The image above show what very well could be 2 newly discovered moons for Pluto. The images were taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the Hubble Space Telescope between May 15 and May 18. Along with Pluto and Charon, the two potential moons designated P1 and P2 are shown appearing to rotate counterclockwise around Pluto.

In the image below Pluto and Charon are purposely overexposed so P1 and P2 stand out better, they are thousands of times fainter than either Pluto or Charon.

A high resolution version of the first image is available here.

Source: NASA

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, H. Weaver (JHU/APL), A. Stern (SwRI), and the Hubble Space Telescope Pluto Companion Search Team

Last night was the night. The closest the planet will be in 13 years at a mere 43 million miles. I wasn’t about to miss out, plus there is a major dust storm underway.

I saw it, sort of. Lots of water vapor and atmospheric instability made Mars all but un-viewable. I also determined the laptop doesn’t like the cold; it was throwing hissy fits. Seems like about freezing is about as much as the poor thing can stand – it was in the upper 20’s F. I have a cure in the back of my car, a portable heater that is even safe for indoor use. I need to get one little hose for it unless I want to use small cylinders, but I have a 20 lb cylinder which is almost full. Now I need to construct some sort of shelter to put it and the computer in. With any luck I can have something together by the weekend.

I am constructing a conversion plate for the little scope and the wedge, it is just too cold to use the big scope on a regular basis; not a really tough project. The little scope is not designed to be polar mounted as a “go-to” scope, but it does have setting circles and that should be enough. If I can get it to track in R.A. I will be all set, I may be able to guide it manually too. The nice thing about the little scope is it is quite light weight and I can pick up and be back inside in do time at all.

Reports from the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory Mirror Lab says the first mirror for the Giant Magellan Telescope “appears to be essentially perfect”.

The mirror is 8.4 meters (27 feet) and it is only the first of seven. When complete in 2016 the telescope will have a 22 meter (72 foot) aperture! That is 4.5 times the collecting power of any optical telescope and 10 times the resolving power of Hubble.

The Mirror Lab workers are ready to disassemble the 7.5-story test tower and construct an even higher tower that will hold the 3.7 meter (12 foot) mirror for testing the off axis GMT mirrors.

This is the third 8.4 meter mirror cast at the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab, the other two are at the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) on Mount Graham, Arizona. You can see the recently released First Light Images from LBT here.

We’ll have to wait a while for the GMT, but the LBT promises to yield lots of great information and images.

Source: Space Ref

Image Credits: University of Arizona / GMT / LBT

Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. If we ever do go to Mars and things go wrong, will we know how to deal with them.

One of the reasons for sending robotic missions to the red planet is to learn what sorts of things can go wrong. There was a report published in June by MEPAG, otherwise know as Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group. Quite a long title: An Analysis of the Precursor Measurements of Mars Needed to Reduce the Risk of the First Human Mission to Mars, and a good read, at least I thought it was.

Below is a table from the report, the hazards are ranked 1 to 5, with one being the least and 5 being the most. Take a look at Ref. 3, very interesting. Now before you get all worked up they are NOT saying there IS life on Mars, but if there is, what are the hazards. By the way, PP stands for Planetary Protection.

I won’t go into the details because you can download the report for yourself and give it a read, it is a PDF file of 1.77 MB but it is worth the time even on dial up. The biohazard section begins on page 12.

There is a write up on the Science at NASA site which is where I found this. Check it out.

Image Credit: NASA

Things got back to normal last night – a welcome relief. You wouldn’t think that puny amount of snow would cause such a ruckus, but as I said with the leaves still on the trees (really late for that) combined with a high water ratio in the snow it added more weight than the trees could take, and since the power company isn’t known for keeping limbs and what-not cleared away, well, they complain about the overtime costs to get everything restored.

To address some of the comments in the last post:

I too believe in being at least a little prepared and not expect miracles from the government. I have a 50 kw back-up generator to run my wells which consist of 2 – 20 hp turbines that crank out 600 gallons per minute, they have to run — that isn’t an option. Trouble is, that generator isn’t wired into the house, but, I do have a small generator that I hook up to give me the two things needed most in the winter, heat and water. I have options for lights and can eat out. Sleep deprivation for the staff is something we have to tolerate, if the wells go down the water HAS to flow one way or another, there’s about a 30 minute window to make sure that happens. I also count my blessings, there are lots of areas that got 20 inches of the white stuff and are still out power.

Yeah, snow already, sadly we average 6 inches in October. Winter is here only (on average) 72 inches to go. We also have the time change to look forward to. If there is a good part to that the scope can come out and used by 5:30, and in a month I will be able to do an alignment by 4:45.

It does!

And finally, I too was to get a chance to go to the local college and get a look at Mars through a 24 inch scope. Bah…too many clouds. I am hoping to get at least a peek at it this weekend with mine and attempt an image or two.

A strong low pressure system coming up the coast teamed up the remains of Hurricane Wilma and deposited 4 inches of snow in our area (20 in some). Since there were still many leaves on the trees, the snow load caused many to break and come down on power lines. The result is we are in day 2 of a power failure. We are hopeful things will be restored today but the power company is saying it could be out until Saturday.

Back to blogging when things get back to normal, when the power is out I have to work….bleh.