror no smaller than 6 inches (15 centimeters) is required to spot it. The asteroid will approach Earth from the sunward direction, so it will be a daylight object until just before the time of closest approach. It is expected to reach about mag 11.2. The asteroid will travel the 70° of sky eastward fromAquila to central Pegasus in just 10 hours, moving along at 7 arcseconds per second.

Sky map of asteroid 2005 YU55 orbit:

Sky map of asteroid 2005 YU55 orbit (image: Skyandtelescope.com)

  Video about  asteroid 2005 YU55:

Video streaming by Ustream

Draconids meteors shower radiant 2011

Draconids are not known for their bright meteor displays. They are so-named because meteors appear to radiate from the northern constellation Draco. Normally the Draconids are a weak shower (leftover from Comet Giacobini-Zinner comet) producing about 10 meteors per hour. However, this shower has proved strongly variable in the past. In 1933 and 1946, the Draconids produced meteor storms. Stars were shooting at rates of 10,000 per hour or even more. The trails are now older and more dispersed, but in October 8, 2011, Earth will have another near head-on collision with a cloud of comet dust, setting off a strong outburst of as many as 750 meteors per hour. The 2011 Draconids could possibly be the most powerful meteor shower since the dazzling Leonids display 10 years ago.

The meteor activity is expected to be enhanced between 16.00 and 21.00 Universal Time (UTC).The best locations from which to view the shower, which is only visible in the northern hemisphere, will be Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. The radiant for the Draconids is highest up at nightfall, so watch for these meteors as soon as darkness falls.  Draco will be high in the North-West sky, just above and to the left of the north star, Polaris. It’s interesting, that Draconids are unusually slow meteors.

Unfortunately, the waxing gibbous moon will wipe many of these meteors from view (up to 90% of meteors!). And if you look at the Moon it will spoil your night vision, so keep it behind you, ideally blocked out by a building or tree. The meteors will streak across the entire sky so don’t just look at Draco. Tonight you need only your eyes. Binoculars and telescopes are no good for meteorwatching.

In fact, the 2011 Dragonids meteor shower is expected to be so strong that NASA has begun preparing for the risk to satellites orbiting Earth such as the International Space Station or Hubble Space Telescope.

And don’t forget that meteor showers are notorious for defying predictions, so you never know for sure. If you see nothing – don’t worry – there might be another Dragonid meteor storm in 2013!

UARS orbit

Updated: September 28: Although rumours suggested that few of NASA’s UARS satellite debris have finally hit the country Canada, NASA says that any debris have fallen into open waters of Pacific Ocean.

UARS (Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite) was an orbital space observatory. The 5,900 kg (13,000 pounds) spacecraft was deployed in 1991.  $750 million mission was sent to study the Earth’s atmosphere, particularly the ozone layer.
For 20 years, satellite was passing over anyone living south of Alaska or north of New Zealand. UARS has been dead in orbit since 2005 – it was shut down because of the newer, better satellites operating in orbit.

When and where UARS will fall? The current (september 21) UARS orbit is about 190 km by 205 km and it is decreasing every day. In September of 2011 UARS, about the size of a school bus (11 meters long and 4,5 meters wide), will hit the Earth’s atmosphere, moving at speed of 5 miles per second!  Re-entry is expected late Friday, September 23, or early Saturday, September 24, Eastern Daylight Time. 26 large pieces (total weight 530 kg, 1,170 pounds) of the NASA satellite can reach the Earth’s surface. The largest “bomb” could weigh nearly 300 pounds (150 kg).
The satellite will not be passing over North America during that time period, but neither NASA nor russian scientists know where the dead spacecraft will fall until around two hours before it happens. The actual date of re-entry is difficult to predict because it depends on solar flux, the spacecraft’s orientation as its orbit decays, the atmosphere changes on a daily basis. As re-entry draws closer, predictions on the date will become more reliable.

