Earth and Moon from Juno fly-by

"Earth and Moon as seen from passing spacecraft"

D C Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Steve Cole
NASA Headquarters 

When NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew past Earth on October 9, 2013, it received a boost in speed of more than 7.3 kilometers per second, which set it on course for a July 4, 2016 rendezvous with Jupiter. One of Juno's sensors, a faint star tracking camera, also had a unique view of the Earth-Moon system. The result was an intriguing, if low-resolution, glimpse of what it would be like to approach our worlds from a distance.

“In the movie, you ride aboard Juno as it approaches Earth and then soars off into the blackness of space," said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio. "No previous view of our world has ever captured the heavenly waltz of Earth and Moon."

The Juno Earth flyby movie is available on YouTube HERE. The original score is by Vangelis.

Ancient cosmic pirouette of Earth and Moon from the Jovian-bound spacecraft Juno as it flew by Earth, October 9, 2013 [NASA/JPL-Caltech].

The cameras that took the images for the movie are located near the pointed tip of one of the spacecraft's three solar-array arms. They are part of Juno's Magnetic Field Investigation (MAG) and are normally used to determine the orientation of the magnetic sensors. These cameras look away from the sunlit side of the solar array, so as the spacecraft approached, the system's four cameras pointed toward Earth. Earth and Moon came into view when Juno was about 966,000 kilometers away -- about thrice the Earth-Moon separation.

During the flyby, timing was everything. Juno was traveling about twice as fast as a typical satellite, and the spacecraft itself was spinning at 2 RPM.

To assemble a movie that wouldn't make viewers dizzy, the star tracker had to capture a frame each time the camera was facing Earth at precisely the right instant. The frames were then sent to Earth, where they were processed into video.

"Everything we humans are and everything we do is represented in that view," said the star tracker's designer, John Jørgensen of the Danish Technical University, near Copenhagen.

The Waves instrument aboard NASA's Juno spacecraft recorded amateur radio signals from ham radio operators from around the world [NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Iowa].

Also during the flyby, Juno's Waves instrument, which is tasked with measuring radio and plasma waves in Jupiter's magnetosphere, recorded amateur radio signals. This was part of a public outreach effort involving ham radio operators from around the world. They were invited to say "HI" to Juno by coordinating radio transmissions that carried the same Morse-coded message. Operators from every continent, including Antarctica, participated.

"With the Earth flyby completed, Juno is now on course for arrival at Jupiter on July 4, 2016," said Rick Nybakken, Juno project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California

Moon from Juno star-tracking camera, October 9, 2013 [NASA/JPL/SwRI/MSSS/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo].

The Juno spacecraft was launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on August 5, 2011. Juno’s launch vehicle was capable of giving the spacecraft only enough energy to reach the asteroid belt, at which point the Sun’s gravity pulled it back toward the inner solar system. Mission planners designed the swing by Earth as a gravity assist to increase the spacecraft’s speed relative to the Sun, so it could reach Jupiter. (The spacecraft’s speed relative to Earth before and after the flyby was unchanged.)

Earth - over the coast of Namibia, from mosaic of images captured from the Juno spacecraft's on-board Junocam, near the Jupiter-bound probe's close encounter with Earth and Moon, October 9, 2013 [NASA/JPL/SwRI/MSSS/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo].

After Juno arrives and enters into orbit around Jupiter the spacecraft will circle the planet 33 times, from pole to pole, and use its collection of science instruments to probe beneath the gas giant's obscuring cloud cover. Scientists will learn about Jupiter's origins, internal structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.

Juno's name comes from Greek and Roman mythology. At times personified in Earth's Moon, Juno was the goddess of the civil state.

More information about Juno is online, HERE

ISS: Earth's Moon

Photographed by the Expedition 28 crew aboard the International Space Station, this image shows the moon, the Earth's only natural satellite, at center with the limb of Earth near the bottom transitioning into the orange-colored troposphere, the lowest and most dense portion of the Earth's atmosphere. The troposphere ends abruptly at the tropopause, which appears in the image as the sharp boundary between the orange- and blue-colored atmosphere [NASA/ISS].

