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Space News Update — August 25, 2015 —

Contents

In the News

Story 1:

Dawn Sends Sharper Scenes from Ceres

Story 2:

The Legend of Gaia

Story 3:

Send Your Name to Mars on NASA's Next Red Planet Mission

Departments

The Night Sky

ISS Sighting Opportunities

NASA-TV Highlights

Space Calendar

Food for Thought

Space Image of the Week

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1. Dawn Sends Sharper Scenes from Ceres

NASA's Dawn spacecraft spotted this tall, conical mountain on Ceres from a distance of 915 miles (1,470 kilometers). The

mountain, located in the southern hemisphere, stands 4 miles (6 kilometers) high. Its perimeter is sharply defined, with

almost no accumulated debris at the base of the brightly streaked slope with bright streaks. Credits: NASA/JPL-

Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

The closest-yet views of Ceres, delivered by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, show the small world's features in

unprecedented detail, including Ceres' tall, conical mountain; crater formation features and narrow, braided

fractures.

"Dawn is performing flawlessly in this new orbit as it conducts its ambitious exploration. The spacecraft's view

is now three times as sharp as in its previous mapping orbit, revealing exciting new details of this intriguing

dwarf planet," said Marc Rayman, Dawn's chief engineer and mission director, based at NASA's Jet Propulsion

Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

At its current orbital altitude of 915 miles (1,470 kilometers), Dawn takes 11 days to capture and return

images of Ceres' whole surface. Each 11-day cycle consists of 14 orbits. Over the next two months, the

spacecraft will map the entirety of Ceres six times.

The spacecraft is using its framing camera to extensively map the surface, enabling 3-D modeling. Every

image from this orbit has a resolution of 450 feet (140 meters) per pixel, and covers less than 1 percent of the

surface of Ceres.

At the same time, Dawn's visible and infrared mapping spectrometer is collecting data that will give scientists a

better understanding of the minerals found on Ceres' surface.

Engineers and scientists will also refine their measurements of Ceres' gravity field, which will help mission

planners in designing Dawn's next orbit -- its lowest -- as well as the journey to get there. In late October,

Dawn will begin spiraling toward this final orbit, which will be at an altitude of 230 miles (375 kilometers).

Source: NASA Return to Contents

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2. The Legend of Gaia

The Gaia Spacecraft Source: ESA

Last Friday, 21 August, ESA’s billion-star surveyor, Gaia, completed its first year of science observations in its

main survey mode.

After launch on 19 December 2013 and a six-month long in-orbit commissioning period, the satellite started

routine scientific operations on 25 July 2014. Located at the Lagrange point L2, 1.5 million km from Earth,

Gaia surveys stars and many other astronomical objects as it spins, observing circular swathes of the sky. By

repeatedly measuring the positions of the stars with extraordinary accuracy, Gaia can tease out their distances

and motions through the Milky Way galaxy.

For the first 28 days, Gaia operated in a special scanning mode that sampled great circles on the sky, but

always including the ecliptic poles. This meant that the satellite observed the stars in those regions many

times, providing an invaluable database for Gaia’s initial calibration.

At the end of that phase, on 21 August 2014, Gaia commenced its main survey operation, employing a

scanning law designed to achieve the best possible coverage of the whole sky.

Since the start of its routine phase, the satellite recorded 272 billion positional or astrometric measurements

54.4 billion brightness or photometric data points, and 5.4 billion spectra.

The Gaia team have spent a busy year processing and analysing these data, en route towards the

development of Gaia’s main scientific products, consisting of enormous public catalogues of the positions,

distances, motions and other properties of more than a billion stars. Because of the immense volumes of data

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and their complex nature, this requires a huge effort from expert scientists and software developers

distributed across Europe, combined in Gaia’s Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC).

“The past twelve months have been very intense, but we are getting to grips with the data, and are looking

forward to the next four years of nominal operations,” says Timo Prusti, Gaia project scientist at ESA.

“We are just a year away from Gaia's first scheduled data release, an intermediate catalogue planned for the

summer of 2016. With the first year of data in our hands, we are now halfway to this milestone, and we’re

able to present a few preliminary snapshots to show that the spacecraft is working well and that the data

processing is on the right track.”

As one example of the ongoing validation, the Gaia team has been able to measure the parallax for an initial

sample of two million stars.

