SLOOH Skylog

Saturday’s Lunar Eclipse was a real success through the Slooh telescopes, with many members collecting images and several creating collages and animations. The evening included live eclipse missions, lunar-science commentary, and a selection of moon-themed songs.

Following is a sampling of members’ eclipse creations. If you have eclipse images you’d like to contribute, send an email to tavianne@gmail.com and we’ll add them to the collection.

From Slooh member, DaveM:

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 From Slooh member, OlafB:

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From Slooh member, TaviG:

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Slooh member AloysiusO took this image with his Nikon D80:

On August 16, Luna will pass through Earth’s shadow to bring us this year’s final lunar eclipse. Fortunately, Slooh’s Teide observatory is well-placed to observe much of the event, including the moment of greatest eclipse.

Saturday’s event is a partial eclipse, lasting just over three hours. With greatest eclipse occurring twenty-five minutes after the observatory opens, Slooh members will be able to witness three of the five contact moments of the eclipse. These include the last few moments of the first penumbral and all of the umbral and final penumbral phases.

Just as we’ve done with past lunar eclipses, the Slooh telescopes will target the moon to give members a close-up, real-time look at an eclipse as it occurs. We’ll also feature music and live commentary on SloohRadio throughout the event. Members can snap images of the evolving eclipse as various lunar craters slip through Earth’s shadow, while Slooh SkyGuides describe the interaction between our planet and its only moon.

This is an early evening event for the Teide location, beginning just after the observatory opens. Lunar missions have been scheduled, by Team Slooh and members, all throughout the eclipse, from 20:45 UTC through 23:50 UTC. Actual moon mission times will be noted to this Saturday’s Teide 1 Member Channel schedule on the Slooh Launchpad. And, of course, the event can be viewed and images snapped through the Member Channel on the Mission Interface.

Slooh SkyGuide Marleen Bryan compiled several of her Slooh images from March 2007’s partial lunar eclipse to create the following video, offering a preview of what we can expect to see with this Saturday’s event.

NOTE: SloohRadio can be accessed from the Mission Interface or through the SloohRadio link via your computer’s media player. The SloohRadio link works only during live airtimes.

This month marks one of the northern hemisphere’s best meteor showers of the year, the Perseids, and already, members are capturing a few streaks through Slooh’s All-Sky camera and in their Slooh images.

This year, scientists predict that the shower will peak between the hours of 1130 UTC and 1400 UTC on August 12 - prime observing hours for the pacific US timezone at 0330 PDT through sunrise Tuesday morning. Almost as much fun as the main event are the nights immediately preceding and following peak hours, with the most significant numbers of “extra-curricular” Perseids typically prominent in the hours just before dawn.

With that in mind, because the actual peak occurs during daylight hours on Teide, we’ll feature a special Slooh Mission Alert on Tuesday night, August 12, at 11pm EDT / 8pm PDT - that’s 0300 UTC Wednesday morning. We’ll target some better-known objects in and around the constellation Perseus, we’ll talk more about the Perseids and meteor showers in general, and we’ll even try listening for meteor pings through one of several live public radio streams.

The following slideshow is an introduction to meteor showers and the Perseids. To view the fullscreen version, select “View Slideshare Presentation” at the bottom left corner of the slideshow.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), is due to start-up September 10, 2008 and will enable scientists to delve into the nature of the universe by seeking new particles, new forms of energy, and new principles on which the universe is constructed. Researchers will do this by colliding protons at energies up to 7 TeV - trillion electron volts (remember, electron volts represent energy, not the electro-motive force that voltage represents by itself.)

This is uncharted territory in the physics realm and may answer important questions such as the origin of mass, or the nature of dark energy. Some of the future experiments that will be run include simulating the conditions of stellar evolution. These will reveal the particle level (micro) explanations of the macro objects that we observe on Slooh (e.g. supernovae, planetary nebulas, binary systems, etc.)

We’ll be running some specials on these astronomical and cosmological aspects of the LHC on Slooh Radio as the date approaches. These will include live missions to observe and discuss how what we see on Slooh relates to the LHC project.

Check the radio schedule and here on the Slooh Skylog for more information.

I’ve included a link to a scientifically accurate presentation produced and presented by Will Barras and the scientists and engineers at LHC in Switzerland and France. They will tell you everything about this exciting new tool in a fun and non-conventional way!

Rob Keown

CERN Rap from Will Barras on Vimeo.

We have some fabulous news to share regarding our exciting projects at the Slooh Mt. Teide Observatory!….