Pieces of UARS will fall within a zone between 57 degrees north latitude and 57 degrees south latitude. It is estimated that debris footprint will be about 500 miles long.
What are your chances of being hit by debris from UARS? About one in 21 trillion! It means 1 of 3 200 chance that a human on Earth could be hit by falling satellite debris. Seventy percent of the surface is water. Most of the rest is mountain, desert, tundra or open farmland. Humans really use only about 5 percent of the land on the planet Earth. On average one piece of debris fells back to Earth each day, but throughout the entire 54 years of the Space Age nobody was injured by space debris. In 1979, 15 times heavier than the UARS, Skylab space station crashed in Australia and the USA had to pay clean-up costs. Newer satellites use their last fuel to ditch themselves in the Pacific ocean.

How to watch UARS entering the atmosphere?
If the UARS satellite will fall over a populated region, it should be a magnificent sight to observers on the ground. Probably, it would be visible even in daylight! Now UARS is slowly rotating with a period of 17 seconds. Its magnitude changes from -4.0 to 3.5 mag (so it can be easily seen by naked eye like a bright moving star). It also can be observed with binoculars but even for small telescopes it is flying to fast. Satellite revolts the Earth 16 times per day. It is better to look for UARS in the early evening or before dawn, because at night it dissapear in Earth’s shadow. Visability vary with the observers latitude. For a star chart and other pass details we recommend to visit http://www.heavens-above.com

UARS Satellite orbit (image: dailymail.co.uk)

UARS Break up model (video)

It is also confirmed that another NASA’s ROSAT satellite is heading to Earth at the end of October, and 400 kg debris could survive re-entry.

Supernova September 2011

The supernova flared up on 2011 August 24 in the Pinwheel Galaxy (M101) just 21 million light-years from Earth. It’s the closest star explosion observed since 1987. How to observe supernova? Designated SN 2011fe (PTF 11kly initially), the supernova is brightening rapidly  in the Big Dipper (constellation Ursa Major). The galaxy stands above the two stars at the end of the Dipper’s handle (Eta η and Zeta ζ Ursae Majoris) and forms an equilateral triangle with them. The supernova is located about 4.4 arcminutes south (and a bit west) of M101′s center at right ascension 4^h 03^m 05.8s, declination +54° 16′ 25″.

 M101 is the third largest galaxy (in angular size) in the Messier list, and is visible as an extended object even through 10×50 binoculars. The astronomers discovered the blast within hours after its detonation. Type Ia supernova explosions are the complete thermonuclear destruction of a carbon-oxygen white dwarf star that had been collecting mass in a binary system. Supernova Ia are an important type of object in astronomy – they are extremely bright, and therefore observable at very large distances.

2011 fe could reached 10th magnitude at its peak in 11-12 of September. So it is only 2 magnitudes fainter than Neptune and easily observable by binoculars and small telescopes.

Comet Garrard

Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd discovered by Australian amateur astronomer Gordon Garradd is visible in September 2011 through all binoculars and small telescopes as high evening object glowing at  magnitude 7 . It has a bright green head (coma), a sharp nucleus and a short but well defined tail . The comet’s location is in the tiny constellation Arrow (Sagitta) in the autumn Milky Way. In late September Garradd comet enters Hercules, where it will peak in brightness from October 2011 to March 2012 at around magnitude 6, so it could be visible with the naked eye. But be careful – it looks like a faint cloud – a faint object for beginners who expect spectacular view. Anyhow since Hale-Bopp none comet was visible so bright for so long time for observers at mid-northern latitudes.  And lets remain optimistic – sometimes comets behave in unexpected ways exceeding all expectations.

Closest approach to Earth was 5th of March 2012 when comet Garradd was 117.7 million miles away (1.27 astronomical units). At that time, the comet was seen glowing in the Little Dipper. It never comes closer to the Sun than Mars – at its closest approach to the Sun on December 23rd it was still 1.55 astronomical units from the Sun. Garradd would be a great comet if had passed closer to the Sun!

In March 2012 Garradd remained reasonably bright, somewhere near 7th magnitude, which makes it an inviting target for binocular and small-telescope users. In to history Garrard comet come to be known for two distinctive tails. From the perspective of earthbound comet watchers the tails are visible on opposite sides of its greenish coma.

Comets are composed of rock, dust, ice, and frozen gases such as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane, and ammonia. They have been described as dirty snowballs. Comet nuclei can range from about 100 meters to more than 40 kilometers across. It contains a variety of organic compounds. It is believed that about 4 billions years ago comets bombarded the Earth bringing the vast quantities of water and “life bricks” into Earth’s oceans. An impact 65 million years ago is believed to have killed off the dinosaurs.

