Everything Under The Sun Is In Tune

Via the Guardian:

In an unusual treat for astronomers, and perhaps Pink Floyd fans, what is often known as the dark side of the moon has been captured, fully illuminated, by a camera aboard a NASA satellite. The series of images taken from NASA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory show a view of the far side of the moon, as it is more formally known, as it moved in front of the sunlit side of Earth. The images, taken on 16 July, show the moon moving across the Pacific Ocean towards North America. Its far side is shown in detail owing to sunlight hitting it, revealing a crater and a large plain called the Mare Moscoviense. Earth-bound observers see only one side of the moon because it is tidally locked to our planet, meaning its orbital period is the same as its rotation around its axis. The images of the far side of the moon, which wasn’t seen by humankind until a Soviet mission in 1959, will be captured about twice a year by NASA’s observatory, which is primarily monitoring solar winds.

(Tipped by JMG reader Smith)

Manhattanhenge Is This Weekend

Father Tony reminds us that the astronomical event known as Manhattanhenge is this weekend:

Manhattanhenge, the moment when the setting sun aligns precisely with the street grid in Manhattan, can be seen this weekend. Half the sun will align with the grid on Friday at 8:12 p.m., and the full-sun Manhattanhenge will happen the same time on Saturday, according to the Hayden Planetarium. The best view can be seen as far east in Manhattan as you can go without losing view of New Jersey. Good spots are cross streets like 14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd and 57th streets. On a clear day, the typical resulting effect of Manhattanhenge is a "radiant glow of light" across the skyscrapers and buildings, "simultaneously illuminating both the north and south sides of every cross street of the borough's grid," according to Hayden Planetarium.

The final Manhattanhenge of 2015 will be on July 13th.

Today's Solar Eclipse From Space

Grey skies blotted out today's solar eclipse for many Europeans who were in the right place to observe it, but the European Space Agency has provided a brief time-lapse from its Proba-2 satellite. Today's eclipse is especially rare as it took place on the vernal equinox during a "supermoon." And that means the end times have begun, of course.

WorldNetDaily, an American site that is roughly affiliated with the American political right, reported that biblical experts believe that the message is a sign of judgment from God to those on Earth. The co-founder of Christian website Root Source, Bob O’Dell, told WND that the message was a sign of judgment. The eclipse will be total across the North Pole, and so is not pointed at anyone in particular. “The North Pole can’t really be called the territory of any particular nation or people,” O’Dell told the site. “This is likely a message from God to the entire world.” But since the eclipse will most affect those in northern Europe, the message should be especially heeded by people there, according to a pastor interviewed by WND. “In Jewish tradition, a total solar eclipse is a warning to the Gentiles and a sign of judgment on the nations,” he told the paper. “When we look at where the darkness will be, it will be in northern European countries like England and Sweden where we see the rise of Islam and anti-Israel sentiment. Europeans especially should take heed.”

Northern Lights Dazzle In Rare Display

Mashable reports:

The Northern Lights could be seen pulsating through the sky in several cities throughout North America on Tuesday evening due to a rare geomagnetic storm. The colorful display was also caught on camera in areas within Canada and Europe. The geomagnetic storm, which is just one notch below the highest category of solar storm, began at about 10 a.m. ET on Tuesday, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center. The geomagnetic storm is the result of a pair of coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, that left the Sun on March 15 and are now interacting with Earth's atmosphere and geomagnetic field.

Ken Ham: Jesus Will Stop Asteroids

"According to God’s Word, the universe is not here as the result of naturalistic processes. God created the universe and has imposed order on it. The universe is not strictly governed by unfeeling natural laws. God upholds and sustains the universe that He has made.  And we don’t need to worry that an asteroid will obliterate life. The Bible has already told us how things will end — with judgment from God when Jesus Christ returns to Earth." - Creationist Ken Ham, putting your fears to rest.

