Freaky Saturn Hexagon

There are some things about space that NASA doesn't tell the general public because people would get all freaked out.

Earlier, I told you about the Human-ish Eye at Saturn's South Pole(link).

If that doesn't have you scared, check out the Hexagon at Saturn's North pole.


Sixth Planet from the Sun, Six sided hexagon.

Coincidence?

Human-ish Eye at Saturn's South Pole

There are some things about space that NASA doesn't tell the general public because people would get all freaked out.

Behold, The Human-ish Eye at Saturn's South Pole.

A freaky storm two-thirds the diameter of Earth and unlike anything ever seen has been spotted on Saturn.

The tempest, some 5,000 miles wide (8,000 kilometers), has an oddly human-looking hurricane-like eye

NASA's Cassini spacecraft photographed the huge storm. It swirls with 350 mph winds at the ringed planet's south pole.

Space News - Antimatter Energy Drink

I just found out about a new Energy Drink that I have to try. Below is text from the Antimatter web site (Link).

be not afraid...


...Antimatter™ is The World's First Space Energy Drink

Antimatter™ is produced from ingredients
that have been flown in space.

It is specifically designed to help improve your
mental focus,
reaction time and
physical stamina*.

Every time you take a drink of Antimatter™ you are consuming ingredients that have physically been to space and back — No Bull !

Space News - Roswell wants UFO theme park.

The Roswell New Mexico is the site of a purported UFO crash in July 1947, which the military later claimed was a top-secret weather balloon. Even today, Roswell is visited by UFO/Alien losers worldwide.

Roswell businesses have been cashing in on the UFO craze for years. Paintings and replicas of UFOs and space aliens adorn downtown buildings, and even the McDonald’s and Wal-Mart are UFO- and space-themed.

Right now, the town’s biggest tourism attraction is the International UFO Museum and Research Center, which has drawn 2.5 million visitors since opening in 1992.

The top complaint by tourists during the city’s annual UFO festival each summer is that there’s not enough to do.

Now city officials want to take it to another level with a UFO-themed amusement park, complete with an indoor roller coaster that would take passengers on a simulated alien abduction.

The park, dubbed Alien Apex Resort, could open as early as 2010.

I would love to go. And not because I think it would be cool or I believe in UFO's. UFO's are not real.

Much like the South Carolina State Fair, I want to go to the Roswell amusement park to look at all the people who don't get out to the "big city" much and feel better about myself.

People who are such losers that they want to be kidnapped by aliens, rectally probed and parent a alien/human hybrid, just to have a feeling of belonging to something.

People with mullets.

People who real aliens would not choose to genetically harvest for their hybrid breeding experiments.

Space News - Governor saw UFO

Former Arizona Gov. Fife Symington, who trotted out an aide dressed as an alien 10 years ago to spoof the frenzy surrounding mysterious lights in the Phoenix sky, now says the lights were actually an alien spacecraft.

Now a pastry chef and business consultant, Symington is keying in on the anniversary of the sighting of the so-called "Phoenix Lights" by reversing course, saying the lights were really extraterrestrial and that he saw a UFO himself.

"I'm a pilot and I know just about every machine that flies," Symington said Thursday. "It was bigger than anything that I've ever seen. It remains a great mystery. Other people saw it, responsible people. I don't know why people would ridicule it."

During a news conference in 1997, Symington, a former Air Force captain then in his second term as governor, told the assembled press that an alien had been captured. He then ushered out his chief of staff, Jay Heiler, dressed in a costume complete with oversized head and eyes.

"This just goes to show that you guys are entirely too serious," Symington said at the time.

Later that year, he was convicted of bank fraud charges stemming from his bankrupt real estate empire. The conviction later was overturned and he was pardoned by President Clinton in 2001 before federal prosecutors decided whether they would retry the case.

Symington recently told a UFO investigator making a documentary that he hadn't acknowledged his own encounter at the time because he didn't want people to panic. He repeated the story in an interview on CNN and other media, saying the craft he saw was "enormous. It just felt otherworldly. In your gut, you could just tell it was otherworldly."

Heiler, who says Symington is one of his closest friends, said he isn't surprised he believes in UFOs.

A "Trekkie" who enjoys discussing space travel, Heiler said Symington is convinced that earthlings will travel to distant solar systems at above the speed of light "in our lifetimes."

