As an aside, the Aurora Australis was known to history before Australia (the continent), which was claimed and named in the 18th century.

Aurora Australis and Orion, 04/94, Image: NASA, STS-59 and Crew

The aurorae are caused by the Earth’s magnetosphere, which accelerates and funnels ionized particles along the magnetic field.  Aurora can be seen all over the world; indeed, it is imaged on other worlds, but it is more easily seen in the polar regions due to the magnetic field and longer periods of darkness.  Green or brownish red in the aurorae are associated with photons striking oxygen, while blue or red are associated with nitrogen.

Magnetosphere, Image: Science.NASA.gov

We know that the aurorae are caused by ordinary (and extraordinary) solar activity.  After the Carrington Event in 1859 (Saturday’s riddle) the aurorae were particularly active.  Reported all over the Earth, in some places they were so bright that one could read newsprint outside at 1:00 am.   Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis are also believed to be nearly mirror images of each other.

Aurora Mirror Image, Credit: Polar VIS, NASA/JPL

Thought to be a sign from God to the Europeans in the Middle ages, the spirits dancing in the sky to the Cree, and the reflection of light from the body armor of virgin warriors by the Vikings, the aurorae have lost none of their beauty and appeal through discovery.

Here are a few links if you want to read more about the aurorae:

Aurora link RE: 1859 solar flare
Aurora forecast – Geophysical Institute
Sounds in and around Aurora
“The Northern Lights”, Alan Booth, 1992 documentary (45min)
The Northern Lights in mythology – Bullfinch’s, et al

And an excellent link to YouTube recording the sounds of aurorae, along with informational narration (well worth watching):

?Listening to Northern Lights, YouTube

Marian is coming right up, just wanted to share the shuttle launch.

Source

You can find it HERE.

and….The Who were EXCELLENT!

Launch Date: Monday, 4:14 am ET

Odds of Launch: 60 percent

Shuttle: Endeavour (OV-105)

Mission: STS-130

Mission Length: 13 days

EVA’s: 3 (on flight days: 5, 7, 10)

Commander: George Zamka

Pilot: Terry Virts

Mission Specialists: Robert Behnken and Kathryn Hire, Nicholas Patrick, Stephen Robinson

Launch Pad 39A — Webcam Image courtesy: NASA/Kennedy Space Center

NOAA’s Forecast:

Tonight: Mostly clear, with a low around 46. North northwest wind around 5 mph.

To keep current with the news about the launch, I recommend you go to NASA’s Launch Blog which should be live around midnight ET You will need to refresh your browser to get the latest from that site, but it’s THE place to get the up to the minute stuff especially if you can’t watch NASA TV.

If I can get up on time, I will be watching the launch itself on NASA-TV

The big priority for this mission: deliver the connecting module known as Tranquility. Tranquility has a cupola. The cupola is a robotic control station that offers 360 degree views of the ISS and of course, Earth and other objects. Once Tranquility is attached and operating building the station is 90 percent complete and naturally we are going to halt manned flights, yeah that dog and pony show makes a lot of sense.

Image Credits: NASA / NOAA

We have some smart people out there reading the blog, so  I decided to mix things up a little bit this week, and see if I could make you think.  The answer to today’s riddle will not be an object.  It will be an event.  We’re operating under the same rules:  This deals with astronomy; it’s something with which you are familiar;  it’s something you grew up knowing.

I think I’ll make you work a little this week.

Image shamelessly lifted from Space.Com

This event occurred within recent history.

It was known globally while it was happening.

It has happened before.

It will happen again.

Image: National Archives circa 1938-1945, ID 195876

It left traces behind.

It is at the top of the heap for its type of event within recorded history.

After it occurred, there was no evidence of this event in space (this is not a contradiction).

The depiction of this event occurring at any time makes for a thrilling plot line.

STS112 EVA Image: NASA

Your final clue, just to save us all time:  The event in question is NOT an asteroid strike.

Hmmmm.  Any guesses?  Come on out and play — I’ll see you in the comments.

Good luck!

The Hubble map of Pluto from 1994 (upper) and the latest one below. Be sure to click the image for a larger version. Image credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Buie (Southwest Research Institute)

Pluto has a surface temperature of something like 35 to 45 K (-378^oF to -396^oF). I sort of always thought of Pluto as a pretty static place, but not so.

The little world’s northern hemisphere is getting brighter and it is becoming redder as a result.  Hubblesite described it as an icy and dark molasses-colored world.