From NASA Image Gallery

A first lunar transit for SDO

Close up on a solar prominence, with startling clarity, the New Moon's disk slides between the new Solar Dynamics Observatory in geosynchronous orbit and it's constant view of the Sun. The inconstant Moon is our humbling reminder how comparatively little things often obscure our view of a much bigger picture [NASA/GSFC/SDO].

Sun and Moon - A first for the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), and it was visually engaging too. On October 7, 2010, SDO observed its first lunar transit when the new Moon passed directly between the spacecraft (in its geosynchronous orbit) and the Sun. With SDO watching the Sun in a wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light, the dark Moon created a partial eclipse of the Sun.

These images, while unusual and cool to see, have practical value to the SDO science team. Karel Schrijver of Lockheed-Martin's Solar and Astrophysics Lab explains: "The very sharp edge of the lunar limb allows us to measure the in-orbit characteristics of the telescope e.g., light diffraction on optics and filter support grids. Once these are characterized, we can use that information to correct our data for instrumental effects and sharpen up the images to even more detail."

The image below shows a full disk version, view the larger story here.

InOMN - 18 Septembre 2010

It's INTERNATIONAL OBSERVE the MOON NIGHT. If you've waited past Civil Twilight, the ancient angular momentum in Earth's rotation is catching up once again with our Moon. Waxing Gibbous, it appears much like it did 886 days ago, when Jocelyn Sérot captured this image. If it's been a while since you looked up, really looked up, AT the Moon, you may need to be reminded of some basic facts. If so, don't feel bad. Everyone tends to ignore beauty in their own backyard, and the Moon is patient. No one is poor who has such adornment framed by an apartment window, a wide meadow or a skyline, a soup line or a battlefield [LPOD/ILUJ/Jocelyn Sérot].

It's not Full, and there's no eclipse. What can you actually "observe" on the Moon, tonight?

Like Galileo, you can surprise yourself. Even modest magnification will delight the eye and allow a better view of the Moon's depth of field. You may need to remind yourself of the Moon's true distance. From limb to limb, it's diameter is equal to the distance from New York City to Las Vegas, for example, and it's almost thirty Earth-diameters away (a lot further than it looks).

Take a look at the richer field below, taken from within the mosaic above, specifically at the southwestern side, near the terminator. It's early morning on the Moon there, and because the shadows are long, some very subtle features that are ordinarily invisible at this distance (and sometimes harder to see up close) come into view now, and again briefly two weeks from now at local evening, when, unfortunately for most, the Moon will rise in the wee hours before dawn.

Like the Moon itself, there's more to the full-globe mosaic by Jocelyn Sérot than immediately meets the eye. The original combination of hundreds of exposures resulted in a detailed "observation," better than the best photographs taken through large telescopes just a few decades ago. Forget the easy stuff, the gestalt of huge mountains and rays for a moment and look again at the close-up, immediately above.

At dead center is a "ghost crater," where a ring of worn mountains are all that remain of a once-proud and craggy crater long ago overrun with molten material. Immediately to it's west is one of the Moon's many low-lying "domes."

Dome Kies Pi presents a very smooth low profile above the mare plain. It's best seen right now, while early morning shadows are long.

Need a better look? Thanks to the WAC Preview program written by Ron Evans, an outstanding contributor to Charles A. Wood's Lunar Picture of the Day forum, there are no better views available than this LROC Wide Angle Camera image. (Oh, I should remind you that LRO is "up there," too, by the way. By tomorrow afternoon, it will have orbited the Moon 5,700 times.)

That ghost crater is easy enough to cross-reference with the smaller-scale pictures, further up. But we're almost too close to really "see" this dome, looking through the LRO camera. The gentle rise of the dome, visible even in low power telescopes if you know where and when to look, is probably best "appreciated" from an aesthetics view, moving out into the backyard and tracing out the landmarks in finding it on the very face of the Moon [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Here's a look downward again only an orbit later, when LRO traveled a little more directly overhead. More accurately put, the Moon continued rotating under the LRO's polar orbit, allowing the spacecraft a complete data-picture of the Moon over time.