Heiler said he remained "the earthbound skeptic" in those talks.

New Mexico and 134340 Planet Day.

The state of New Mexico could effectively secede from the astronomical community if a resolution to call Pluto a planet is passed.

Joint House Memorial 54 was introduced by representative Joni Marie Gutierrez, who represents Dona Ana County. It states that Pluto, the recently demoted object, "be declared a planet and that March 13, 2007 be declared 'Pluto Planet Day' at the legislature."

Pluto was stripped of its planet status last August when a group within the International Astronomical Union voted to call the diminutive, far-flung world a dwarf planet. The decision was immediately and widely criticized by astronomers, many of whom have said it might not stand over time.

The foundations of planetary science won't likely be shook if the resolution passes, however. A Joint House Memorial "does not have the color of law," explained Peter Hay, a staff member at the New Mexico State Legislature. "It is a feeling of the House."

The resolution is the third item on the agenda "on the Speaker's table" today, Hay said in a telephone interview, and could be called to a vote at any time. If the House passes it, the Senate would then take it up. No vote by the Governor is required.

The reasoning of the resolution:

"WHEREAS, New Mexico state university and Dona Ana county were the longtime home of Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto; and
WHEREAS, Pluto has been recognized as a planet for seventy-five years; and
WHEREAS, Pluto's average orbit is three billion six hundred ninety-five million nine hundred fifty thousand miles from the sun, and its diameter is approximately one thousand four hundred twenty-one miles; and
WHEREAS, Pluto has three moons known as Charon, Nix and Hydra; and
WHEREAS, a spacecraft called New Horizons was launched in January 2006 to explore Pluto in the year 2015.

Tombaugh used the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz. to first spot Pluto in 1930. Pluto is now known by a number, 134340.

Steven Hawking - Superdork

I'm not making fun of Steven Hawking. I idolize him.

Soon Hawking will be the only human to have appeared on Star Trek, appeared in the Simpsons, and actually travelled in Space.

LONDON (AP)— Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking says he wants to undertake a zero-gravity flight aboard an airplane this year as a precursor to a journey into space, a newspaper reported Monday.

“This year I'm planning a zero-gravity flight and to go into space in 2009,'' he was quoted as saying in The Daily Telegraph newspaper.

Hawking, 65, has said he hopes to travel on British businessman Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic service, which is scheduled to launch in 2009. The service will charge space tourists about US$200,000 (about 100,000 pounds; euro155,000) for a two-hour suborbital trip some 87 miles (140 kilometers) above the Earth.

Branson was keen to help the scientist realize his dream of space flight, Virgin Galactic spokesman Stephen Attenborough said Monday.

“Richard is very determined that if we can possibly make this happen, then it should,'' Attenborough said.

He said the company had not discussed the issue of payment with Hawking.

One of the best-known theoretical physicists of his generation, Hawking gained fame with the best-selling book “A Brief History of Time.''

The scientist, who uses a wheelchair and communicates with the help of a computer because he suffers from a neurological disorder called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, has done groundbreaking research on black holes and the origins of the universe, proposing that space and time have no beginning and no end.

Hawking has warned that the survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there's an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy Earth

Space News - Hubble X-mas Cards

This Christmas, instead of sending X-mas cards with a photo of your dogs wearing antlers or yourself wearing aviator sunglasses, why not send a X-mas card with an image from the Cosmos, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope? (link)

Space News - Earth Photographed from Saturn

I have previously told you about the Cassini probe which is orbiting Saturn right now(link).

In the above photo, taken last month, the Cassini probe looked back at Earth, which appears as a lonely dot in the night. (Click the photo to enlarge)

Not since Voyager 1’s portrait of Earth from Neptune – famously known as the Pale Blue Dot(link) – has our home planet been photographed from the outer Solar System.

Cassini used its wide-angle camera to snap this home portrait while at a distance of about 930 million miles (1.5 billion kilometers) from Earth. The orbiter was looking down on the Atlantis Ocean and the western coast of North Africa at the time this shot was taken on Sept. 15, 2006.

A hint of the Earth’s Moon is visible in a close look at the pale blue orb.

Space News - Neil Armstrong Quote Revised

That's one small word for astronaut Neil Armstrong, one giant revision for grammar sticklers everywhere.

