10/22/2018 – Ephemeris – The Hubble Space Telescope is on the mend
Ephemeris for Monday, October 22nd. The Sun will rise at 8:07. It’ll be up for 10 hours and 39 minutes, setting at 6:46. The Moon, 2 days before full, will set at 6:42 tomorrow morning.
Some of this news is a week old, but on October 5th the Hubble Space Telescope went into safe mode due to the loss of a functioning gyroscope. It needs three for fine stabilization for normal operation. Six new ones were installed by a servicing mission in 2009. In a worse case scenario, it can hobble along with just one. When a backup gyro was brought on-line it was showing anomalous readings. That was the status as of a week ago. Apparently, a workaround for the wonky gyro was found, and Hubble will go back into full operation soon. Another servicing mission is impossible because the Space Shuttle program has ended and all the surviving shuttle orbiters are in museums. With the James Web Space Telescope delayed until at least 2021, there may well be a gap in the reception of those exquisite images from space.
The times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
10/19/2018 – Ephemeris – Last 2018 outings for the GTAS this weekend
Ephemeris for Friday, October 19th. The Sun will rise at 8:03. It’ll be up for 10 hours and 47 minutes, setting at 6:51. The Moon, 3 days past first quarter, will set at 3:32 tomorrow morning.
Clouds willing, the Grand Traverse Astronomical Society will host two events this weekend. The first is Saturday night on the sidewalk on the 200 block of Front Street in Traverse City. It’s the International Observe the Moon Night, celebrated around the world. The event will begin at 8 p.m. Again the sky has to be at least partially clear for this event to happen.
Sunday night, again skies willing, members of the society will be at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore Dune Climb for the final star party of the year celebrating the 48th anniversary of the establishment of the park. On tap will be the Moon, Mars and Saturn plus some of the brighter wonders of the heavens including colorful binary stars and star clusters.
The times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
10/18/2018 – Ephemeris – Halley’s Comet returns as the Orionids
Ephemeris for Thursday, October 18th. The Sun will rise at 8:02. It’ll be up for 10 hours and 50 minutes, setting at 6:53. The Moon, 2 days past first quarter, will set at 2:32 tomorrow morning.
Halley’s Comet is back! (Pronounced Hall-ee’s) Well sorta. In the form of the Orionid meteor shower. Bits of Halley’s Comet from previous passes by the Earth’s orbit make their twice-yearly show in our skies as these bits collide with the Earth’s atmosphere. Halley’s orbit passes close to the earth’s orbit at points where the Earth is around May 6th and again near October 21st. Light dust and ionized gas get blown back into the tail of the comet. Heavier particles, still affected by the pressure of sunlight and the gravitational pull of the Sun and planets end up roughly following the comet’s orbit. In the morning after the Moon sets should be the best time to see them. They will seem to come from a spot above Orion and below Gemini.
The times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
10/17/2018 – Ephemeris – Where are the bright planets tonight?
Ephemeris for Wednesday, October 17th. The Sun will rise at 8:00. It’ll be up for 10 hours and 53 minutes, setting at 6:54. The Moon, 1 day past first quarter, will set at 1:33 tomorrow morning.
Let’s look at the bright planets for tonight. Three of them are visible in the evening sky. Venus though still officially an evening planet sets before the Sun because it is south of the Sun’s path. Jupiter will be very low in the west-southwest as skies darken. It will set at 8:16 p.m. Saturn, the ringed planet, will start the evening low in the southwestern sky and will set at 10:39 p.m. Mars will be low in the south as the skies darken tonight. and is now 64.6 million miles (104.0 million km) away. Mars will be due south at 9:04 p.m., and it will set at 2:03 a.m. Tonight Mars will be east or left of the waxing gibbous Moon. Mars is picking up speed moving eastward, crossing the constellation of Capricornus this month.
The times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
10/16/2018 – Ephemeris – Soyuz failure makes for problems for the ISS
Ephemeris for Tuesday, October 16th. The Sun will rise at 7:59. It’ll be up for 10 hours and 56 minutes, setting at 6:56. The Moon, at first quarter today, will set at 12:36 tomorrow morning.
Last Thursday the 11th a cosmonaut, Alexy Ovchinin and an astronaut, Nick Hague were launched toward the International Space Station by a Russian Soyuz rocket. At about the time the four first stage boosters separated from the second stage, something happened, and the capsule containing the men was weightless instead of being boosted by the second stage of the rocket. The Soyuz has an escape system, so the descent capsule separated from the protective shroud and the orbital module on top of it and the service module below it. To make a landing downrange. The men are safe, but the three persons in the ISS must return by mid-December, whether or not they are relieved as their Soyuz capsule cannot be safely flown after that.
The times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
The above with the exception of the last line is what goes out on the 59 second length of my radio program. What follows is a more complete explanation of the problems in store for the International Space Station as the Russians attempt to determine the cause of the failure, fix the problem and begin flying again.
Cosmonauts and astronauts visiting the International Space Station generally use the same Soyuz that brought them up and docked to the station to return to the Earth. It happens that the reaction control thrusters used to orient the spacecraft use hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) as a monopropellant. It decomposes into oxygen and steam when in contact with a catalyst to provide thrust. However, hydrogen peroxide is unstable if left to itself, slowly decomposing. This gives the Soyuz a useful lifetime of about 200 days on orbit. The current crew of Sergey Prokopyev, Serena M. Auñón-Chancellor, and Alexander Gerst was launched from Baikonur, Kazakhstan on June 8, 2018. The 200 days runs out in late December. Their original scheduled return date was December 13th.
Scott Manley on YouTube has more information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpqq0i4w_fM
10/15/2018 – Ephemeris – The Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa2 is exploring the asteroid Ryugu.
Ephemeris for Monday, October 15th. The Sun will rise at 7:58. It’ll be up for 11 hours even, setting at 6:58. The Moon, 1 day before first quarter, will set at 11:43 this evening.
The Japanese asteroid sample return mission Hayabusa2 is in the midst of operations at the near-earth asteroid Ryugu. It dropped three rovers that hopped across its surface and later this month will take the first of three samples. Hayabusa means peregrine falcon in Japanese. It will stay at the asteroid until late next year, it then will make a year-long trip back to the Earth, landing in the Outback of Australia. NASA’s own OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission is currently approaching the near-earth asteroid Bennu. It will orbit the asteroid for over a year and can make up to three attempts to take a sample of the asteroid for return to Earth. It is to land at the Utah Test and Training Range in September of 2023.
The times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
10/12/2018 – Ephemeris – The Moon’s phases
Ephemeris for Friday, October 12th. The Sun will rise at 7:54. It’ll be up for 11 hours and 8 minutes, setting at 7:03. The Moon, halfway from new to first quarter, will set at 9:31 this evening.
The Moon’s changing appearance over the month may seem to be mysterious at first glance. Maybe because one may think that the objects in the sky are somehow different from the familiar objects we see around us on the Earth. In ancient times, especially the Greeks thought that everything in the heavens halfway perfect and spotless. They explained the definite markings we see as the man-in-the-moon as a reflection of the Earth by a spotless Moon. The Moon’s phases are simply light and shadow on a ball in the sunlight. Sometimes, when the Moon appears in the daytime, take a small ball, like a golf ball and hold it up to the Moon, while the ball is also in sunlight, and the small ball will exhibit the same phase as the Moon.
The times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