The new domes, and the fantastic new Slooh Half Metre Telescope, have arrived on Tenerife in the Canary Islands.  This is the location of Slooh’s World class observatory site on Mt. Teide, high above the clouds at an altitude of 7,743ft.  Work has already begun in preparation for the installation of the new systems and equipment. 

Initially, we’ll be working on the installation and testing of the new Slooh V3 software - a development of the existing patented Slooh system.  This work will be carried out using Dome 2 at Teide which will be taken offline during the upgrade process.  However, live missions will run normally each night on Teide Dome 1!  For progress reports and more detailed information on this, and other exciting projects, see the “Slooh Observatory” section of the the Slooh Forums.

We also have news regarding the new Slooh Chile Observatory…. The resolution of the network issue at the Chile site appears to be in hand, and as such we expect to launch Chile in the very near future.

Thank you for your patience and understanding during this tremendously busy and exciting time for Slooh while we improve and greatly extend the Slooh service!

Paul, Mathew and the rest of the Slooh Team!

The constellation Lyra is one of our favorite summer constellations.  Its brightest star, Vega, is part of the “summer triangle” (along with Deneb in Cygnus, and Altair in Aquila.)  Vega is important for another reason - due to precession, a process where the Earth’s axis “wobbles” like a spinning top, Vega will be our north star in about 12,000 years from now.  (set your clock…)
 
As its name suggests, Lyra represents a lyre or harp.  Its shape is formed by a triangle (with Vega at its tip) connected to a parallelogram.  The star Zeta Lyrae joins the two shapes.  The triangle is the harp’s handle, and its imaginary strings would be stretched over the parallelogram.
 
When we think of the constellation Lyra, the first thing that usually comes to mind is the impressive Ring Nebula, M57.  But, have you ever seen “the other ring nebula” in Lyra?  This is only one of several deep-sky beauties hidden in the small constellation. 
 
Please join us on Sunday night August 3 at 9 pm EDT (0100 UT on August 4) when Sky Safari will tour the constellation Lyra. We’ll follow-up the live feature with an extended presentation, here. NOTE: Sky Safari: Constellation Lyra has been rescheduled to Monday night August 4 at 925 pm EDT (0125 UTC on August 5).

And, don’t forget your road map!

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Extended Presentation of Sky Safari: Constellation Lyra (Select “view on slideshare” for Full Screen option. The animations of RR Lyrae and Beta Lyrae, slides 18 and 34, can be seen in their active form on RonaldB’s Variable Star Animations page.

By now, many members have noticed the recent changes to the SloohRadio programming, and several have asked, “Why the change?”

The new format is a first step towards a greater focus on Slooh’s unique “live” experience. With time, you will see more guided tours and Mission Alert features, as well as ambient music interlaced with astronomy and missions commentary.

Even as we develop this new format, several favorites will remain, including Phil Harrington’s StarWatch and Jeffery Bass’ Starry Nights. A general description of the current programming is noted at the top of the SloohRadio page. More detailed information about the individual shows can be found within the daily radio schedule, and often, here on the SkyLog.

Other programs of the past; such as mini-tutorials, upcoming sky events, and occasional astronomy news; will be featured here on the SkyLog page. Check back often for those.

Your enthusiasm for SloohRadio is appreciated and has been inspiring. Slooh looks forward to your continued support and patience as we move forward.

Not so long ago, we believed that the Moon was much like our planet. To earth-bound observers, lunar features appeared as great seas and even vegetation-covered plains. Today, of course, we know that quite the opposite is true and that the lunar landscape is not like Earth’s at all.

From Earth, the major features of the Moon’s surface appear simply as lighter and darker regions, but these features are anything but simple. They represent vast basins, sprawling lava plains, and even a few mountain ranges.

Luna’s brighter highlands are riddled with ancient impact craters that can be seen even today. In the darker mares, those impact sites are not so apparent - likely due to flows from hot material during early lunar existence.

One of the most prominent lunar features is Tycho Crater. Visible as a bright ridged circular region near the Moon’s lower limb, and believed to have been formed by a relatively recent impact, this crater has been a target for many telescopes and the subject of much scientific study.

The following slidecast, the first in a series of several featuring the lunar surface, offers a more in-depth look at this fascinating lunar feature.

When we look to the night sky, the one thing that we can be sure to see is stars. Certainly, there are other objects to be seen - distant galaxies, nearby nebulae, maybe a planet or an asteroid - but even each of these would not be seen were it not for the luminous property of stars.

There are many tens of billions of stars in our galaxy. The entire Universe is believed to house more than 70 thousand million million million stars. These stars come in many colors and sizes, all of which tell us something about the stars themselves - their compositions, their expected lifespans and likely manner of death, even whether or not they might host planets.

