astronomy
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ILOA details its ILO-X lunar telescope, wants it on the Moon in 2015
The International Lunar Observatory Association and Moon Express have spent years working on their privately-backed, Moon-bound ILO-X telescope. Today, they can finally share the nuts-and-bolts details of their flight test hardware. Not surprisingly, the roughly shoebox-sized device won't come close to matching Hubble between its tiny 130mm, f/5.6 aperture and 6.4-megapixel resolution. However, oneupmanship isn't the point -- ILOA mostly wants its inaugural telescope to be accessible enough that schools, scientists and the public at large can get a peek at deep space through the internet. Most of the challenge rests in getting ILO-X to its ultimate destination. Moon Express won't deliver the telescope to the Moon until sometime in 2015, which will leave us waiting some time for another vantage point on the universe.
Daily Update for May 28, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Photographing the moon with an iPhone
Stargazers and amateur astronomers might be shocked to hear that, with the right equipment, the iPhone makes a perfect camera to photograph the moon. Writing on his 23x blog, Jared Earle reveals the surprising, simple steps he takes to get amazing shots of the moon. To start with, you need some kind of telescope to get such close-up shots. Earle uses a Celestron C5. He then uses the Magnifi adapter to attach his iPhone 4S to the telescope. Once the two pieces of hardware are connected, Earle launches the Cortex Camera app (US$2.99) to snap his pics. The app uses dozens of individual photos to assemble one highly detailed, noise-free one. If you're hoping to get some great snaps of the moon, Jared Earle's piece is a must-read. I particularly like his tip about using Apple's EarPods with Remote and Mic as a shutter release. [Image by Jared Earle]
This weekend's Lyrid meteor shower: Four iOS apps that can help you watch it
If you're a meteor maven or stargazer, this is the weekend for one of the year's best meteor showers, the Lyrids. The Lyrids come to maximum strength April 21-22, which for those of us in North America means late Sunday night and early Monday morning. The shower is caused by the Earth passing through the orbit of space debris left by a comet, and usually dazzles viewers with 10-20 meteors per hour from a point in the sky close to the bright star Vega in the constellation of Lyra. How can iOS help? Well, there are a lot of astronomy apps that will point you in the right direction using the compass and elevation sensors, and give you some background on meteors and their origins. Here are some of my personal favorites that should come in handy this weekend: Star Walk (US$2.99) has some info on the Lyrids shower, and best of all it will show you where to look in the early morning sky. You don't have to know a thing about astronomy; Star Walk uses the iPhone sensors to point you in the right direction. Distant Suns ($9.99 for the most advanced version) is another favorite. It doesn't list the meteor shower on its event notifications, but you can easily select the constellation Lyra in the app and the app directs you on where to look for the shower. Like Star Walk, Distant Suns provides a striking display of the night sky. There is a free, lite version available for download as well. Pocket Universe ($1.99) also has a beautiful display, and while the app mentions the Lyrid shower, it doesn't provide any details. You can use the program to orient you towards Lyra. Sky Safari ($2.99) is an excellent astronomy app and star chart, but it's completely silent about the meteor shower. Like the other apps, since you know that the shower is in the constellation of Lyra, it will point you to the proper area of the sky for possible viewing. If you are just getting started in amateur astronomy, Star Walk is your best bet. It seems the most friendly app for events like this meteor shower, and the Lyrids shower is on the events list in that app along with additional information. You're just a tap away from finding that point in the sky where the most meteors appear to be coming from. %Gallery-186223% The moon is always the enemy of those looking for faint objects in the sky. For this year's Lyrid shower, the moon doesn't set until about 4 AM Monday morning, making this a less than perfect event. You should be able to see meteors beginning at about midnight Sunday, with western North America being the best location for viewing. The meteors you see flash through the sky are actually very small pieces of rock igniting when they hit the Earth's atmosphere about 60 to 70 miles up. These rocks are seldom are large enough to make it all the way down to the Earth's surface, but sometimes they do, as evidenced by the large meteorite that hit Russia on February 15. The meteor image on this page is from Wikimedia Commons.