Parallax is the apparent motion of a star against a distant background observed over the period of a year and

resulting from the Earth's real motion around the Sun; this is also observed by Gaia as it orbits the Sun

alongside Earth. But parallax is not the only movement seen by Gaia: the stars are also really moving through

space, which is called proper motion.

Gaia has made an average of roughly 14 measurements of each star on the sky thus far, but this is generally

not enough to disentangle the parallax and proper motions.

To overcome this, the scientists have combined Gaia data with positions extracted from the Tycho-2

catalogue, based on data taken between 1989 and 1993 by Gaia's predecessor, the Hipparcos satellite.

This restricts the sample to just two million out of the more than one billion that Gaia has observed so far, but

yields some useful early insights into the quality of its data.

The nearer a star is to the Sun, the larger its parallax, and thus the parallax measured for a star can be used

to determine its distance. In turn, the distance can be used to convert the apparent brightness of the star into

its true brightness or ‘absolute luminosity’.

Astronomers plot the absolute luminosities of stars against their temperatures – which are estimated from the

stars' colours – to generate a ‘Hertzsprung-Russell diagram’, named for the two early 20th century scientists

who recognised that such a diagram could be used as a tool to understand stellar evolution.

“Our first Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, with absolute luminosities based on Gaia’s first year and the Tycho-2

catalogue, and colour information from ground-based observations, gives us a taste of what the mission will

deliver in the coming years,” says Lennart Lindegren, professor at the University of Lund and one of the

original proposers of the Gaia mission.

As Gaia has been conducting its repeated scans of the sky to measure the motions of stars, it has also been

able to detect whether any of them have changed their brightness, and in doing so, has started to discover

some very interesting astronomical objects.

Gaia has detected hundreds of transient sources so far, with a supernova being the very first on 30 August

2014. These detections are routinely shared with the community at large as soon as they are spotted in the

form of ‘Science Alerts’, enabling rapid follow-up observations to be made using ground-based telescopes in

order to determine their nature.

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One transient source was seen undergoing a sudden and dramatic outburst that increased its brightness by a

factor of five. It turned out that Gaia had discovered a so-called ‘cataclysmic variable’, a system of two stars in

which one, a hot white dwarf, is devouring mass from a normal stellar companion, leading to outbursts of light

as the material is swallowed. The system also turned out to be an eclipsing binary, in which the relatively

larger normal star passes directly in front of the smaller, but brighter white dwarf, periodically obscuring the

latter from view as seen from Earth.

Unusually, both stars in this system seem to have plenty of helium and little hydrogen. Gaia’s discovery data

and follow-up observations may help astronomers to understand how the two stars lost their hydrogen.

Gaia has also discovered a multitude of stars whose brightness undergoes more regular changes over time.

Many of these discoveries were made between July and August 2014, as Gaia performed many subsequent

observations of a few patches of the sky close to the ecliptic poles. This closely sampled sequence of

observations made it possible to find and study variable stars located in these regions.

Located close to the south ecliptic pole is the famous Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a dwarf galaxy and close

companion of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Gaia has delivered detailed light curves for dozens of RR Lyrae

type variable stars in the LMC, and the fine details revealed in them testify to the very high quality of the data.

Another curious object covered during the same mission phase is the Cat’s Eye Nebula, a planetary nebula also

known as NGC 6543, which lies close to the north ecliptic pole.

Planetary nebulae are formed when the outer layers of an aging low-mass star are ejected and interact with

the surrounding interstellar medium, leaving behind a compact white dwarf. Gaia made over 200 observations

of the Cat’s Eye Nebula, and registered over 84 000 detections that accurately trace out the intricate gaseous

filaments that such objects are famous for. As its observations continue, Gaia will be able to see the expansion

of the nebular knots in this and other planetary nebulae.

Closer to home, Gaia has detected a wealth of asteroids, the small rocky bodies that populate our solar

system, mainly between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Because they are relatively nearby and orbiting the

Sun, asteroids appear to move against the stars in astronomical images, appearing in one snapshot of a given

field, but not in images of the same field taken at later times.

Gaia scientists have developed special software to look for these ‘outliers’, matching them with the orbits of

known asteroids in order to remove them from the data being used to study stars. But in turn, this information

will be used to characterise known asteroids and to discover thousands of new ones.