A little later that same month, here's the same area in late afternoon illumination. Can you spot Dome Kies Pi?

Using the Earth to study the Moon

Paul D. Spudis
The Once & Future Moon
Smithsonian Air & Space Blogs

Last week, the Science Team of the Mini-RF imaging radar experiment aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission, met in Flagstaff, Arizona. We were there to conduct field studies of some interesting lunar analogs that occur in this area. Scientists study the planets through a variety of means, including images, remote-sensing, and sample return. One technique involves studying the processes and deposits of the Earth as a guide or analog to understanding similar features on the Moon and other bodies. Analogs have been studied since the beginning of the space program and have been essential to unraveling the complex histories of rocky objects in the Solar System.

The team gathered early Wednesday morning north of Flagstaff. Our field guides pictured the three areas we would spend the day visiting, along with geologically similar features found on the Moon. Our technique used airborne radar images of our targets: The SP cone and lava flow, Sunset Crater National Monument and Meteor Crater. Each site offers specific features that one can observe and walk across, using it as a guide toward understanding the same processes that have shaped our Moon. Our field trip illuminated the radar data in a “real world” environment, assisting us as we continue to explore and map with our instrument now orbiting the Moon.

The SP cone and flow is one of the most remarkable volcanic features in the region, with a beautifully symmetrical cinder cone and an extremely rough, blocky lava flow (Fig. 1; for full resolution versions of the surface pictures, click here: a, b, c). As viewed from the ground, the lava flow is blocky and extremely rough at the scale of the L-band radar wavelength (about 25 cm, or almost a foot). Steep flow fronts of blocky lava lie directly upon a smooth plateau of flat-lying sedimentary rocks. These remarkable flow fronts can be up to 50 m high (over 150 feet) and their rubbly, rugged fronts provide a spectacular contrast to the featureless plain upon which they rest. In the radar image, the lava flow is extremely bright, indicating high radar returns and its circular polarization ratio (CPR), one measure of its surface roughness at wavelength scales, is very high.

SP cone and flow, a very rough, fresh volcanic feature in northern Arizona. Radar image courtesy of L. Carter, Smithsonian Inst. (click to enlarge.)

The relations seen at the SP flow indicate the very high CPR features on the Moon could likewise represent very rough, block-rich surfaces. An example of such is the unusual flow of shock impact melt (not volcanic lava, although quite similar in terms of its physical properties) seen emanating from the far side crater Gerasimovich D (22°S, 122°W, 26 km diameter; Fig. 2). Both of these lobate flows (volcanic lava on the Earth, impact melt on the Moon) show high CPR, indicating the surface of the flow on the Moon probably has similar properties to the SP flow north of Flagstaff. One exception is that the mean block size on the Moon may be smaller, as the Mini-RF S-band radar has a shorter wavelength (12.6 cm or about 5 inches) than the longer wavelength AIRSAR L-band image (23 cm wavelength) of SP crater.

Gerasimovich D, directly on the opposite side of the Moon from Mare Crisium, is pictured showing an outflow of impact melt rock with high CPR, similar to the high CPR seen in the SP lava flow. This "Crisium Antipodes" is also site of the most intense crustal magnetism yet discovered on the Moon, sufficient to cavitate Solar Wind and to form a "mini-magnetosphere" over the area. (click to enlarge)

Fifteen miles away from the SP flow, an instructive set of geologic relations are seen at Sunset Crater National Monument (Fig. 3; for full resolution versions of the surface pictures, click here: d, e). At this feature, the extremely rough lava surface of the Bonito flow is in direct contact with smooth, ash mantled hills of the same age. This contact is shown by the sharp boundary between high CPR lava and the extremely low CPR ash-covered hills in the radar image. Such a relation is also evident on the Moon, where regional dark mantle deposits of lunar volcanic ash (such as the Sulpicius Gallus dark mantle on the rim of Mare Serenitatis) show low CPR, exactly as does its terrestrial counterpart. Once again, the Earth example allows us to better interpret our remote-sensing data for the Moon.