Satellite Safari gives you a unique vantage point for what is in orbit
Satellite Safari is a new iOS app from the creators of Sky Safari. Rather than look at the universe, Satellite Safari has more local ambitions. The app contains a complete database of what is orbiting the earth. It allows you to find what is overhead, then view the spacecraft from earth, from above the earth, or right next to the orbiting satellite with the sun's lighting at the correct orientation. You can easily find what is above you at any time, and try to locate it with binoculars or with the naked eye if the satellite is bright enough. The satellite positions are updated every second, and the position calculations are updated every day. This app packs a lot of power into an iOS device. It's just the thing to have when you are sitting out on our increasingly pleasant spring evenings seeing if you can spot some of the man-made traffic zipping by over our heads. My tests of the app were positive. No crashes, no surprises. Sometimes the animation could be a little jumpy. Lots going on in the background, but I never found it a problem. The app did everything I asked it to do, and worked quickly. Even better, Satellite Safari is the official app of the Sky Cube Mission, which is expected to launch and deploy from the International Space Station in September. When it does, you'll actually be able to request your own images from/of Earth, and even 'broadcast' your own messages from orbit as 'tweets from space.' %Gallery-183678% Like Sky Safari, Satellite Safari not only does good math, but displays its graphics in a compelling way. When you have the orbital view, you can zoom in to see details of the satellite, or rotate the image to see it from any angle. As you rotate, the light and shadows update in a realistic fashion. Satellite Safari is a universal app on sale until April for US$2.99. It's optimized for the iPhone 5 and requires iOS 4.3 or later. A very cool app, which will only become more useful this fall when the SkyCube features ramp up.
Check out tomorrow's asteroid close call on your iPhone or iPad
As you may have read, our home planet will have a close call tomorrow, February 15, with a 180,000-ton asteroid called 2012 DA14. There is no chance of a collision, but the space rock will come within 17,200 miles, closer than many of our communication satellites. You can follow the approach of the asteroid tomorrow from several of the Southern Stars apps for iOS. You won't be able to see the asteroid with the naked eye -- that will take a pretty large telescope with computerized tracking to get it into the correct position -- but SkySafari Plus and SkySafari Pro will do the job on your iOS device. The math it takes to display the space rock is tricky, so Southern Stars founder Tim DeBenedictis consulted with experts at JPL and added a solar system orbit integrator into the app. That means the app is not just displaying a canned animation of the fly-by, but actually computing the asteroid position in real time. I watched the asteroid in my version of SkySafari Pro. It's easy to find it in the sky by typing in its name, but the best views were from a few miles away from the asteroid where you can watch it approach the Earth and graze by. %Gallery-178864% The updated software is free for SkySafari owners, and people interested in getting the software are being offered a 30 percent off sale that lasts through Sunday. The folks at Southern Stars note that the OS X version of SkySafari did not get updated due to delays in the approval process at the App Store. With the sale prices, SkySafari Plus for iOS is US$9.99, and SkySafari Pro for iOS is $29.99. The basic version of SkySafari does not contain the orbit integrator. Southern Stars created a video showing the fly-by, which I've included below. Of course, the SkySafari software is not just for tracking asteroids, but it's a complete star atlas and planetarium app that can show you the sky from any place on Earth and any date up to a million years in the past or future. The apps are universal and optimized for the iPhone 5. They require iOS 4.3 or later.