Finally, in addition to the astrometric and photometric measurements being made by Gaia, it has been

collecting spectra for many stars. The basic use of these data is to determine the motions of the stars along

the line-of-sight by measuring slight shifts in the positions of absorption lines in their spectra due to the

Doppler shift. But in the spectra of some hot stars, Gaia has also seen absorption lines from gas in foreground

interstellar material, which will allow the scientists to measure its distribution.

“These early proof-of-concept studies demonstrate the quality of the data collected with Gaia so far and the

capabilities of the processing pipeline. The final data products are not quite ready yet, but we are working

hard to provide the first of them to the community next year. Watch this space,” concludes Timo.

Source: ESA Return to Contents

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3. Send Your Name to Mars on NASA's Next Red Planet Mission

This artist's concept from August 2015 depicts NASA's InSight Mars lander fully deployed for studying the deep

interior of Mars. The mission will launch during the period March 4 to March 30, 2016, and land on Mars Sept. 28, 2016.

Mars enthusiasts around the world can participate in NASA’s journey to Mars by adding their names to a silicon

microchip headed to the Red Planet aboard NASA's InSight Mars lander, scheduled to launch next year.

InSight, short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, will

investigate processes that formed and shaped Mars. Its findings will improve understanding about the

evolution of our inner solar system's rocky planets, including Earth.

"Our next step in the journey to Mars is another fantastic mission to the surface," said Jim Green, director of

planetary science at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "By participating in this opportunity to send your

name aboard InSight to the Red Planet, you're showing that you're part of that journey and the future of

space exploration."

Submissions will be accepted until Sept. 8. To send your name to Mars aboard InSight, go to:

http://go.usa.gov/3Aj3G

The fly-your-name opportunity comes with “frequent flier” points to reflect an individual's personal

participation in NASA’s journey to Mars, which will span multiple missions and multiple decades. The InSight

mission offers the second such opportunity for space exploration fans to collect points by flying their names

aboard a NASA mission, with more opportunities to follow.

Last December, the names of 1.38 million people flew on a chip aboard the first flight of NASA's Orion

spacecraft, which will carry astronauts to deep space destinations including Mars and an asteroid. After

InSight, the next opportunity to earn frequent flier points will be NASA's Exploration Mission-1, the first

planned test flight bringing together the Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule in preparation for

human missions to Mars and beyond.

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InSight will launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California in March 2016 and land on Mars Sept. 28, 2016.

The mission is the first dedicated to the investigation of the deep interior of the planet. It will place the first

seismometer directly on the surface of Mars to measure Martian quakes and use seismic waves to learn about

the planet's interior. It also will deploy a self-hammering heat probe that will burrow deeper into the ground

than any previous device on the Red Planet. These and other InSight investigations will improve our

understanding about the formation and evolution of all rocky planets, including Earth.

The lander will be the first mission to permanently deploy instruments directly onto Martian ground using a

robotic arm. The two instruments to be placed into a work area in front of the lander are a seismometer

(contributed by the French space agency Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, or CNES) to measure the

microscopic ground motions from distant marsquakes providing information about the interior structure of

Mars, and a heat-flow probe (contributed by the German Aerospace Center, or DLR) designed to hammer itself

3 to 5 meters (about 16 feet) deep and monitor heat coming from the planet's interior. The mission will also

track the lander's radio to measure wobbles in the planet's rotation that relate to the size of its core and a

suite of environmental sensors to monitor the weather and variations in the magnetic field. Two cameras will

aid in instrument deployment and monitoring the local environment.

Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, is building and testing the spacecraft.

The figure above is an annotated version an InSight illustration, with the following features labeled:

• Grapple – Mechanism at the end of the IDA that grips the instruments during deployment

• Heat Flow Probe – Hammering mechanism that pulls the temperature sensors down into the regolith

• HP3 – Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package, the heat flow experiment

• IDC – Instrument Deployment Camera, pointable medium-resolution camera

• IDA – Instrument Deployment Arm

• ICC – Instrument Context Camera, fixed wide-angle camera

• Pressure Inlet – Wind-shielded opening for pressure sensor

• RISE Antenna – X-band radio antenna for the Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment

• SEIS – Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure, the seismometer

• Tethers – Cables carrying electrical power, commands and data between the lander and instruments

• TWINS – Temperature and Winds for InSight, environmental sensors

• UHF Antenna – Antenna used for communication with orbital relay spacecraft

• WTS – Wind and Thermal Shield protecting the seismometer from the environment

InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program of competitively selected solar system exploration missions with

highly focused scientific goals.