Because of their low mass, comets can’t become round and have irregular shapes. Cometary nuclei are among the darkest objects in the solar system (!!!). They often reflect approximately 4 % of the light. It is interesting that Comet Ikeya-Seki was visible in the daytime in 1965, being brighter than the Moon.

Comet Garrard 2012 March finder chart (image: heavens-above.com)

The streams of dust and gas form a huge comet coma. The force exerted on the coma by the Sun’s radiation pressure and solar wind cause an enormous tail to form, which points away from the Sun. The streams of dust and gas each form their own distinct tails. The coma may be larger than the Sun (1 000 000 km across) and tails extend to 150 million km or more! Meteor showers on Earth are actually caused by Earth passing through comets’ orbits. The most famous meteor shower is the Perseid meteor shower that happens every year in period between August 9 and August 13, at the time when Earth passes through the orbit of the Swift–Tuttle comet.

Comets are classified according to the length of their orbital period: short period comets have orbital periods less than 200 years (the shortest known orbital period has Comet Encke – 3,5 years), long-period comets have periods to thousands or millions of years and single-apparition comets exit the solar system after passing the Sun once.

Asteroids and comets are considered remnants from the giant cloud of gas and dust that condensed to create the sun, planets, and moons some 4.5 billion years ago. Today comets come from the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt. While trillions of comets are ringing the outer fringes of the solar system, only from 5 to 20 new comets are discovered every year and the total number of comets that have been identified so far is over 3800. The most famous comet of them all, Halley’s comet can be see every 75–76 years. Most comets are named after their discoverer except Comet Halley, which was predicted to return by Edmund Halley in 18^th century.

Eclipse of the moon (image: Stephen Thorley)

The most interesting astronomy events in 2011:

January 2 -Jupiter and Uranus conjuction  (0.6º)

 January 3/ 4 - Quadrantids Meteor Shower.

 January 4 - Partial Solar Eclipse. The partial eclipse will be visible in most parts of northern Africa, Europe, and Asia.

 January 30 – Venus conjuction with the Moon (3º)

 March 20 – The March Equinox occurs at 23:21 UTC.

 March 22 – Greatest elongation of Mercury.

 April 4 - Saturn at Opposition. The ringed planet will be at its closest approach to Earth and its face will be fully illuminated by the Sun.

 March 16 – Jupiter and Mercury conjuction (2º)

 April 21/22 - Lyrids Meteor Shower.

 May 5/ 6 - Eta Aquarids Meteor Shower.

 May 12 – Jupiter, Venus and Mercury will be in a line with Mars (morning sky).

 June 1 - Partial Solar Eclipse. Eclipse will be visible in most parts eastern Asia, Alaska, northern Canada, and Greenland.

 June 15 - Total Lunar Eclipse. The eclipse will be visible throughout most of South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia.

 June 21 – The June solstice occurs at 17:16 UTC.

 July 1 - Partial Solar Eclipse. This partial eclipse will only be visible off the coast of Antarctica.

 July 7 – Neptune completes its first complete orbit of the Sun since its discovery on 23 September 1846.

 July 27 – Mars near the Moon (0.5º)

 July 28/29 - Southern Delta Aquarids Meteor Shower.

 August 5 – the brightest asteroid, Vesta (magnitude 5.7) is at Opposition in Capricornus.

 August 12/13 – Perseids Meteor Shower.

 August 22 - Neptune at Opposition.

 September 25 - Uranus at Opposition

 September 28 – Venus and Saturn meet up with Spica and the Crescent Moon.

 October 21/ 22 - Orionids Meteor Shower.

 October 29 - Jupiter at Opposition.

 November 10 – Mercury and Venus pass Antares.

 November 17/18 - Leonids Meteor Shower.

 November 25 - Partial Solar Eclipse.

 December 10 - Total Lunar Eclipse.

 December 13/ 14 – Geminids Meteor Shower.

 December 21 – The December solstice occurs 05:30 UTC

 December – Comet Garrard 2009 P1 (magnitude 7) and Comet Levy 2006 T1 (magnitude 9).

What is your favourite event?