NASA offers free e-book for iPad owners
What a nice holiday gift from NASA: it's an interactive e-book available in the iBookstore called Hubble Space Telescope: Discoveries, featuring beautiful images, video and animations relating to the space telescope that is giving us striking new views of the universe we live in. "These new e-books from NASA will allow people to discover Hubble and Webb in a whole new way - both the science and the technology behind building them," said Amber Straughn, an astrophysicist on the Webb telescope project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "They collect all of the amazing resources about these two observatories in an excellent product that I think people will really enjoy." The e-books are highly interactive and include image galleries and videos. Tracy Vogel of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., is part of the design team that put them together. "For instance, the readers can watch a galaxy collision simulation video, manipulate a telescope model to see it from all angles, or flip through a gallery of planetary nebulae - all right there on the page," Vogel said. If you have an iPad the book is available at this link. Be forewarned; it's a hefty download, almost 900 MB. The e-book requires iBooks 3.0 or later and iOS 5.1. %Gallery-174005%
University of Montreal detects an orbitless planet, shows that stars don't have an iron grip (video)
Astronomers have long theorized that there are many planets that have drifted away from their home stars, whether it's a too-loose gravitational pull during the planet's formation or a stellar tug-of-war. We've never had a reasonable chance of locating such a wanderer until today, however. The University of Montreal believes it has spotted CFBDSIR2149, an awkwardly-named gas giant four to seven times larger than Jupiter, floating by itself in the AB Doradus Moving Group of young stars. Scientists made the discovery first by pinpointing their target through infrared images from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, and later using the Very Large Telescope to deduce that the object was both too small to be a star as well as hot and young enough (752F and under 120 million years old) to fit the behavior of a planet orphaned early into its existence. With CFBDSIR2149's nature largely locked down, the challenge now is learning just how common such lonely examples can be; when it's much easier to focus on the stars while hunting for planets, finding any more strays could prove to be a daunting task.
DARPA SpaceView program enlists us to track space debris, save a satellite today (video)
Space junk is an undeniable problem when there's over 500,000 dead satellites, spacecraft pieces and other human-made obstacles that could crash into active orbiting vehicles. DARPA is more than a little overwhelmed in trying to track all those hazards by itself, so it's recruiting amateur help through its new SpaceView program. The effort will buy time for non-professional astronomers on existing telescopes, or even supply hardware directly, to track the spaceborne debris without the sheer expense of growing an existing surveillance network. While that amounts to using hobbyists purely as volunteers, DARPA notes that the strategy could be a win-win for some when hardware donated for SpaceView could be used for regular astronomy in spare moments. The challenge is getting through the sign-up phase. While SpaceView is taking applications now, it's initially focusing on options for standard commercial telescopes and hand-picking those who have permanent access to hardware in the right locations -- there's no guarantee a backyard observatory will pass muster. Those who do clear the bar might sleep well knowing that satellites and rockets should be that much safer in the future.
9-gigapixel image of the Milky Way reminds us just how small we truly are
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but this just leaves us speechless. Pictured above is a compressed 108,500 x 81,500 pixel image of 84 million stars across central parts of the Milky Way. Taken by the VISTA survey telescope at the ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile, this 9-gigapixel photo is the result of thousands of individual images being meshed together. If it were printed out at the average resolution of a standard book it would measure a mind-boggling 9 x 7 meters. Using three separate infrared filters, VISTA is able to see through dust fields that normally obscure the view of an optical telescope. By studying this monumental image, astronomers hope to gain a better understanding of how galaxies form and evolve. If you'd like to take a look at this galactic work of art in its entirety, you can do so by visiting the source link below. (Image credit: ESO/VVV Consortium)
Alt-week 20.10.12: our oldest primate ancestor, the birth of the moon and a planet with four stars
Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days. Most mornings, we wake up with little to no idea what happened the day before, let alone last week. Fortunately, they don't let us run important scientific research projects. Or maybe they do, and we just forgot? This week (and most others as it goes) we definitely leave it to the pros, as we get some insightful glimpses at some important origins. Ball Lightning, the moon and even us humans are the benefactors of those tireless scientists, who work hard to explain where it all comes from. There's also a planet with four stars that sees the first few paragraphs of its origin story excitedly written out. One thing we never forget, however, is that this is alt-week.