An Australian computer programmer says he found the missing "a" from Armstrong's famous first words from the moon in 1969, when the world heard the phrase, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

Some historians and critics have dogged Armstrong for not saying the more dramatic and grammatically correct, "One small step for a man ..." in the version he transmitted to NASA's Mission Control. Without the missing "a," Armstrong essentially said, "One small step for mankind, one giant leap for mankind."

The famous astronaut has maintained he intended to say it properly and believes he did. Thanks to some high-tech sound-editing software, computer programmer Peter Shann Ford might have proved Armstrong right.

Ford said he downloaded the audio recording of Armstrong's words from a NASA Web site and analyzed the statement with software that allows disabled people to communicate through computers using their nerve impulses.

In a graphical representation of the famous phrase, Ford said he found evidence that the missing "a" was spoken and transmitted to NASA.

"Told you so... A-holes", Armstrong said in a statement.

Space News - New Name 4 Pluto

Planets get to be named after mythological gods or Micky Mouse's dog.

Grubby dwarf planets get boring asteroid numbers instead of cool names.

Pluto has been given a new name to reflect its new status as a dwarf planet.

On Sept. 7, the former 9th planet was assigned the asteroid number 134340 by the Minor Planet Center (MPC), the official organization responsible for collecting data about asteroids and comets in our solar system.

The move reinforces the International Astronomical Union's (IAU) recent decision to strip Pluto of its planethood and places it in the same category as other small solar-system bodies with accurately known orbits.

Pluto's companion satellites, Charon, Nix and Hydra are considered part of the same system and will not be assigned separate asteroid numbers, said MPC director emeritus Brian Marsden. Instead, they will be called 134340 I, II and III, respectively.

There are currently 136,563 asteroid objects recognized by the MPC; 2,224 new objects were added last week, of which Pluto was the first.

Pluto No Longer a Planet

Breaking Space News

In this post(link), I first mentioned a debate about whether Pluto should be called a planet.

Then in this post(link), I predicted that Pluto would one day lose its planethood.

Well, that day has come. Pluto is no longer a planet.

Capping years of intense debate, astronomers yesterday resolved today to demote Pluto in a wholesale redefinition of planethood that is being billed as a victory of scientific reasoning over historic and cultural influences. But already the decision is being hotly debated.

"Pluto is not a planet," Astronomer Brown said. "There are finally, officially, eight planets in the solar system."

The decision establishes three main categories of objects in our solar system.

* Planets: The eight worlds from Mercury to Neptune.

* Dwarf Planets: Pluto and any other round object that "has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit, and is not a satellite."

* Small Solar System Bodies: All other objects orbiting the Sun.

Pluto and its moon Charon are part of a sea of other objects that occupy the same region of space. Earth and the other eight large planets have, on the other hand, cleared broad swaths of space of any other large objects.

"Pluto is a dwarf planet by the ... definition and is recognized as the prototype of a new category of trans-Neptunian objects," states the approved resolution.

What is screwed up about the new definition is that "dwarf planets" are not planets under the definition.

The vote came after eight days of contentious debate amoung astronomers that involved four separate proposals at the group's meeting in Prague.

The initial proposal, hammered out by a group of seven astronomers, historians and authors, attempted to preserve Pluto as a planet but was widely criticized for diluting the meaning of the word. It would also have made planets out of the asteroid Ceres and Pluto's moon Charon. But not now.

"Ceres is a dwarf planet. it's the only dwarf planet in the asteroid belt," Brown said. "Charon is a satellite."

The category of "dwarf planet" is expected to include dozens of round objects already discovered beyond Neptune. Ultimately, hundreds will probably be found, astronomers say.

The word "planet" originally described wanderers of the sky that moved against the relatively fixed background of star.

Pluto, discovered in 1930, was at first thought to be larger than it is. It has an eccentric orbit that crosses the path of Neptune and also takes it well above and below the main plane of the solar system.

Recent discoveries of other round, icy object in Pluto's realm have led most astronomers to agree that the diminutive world should never have been termed a planet.

My kids will only learn about 8 planets.

Space News - The Big Jump

Frenchman Michel Fournier is readying himself and equipment to attempt a record-setting free fall from the stratosphere. The 62-year old Fournier is an experienced parachutist, pilot and former military officer.

Dubbed "The Big Jump", Fournier is eyeing next month for his supersonic free fall from about 130,000 feet (40 kilometers)—roughly 25 miles above the Earth. The dive from a balloon-carried gondola is slated to take place above the plains of Saskatchewan, Canada.