NASA Craft Orbits Dwarf Planet

Via IFL Science:

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft made history at 4:39 a.m. PST Friday morning when it reached Ceres and became the first man-made object to orbit a dwarf planet. According to NASA, the objective of the Dawn mission is to “study the asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres, celestial bodies believed to have accreted early in the history of the solar system. The mission will characterize the early solar system and the processes that dominated its formation.” Dawn was launched from Cape Canaveral in September 2007, with an ultimate destination of the asteroid belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter. Dawn’s first target in the asteroid belt was Vesta. Dawn arrived there in 2011 and spent 14 months studying the protoplanet. Since leaving Vesta, Dawn has had a trajectory for its second and final destination: Ceres. No other spacecraft has ever orbited two separate targets.

There's A Moon In The Sky

Via Wonkette:

This may be the goofiest thing the Maddow Show has ever run. On the QVC shopping channel, host Shawn Killinger and designer Isaac Mizrahi got into a debate over the true nature of the moon, after Killinger remarked that the swirly pattern on a cardigan looked like the view of Earth from zillions of miles away, like “from planet Moon.” Planet? No, that’s not right. The moon’s a star, isn’t it? And so a shopping channel became the forum for a debate over whether the moon is a planet or a star, or maybe something else. When someone off set finally looked it up on Wikipedia and said it was a “natural satellite,” neither Killinger nor Mizrahi were ready to buy that.

Mizrahi: "Things live on it, I think it’s a planet."

Happy Solar Flare

Via the Telegraph:

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory has captured dramatic footage of a powerful X-class solar flare erupting on the surface of the Sun. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however – when intense enough – they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel. This flare was classified as an X1.8-class flare – X-class denotes the most intense flares, while the number provides more information about its strength.

The View On Comet 67P

Spacecraft Lands Safely On Comet 67P

Jupiter Is Watching You

The pupil is actually the shadow of Ganymede, one of Jupiter's 67 "confirmed" moons and the largest moon in the solar system. "Larger than Mercury and Pluto, and only slightly smaller than Mars, Ganymede would easily be classified as a planet if it were orbiting the sun rather than Jupiter." Ganymede whips around the massive Jupiter every seven days. Details.

Christian Movie The Principle Claims Universe Revolves Around The Earth

Via the Christian site CBN News:

A new documentary, "The Principle," is so controversial that scientists and even people featured in the movie are condemning it before they've had a chance to see it. The film chops away at some of the most sacred cows of modern science: that Earth is nothing special and sprang into being by accident. It delves into the latest scientific findings to present what its makers believe is solid evidence the whole universe revolves around Earth and its Milky Way galaxy. Physics professor John Hartnett, with Australia's University of Adelaide, studied the locations of some 400,000 galaxies from the 2005 Sloan Digital Sky Survey and was astounded to see a surprising form and pattern in how they're arrayed, all with Earth at the center. "As if the galaxies preferred to lie at some periodic spacing out from the Earth," Hartnett explains in the documentary

The film opens today on a single screen in Chicago.

NASA Spacecraft Orbits Mars

Via the New York Times:

NASA’s latest Mars spacecraft, Maven, arrived Sunday evening to study the mystery of what happened to the planet’s air. After a 33-minute engine firing, mission controllers received acknowledgment at about 10:25 p.m. Eastern time that Maven was in orbit around Mars. After a six-week period to turn on and check systems on the spacecraft and to move it to its final orbit, Maven — the name is short for Martian Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution — is to take detailed measurements of the dynamics of Mars’s upper atmosphere. But first, it will have a sideshow, taking observations of a comet that, by rare happenstance, will make a close flyby of Mars on Oct. 19, passing within 82,000 miles. Mission managers have arranged to activate Maven’s eight scientific sensors by then.

Astronomers Find "Mega-Earth"

Via the Washington Post:

Astronomers have discovered a surprising planet, a rocky world with 17 times the mass of Earth. There have been “Super-Earths” discovered before, but this one is in a league of its own. The scientists call it a “Mega-Earth.” Discovered by NASA’s Kepler space telescope and announced Monday at an astronomy meeting in Boston, this planet, officially named Kepler-10c, scrambles the equations that dictate how massive a rocky planet can be without ballooning into a Jupiter-like gas giant. The theorists didn’t see this coming. The orthodoxy was that, beyond about 10 Earth masses, a planet would hold on to so much hydrogen gas that it would become like Jupiter or Saturn. Kepler-10c suggests that plus-size planets can stay rocky, with clearly defined surfaces, rather than becoming gaseous and bloated. That means there’s more real estate out there for life as we know it on Earth.

