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Comet Hunter

A brave woman armed with the specialized tools of her trade sits alone in the dark and mentally prepares herself for the hunt. Her mission: to track down and identify some of the more elusive and exotic members of our solar system.

No, this is not an opening scene from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This could be you or me, a citizen scientist, using Photoshop to animate a set of images from one of NASA’s orbiting solar observatories to hunt for comets.

A few days back we learned about famous comet hunter Charles Messier and how his catalog of objects came about. By participating in one of NASA’s Citizen Science projects, you too can become a comet hunter even if you don’t have access to a telescope!

Enter NASA’s Sungrazer Project, where you can put your hunting skills to the test and hopefully discover a comet. Participants inspect images taken by the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) or NASA Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) and look for objects moving in such a way that they may be comets. To date, over 4,000 comets have been discovered in SOHO data, with the majority of those found by citizen scientists. Moreover, over 99% of SOHO’s comet discoveries have come from its LASCO coronagraph, an instrument that uses an occulting disk to block the direct light from the sun, allowing faint objects in the vicinity of the sun to be visible.

Want to get involved in the hunt? You would start by downloading a set of SOHO/LASCO still images, then animate the images using a program such as Photoshop or GIMP. When you view the animation, you’ll see a lot of moving objects, most of them stars or sometimes a planet. It’s easy to rule out the stars in the SOHO/LASCO image animation because they always move horizontally from right to left and at the same speed as one another. Planets are easily identifiable as well, since they always move horizontally either right to left or left to right, and they are generally larger and brighter than stars. Another common sight will be cosmic rays, energetic particles striking the imaging sensor. Again, these are easily identifiable because they appear in only one frame of the animation as white dots, blobs, or streaks at random locations in the field of view. To get an idea of what you’re dealing with, click on the image below to view an animation of recent SOHO/LASCO data. It’s easy to identify the stars, a planet, and a multitude of cosmic rays.

The tricky bit is finding a comet in the midst of these predictably and chaotically moving objects. You are looking for a small, faint dot moving slowly through the animation, usually toward the Sun from the lower portion of the field of view. Comets are easily distinguishable from stars and planets, as they hardly ever move horizontally through the images, and they always move with a near constant speed, size, shape, and brightness. This small, faint, slowly moving dot must appear in at least five consecutive images before being reported as a potential comet. To find out if comet hunting is for you, download a sample set of data that includes a known comet (available at the bottom of this comet hunting guide web page), and see if you can pick it out of the crowd of stars, planets, and cosmic rays.

Comets not your cuppa? No problem! You can search for exoplanets, spot protoplanetary disks around nearby stars, or process and analyze images of Jupiter. Prefer to use your own telescope? You can submit data on the brightness and position of near Earth objects, or share your Jupiter images with the JunoCam team to help them plan future photographic missions.  

NASA’s citizen science projects are not limited to astronomy; you can find projects in the fields of geology, oceanography, meteorology, and more. Moreover, citizen science projects aren’t limited to NASA; use your computer’s down time to analyze radio telescope data for SETI, classify distant galaxies for Galaxy Zoo, help identify constellations in celestial maps for the Adler Planetarium, or transcribe the notebooks of the famous Harvard College Observatory women “computers” for the Smithsonian. The number of crowdsourcing projects continues to grow!  

Next time you have time to kill, why not stop your Pokémon Go, close your Candy Crush, and spend some time contributing to scientific research. Below you’ll find more links to help get you started on your own hunt:

https://www.zooniverse.org/projects

https://transcription.si.edu/

https://www.scientificamerican.com/citizen-science/

https://www.oldweather.org/

http://www.cosmologyathome.org/

https://einsteinathome.org/

https://www.uahirise.org/hiwish/

https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/nora-dot-eisner/planet-hunters-tess

http://scope.pari.edu/

https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/shannon-/solar-stormwatch-ii

https://www.aavso.org/observers

http://alpo-astronomy.org/lunarupload/lunimpacts.htm

Happy Hunting!

M. Colleen Gino, MRO Assistant Director of Outreach and Communications

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Faster Than A Speeding Bullet!