Record-setting fall

The Jump equipment is principally composed of a huge Russian-supplied stratospheric balloon and the specially crafted gondola. To ascend to jump height will take some 3 hours. The gondola shelters Fournier during ascent. It also is loaded with flight instruments: navigation equipment, oxygen bottles, radio gear, video recorders and Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite tracking device.

If successful, Fournier will beat four world parachutist’s records from the border of space:

* Altitude record for freefall
* Altitude record for human balloon flight
* Time record for longest freefall
* Speed record for fastest freefall—breaking the sound barrier in the process

After the separation of the balloon and at the time of Fournier’s jump, the gondola will descend by parachutes. The base of the gondola is equipped with shock absorbers for a safe touch down back on the ground.

Fournier will be wearing a spacesuit made of new synthetic material fabricated by the Textile Institute of France. The apparel is designed to thermally balance the wearer’s body during The Big Jump, yet is light enough to enhance Fournier’s maneuverability during the plunge to Earth.

In spotlighting the upcoming skydiving attempt, French astronaut, Jean-François Clervoy, stated that Fournier is to be admired for the human dimensions of the solo exploit because he will be the only person onboard the gondola to ultimately decide to step out into thin air and take the gigantic step.

Pluto - 2 New Moons and Looming Relegation.

In school I learned that Pluto was the ninth Planet from the Sun.

Pluto has a moon, or partner, named Charon. Charon doesn't orbit Pluto, they both orbit a center of gravity between them.

Now, a pair of small moons that NASA's Hubble Space Telescope discovered orbiting Pluto have official names: Nix and Hydra. Photographed by Hubble in 2005, Nix and Hydra are roughly 5,000 times fainter than Pluto and are about two to three times farther from Pluto than its large moon, Charon, which was discovered in 1978.

Right now there is a Nasa spacecraft on the way to Pluto(link), and by the time it get there, Pluto will no longer be considered a planet.

Pluto has more in common with Kupier Belt Objects than the other planets and scientists keep finding more and more objects that resemble Pluto. We can't start calling all of these objects "planets" even if they are named after Zena the Warrior Princess. (link) (link). Sooner or later Pluto will be relegated from planethood.

My kids will not learn that Pluto is a planet.

That's No Moon - Or is it?

Obi-Wan in Star Wars (1977) - "That's no moon. It's a space station."

Me on Turnipblog (2006) - "That's not the Death Star. It's Saturn's moon Mimas.

In this post(link) I told you about the Cassini spacecraft that is currently orbiting and studying Saturn and its moons.

Well, Mimas is one of Saturn's moons and it looks like the Death Star. Mimas is 398 km (247 miles) across.

What looks like the superweapon that blasted Princess Leia's peaceful home planet of Alderaan is actually a giant crater called Herschel, which is a third the size of the moon itself. Herschel, is about 130 kilometers (80 miles) wide and 10 kilometers (6 miles) deep.

Space Update - New Red Jr. Photos

Remember learning in school that Jupiter had a big red spot?

Now Jupiter has 2 red spots, as I explained In this post(link).

Hubble Space Telescope just took the best photos yet of Red Jr.

Extraterrestrial Life = Confirmed

This is the most important discovery that science has ever yielded.

We came from the stars baby!

In this post(link), I predicted that Humans will one day discover evidence of Extraterrestrial Life.

I have 3 words for you...




....Face On Mars!

In July 1976, Viking Orbiter 1 was acquiring images of the Cydonia region of Mars as part of the search for potential landing sites for Viking Lander 2. On July 25, 1976, it photographed a region of buttes and mesas along the escarpment that separates heavily cratered highlands to the south from low lying, relatively crater-free, lowland plains to the north.

Nasa tried to cover-up the significance of The Face and has denied its existence, but recent Hubble Space Telescope images show that the same face can be found at the center of several galaxies and nebulas.

Everything is about to change.

Space Update - New Red Spot for Jupiter

If you know anything about the Solar System, you are familiar with Jupiter's Great Red Spot, a storm twice as wide as our planet and at least 300 years old. The Great Red Spot is the most powerful storm in the whole solar system.

Well, Jupiter is growing a new red spot. The official name of the new storm is "Oval BA". It's about half the size of the famous Great Red Spot and almost exactly the same color.