Sunset crater lava flow (high CPR) and ash deposits (low CPR). Radar image courtesy of L. Carter, Smithsonian Inst. (click to enlarge)

The Moon is covered with millions of impact craters and we were anxious to visit and compare the radar data of Meteor crater, the world’s first proven impact structure, with surface conditions within and near the crater rim to better understand the surface of the Moon. The rugged, blocky ejecta of rocks thrown out of the crater is evident by the radar bright halo surrounding Meteor crater (Fig. 4; for full resolution versions of the surface pictures, click here: g,h,i,j). On the ground, this is manifested by abundant boulders of rock, strewn about the outer rim of the crater. The crater interior is filled with ancient lake bed sediments. This fine-grained material results in lower radar echoes for the floor of Meteor crater than for its rocky walls and rim. Similar features are found in certain lunar craters where fine-grained material, moved downhill by gravity, partly fills the crater interiors. The afternoon’s hike down into and across the floor of Meteor crater gave all of us a better appreciation for the surface topography and conditions on the Moon. The climb back up to the rim, capped off our long day of field work.

Meteor Crater in Arizona, showing blocky, rough exterior rim deposits, wall outcrop, and fine-grained floor materials. AIRSAR radar image (click to enlarge)

Many of the geological features seen in radar images of the Earth are also seen in the radar images from the Moon. As we continue to map the Moon with the Mini-RF radar, the sometimes puzzling relations seen in the lunar data are understood better by comparison with Earth analogs. Our entire team acquired valuable insight into how the Moon works and what the surface is like from our day in the field. For a geologist, there is simply no substitute for directly observed field data to fully comprehend the complex history and processes of the Moon.

Equally interesting and important will be the insight and knowledge gained when we sample the Moon in more detail. The Moon has been described as a “dead planet” because compared to the Earth, which has rapid, dynamic processes of erosion, the Moon remains unchanged for millions of years. However, for its ability to retain the ancient historical record of the Earth-Moon system, advantage goes to the Moon. The multi-billion year records of impact and solar wind embedded in the lunar surface awaits our recovery, and will tell us about both the past and possible future of our home planet.

Saga of the Bonestell 'Lunar Landscape'

Just a small sampling from the middle of "Lunar Landscape" by Chesley Bonestell (1957) and representing a notion from the dawn of the Space Age of the view of Earth from a New Moon's near side northern hemisphere and also how much has been learned of the Moon since that time. Micrometeorite bombardment, for example, "gardens" the immediate surface of the Moon every two million years, causing an erosion unseen on Earth and smoothing most of lunar mountains. Earth is not far from what was seen by Apollo astronauts or Kaguya as recently as 2008, though the great systems of clouds are not seen, nor is the angle of North America properly portrayed. The full mural can be seen here, showing why the mural's unique place across more than just one discipline makes it more than worthy of preservation.

Tom D. Crouch
Smithsonian Air & Space Blog

For more than a decade it has been my privilege, among my other duties, to serve as curator of the National Air and Space Museum art collection. It comes as a surprise to many folks to realize that the Museum has an art collection. In fact, it includes over 4,700 works by artists with names like Daumier, Goya, Rauschenberg, Rockwell and Wyeth, and is perhaps the finest and best-rounded collection of aerospace-themed art held by any of the world’s museums. People who are aware that I manage the Museum’s art treasures occasionally ask if I have a favorite work in the collection, I do.

Chesley Bonestell’s mural, Lunar Landscape, was unveiled at the Boston Science Museum’s Haydon Planetarium on March 28, 1957. “No spaceship reservations are needed for a startlingly realistic visit to the Moon” announced a museum press release. Measuring forty feet long by ten feet tall, the dramatic panorama of the lunar surface was the masterwork of an artist who had done more than his fair share to set the stage for the coming of the Space Age.

Read the full post HERE.

December 2009 Lunar Highlights

Once in a Blue Moon, the second of two Full Moons in any one calendar month, results in a lunar eclipse, however exceptionally partial and all but invisible in the Western Hemisphere.