Mega-Earth is too close to its sun to be habitable and only has a 45-day year.

NASA Cameras Capture Solar Eruption

Via the Telegraph:

Solar flares, or coronal mass ejections (CMEs) belch huge clouds of superheated particles from the sun's corona - the wispy, outermost and hottest layer - and can reach speeds exceeding one million miles per hour. The CME, captured on May 9, 2014, was the first seen by NASA's new Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS. To capture the phenomenon, the IRIS must be pointed at the sun a day ahead of time and involves a degree of luck, according to NASA. The field of view seen in the footage is about five Earth's wide and about seven and a half Earth's tall.

TONIGHT: Manhattanhenge

Sunsets are not regularly visible to most of Manhattan. But tonight, if you stand in the right place, you'll see one.

It’s Manhattanhenge. Just before sunset, the sun will line up with Manhattan’s cross streets. For 15 minutes, beginning just after 8 p.m., the sun will appear on the edge of the grid in half-disk form, like a postcard. It will illuminate the city’s deep canyons and wash the streets in peachy light. Then it will set on the streets’ center lines, at 8:16. The term Manhattanhenge was popularized by Neil deGrasse Tyson, the director of the Hayden Planetarium. The phenomenon reminded him of Stonehenge, where the sun aligns with several of the ancient stones on the summer solstice. If Manhattan’s grid ran strictly north-south and east-west, Manhattanhenge would fall on the spring and fall equinoxes. But it is turned about 30 degrees east from due north. Dr. Tyson has said that Manhattanhenge “may just be a unique urban phenomenon in the world, if not the universe.”

The best viewing spots are on the major crosstown streets below Central Park.

NASA Tracks Blood Moon Eclipse

There's a moon in the sky. It's called the moon. 

Neil deGrasse Tyson Trolls Creationists

"The Crab Nebula is about 6,500 light years from Earth. According to some beliefs, that’s the age of the whole universe, but if the universe were only 6,500 years old, how could we see light from anything more distant than the Crab Nebula? We couldn’t. To believe in a universe as young as 6,000 or 7,000 years old is to extinguish the light from most of the galaxy, not to mention the light from all the other hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe." - Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, in Sunday's episode of Cosmos, which focused on the speed of light.

NASA: Look At The Milky Way

Via the Jet Propulsion Laboratory:

Touring the Milky Way now is as easy as clicking a button with NASA's new zoomable, 360-degree mosaic presented Thursday at the TEDActive 2014 Conference in Vancouver, Canada. The star-studded panorama of our galaxy is constructed from more than 2 million infrared snapshots taken over the past 10 years by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. "If we actually printed this out, we'd need a billboard as big as the Rose Bowl Stadium to display it," said Robert Hurt, an imaging specialist at NASA's Spitzer Space Science Center in Pasadena, Calif. "Instead, we've created a digital viewer that anyone, even astronomers, can use." The 20-gigapixel mosaic uses Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope visualization platform. It captures about three percent of our sky, but because it focuses on a band around Earth where the plane of the Milky Way lies, it shows more than half of all the galaxy's stars.

Watch the clip and use the viewer here.

Meteor Shower Hits Russia

USA Today reports:

Russia was hit by a meteor shower on Friday in the nation's central Ural Mountains, injuring hundreds and causing damage to buildings in six cities, according to reports. Fragments of the meteor fell in a thinly populated area of the Chelyabinsk region, Russia's Emergency Ministry said in a statement, the Associated Press reported. At least three had been hospitalized in serious condition but the majority received treatment for minor cuts from broken glass after the explosions broke windows and shook buildings. Interior Ministry spokesman Vadim Kolesnikov said more than 400 people had called for medical assistance