Oval BA first appeared in the year 2000 when three smaller spots collided and merged.

Oval BA has been changing colors in recent months.

It was white in November 2005, slowly turned brown in December and then red a few weeks ago. Scientists are wondering if Oval BA has become permanently red.

Other Space Related news:

Scientists have discovered a huge crater in the Saharan desert, about 19 miles (31 kilometers) wide. The newfound crater was likely carved by a space rock that was itself roughly 0.75 miles wide in an event that would have been quite a shock, destroying everything for hundreds of miles. The crater is named “Kebira,” which means “large” in Arabic.

Scientists are debating whether or not there may be water on the moon, in permanently shadowed craters at the lunar poles, called "cold traps". If there is enough lunar water at the bottom of deep craters it might be converted to oxygen, drinkable water, even rocket fuel for future Lunar missions. If the US finds the water first we will, of course, appropriate it in violation of The Moon Treaty(link).

Saturn and the Cassini Spacecraft

The planet Saturn is called "The Jewel of the Solar System"

Saturn has the most extensive and complex ring system in our solar system, extending hundreds of thousands of miles from the planet. Made up of billions of particles of ice and rock - ranging in size from grains of sugar to houses - the rings orbit Saturn at varying speeds.

There are hundreds of individual rings, believed to be made of pieces of shattered moons, comets and asteroids. Each of the billions of rings particles orbits the planet on its own path.

Saturn is a gas giant, like Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune. Saturn is made mostly of hydrogen and helium.

Four NASA spacecraft have been sent to explore Saturn. Pioneer 11 was first to fly past Saturn in 1979. Voyager 1 flew past a year later, followed by its twin, Voyager 2, in 1981.

Right now, the Cassini space craft is in orbit around Saturn. The Cassini spacecraft is the first to explore the Saturn system of rings and moons from orbit. Cassini entered orbit on Jun. 30, 2004 and immediately began sending back intriguing images and data. Currently, Cassini scientists are tracking the strongest lighting storm ever detected at Saturn. The storm is larger than the continental United States, with lightning 1,000 times stronger than Earth's lightning.

Saturn has 34 known moons. Saturn's moon Titan is bigger than the planets Mercury and Pluto and is one of the few moons in our solar system with its own atmosphere. Scientists are attracted to Titan because its atmosphere is similar to that on early Earth, before life began. Cassini released the European Space Agency's Huygens Probe in January 2005. The Huygens Probe dove into Titan's thick atmosphere to look at Titan's surface.

The Huygens Probe didn't find any water, but look at all the cool pictures (above) that Cassini has been taking.

Here is a link to NASA's Cassini web site(link)

Space Update - Pluto Probe

This has been a busy Space week. In addition to last Sunday's safe landing of the Stardust capsule(link), on Thursday NASA launched the first probe bound for the planet Pluto and beyond.

The probe is on a nine-year trek towards Pluto. The spacecraft should swing past Jupiter, grabbing a gravity boost in the process, in late February 2007.

Pluto is the only member of the traditional nine-planet solar system not visited by a spacecraft, a statistic New Horizons hopes to change. The probe carries seven primary instruments to study Pluto, its moon Charon and two other objects – currently dubbed P1 and P2 – discovered orbiting the planet last year.

The spacecraft is designed to begin observing Pluto about five months before its scheduled flyby in July 2015, which will take place about three billion miles from Earth .

Mission managers expect New Horizons to speed past the planet at about 31,000 miles per hour while using its instrument package to build detailed maps of the planet, as well as study its composition and tenuous atmosphere.

About nine months after the encounter, the 1,054-pound spacecraft should finish sending its Pluto observations to Earth, which will take about 4.5 hours to reach researchers on the ground.

The information New Horizons will send to Earth about Pluto and its moons will likely alter our view of the distant, icy world, researchers said.

NASA's New Horizons Page(link)

New Horizons Trivia

A Lockheed Martin-built Atlas 5 rocket flung the New Horizons spacecraft away from Earth at about 36,250 miles per hour– the fastest ever for a NASA mission

Riding aboard the NASA spacecraft are ashes of the late astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered the planet in 1930 at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. Tombaugh died in Jan. 17, 1997.

A Florida quarter – bearing the image of a space shuttle – is also accompanying the probe to Pluto.