How fast is that, exactly? I had to look it up. The range I found was about 420 — 4665 fps (feet per second), which translates to 286 – 3180 mph (miles per hour). So while Superman is certainly super speedy, he can’t compete with the little specks of cometary debris I saw plowing through Earth’s atmosphere last night. Meteors travel anywhere from 25,000 to 160,000 mph through our atmosphere, and the average Perseid travels at the high end of that range, about 133,000 mph. So sorry to burst your bubble, fan folks, but I’m not convinced that Superman can outrun a meteor. It’s a darn good thing that the Perseid meteors originate from Comet Swift/Tuttle rather than Krypton, or Superman would really be in trouble…(BTW, I’m up for a discussion of the physics of Superman!)

Let’s back up a bit. On Monday I talked about the Perseids and suggested when and where you might go to see them for yourself (check it out here). Following my own advice, on Monday night I set up my camera in my yard and shot from about 10:30pm to 12:30am. During that time, I caught only one meteor, and it wasn’t even a Perseid, it was a sporadic. But honestly I didn’t expect much, since Monday night/Tuesday morning was not yet the peak of the shower, the time span over which you can expect to see the greatest number of meteors.

Hoping for better results, last night I met up with fellow MROI astrophotographer Dylan Etscorn at Box Canyon outside of Socorro, NM. I chose that location based on the information I gathered from variety of sources: 1) Weather Underground and Clear Dark Sky to be sure we’d have clear skies locally; 2) the LunaSolCal app to get the time and azimuth of moonrise; 3) Software Bisque’s TheSky software to see what would be where in the sky during the time I wanted to observe; and 4) Google Earth for geographic details of the Socorro area.

After checking all these sources, I determined that the constellation Perseus lined up well with the north end of the canyon, the galactic core portion of the Milky Way lined up well with the south end of the canyon, and that the east wall of the canyon was high enough to do a darn good job of blocking the Moon from view for an hour or more after it rose. In case you are wondering, yes, I go through this much checking and more when planning a photographic outing.

We dragged our collection of camera gear and comfy lounge chairs not far into the south end of the canyon, and had our cameras set up to automatically shoot continuous long exposures by 10:30 pm. Now it was time to settle into the comfy chairs and start counting meteors! At first I faced north toward the radiant in Perseus and my colleague faced south toward the Sagittarius and Scorpius in the Milky Way, with the thought that by looking in two different directions we’d see more meteors between us. But when my colleague’s meteor count quickly rose far above mine, I abandoned the radiant and faced south toward the galactic core as well. I’m glad I did, as I saw a handful of bright meteors with long trails traversing the Milky Way over the next several hours, such as the one in the image below.

One of the brighter Perseid meteors we observed right before midnight on August 11, 2020. This is a composite image; the main image of the sky is a single 25-second exposure taken with a Nikon D850 at ISO 4000 with a Rokinon f/2.8 12mm linear fisheye lens at f/4. The canyon walls were lit several different times by the headlights of cars coming in to the parking lot at Box Canyon; the lit portions of those several images were layered into the main image to create the composite.

To make a long observing session story short, in spite of repeatedly being buzzed by bats (which elicited a few shrieks here and there), having headlights from several other late night visitors beamed into our optics, and eventually being almost totally clouded out, my colleague counted over 90 meteors over the four hours we were camped in the canyon. Not the best numbers, but not terrible either. Frankly, just sitting outside under our reasonably dark skies in Socorro and enjoying the twinkling jewels of the night was more than enough for me!

If you have a story to share about your Perseid experience, we’d love to hear from you! Please post it below in the comments section. If you have a photo you’d be willing to share, please post it in the comments of this Facebook post!

M. Colleen Gino, MRO Assistant Director of Outreach and Communications

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The Messier Catalogue: The Masterpiece in the Mess

Once again we get to hear from MRO Outreach Assistant Shelbi Etscorn!

Have you ever searched for something in a cluttered purse or backpack and found that your hands seemed to be predisposed to grab every object except the one you’re looking for? You dig and dig, and your impatience grows with every passing second. If you’re like me, your frustration and agitation will eventually lead to you pulling out items one by one just to get them out of the way while you focus on finding the one thing you’re looking for. For most of us, the outcome of this labor is simply the retrieval of the object in question and perhaps a sense that you might want to consider cleaning out your bag. But when French astronomer, Charles Messier, applied this same concept to his hunt for comets, he ended up creating one of the most famous lists of astronomical objects ever compiled.

During the 17th century, Messier became the first astronomer to dedicate himself wholly to searching the night sky for comets. It proved to be a pursuit he was very adept at, earning him the title of the Comet Ferret by King Louis XV.