Australia Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder goes live as the world's quickest radio telescope
Australia's Shire of Murchison is quickly becoming a hotbed for radio telescopes. As of of Friday, the territory is operating the world's fastest radio telescope in the form of the Australia Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP). The 36-antenna grid's eventual use of six phased array feeds, each with 188 receivers, will let it scan a field of view 150 times larger than the moon's visible area while processing that information much faster than a typical single-pixel radio telescope feed -- CSIRO estimates that an image of the Centaurus A galaxy that would take 10,000 hours to process with rivals should take five minutes with ASKAP. Ultimately, the array should grow to 60 antennas as part of the Square Kilometer Array, which includes South Africa in its hunt for pulsars, quasars and other unique parts of the universe. Just don't get your hopes up for booking alien listening sessions anytime soon. Commissioning started virtually as soon as the ribbon was cut, and scientists have already scheduled their usage slots for the next five years. We're sure we'll get over any frustration when we see the first ASKAP results published within the next year.
Cassini HD for the iPad lets you take a free trip to Saturn today
I continue to praise the variety of Astronomy apps that are available for iOS. Today, I call your attention to Cassini HD for the iPad, which is usually US $1.99, but is free today only. The app collects more than 800 striking images from the NASA Cassini Mission that did a close flyby of Saturn and its moons. This app isn't a NASA product, but comes from Thinx Media Interactive. The app features a variety of views of our ringed planet and 20 of its satellites. Each image has an explanation sourced from NASA/JPL. You can swipe from image to image, or use a drop-down menu to explore the images. You can share the images via social networks, email them, or save them to your camera roll where they could be used as a wallpaper on your iPad. Although the native images are quite detailed, there is no ability to zoom into them and take a closer look at part of the picture. When I first tried the app, I quickly swiped from page to page. After a while, I settled in and spent some time contemplating each image and appreciating the beauty and technology that allows us to see these other-worldly vistas. NASA publishes a variety of iOS apps, including the useful NASA Science app that summarizes much of what NASA is doing. That said, the Cassini HD collection of images is something NASA doesn't offer, except via a variety of web sites. If you are interested or inspired by these types of images, Cassini HD is free today and worth a download. Check the gallery for some sample screens. %Gallery-165481%
Star Walk adds realistic sunsets and enhanced galleries
As iOS astronomy apps go, Star Walk is certainly at the top for graphics and depth of features. We've reviewed it favorably in the past. Version 6.0 today adds realistic sunset and sunrise effects, a completely new info window, and a new and improved gallery of astronomy images. The company says that, due to the new visual effects, the sunset and sunrise look very realistic with flares and rays across the sky. To view it, one taps the sun and moves the Time Machine on the right side bar forward. The new info window features numerous pictures of a selected object, facts and figures about sizes and distances, pluse detailed descriptions and Wikipedia articles. %Gallery-163702% Star Walk is an augmented reality app. If you go outside, launch the app and point your iPad or iPhone at the sky, you'll see the stars, planets and deep sky objects in their proper place from your location. If you move your device, the sky map updates in real time. I've tried the new features and agree that the sunsets and sunrises are quite striking. I also appreciate the new and more detailed info and new photos that are in the gallery. Star Walk is available for iPhone and iPod Touch for US$2.99. Star Walk for iPad costs $4.99. The apps require iOS 4.3 or greater. If you already have Star Walk the update is free. Check the gallery for some screen shots.
Scientists release biggest ever 3D map of the universe, lacks turn-by-turn navigation (video)
The stargazers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have released a huge three-dimensional map of outer space, a core part of its six-year survey of the skies. Encompassing four billion light-years cubed, the researchers hope to use the map to retrace the movements of the universe through the last six billion years. Using the latest Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III), the center says the data will help improve their estimates for the quantity of dark matter in space and the effect that dark energy has on the universe's expansion, "two of the greatest mysteries of our time" -- if you're an astrophysicist. Even if you're not, you'll still want to board the animated flight through over 400,000 charted galaxies -- it's embedded after the break.