Here are some of the other Hubble images:  90 degs / 180 degs / 270 degs.  The images don’t give us a lot of detail as far as the surface features go, still a lot can be learned from these pictures.  We do have a spacecraft on the way to Pluto and in 2015 it will finally arrive – Pluto is a LONG  ways away, heck those are Hubble pictures and we still can’t resolve the surface!

Ok before I get all carried away, Pluto has a diameter of 2,390 km and if you are thinking that’s smaller than our moon, you’d be right.  Our moon happens to be the 5th largest moon in the solar system, but that’s another story.  The other thing about Pluto’s size is Eris (yeah, the one that caused the hub-bub) is maybe even a little larger than Pluto.  Pluto’s whole orbit is tilted 17 degrees relative to the ecliptic and it’s also very elongated.

I’m not going to go into the whole planet, dwarf planet debate.  I will say I’ve come to my own conclusion.  Suffice it to say, Pluto is very strange place.

Head on over to Hubblesite for the full press release, more images and even video.

Wait – wait, don’t run!  Come back!

I know “quantum entanglement” sounds like a really difficult concept on which to get a handle.  It is, indeed, very difficult; however, I’ve no doubt it’s a concept you are fully capable of understanding.  Remember, I read your comments and emails.  We’re not getting into the deep water here (and it does get very deep and murky), we’re just going to wade in and splash around a bit.

Albert Einstein, 1905, Swiss Patent Office Image: Historical Museum of Berne by Lucien Chaven (1868-1942) Einstein is 26 years old in this photograph

To start off, look at the word “quantum”.  You may as well, you know… you run across it everywhere.  I sat and quickly counted 38 terms using the word “quantum”… that’s just what hit me off the top of my head, I have no idea how many such terms are in use.  The word springs out at you in some surprising combinations, from the immediately recognizable (quantum physics), to the “not so much” (quantum suicide).  We’ll be dealing with the word only as it applies in physics.  You can read a dictionary as well as I, but in physics “quantum” basically indicates the smallest possible state of being, without alteration, that can be achieved.  This is matter and energy in its most basic form; elementary particles.  An atom would be an example of an elementary particle, although as far as particles go, an atom is pretty bulky.  Knowing that, you can see immediately that the phrase “quantum entanglement” is going to be about the entanglement of objects at their most basic level.  This is not the same thing as the bonds which exist between two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen to make a molecule of water.

With quantum entanglements, two or more objects are linked (joined) at their quantum (smallest possible) level so that you cannot fully describe the one without the other, no matter how far apart they are.  In a water molecule, you can describe the oxygen atom quite nicely without ever describing the hydrogen atoms.  Interested?  Here’s where it gets spooky.

The Scream by Edvard Munch 1893 Image: The National Gallery, Oslo, Norway

If you separate the objects which are entangled, even by as far as a million light years, they still act as one object.  No matter how far apart they are.  If you have one of the objects on the Earth and the other object on Pluto, and you move the Earth object two feet, then the object on Pluto will move two feet… at exactly the same time, in exactly the same manner, in exactly the same direction.  Anything that happens to the first object will happen to the second, immediately.  Anything.  The Sun and the Earth are about 93 million miles apart, and it takes light a little over 8 minutes to travel that distance through space.  Two objects which are entangled but separated by the same distance, 93 million miles, will still react identically and immediately.  Notice that I’m not saying “about”, “nearly”, “approximately”, or “quickly”.  I’m saying “exactly”, “identically”, and “immediately”.  That is so cool.

Quantum entanglement is not science fiction or science theory; this is science fact.  It’s also our future.  Just imagine if you had a “quantum entanglement communicator” and wanted to talk with someone living on a planet 10 billion light years away.  Communication would be instant, it would NOT take billions of years.  You could sit in your living room and safely drive a vehicle located on Mars.  Or Neptune.  Can you imagine the speed of a quantum entanglement computer?  No matter how many million terabytes you’re processing, it processes instantly.  Not within seconds or nanoseconds… instantly.  And get this; not only are scientists looking at quantum entanglement for instant information transfer, they’re also looking at it for instant matter transfer.

Several people have told me through the years that the sciences are boring, and I needed to be doing something interesting and exciting with my life.

Right.

Image: NASA/ESA/D.Jewitt, the incomparable Hubble, STScl 2010 07

This is incredible, and just released yesterday.  Tom and I got the release yesterday morning, but waited until NASA could get the image up.  NASA/ESA had it ready last night.  They are so awesome.

