Astronomy

Moon dust is a strange substance : we reported previously about the abrasive capabilities of the dust, but there are more strange things about moon dust. The moon's surface material is one of the lousiest imaginable electrical conductors, so the dust normally on the surface picks up and keeps a charge. And what happens to particles carrying like electrical charges? Right : they are repelled from each other. And if a hundred-kilometer circle with a rim a couple of kilometers high is charged all over, what happens to the dust lying on it? The answer, given only by narrative description, is that electrostatic charging caused the dust to levitate, causing fountains of moon dust.

But there's more : the dayside of the moon is mainly positively charged; the nightside is negatively charged. At the interface between night and day electrostatically charged dust would be pushed across the terminator sideways. So, what do you get when miles of electrostatic dust gets attracted ? A long and skinny dust storm, stretching all the way from the north pole to the south pole, swirling across the surface, following the terminator as sunrise ceaselessly sweeps around the moon.
Scientists are increasingly confident that this kind of electrostatic storms are real.

Whatever happened to the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity ? Well, they are still crawling on the surface of Mars. Their initial lifespan of 90 days has been extended several times up to today. Both robots are beginning to show aging but the NASA engineers are trying to keep them up as long as possible.

Here's a little overview of the current location and tracking of both rovers. Spirit continues to make progress toward "Home Plate," a conspicuous circular feature scientists hope to investigate before the Martian winter, in search of layered rock outcrops that may provide additional information about the geology of the "Columbia Hills." During the past week, the rover has driven nearly 100 meters (328 feet), and has still had time to do some targeted remote sensing. Spirit is currently just less than 170 meters (560 feet) from Home Plate.

Opportunity is healthy and is continuing the characterization of an outcrop called "Olympia." The rover is on top of a feature called "Overgaard." The plan is to complete a mosaic with the microscopic imager, then drive toward a feature called "Roosevelt" and examine it with tools on the robotic arm. The informal names of targets on Overgaard are related to Mozart, marking his 250th birthday on Jan. 27.

Several sites are making composites and large panoramas of the images beamed back to earth. My favourite is Mars midnight browser, but MER imagary, A Walk on Mars and Mars.hynee.com are showing splendid pictures too.

Spaceforcase is a wonderfull site where Kees Veenenbos posts rendered images of planets in our solar system. Especially Mars is a popular rendering site. Every image is rendered very realistically, and has a little explanation too, which makes it all very interesting. Checkout his images of Titan, too.

Spaceimages.com carries a page with the most stunning space images taken in 2005. Explore the view from Husband Hill, Mars, explore the surface of Titan or admire the remnants of the 1987A supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud, which optical hot-spots now encircle the ring like a necklace of incandescent diamonds. Each image is accompanied with an extended explanation.

I'm on my way to Pluto. or at least, my name is. The NASA space probe New Horizons, launched yesterday, carries a disc with the names of all subscribers of the NH ecard site which I mentioned some months ago. The $700m probe will gather information on Pluto and its moons before - it is hoped - pressing on to explore other objects in the outer Solar System. Pluto is the only remaining planet that has never been visited by a spacecraft.

At the same time, researchers are opening the Stardust probe, which collected dust particles on the Wild2 comet. A very important part of the study of cometary grains is the study of organics. We know comets contain abundant organics and abundant water. We're not sure what kinds of organics are in there. But we think that most of the Earth's water and organics - most of the molecules in our bodies - came from comets.

Members of the public are being asked to sift through millions of pictures of the gel to locate the precise positions of the tiny grains. The project, known as Stardust@home, has been set up by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. Volunteers will be able to access the images via a web-based "virtual microscope".

Tammy Plotner created a sky calendar with the most remakable things in the night sky for 2006. You can download the PDF file on the site of Universe Today. Stunningly beautiful !

After 14 months of climbing, the Mars rover Spirit has reached the summit of Husband Hill, 269 feet above the edge of the Martian plain. The panoramic view from the top is spectacular. This breathtaking view from the summit reveals previously hidden southern terrain called "Inner Basin"(center), where team members hope to direct Spirit in the future. The rover left tracks to the left point toward the west, the direction Spirit arrived from. The peaks of "McCool Hill" and "Ramon Hill," both in the "Columbia Hills," can be seen just to the left and behind Inner Basin.

NASA is preparing to send the New Horizons probe to Pluto. It will be the first earth device to get intimate with the icy planet. And you can be there too - or, at least, your name. NASA is asking everyone to send them their names, which will be attached in the space device. The New Horizons probe will be launched in January 2006 to explore Pluto and the mysterious Kuiper belt, in the outskirts of the Solar System. It is expected that the probe will return to earth in approximately 50 thousand (!) years.

In honor of the first manned Moon landing, which took place on July 20, 1969, Google has added some NASA imagery to the Google Maps interface to help you pay your own visit to our celestial neighbor. Happy lunar surfing. And make sure you zoom in all the way to see a silly surprise.

The Messier objects are a set of astronomical objects catalogued by Charles Messier in his catalogue of Nebulae and Star Clusters first published in 1774. The original motivation behind the catalogue was that Messier was a comet hunter, and was frustrated by objects which resembled but were not comets. He therefore compiled a list of these objects. The Messier objects are still the most well known - and bright - objects on the night sky. Silicon Owl has an overview of the appearance of these objects, both in a telescope, and as photographed with professional equipment.

A Messier Marathon is an all night (or as long as you can stay awake!) search to try to identify as many of the Messier objects as you can, up to 110! If you time it right, are properly prepared, and try to find the objects in the best possible order, you'll find many of them. Sounds like fun.