M 31, the Andromeda Galaxy

While scanning the sky searching for new apparitions, Messier came across the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant in the constellation Taurus. His excitement at finding what he initially mistook as a comet, quickly turned to frustration when he realized his error. To avoid being hoodwinked again, Messier jotted down the location of the object. He was effectively pulling the Crab Nebula out of the night sky and setting it to the side so it would not disturb his quest, much like the clutter pulled out of the bag.

It wasn’t until Messier added his third entry to his list of objects to disregard, that he began to actively search for these objects in the same way he had previously searched for comets. What he once saw as a mess was quickly becoming his masterpiece.

M42, The Orion Nebula

By 1771, Messier had compiled a list of 45 objects that had been discovered by himself and by his contemporaries. This initial catalogue was published in 1774 in the journal of the French Academy of Sciences.

By 1780, the catalogue had grown to include 80 objects.

By 1781, Messier published his final version which held 103 celestial objects.

The Messier catalogue as it is known today contains 110 objects. After his death, astronomers were guided by Messier’s notes to find the final seven contributions to the catalogue, the most recent of which wasn’t added until 1967. Among the catalogue can be found examples of all five types of deep-sky objects: diffuse nebulae, planetary nebulae, open clusters, globular clusters, and galaxies.

M45, The Pleiades

While Messier’s catalogue only includes objects visible from the European latitudes (being the objects which Messier could observe), it is still an extremely popular list for amateur astronomers and researchers alike owing to the fact that all of these objects are among the brightest, nearest, and most easily found objects in the sky. Messier was able to find them all using a 4-inch refracting telescope. Today, even basic telescopes available to amateur sky enthusiasts are capable of observing these objects with great detail.

Because of this, they have become some of the most popular objects observed during star parties, shot by astrophotographers, and researched by scientists. Even if you know very little about astronomy, chances are you’ve heard of at least one of these objects: The Andromeda Galaxy, the Orion Nebula, the Pleiades, and the Whirlpool Galaxy just to name a few. All of the heavy hitters of the astronomical world make the list. It reads like the who’s who of astronomical objects.

M20, the Trifid Nebula, and M8, the Lagoon Nebula

The next time you look up at the night sky, take a look at Messier’s catalogue and see if you can’t find a few. You’ll inevitably find yourself looking at some of the most beautiful objects in the night sky. The story of Messier and his catalogue is an excellent reminder to not become so focused on the task at hand that you are unable to see what beauty may lie in the road bumps along the way. You never know when the pebble in your shoe might prove to be gold. Unfortunately, at the time of writing this, the clutter found in the mayhem of my purse remains: clutter. ­­­

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Catch a Falling Star

Or at least observe a few…That’s right, it’s time for the annual Perseid meteor shower, whom most agree puts on the best show for those of us in the northern hemisphere. The Perseids are predicted to peak on August 11 – 12. This year the celestial light show may be somewhat subdued due to the nearly last quarter Moon rising not long after the radiant of the shower in the constellation Perseus. Many of the fainter meteors will be lost in the glare of the Moon, but one should still see plenty of bright meteors, up to 50 an hour, and maybe even a fireball or two.

An annual meteor shower is one that occurs every year over the same period of time in a well-defined area of the sky. In the case of the Perseids, the meteors appear to come from the constellation Perseus. Meteor showers are named after the constellation that the radiant appears in, the radiant being the point in the sky in which the meteors appear to originate from.

Perseid meteor.

Meteors are little bits of debris (ranging in size from a grain of sand to a small pebble) left behind by comets and asteroids that strike the Earth’s atmosphere and burn up in a fiery streak of light. On any given night and depending upon your observing conditions, you can expect to see a handful of meteors coming from random directions in the sky, called sporadic meteors. Annual meteor showers occur when the Earth passes through the trail of debris left behind in the orbital path of a comet. The Perseids are from Comet Swift-Tuttle, a periodic comet that passes through our neighborhood every 133 years.

The brightness of a meteor depends both upon its size and the speed at which it passes through our atmosphere, with speeds ranging from 25,000 to 160,000 mph. Since the range of sizes of a meteor is pretty small, less than 1 to 2 grams on average, the kinetic energy the particle has due to its speed is the dominant factor in how bright it will appear. The flash we see from Earth is due to the tiny piece of debris transferring its energy to atmospheric atoms along its path as it travels through the thermosphere (the meteoric region lies about 50 to 75 miles in altitude). This long, thin column of excited atoms, the meteor trail, is usually less than several feet in diameter but can be dozens of miles long.