Charles Taylor
via the Lunar Observing forum

(all times UT)

Tuesday, December 1: Luna 0.03°S of M45 (1400)

Wednesday, December 2: Full Moon (0730)

Thursday, December 3: Luna 0.8°N of M35 (2000)

Friday, December 4: Perigee [33.0'/363,479 km (1400)
(225,855 miles)

Monday, December 7: Luna 5.0°S of Mars (0300)

Wednesday, December 9: Last Quarter (0013)

Wednesday, December 16: New Moon [lunation 1076] (1202)
-Extreme lunar crescent spotting data for L1076-80:

Friday, December 18: Luna 1.4° N of Mercury (0800)

Sunday, December 20: Apogee [29.4'/405,731 km] (1500)
(252,110 miles)

Monday, December 21: Luna 4.0°N of Jupiter (1500)

Christmas Eve
Thursday, December 24: First Quarter (1736)

Tuesday, December 29: Luna 0.03°N of M45 (0100)

New Years Eve
Thursday, December 31: Luna 0.8°N of M35 (0600)
Full Moon [blue moon] (1913)
Partial Lunar Eclipse [Dec 31/Jan 1]
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/OH/OH2009.html

Room with a view

View of the neighbors; as seen from low Earth orbit.

Aluna: Lunar Clock on the Thames

Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent, BBC News

Scientists and artists plan to build a 40m-wide lunar clock by the River Thames by 2012. The proposed site is at East India Dock, six miles along the river from Westminster Palace. Its designers hope their clock will become as iconic as Big Ben, which has been marking time for 150 years.

Read the article HERE.

If I could gift wrap the Moon...

Meditations on our corner of the Universe, as seen from Dr. Jeff's backyard, and yours...

Recommended Reading, HERE.

Returning to the Moon:

At The Economist, the debate continues:

"This house believes that NASA should not
send humans back to the moon"

Along with 59 percent of those who had added their vote, the Lunar Pioneers voted (one time) very much AGAINST the resolution of "the House."

We also added the following comment to the on-going discussion:

"Aside from the political questions, questions of NASA's role as "a creature of Congress" and, thus, its concurrent accountability to the national budget and sometimes transient but passionate concerns during the biennial federal election cycle, the weight of science is especially clear.

The astounding technological achievement of the Apollo Era, quite literally, "barely scratched the surface" of Earth's Moon.

There is unfinished business throughout the surface area of this Rosetta Stone, upon which is recorded the long history of the Solar System, and more, the history of the neighborhood in the inner Solar System occupied by Earth.

Far from the desert many hastily concluded that it was forty years ago the Moon has upon it all the materials needed to construct the robust kinds of machinery and equipment needed for exploration beyond the neighborhood, already in Earth orbit, with neither the Gravity Well nor the resistance of atmosphere.

Volatiles, Rail Gun emplacement and materials necessary to both study and overcome the threat of deadly, highly challenging, ionizing interstellar cosmic rays.

The latter threat alone is a compelling reason to put lunar exploration high on the agenda of even a reluctant technological superpower.

(Little discussed is the well-published fact that, using present propulsion technology, a round-trip to Mars, for example, exceeds NASA's individually assessed absolute limit on the probability of Radiation Exposure Induced Death (REID); 4 percent, over any single astronaut's lifetime.)

Finally, there is the history of bombardment, which even the casual observer of the Moon, in long proximity to Earth, shows may not be completely removed to the distant past. Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, and the similar cometary encounter with Jupiter mere days ago, (demonstrate how) the shuffle of mass, along with the variable radiance of our modest star, right here where we presently spend our lives, is still underway.

If we are to survive, we must reach beyond our dependence on Earth and a deceptive perspective of its constant safety. That way goes through the Moon, our natural deep-water port to the Deeper Sea upon which we depend.

Join the Discussion and Debate HERE.

A pixel, from Earth to the Moon

This is a translated version of this post, written originally in Portuguese by Kentaro Mori at 100nexos and translated by Carlos Hotta.

Can you imagine a 1.700 km rock about 400.000 km from Earth? It is really hard for us to picture that. This rock, however, is our Moon. It is really difficult to grasp the Moon's distance and dimensions, specially because our senses fool us. Try to represent with your hands, or even your arms, the size of the Moon in the sky. If you did that, you probably made a circle that is much larger than the one you see in the sky.