For additional information about the InSight mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/insight/main/index.html

Source: NASA and NASA Return to Contents

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The Night Sky

Source: Sky and Telescope Return to Contents

Tuesday, August 25

At nightfall, the waxing gibbous Moon

shines above the tilting Sagittarius

Teapot. The Teapot pattern is about as

big as your fist at arm's length, with its

spout to the right.

Wednesday, August 26

As the stars begin to come out, look

upper left of the Moon by about two fists

at arm's length for Altair. How early can

you see it? With the steady turning of the

sky (or rather the Earth), Altair stands

directly above the Moon by about 10:30.

Thursday, August 27

The Moon after dark shines just above

the dim boat-shape of Capricornus. Look

about a fist to its right for dim Alpha

Capricorni, a double star that's just

resolvable with the naked eye. Binoculars

show Alpha as a pair quite obviously.

About half a binocular field below or

lower left of Alpha is Beta Cap, a less

easy double star for binoculars.

Friday, August 28

By the time it gets fully dark now,

Cassiopeia has risen as high in the

northeast as the Big Dipper has sunk in

the northwest. Midway between them,

and a little higher, is Polaris.

Saturday, August 29

Full Moon (exact at 2:35 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time). Well to the Moon's left or upper left this

evening, look for the Great Square of Pegasus balancing on one corner. It's a bit larger than your fist

at arm's length.

By the 29th, Venus edges up above the eastern horizon in early dawn to join faint little Mars. (This scene is drawn for latitude 40° north; for instance New York, Denver, Madrid. At other latitudes, the view will be tilted from this by the difference between your latitude and 40° N.)

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ISS Sighting Opportunities (from Denver)

No Sighting Opportunities through this Period

Sighting information for other cities can be found at NASA’s Satellite Sighting Information

NASA-TV Highlights (all times Eastern Time Zone)

Wednesday, August 26

8 a.m. - ISS Expedition 44 In-Flight Event for JAXA with JAXA Flight Engineer Kimiya Yui and NASA Flight Engineers Scott Kelly and Kjell Lindgren (NTV-1 and NTV-2 with English interpretation) (all channels)

1 p.m. - Simulated Airplane Crash Test to Determine the Survivability of Emergency Locater Transmitters – LaRC (NTV-3 (Media))

2 p.m. - Video File of the ISS Expedition 45/Visiting Crew Activities in Baikonur, Kazakhstan (includes activities from August 18-26) (all channels)

4 p.m. - Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum Presents “STEM in 30” -- Time and Navigation: In This Episode of STEM in 30, We’ll Take a Look at the Challenges of Navigating at Sea, in the Sky, and even in Space (NTV-1 (Public),

Thursday, August 27

6 a.m. - Live Satellite Media Interviews: NASA Outlook on Current Conditions and Future Projections of Sea Level Rise (NTV-3 (Media))

1 p.m. - Live Satellite Media Interviews: NASA Outlook on Current Conditions and Future Projections of Sea Level Rise (NTV-3 (Media))

Friday, August 28

2:30 a.m. - ISS Expedition 44 Soyuz TMA-16M Relocation from the Poisk Module to the Zvezda Service Module (Padalka, Kelly, Kornienko; undocking is scheduled at 3:12 a.m. ET and redocking is scheduled at 3:37 a.m. ET) (Starts at 2:45am) (all channels)

12 p.m. - Video File of the ISS Expedition 45/Visiting Crew’s Final Fit Check and Soyuz TMA-18M Preparations at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan (all channels)

1 p.m. - Earth Right Now Roundtable: NASA Science from the Greenland Ice Sheet (all channels)

Watch NASA TV online by going to the NASA website. Return to Contents

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Space Calendar

Aug 25 - Northern Iota Aquarids Meteor Shower Peak

Aug 25 - Comet 141P/Machholz Perihelion (0.761 AU)

Aug 25 - Comet 141P-A/Machholz Perihelion (0.761 AU)

Aug 25 - Comet 318P/McNaught-Hartley At Opposition (1.560 AU)