The best time to look for Perseids is after midnight into the early morning hours of Wednesday, August 12. The sky map above shows the location of the radiant at 1:00 AM MDT for our location here in Socorro, New Mexico. Not a night owl? No problem! You can start your search as soon as it gets dark; set yourself up in a comfy lounge chair, look toward the northwest, and you will likely catch a glimpse of a falling star.

M. Colleen Gino, MRO Assistant Director of Outreach and Communications

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Close Encounter of the Moon-Mars Kind

On Sunday, August 9, some fortunate folks in dozens of cities spread across South America will have the opportunity to witness a relatively rare occurrence as the planet Mars slips behind one side of the Moon and reappears on the other side about an hour-and-a-quarter later. In reality it’s not Mars playing hide and seek, the Moon is moving between us and Mars as it travels along its orbital path; this is known as a lunar occultation.

Lunar occultations of stars happen fairly frequently, but planetary lunar occultations are relatively few and far between. Unfortunately, those of us in the northern hemisphere won’t see this particular planetary occultation, but we will see a stunningly close encounter of the Moon and Mars with only about 1° separating the pair at our location in Socorro, New Mexico. The sky chart below shows this duo high in the sky toward the south about an hour before sunrise, but you can start observing any time after midnight Saturday night/Sunday morning. While you’re at it, you may catch a glimpse of a few Perseid meteors, which are heading toward their peak on August 11-12 (more on that later).

The next lunar occultation of Mars will occur on October 3, but once again it will only be visible at select locations in the southern hemisphere; we in the northern hemisphere will see another close encounter with about a 2° separation between the Moon and Mars. However, many of us in the southern US including parts of New Mexico, will be treated to a stellar lunar occultation on November 9 in the early morning hours, when the Moon will occult a star in the constellation Leo, Eta Leonis. For details on this and other stellar and planetary occultations, visit the International Occultation Timing Association (IOTA) website.

M. Colleen Gino, MRO Assistant Director of Outreach and Communications

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Link Me Up, Elon!

By this time, you’ve likely heard about the SpaceX Starlink satellites, if only due to the great concern being voiced by both professional and amateur astronomers that the night sky will never be the same. Over the next decade, Starlink plans to launch 12,000 satellites into low Earth orbit for the purpose of providing high-speed internet everywhere on Earth. That’s great news for those of us in rural areas like Socorro, New Mexico, who deal with incredibly poor internet service, but not-so-great news for those of us who observe the night sky.

Video of Starlink satellites from one of the first launches, taken by MROI staff member Dylan Etscorn. Click on the image to play the video.

Currently, there are 2,666 operational satellites orbiting the Earth (Union of Concerned Citizens). Anyone who has watched the night sky for long has likely seen a satellite or two passing overhead, and those of us who image the night sky will occasionally capture the streak of a satellite as it passes through the field of view. With an additional 12,000 satellites in orbit, the chances of a satellite photo-bombing one’s image increases dramatically. Add to that another 30,000 satellites, which SpaceX is in the process of getting approval for, and one begins to wonder if it will be possible to take an image without a satellite passing through. SpaceX/Starlink founder Elon Musk isn’t overly concerned with this prospect, as he is reported to be of the opinion that all astronomical observing should be done by orbiting telescopes anyway. Yo, love your forward thinking, dude! Can my beloved Takahashi refractor hitch a ride on one of your satellites by any chance?

Moreover, SpaceX isn’t the only company chasing the golden goose of providing global high-speed internet via satellites; OneWeb Satellites plans to deploy up to 900 satellites into low Earth orbit with the same goal, and Amazon’s founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is developing Project Kuiper, a constellation of 3,236 satellites for high-speed broadband connectivity. It could get pretty crowded up there!

SpaceX addressed the concern of Starlink satellites ruining astronomical imaging early on by using an experimental coating on one of the satellites to reduce its reflectivity, and a deployable sun visor on another satellite to block sunlight from reflecting off the antenna surfaces. All 58 satellites of the next batch, whose launch window starts tomorrow, August 7 at about 1 AM EDT, are equipped with the sun visor. Musk has shown at least some level of sensitivity to the concerns of the astronomical community about the negative impact that thousands of shiny satellites swarming above us will have on Earth-based observations.