The angular size of the Moon is only half of a degree. If you extend your arm in front of you with your thumb pointing up, its width is about two degrees. That is right: if you extend your thumb towards the the Moon, you can cover it about four times. Even thought the Moon is 1.700 km. Go on and check yourself! Almost everyone of us will overestimate the size of the Moon in the sky. Some of us will even use their arms when estimating it! This is called the Moon illusion. And this is why the Moon looks so tiny when we take a picture of it: cameras do not lie but our brains do.

We have been observing the sky above us for thousands and thousands of years. We have understood the celestial mechanics for a few centuries. And four decades ago, humans, with no more than six degrees of separation from you and I, have landed in the Moon. There you could not cover the Moon with your thumbs (unless you put then directly in front of your eyes, an occasion when you would see little else).

There are many ways to express how fantastic it was to land in the Moon. As we are talking about distances, please have a look at the image bellow - the inspiration of this post - and join me towards the infinite --- and beyond.

This image was created by Drew Olbrich, that wanted to correctly represent the scale between sizes and distances of the Earth and the Moon. We are used to see the pair represented in an artistic way, ignoring their true proportion. This is understandable, as you can see the emptiness between both bodies. This is the truth, however, the space is a great emptiness. In order to see this image in space, you would have to be approximately 560.000 km from where you are now. You may click the image to visit Olbritch's site and check the image with higher resolution.

This image has the most impact if you make it fill your whole screen and then turn off all the lights in the room" recommends Olbrich. "Stare at it for a while and try to imagine that you're out in space looking back through some kind of bizarre porthole."

Speaking of higher resolution, while I was contemplating Olbrich's image I started thinking of what would be the size of Apollo space shuttle in the image. It would certainly be so tiny that it would be invisible to us. The next geekiest question would be: what should be the image's minimum resolution to make the modules appear as a single pixel?

Experience the translated post HERE.

Penumbral Lunar Eclipse Imaged

At last Full Moon, August 5, (a last iteration of the "mystical" Triple-Eclipse which had serious Astrologers, particularly in India, concerned, as detailed HERE) the Moon's southern hemisphere slid through the northmost edge of Earth's refracted "outer shadow. As the most partial of lunar eclipses are, this one was virtually impossible to detect buy earthbound observers.

Or, as John Walker wrote at Fourmilab's blog "None Dare Call it Reason," or Fourmilog, "the most subtle phenomena in naked eye astronomy is a penumbral lunar eclipse: the Moon does not pass into the region of the Earth's shadow where the Sun is entirely obscured by the Earth, and consequently, although sunlight on some or all of the Moon is partly blocked by the Earth, the visual effect is very difficult to perceive, especially with the logarithmic transfer function of human vision and its inability to make absolute intensity comparisons of events.

"Fortunately, here in the 21st century, although we don't (yet) have ATOMIC SPACE CARS, we do have magnificently linear digital sensors in our cameras, so it seemed entirely plausible to me that I'd be able to capture the ever so slight shading of the Earth's fuzzy shadow on the Moon during the penumbral lunar eclipse of August 6th, 2009.

"So, I set up my Nikon D300 camera and Nikkor 500 mm catadioptric “mirror lens” (you can see them here another context) about an hour before the eclipse was to begin to allow the optics to equilibrate to the ambient temperature. Then, just before the start of the eclipse, I shot a number of photos of the Moon with various exposure times..."

The Result is excellent, though Mr. Walker almost apologizes for not having corrected for "an apparent rotation," what he has captured is the Moon's fast-moving librational wobble.

It's worth a look, and he has allowed access to a large version by clicking on the version posted to the blog.

World Record Moon Mosaic 2009

For scale, the large impact on the south rim of Descartes,
Descartes A, is about 10 kilometers across.

Hat Tip to Chuck Wood at LPOD for his comparison first of Copernicus with what only looks like a garden-variety, good but not especially extraordinary telescopic image of the Moon. Instead, surfing to my personal favorite, the lunar swirl and magnetic anomaly the Descartes Formation, reveals a fantastic mosaic, the world's largest, which simply has to be experienced, HERE.