Aug 25 - Apollo Asteroid 2005 QQ87 Near-Earth Flyby (0.084 AU)

Aug 25 - Asteroid 4804 Pasteur Closest Approach To Earth (1.447 AU)

Aug 25 - Asteroid 2246 Bowell Closest Approach To Earth (3.283 AU)

Aug 25 - Centaur Object 7066 Nessus At Opposition (25.578 AU)

Aug 25 - Kuiper Belt Object 307982 (2004 PG115) At Opposition (36.736 AU)

Aug 26 - Comet C/2015 GX (PANSTARRS) Perihelion (1.972 AU)

Aug 26 - Comet C/2015 M3 (PANSTARRS) Perihelion (3.554 AU)

Aug 26 - Comet 263P/Gibbs At Opposition (3.697 AU)

Aug 26 - Comet P/2013 G4 (PANSTARRS) At Opposition (4.295 AU)

Aug 26 - Apollo Asteroid 2015 OS78 Near-Earth Flyby (0.084 AU)

Aug 26 - Asteroid 12258 Oscarwilde Closest Approach To Earth (1.584 AU)

Aug 26 - Asteroid 25000 Astrometria Closest Approach To Earth (2.463 AU)

Aug 26 - Joseph-Michel Montgolfier's 275th Birthday (1740)

Aug 27 - GSAT 6 (INSAT-4E) GSLV Launch

Aug 27 - Comet C/2014 M1 (PANSTARRS) Perihelion (5.572 AU)

Aug 27 - Comet C/2013 C2 (Tenagra) Perihelion (9.132 AU)

Aug 27 - Atira Asteroid 418265 (2008 EA32) Closest Approach To Earth (0.604 AU)

Aug 27 - Apollo Asteroid 85585 Mjolnir Closest Approach To Earth (1.059 AU)

Aug 27 - Asteroid 14413 Geiger Closest Approach To Earth (1.143 AU)

Aug 27 - Kuiper Belt Object 225088 (2007 OR10) At Opposition (86.355 AU)

Aug 28 - Inmarsat-5 F3 Proton-M Briz-M Launch

Aug 28 - Comet C/2014 C1 (TOTAS) Closest Approach To Earth (2.975 AU)

Aug 28 - Comet 82P/Gehrels At Opposition (3.439 AU)

Aug 28 - Asteroid 16 Psyche Occults HIP 22850 (6.4 Magnitude Star)

Aug 28 - Apollo Asteroid 2015 QT3 Near-Earth Flyby (0.011 AU)

Aug 28 - Apollo Asteroid 314082 Dryope Closest Approach To Earth (0.666 AU)

Aug 28 - Aten Asteroid 2100 Ra-Shalom Closest Approach To Earth (0.722 AU)

Aug 29 - Venus Passes 9.4 Degrees From Mars

Aug 29 - Comet P/1998 QP54 (LONEOS-Tucker) Closest Approach To Earth (1.224 AU)

Aug 29 - Comet 83D/Russell At Opposition (3.481 AU)

Aug 29 - Apollo Asteroid 2015 PT227 Near-Earth Flyby (0.025 AU)

Aug 29 - Asteroid 51829 Williemccool Closest Approach To Earth (1.349 AU)

Aug 29 - Asteroid 2068 Dangreen Closest Approach To Earth (1.723 AU)

Aug 29 - Asteroid 397278 Arvidson Closest Approach To Earth (1.821 AU)

Aug 29 - Asteroid 1071 Brita Closest Approach To Earth (1.857 AU)

Aug 29 - Asteroid 31000 Rockchic Closest Approach To Earth (1.870 AU)

Aug 29 - Asteroid 250840 Motorhead Closest Approach To Earth (2.069 AU)

Source: JPL Space Calendar Return to Contents

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Food for Thought

New theory: If we want to detect dark matter we might need a different approach -- University of Southern Denmark

Photo Courtesy of XENON Collaboration

Physicists suggest a new way to look for dark matter: They believe that dark matter particles annihilate into so-

called dark radiation when they collide. If true, then we should be able to detect the signals from this radiation.

The majority of the mass in the Universe remains unknown. Despite knowing very little about this dark matter, its

overall abundance is precisely measured. In other words: Physicists know it is out there, but they have not yet

detected it.