Scientist believe that Hubble captured something long suspected, but never seen:  An asteroid collision in the Asteroid Belt.  Asteroid collisions are what NASA calls “energetic” (I just bet they are), and believe they collide at about 11,000 mph, or about 5 times the speed of a rifle bullet.  Hubble imaged this January 25th and 29th with the new Wide Field Camera 3.  It was about 90 million miles from the Earth.  That’s fairly close for Hubble, but it can image objects as small as the size of a house at that distance.

There’s plenty of evidence for ancient collisions, but we’ve never been able to catch one in modern times.  Scientists have identified the remains of the collision that resulted in an Earth asteroid strike 65 million years ago.  We all know the end story of that little adventure.

NASA has the whole story here, and it’s worth a read.

Some of the last of the best. (From left) Mission Specialist Nicholas Patrick, Pilot Terry Virts, Mission Specialists Robert Behnken and Kathryn Hire, Commander George Zamka and Mission Specialist Stephen Robinson. Image credit: NASA

I am encouraging everybody to get up early on Sunday morning (yeah, like that will happen) and watch Endeavour lift off to the International Space Station.  We are coming down to the end of the shuttle missions.

That’s right, there are just four scheduled missions left before the US takes a back seat in human space flight.  Oh sure a lot of people are putting a happy face on this while one is NASA (like they have a lot of choice) ,  I bet those employees who will be getting the pink slips and adding to the problems the country has going think differently.  With any luck they can get business in the private space industry.  The rest of the happy faced lot are the ones seeing dollar signs because they are sure (they think) to get money to get ahead.  That’s all well and good and everything I’d just like to see a good reliable commercial vehicle that is human certified BEFORE we decide to kill the NASA programs.  But what do I know.

This mission will be STS-130 when it leaves the pad on its 13 day mission to deliver Node 3 also known as Tranquility and the Cupola.  The Cupola is a robotic control station that can get a 360 degree view around the ISS.

The crew: Commander George Zamka, Pilot Terry Virts,  Mission Specialists are Nicholas Patrick, Robert Behnken, Stephen Robinson and Kathryn Hire.

Oh yeah, heh, the early Sunday morning comment was because the launch is going to take place at 4:39 AM!  I am going to set my recorder, I am a get up at 5 am kind of guy but even 4:30 is a stretch – Maybe if I feed the cat earlier the day before…

Voyager    Image:  NASA

An interesting aside about Voyager 2:  The scientists had kept its sensors online as it was launched, and Voyager 2 experienced a completely unexpected robotic “vertigo”, switching itself to its backup sensors.  Of course, the Voyager 2 computers were not controlling the launch; computers on board the Titan/Centaur rocket (amazing things, aren’t they?  I need to do a post on them.) remained in control.  Voyager 2 effectively became our first motion-sick space craft.  After separation from it’s rocket boosters in space, Voyager 2 deployed its arm, but then sensed something wrong,  immediately cutting communication and firing thrusters to orient itself.  Shutting down most of its links to Earth, Voyager 2 spent 79 minutes alone and lost in space, unable to orient itself.  Of course, Voyager 2 found the Sun, oriented itself, and re-established communication with Earth. Voyager 2, despite being nauseous, space sick and disoriented (your indulgence requested), went on to make amazing discoveries, not the least of which was that the surface of Europa is covered in ice.  Prior to the Voyager 2 flyby, scientists suspected Europa’s surface irregularities where caused by tectonic activity.

For 33 years, Voyager 1 and 2 have continued to provide scientific data to Earth.  Both have passed termination shock, and are in the heliosheath, approaching heliopause.  Neither is en route to any specific star.  Both carry the “golden record”.  On board platforms are being slowly powered down, but Voyager is expected to continue transmitting information until 2020, possibly 2025.  Following termination of power, Voyager will drift… controlled by the pull of the Milky Way itself.

Voyager at Termination Shock    Image:  NASA/Walt Feimer

Just to the end of their primary mission, the exploration of the solar system up to Neptune, Voyager has returned five trillion bits of information back to Earth.  It’s my understanding that this represents 6,000 complete Encyclopedia Brittannicas, or 1,000 bits of information to each man, woman, and child on Earth.  Voyager 1 is currently the furthest man-made object in space, and is expected to remain so.

Our tiny ambassadors in space.

Visit the Voyager Homepage here.