(Expect a response from the Miracle Mosaic Makers from AstronoMinsk)

Do we need to go to the Moon to get to Mars?

William Sweet IEEE-Spectrum
June 2009

This is part of IEEE Spectrum's Special Report: Why Mars? Why Now?

It’s an irrational thing, the pull of the moon. From time immemorial, the White Goddess has been held responsible for menstrual cycles, moods, and madness; she’s the mythic governess of our dreams and emotions.

In 1969, Neil Armstrong’s small step for man electrified people around the world, and in the United States it provided a momentary respite from social upheaval. Work done by Armstrong and his successors transformed our understanding of the moon, setting in motion research that continues to this day.

Of course, nobody pretends that the United States went to the moon mainly for science, and if people return to the moon now, it won’t be all for science, either. In the 1960s, the point was to win a race with the Soviet Union. Today the supposed point is to use the moon as a stepping-stone to Mars.

Of the nearly 7 billion people on Earth today, four out of five were not alive when the first lunar landing took place. Without a doubt, a great many of them would love to see people back on the moon again. But does it make sense to spend the US $50 billion it might cost to get them there? Do we need a base on the moon to get to Mars? And if not, should we bother going to the moon at all?

Playing perhaps more to our passions than our reason, in January 2004 President George W. Bush promulgated a program to return to the moon by 2020 and make it a staging area for a mission to Mars, perhaps two decades later. His father, President George H.W. Bush, had suggested essentially the same plan in 1989, but because of the enormous expense and conflicting U.S. commitments in space, it was dead on arrival. The second time around the vision fared better, eventually winning the endorsement—at least on paper—of all the world’s space powers.

But you didn’t have to scratch very hard to discover that such support was often only skin deep, even in the United States itself. Bush never actually mentioned his vision again, and the U.S. Congress promptly excised funding for the Mars part, instructing NASA to focus strictly on the moon. The effect was to radically disconnect the moon from Mars planning, even though going to Mars was supposedly the main rationale for returning to the moon.

Read the whole Artical HERE.

'Scores' witness lunar rainbow

"Moonbow," lunar rainbow graces Victoria Falls

Victoria Falls - Zambia Times -Scores of local and foreign tourists thronged the Victoria Falls at night over the weekend to watch the lunar rainbow.

A check at the entrance to the Victoria Falls from Friday showed that many tourists entered the site to see the exciting natural phenomenon, which is formed when moon rays pass through the sprays of the Victoria Falls after heavy plunges of the Zambezi waters.

One of the tourists from the United Kingdom, Jane Smith described the amazing formation as wonderful.

"It really looks so unreal to be real. It was a wonderful sight which needs more marketing at international level so that more people can come and see it, otherwise you are losing a lot of money," she remarked enthusiastically.

Other excited tourists took pictures in the night as the rainbow curved across the gorge, displaying an exciting bright arch formation.

Read the Article HERE.

Italian 14-19 year olds measure moon's distance

Last week, four Spanish students revealed how they had taken pictures of the curvature of the Earth by attaching a digital camera to a helium balloon and letting it go. When the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph reported the work, the story snowballed, attracting worldwide coverage.

Now a group of 30 Italian students from classes 1SD and 1SE at the Liceo Scientifico "A. Vallisneri" in Lucca, Italy have gone one better with an ingenious measurement of the distance to the moon.

The students analysed an mp3 recording of the conversation between Neil Armstrong on the surface and ground control in Houston in which he utters his famous "one small step" speech. The recording is available on the NASA website.

They noticed an echo on this recording in which sentences from Earth are retransmitted via Armstrong's helmet speaker through his microphone and back to Earth. They used the open source audio editing program Audacity to measure the echo's delay which turned out to be 2.620 secs and used this to work out the distance to the moon as 3.93 x 10^8 metres.

That's not bad given that the actual distance varies between 3.63 and 4.05 x10^8 metres.

The students then went on to measure the eccentricity of the moon's orbit using conversations recorded during the Apollo 17 mission, which was on the lunar surface for 300 hours.