It is definitely worth looking for, argues Ian Shoemaker, former postdoctoral researcher at Centre for Cosmology

and Particle Physics Phenomenology (CP3), Department of Physics, Chemistry and Pharmacy, University of Southern

Denmark, now at Penn State, USA.

"There is no way of predicting what we can do with dark matter, if we detect it. But it might revolutionize our world.

When scientists discovered quantum mechanics, it was considered a curiosity. Today quantum mechanics plays an

important role in computers", he says.

Ever since dark matter was first theorized there have been many attempts to look for it, and now Ian Shoemaker

and fellow scientists, Associate Professor Mads Toudal Frandsen, CP3, and John F. Cherry, postdoctoral researcher

from Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA, suggest a new approach. They present their work in the journal Physical

Review Letters.

Look in underground caves

On Earth several detectors are placed in underground cavities, where disturbing noise is minimized. The hope is

that one of these detectors will one day catch a dark matter particle passing through Earth.

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According to Ian Shoemaker, it is possible that this might happen, but given how little we know about dark matter

we should keep an open mind and explore all paths that could lead to its detection.

One reason for this is that dark matter is not very dense in our part of the universe.

"If we add another way of looking for dark matter - the way, we suggest - then we will increase our chances of

detecting dark matter in our underground cavities", says Shoemaker.

He and his colleagues now suggest looking for the signs of dark matter activity rather than the dark matter particles

themselves.

The researchers believe that when two dark matter particles meet, they will behave just like ordinary particles; that

they will annihilate and create radiation in the process. In this case the radiation is called dark radiation, and it may

be detected by the existing underground detectors.

"Underground detection experiments may be able to detect the signals created by dark radiation", Shoemaker says.

The researchers have found that the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment is in fact already sensitive to this

signal and can with future data confirm or exclude their hypothesis for dark matter's origin.

Don't forget to look in the Milky Way, too

The attempt to catch signals from dark radiation is not a new idea - it is currently being performed several places in

space with satellite-based experiments. These places include the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, and the Sun

may also be such an area.

"It makes sense to look for dark radiation in certain places in space, where we expect it to be very dense - a lot

denser than on Earth", explains Shoemaker, adding:

"If there is an abundance of dark matter in these areas, then we would expect it to annihilate and create radiation."

None of the satellite-based experiments however have yet detected dark radiation.

According to Shoemaker, Frandsen and Cherry, this could be because the experiments look for the wrong signals.

"The traditional satellite-based experiments search for photons, because they expect dark matter to annihilate into

photons. But if dark matter annihilates into dark radiation then these satellite-based experiments are hopeless."

In the early days of the universe, when all matter was still extremely dense, dark matter may have collided and

annihilated into radiation all the time. This happened to ordinary matter as well, so it is not unlikely that dark matter

behaves the same way, the researchers argue.

HOW TO FIND DARK MATTER

Physicists have three ways to try and detect dark matter:

Make it: Slam matter together and produce dark matter. This has been tried at high-energy particle colliders, the

most famous of which is CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland. So far, no success.

Break it: This is the "annihilation" process in which two dark matter particles meet and produce some sort of

radiation. This can happen whenever dark matter is dense enough so that the probability of two dark matter

particles colliding is sufficiently high. So far; no success.

Wait for it: Set up detectors and wait for them to catch dark matter particles or signs of them. So far; no success.

Source: EurekAlert Return to Contents

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Space Image of the Week

Meteors and Milky Way over Mount Rainier

Image Credit & Copyright: Matthew Dieterich

Explanation: Despite appearances, the sky is not falling. Two weeks ago, however, tiny bits of comet dust were. Featured here is the Perseids meteor shower as captured over Mt. Rainier, Washington, USA. The image was created from a two-hour time lapse video, snaring over 20 meteors, including one that brightened dramatically on the image left. Although each meteor train typically lasts less than a second, the camera was able to capture their color progressions as they disintegrated in the Earth's atmosphere. Here an initial green tint may be indicative of small amounts of glowing magnesium atoms that were knocked off the meteor by atoms in the Earth's atmosphere. To cap things off, the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy was simultaneously photographed rising straight up behind the snow-covered peak of Mt. Rainier. Another good meteor shower is expected in mid-November when debris from a different comet intersects Earth as the Leonids.

Source: NASA APOD Return to Contents