The Moon and Jupiter

This evening at sunset a nice crescent Moon and the bright planet Jupiter will be quite close. As sunset around 19:00 the two will be separated by a mere 46′, just a little over the width of the full Moon. The two should make a very attractive pair as they sit above the glow of sunset.

Keep an eye out for Mercury and Venus closer to the horizon. At 19:00 Venus will be 9° above the horizon with Mercury a bit higher at 14°. The Moon and Jupiter will be higher yet around 25°. Since Mars and Saturn are also visible in the southern sky all five naked eye planets will be visible.

UCLA Astronomers Use Keck Observatory to Look Back 12 Billion Years and Measure Oxygen

W. M. Keck Observatory press release…

UCLA astronomers have used the W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaii to make the first accurate measurement of the abundance of oxygen in a distant galaxy. Oxygen, the third-most abundant chemical element in the Universe, is created inside stars and released into interstellar gas when stars die. Quantifying the amount of oxygen is key to understanding how matter cycles in and out of galaxies. This research is published online in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

COSMOS-1908
Galaxy COSMOS-1908 is in the center of this Hubble Space Telescope image, indicated by the arrow. Nearly everything in the image is a galaxy.
Credit: Ryan Sandres and the CANDELS Team
“This is by far the most distant galaxy for which the oxygen abundance has actually been measured,” said Alice Shapley, a UCLA professor of astronomy, and co-author of the study. “We’re looking back in time at this galaxy as it appeared 12 billion years ago.”

Knowing the abundance of oxygen in the galaxy called COSMOS-1908 is an important stepping stone toward allowing astronomers to better understand the population of faint, distant galaxies observed when the Universe was only a few billion years old, Shapley said.

COSMOS-1908 contains approximately one billion stars. In contrast, the Milky Way contains approximately 100 billion stars. Furthermore, COSMOS-1908 contains approximately only 20 percent the abundance of oxygen that is observed in the Sun.

Continue reading “UCLA Astronomers Use Keck Observatory to Look Back 12 Billion Years and Measure Oxygen”

The Moon and Venus

A very thin crescent Moon will pair with Venus in the sunset this evening. The Moon will be about 3.5° from Venus, well above the glow of sunset, perfectly placed to create a nice view. With sunset occurring at 18:58 HST, the pair will be 10° above the horizon at 19:00 and will set almost an hour later at 19:48 HST. The Moon will be quite thin, only 1.9% illuminated and only 1.3 days old. Creating a triangle with the pair of solar system bodies, the bright star Regulus will be 2° above Venus, while Mercury will be 8° higher in the sky. Jupiter will also be visible higher in the evening sky making for a nice lineup of bright planets.

Earthshine
A young crescent Moon, overexposed to show the remainder lit by reflected light from the Earth.

All Five Planets Visible

For much of the month all five naked eye planets will be visible at sunset. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter can all be seen easily if one knows where to look. Indeed, four of the five are quite bright and quite hard to miss. Neptune and Uranus are generally too faint to be seen without optical aid.

Conjunction
Venus and Jupiter over the Keck 1 dome
Tonight, August 1st, Venus is just rising high enough to be easily seen. It will be a mere 5° above the horizon at 19:30, probably bright enough to be seen against the glow. You can find Mercury a little higher, about 10° above the horizon. Jupiter is obvious well above the sunset as a bright object shining at -1.7 magnitude. Mars and Saturn are visible to the south on the top of Scorpio.

There will be a nice conjunction of the Moon and Jupiter, only 46′ apart, on the 5th of August. Mercury reaches eastern elongation on the 16th of the month. A beautiful triplet of Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter will gather in the days around the 22nd. Keep an eye to the sky for the month to be treated to some nice planetary views.

No Doors

A helicopter ride over an active volcano… With no doors.

In mid-July deb and I took a helicopter flight over Kilauea with Paradise Helicopter. A lot of fun! I took all of the material we shot in our helicopter flight and assembled as a bit of video. A lot more view-able this way, more fun than a pile of images sitting on a disk.

On the other had I think I discovered all of the things that can go wrong when shooting from a helicopter with no doors! The wind and vibration is rough, making even the wide angle video of a GoPro jump about. Video shot on the DLSR’s was useless. I also discovered that helicopter blades passing in front of the Sun gives the GoPro Hero 4 Black exposure fits, with black ripples in the image. Thanks to image stabilization and fast shutter speeds the still photos are fairly good.

Seated in a steeply banking helicopter with nothing between me and the molten lava a couple hundred feet below is a thrill I will not soon forget. You can smell the sulfur and feel the heat. Hopefully a little of that comes through in the video.

No Doors

No Doors from Andrew Cooper on Vimeo