Radio astronomy pioneer Sir Bernard Lovell dies at 98
Astronomy just lost one of its vanguards, as Sir Bernard Lovell has died at 98. The UK-born scientist was best known as a cornerstone of radio telescope development. While he wasn't the first to leap into the field, he established the University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Observatory to study cosmic rays in 1945 and organized the construction of what would ultimately be called the Lovell Telescope -- a radio telescope so large and useful that it's still the third-largest steerable example in the world, 55 years after it was first put into action. His work helped track some of the earliest spacecraft and was instrumental in confirming the first discovered pulsars and quasars. On top of his most conspicuous achievements, Sir Lovell played an important role in developing airborne radar during World War II and was lauded for having scientific curiosity long after he hung up his Jodrell director's hat in 1980. Science will be poorer without him. [Image credit: NASA; thanks, Darren]
Alt-week 8.4.12: buckyballs, bosons and bodily fluids
Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days. Remember when we told you last week that we live in a strange world? Well, we had no idea what we were talking about. Seriously, things are about to get a whole lot weirder. High school is certainly a head-scratcher, no matter how old you are, but the mathematics of social hierarchies can't hold a candle to the mysteries of the buckyball. And, if the strange behavior of the familiar carbon molecule isn't enough for you, we've got an entirely new molecule to contend with, while the once-elusive Higgs Boson is getting us closer to unlocking the secrets of the universe. It's all pretty heady stuff, which is why we're also gonna take a quick detour to the world of human waste. This is alt-week.
TUAW and MacTech interview: Southern Stars
Southern Stars makes a host of awesome astronomy tools, like SkySafari and assorted controllers. If you're serious about astronomy give them a look. In this video, Neil Ticktin (Editor-in-Chief, MacTech Magazine) interviews Tim DeBenedictis of Southern Stars at WWDC 2012. Tim was kind enough to tell us about their thoughts on the announcements on WWDC, and how it will affect their plans moving forward. #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
Project 1640 offers new way to search for planets beyond our solar system
It's taken more than six years of development, but a new imaging system for the Palomar Observatory's 200-inch Hale Telescope finally started capturing images last month, and promises to aid significantly in the search for planets outside our solar system (otherwise known as exoplanets). With the suitably mysterious name of "Project 1640," the new instrument is the first of its kind that's able to directly spot planets orbiting distant suns -- as opposed to existing systems that use indirect detection methods to determine the orbit of exoplanets. To do that, Project 1640 effectively blots out the light from stars, which allows astronomers to more clearly observe what might be around them, including objects up to 10 million times fainter than the star itself (the image on the right above is a nearby star captured with the imaging system in place, compared to the same star captured without the new system on the left). Those curious can find more specifics on just how that's accomplished in the official announcement linked below.
Plans for European Extremely Large Telescope approved, is indeed extremely large
We see a lot of "world's largest" claims around here. And this isn't even the first one for a telescope. But this one is actually for the world's biggest optical telescope, and that somehow makes it easier to grasp the magnitude of. At a cost of 1.1 billion Euros, it doesn't come cheap, but the European Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) has just been given the go ahead -- and truly lives up to its name. The mirror it uses will measure 39 meters across (four times that of typical mirrors,) comprising nearly 800 hexagonal pieces, and will swallow 12 times more light than the current biggest in existence. This, of course, means that it will be able to peep galaxies much farther away, and those in the process of formation in much more clarity. The project was approved by the European Southern Observatory council, which got the nod from ten countries in the continent, with others provisionally giving the thumbs up pending government backing. The telescope itself, however, will be located atop Chile's Cerro Armazones mountain in the Atacama Desert once completed.
