If you have shot (probably) the last night Space Shuttle launch a few weeks back and you’d be interested in sharing the footage with the rest of the world, read on:
ATTENTION: NASA buffs 8 to 88, amateur and pro video makers and photographers!
Motherboard.tv is making a film about the launch of STS-130 as seen from the perspective of NASA scientists and everyday fans of all ages.
Don’t worry about quality — we’re looking to capture moments that are both exciting and mundane, including footage of you and your group driving to and getting ready for the launch. We are looking for both the shaky, unplanned stuff and the shots that took hours to set up. You will be credited in the final project, and eligible for prizes!
Contact us for instructions on sending photo and video: Brayden@motherboard.tv
Here’s my first shot of the International Space Station (ISS) passing over Amsterdam (taken at 19:00 UTC on March 07, 2010). The station passed right through the constellation Orion only a fraction of a degree north of the Orion’s belt.
ISS Above Amsterdam crossing the constellation of Orion - (4 subframes exp. 10s f/5.6 ISO 1600 each, stacked with RegiStax)
The ISS will be visible in Amsterdam until March 20 and the next visibility window will start on April 10. Below is the list of the “best” passes over the city:
* all times are in CET (UTC+1) and represent the moment when the station’s elevation is 10°.
Source: Heavens-Above.com
For more information about (visible) passes of ISS, and satellites, not only in Amsterdam but for any place on Earth, visit the heavens above website. You can also follow @twisst on twitter.
ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, currently executing a series of 12 flybys of Mars’ largest moon Phobos, will pass the moon’s surface at an altitude of 67km on March 3 at 20:55 GMT. The close approach will enable scientists to gain valuable data an learn more about the mysterious moon.
This image was obtained by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express on 28 July 2008 (orbit 5870), at a distance of 351 km from the moon’s centre - Credit: ESA/ DLR/ FU Berlin (G. Neukum)
As the spacecraft approaches Phobos, it will be pulled slightly off of its orbit (by a few millimeters per second). Scientists on Earth will turn off all data signals from the spacecraft ensuring the only thing affecting the signal is gravitational tug by Phobos. Although incredible tiny (only one part in a trillion, that is 1 followed by 12 zeros), the changes will be revealed via the Doppler effect.
Animation revealing the graviational influance of Phobos on the orbit or Mars Express - Credit: MaRS team/Observatoire Royal de Belgique
This animation shows how the orbit of Mars Express has been influenced by the gravitational influence of Phobos during the spacecrafts fly-bys of the moon in Summer 2008. Since the orbital deviation strictly depends on the mass and shape of the moon, scientists could use this very deviation to determine the mass of Phobos with unprecedented accuracy (to about one billionth the mass of the Earth).
Here’s a photo of waxing crescent Moon taken tonight at 19:00 GMT from Amsterdam. Only 2 days and 17 hours old, not many features are visible on the surface. The two prominent craters visible at the bottom just at the terminator are Langrenus (right) and Petavius (left).
Photo of waxing crescent Moon taken tonight through a refractor ATC Monar (D=70mm f/4.6) with Canon 450D, exp. 1/50s
The image below portraits two galaxies known as M81 (NGC 3031 or Bode’s Galaxy) and M82 (NGC 3034 or the Cigar Galaxy). M81 is one of the most striking examples of a grand design spiral galaxy, with near perfect arms spiraling into the very center. M82 is five times as bright as the whole Milky Way and one hundred times as bright as our galaxy’s center. Tidal forces caused by gravity have deformed this galaxy, a process that started about 100 million years ago. The interaction between the galaxies has caused star formation in M82 to increase 10 fold compared to “normal” galaxies.
170 minute black and white image of M81 and M82 - Credit: Lightbuckets.com
The inverted image (below) reveals much more that meets the eye. The wispy tendrils seen in the inverted and stretched image are known as Galactic Cirrus. They are high galactic latitude nebulae that are illuminated not by a single star (as most nebula in the plane of the Galaxy are) but by the energy from the integrated flux of all the stars in the Milky Way. These nebulae clouds, an important component of the Interstellar Medium, are composed of dust particles, hydrogen and carbon monoxide and other elements.
Inverted image of M81 and M82 showing the Galactic Cirrus between the galaxies - Credit: Lightbuckets.com
Galactic Cirrus was first found in plates in the Palomar Sky Survey in the mid 1960’s. Alan Sandage investigated them further in 1975 while working with the Palomar 1.2m Schmidt Telescope. The surface brightness of these structures is about 25 mag. or even fainter, which makes them extremely hard to capture with most amateur equipment.
The galaxy group, consisting of M81, M82, NGC 3077 and NGC 2976, is the nearest galaxy group to our own local group (which contains the Milky Way, Magellanic Clouds, M33, and the M31 – M32 – M110 system). At 12 million light years distance, the nearby proximity of galaxies M81 and M82 makes them one of the most spectacular sights in the spring sky.
- The images used in this post have been taken by Alvin Jeng during a test run of the Lightbuckets’ LB0002 – a 0.2m Newtonian Astrograph.
Before the Space Shuttle Endeavour docked with the International Space Station at 05:06 UTC, the camera outside of the station captured this beautiful sunset on orbit with the orbiter seen against the horizon of the Earth. At that point, Endeavour was on a rendezvous course behind the station at the distance of about 8.2 km orbiting the Earth at an altitude of roughly 346 km.