Stars also come in a variety of groupings - as individuals, as asterisms and constellations, in denser globular clusters, and in younger open clusters. For many observers, open clusters are the prettiest, appearing as a sprinkling of diamonds against a velvety backdrop of the night sky. But for scientists, open clusters offer specific insight into stellar structure and evolution. Their astronomically close distances also enable more accurate calculations of intergalactic distances.

About 1100 open clusters are known within our galaxy, but scientists estimate that there are probably more than 100,000. What are some of those known clusters, and what can they tell us about our solar system, our galaxy, and the Universe? This Saturday evening, at 935pmEDT / 0135 UTC, we’ll target four open clusters with a SLOOH Mission Alert to answer these questions and to explore what makes each of them so special. And for your listening pleasure, we’ll surround the Alert with ambient space music, beginning at 9pmEDT / 0100 UTC.

My short three day visit to the Slooh Canary Islands Observatory, high above the clouds on Mt. Teide, draws to a close.  If you don’t follow the Slooh Forums (which I’d highly recommend) you won’t necessarily know why I’m here….

A couple of weeks ago, one of the two domes at the Teide Observatory (below) suddenly stopped working and was stuck open.   This is never a good state of affairs when Slooh’s state of the art astronomical equipment is left open to the elements!  I was on holiday at the time but one of the other Slooh team members managed to get someone to close the dome for us (the Slooh Observatories are “robotic” and don’t have any on-site staff). From what they found, it sounded like the dome was terminal and unrepairable so the decision was taken to wait until the dome was replaced over the next couple of months as planned (see my previous SkyLog post here).

With the delays we’ve experienced launching the exciting new Slooh Chile Observatory, we decided a few days ago that I should visit Teide to see if a repair was possible - even if it had to held together with paper and string!  It’s fortunate that we took this decision because, within 12hrs of arriving on site, I was able to cobble together a repair and get the dome operational again!  Most of that time was spent diagnosing the problem - as with most things at the observatories, they are complex “machines” with all sorts of links and inter-dependent equipment, parts and systems.  A methodical approach certainly rules the roost even if it takes a little longer at the start of the task - it soon pays dividends.

Once the dome was operational again, we ran in to another problem - the pointing accuracy of the main telescope had degraded substantially for no apparent reason.  Even a slight nudge to this kind of equipment is sufficient to change the pointing accuracy (how well the telescopes can point to a celestial object).  There’s all sorts of “magic” behind getting telescope systems to point accurately (considered a “Black Art” by some) - especially when those telescopes are unmanned and have to point to object after object without any mistakes or manual intervention (Slooh has served nearly 300,000 Missions from the Teide Observatory).  Anyway, my last 12 hours on Teide are turning out to be a little busy as I’ll be working on refining the pointing up to the wire!  It’ll have to be a quick drive down the twisting, turning roads from the observatory at 7,743ft altitude to sea level in the morning.

Earlier this afternoon, I completed my last checks in the domes before retreating back to the Residencia which is where the astronomers stay while they’re on site.  We usually aim to finish these “exit” checks, and complete any configuration work on the Observatory, in time to leave a whole night of Slooh Missions before I leave the facility.  This ensures that I don’t leave site without noticing that I’ve inadvertently left something in the way of the telescopes (something which a visiting engineer did to us) or otherwise “disturbed” the equipment!  There’s nothing worse than checking my emails when I return to England to find a message saying “It still doesn’t work” (fortunately that’s never happened)!  However, on this occasion I’ll be forced to finishing off the pointing work during my last night.  Fortunately, I can do this work remotely from the Residencia so I don’t have to risk entering the domes!  If I succeed, Dome 2 will join Dome 1 clocking up more amazing Slooh Missions, if not, I’ll have to work on it remotely from England which isn’t a problem.

With any luck, this will be my last visit to the Teide Observatory until I return in the near future to install the new domes and, more importantly, the new Slooh Half Metre Telescope!  It’s an awesome instrument which will produce some fantastic live views of the heavens for Slooh members from the world class observatory site of Mt. Teide.  I hope you join us for the first Slooh Missions using this fabulous instrument later this Summer!

Well, the view is similar to that in the above photo - so it’s time for me to start my nocturnal work!  Bye for now.

Paul

PS @ 0300hrs:  Later that same night…..my work on the Teide D2 pointing accuracy has cured the problem - it’s now pointing well and Live Missions started an hour ago!  I can return to Blighty a happy man!