They even estimated their errors using the Moon's ephemerides. Likely errors include delays caused by electronics and the time it took for the signals to be routed to the various antennae around the world that NASA used for communications.

Not bad for a group of 14-19 year olds.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/0903.3367: Echoes From The Moon

Feb. 9 Penumbral Lunar Eclipse prompts Spring Tide alert for Sumatra

They still have not arrived at a definitive count of the dead from the Boxing Day earthquake and tidal wave of December 26, 2004 in Banda Ache, the semi-autonomous province on the northern-most part of Sumatra in the Indonesian archipelago.

Observational evidence does not show any direct link between the tidal forces of the Earth-Moon system on tectonics or earthquake activity, though the barycenter of the Earth-Moon system is not at the center of Earth or in Space between the two bodies but rolls along roughly one third of the way from the outer crust to Earth's core. There's plenty of magma, essentially a liquid with far more density and, therefore, inertia than the saltwater covering the outer 70 percent of our planet.

On the disaster-created islands of greater Indonesia, however, hundreds of millions live with daily reminders of the dynamic nature of the Earth's outer layer.

Tidal lock holds the heavier Near Side of our Moon facing Earth and the Moon pulls back, constantly, most directly seen in the tides.

Tomorrow's Jakarta Post echoes warnings from the West Sumatra Natural Disaster Coordinating Unit to "fishermen and sea travel operators" that "the Lunar Eclipse of February 9 could summon violent waves up to five meters high. Unit head Ade Edward said Saturday that the gravitational effect of the eclipse would be accompanied by strong wind from the Indian Ocean heading towards seashores in Sumatra, creating beach abrasion and flood. “We have issued warnings for violent waves, flood, landslide and abrasion to all regency and cities in West Sumatra, so that they will be prepared for the extreme weather conditions which will peak in February,” Ade said. He also said fishermen were urged to watch over the sky before going to the sea, “if the clouds are dark, they better not go to sea."

The February 9 Lunar Eclipse will be prenumbral, meaning the Moon will only skirt Earth's shadow at the extreme southern edge, just before astronomical Full Moon. Unlike the Annual Solar Eclipse in January or the Total Eclipse of July 22, visible in Indonesia as respectable annular and partial eclipses of the Sun in the same area of the Far East, the February 9 "eclipse" barely rates a mention.

The combination of Moon and Sun overhead should cause a strong Spring Tide, heaping up waters largely during the time immediately after the Moon skirts Earth's shadow.

And, as Ade warns, the same effects should occur the day before and after, without much noticable difference, so his warning is accurate up to that point.

But what about those strong winds, landslides and the dark clouds being signs to stay ashore?

Perhaps there is some effect upon a heaping Indian Ocean on the sea breezes during February's Spring Tides near the equator, but I doubt it.

Landslides? Not unless you think erosion by high tides might be in store, again near the shore.

And "Dark clouds?"

Whether or not there are Dark Clouds in the sky, a Spring Tide in February is going to occur, and if you were a fisherman or a coastal dweller, still a little shell-shocked from the tidal wave and massive earthquake of late 2004, dark clouds are not going to mean that the Spring Tide in February will be any better or worse.

Perhaps this report loses something in the translation from Malay into English, but perhaps authorities would prefer the Sumatrans stay ashore, in and around February 9.

Friday Full Moon largest since 1993

Image Moon courtesy CalSky, Apparent waning Moon as seen at ~2230 UT from eastern North Carolina, 12 December 2008.

True distance: 0.0023835 AU = 55.904 Earth radii = 356565.2 km
Light time:  0h 00m 01.19s 
Elongation from sun 174.91°, west (visible in the morning)

What's on Stage? In London, it's Lunar Sea

Rather than following a plot, Lunar Sea is an experience of the moon through visual imagery and the employment of dancing and gymnastic skills aided by a few carefully chosen props. While the first half, named ‘Sea of Tranquility’, could leave some observers bewildered as they search for a story in the strangely wonderful though perhaps repetitive shapes, the second half, ‘Bay of Seething’ makes up for it as the shows’ overwhelming charm becomes apparent and one learns to take it for exactly what it is; an amazing feat of imagination and skill.

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