At this point there are 538 Starlink satellites in orbit, soon to be 596 if tomorrow’s scheduled launch takes place as planned. This number is enough for Starlink to offer a beta version of its internet connectivity to the USA and Canada before the end of this year. Of course I signed up immediately upon hearing this news, but unfortunately the service will be only available to higher latitude locations in the US. You can sign up to be a beta tester on their website.

If you’re interested in trying to catch a glimpse of Starlink satellites, refer to the website Heavens Above. Here you can find visibility details on all of the satellites from all of the launches calculated for your location. The most interesting time to view them is within the first few days of launch, as they are still close together and appear as a string of lights in motion rather than a single point of light, as in the video above.

Love ’em or hate ’em, it looks like Starlink satellites are here to stay. While I might get a little cranky when I have to throw out a perfectly good astrophoto due to some unsightly streaks of unwanted light, the prospect of affordable high-speed internet availability is awfully appealing!

M. Colleen Gino, MRO Assistant Director of Outreach and Communications

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Situational Awareness

A few days ago I told you about one of my favorite apps for Sun and Moon data, LunaSolCal (found at the bottom of July 30th article). Today I’d like to share a few more of my favorite apps and websites that I find extremely useful, especially when observing the sky.

One of the first things I look at when planning an observing session is the weather. There are many excellent weather web sites and apps out there; you probably already have your own favorite. I most frequently refer to Weather Underground for general weather forecasts. You can see anything from hourly forecasts to 10 days into the future. In addition to the usual temperature, cloud cover, humidity, wind speed and direction, and precipitation data, they have pollen, air quality and UV Index data, and more. The site does have annoying ads, but for a few bucks a year you can access the site ad-free.

My other go-to weather site is NOAA’s National Weather Service. Along with the usual weather data you can find radar maps, satellite imagery, and fire weather predictions. In particular I’m a big fan of their SKYWARN Program, in which the NWS partners with local emergency managers to hold classes for the general public in which they receive storm spotting training. These storm spotters send their reports in to the NWS, supplying valuable data on severe storms. If you’re interested in participating in the SKYWARN program, check out this video on YouTube.

Another website I refer to constantly is ClearDarkSky. Aimed at amateur and professional astronomers alike, this site uses a numerical weather model to predict hourly percentage of cloud cover for over 5300 observatories and observing sites in North America. In my experience this site is very accurate.

This discussion wouldn’t be complete without a shout-out to the Magdalena Ridge Observatory’s weather web page. You can see current weather conditions at the MRO Interferometer’s central weather tower and the 2.4m telescope. You can find out information on our weather stations and view weather statistics over various periods of time, and see our Environmental Monitoring Systems’ current data (this ties in with Shelbi’s blog post this past Monday). If you’re tired of looking at charts and graphs, take a look at our live webcams!

Since I’m a lightning and storm photographer as well as an astrophotographer, I use a couple of different apps to track storms, NOAA Weather Radar (free) and RadarScope ($9.99). Both of these apps display high resolution radar data as well as severe thunderstorm and flash flood warnings. My favorite web site for viewing lightning activity is Real Time Lighting Maps, where you can see the location of lightning strikes in real time for locations worldwide. One of my favorite features of this site is the thunder predictor — when a lightning strike occurs a little red dot appears on the map, then immediately a circle appears around and concentric with the dot and starts growing larger and larger until it fades away. This growing circle shows the thunder sound front, so you can see on the map when you’re going to hear the thunder at your location. How cool is that!

That’s it for my favorite situational awareness apps, as I call them. Next up are the sky mapping apps and websites. I have so many of those I use that the subject deserves its own blog post, so stay tuned for that in the near future! Meanwhile, I’d love to hear about your favorite apps and websites, please share in the comments below!

M. Colleen Gino, MRO Assistant Director of Outreach and Communications

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The Road to the Ridge

Up to this point all of the blog posts for Astro Daily have been written by yours truly. But I thought it was high time that you get a break from me and hear from another member of the MRO staff. Today’s article is written by MRO Outreach Assistant Shelbi Etscorn. Thanks for your contribution, Shelbi!
M. Colleen Gino, MRO Assistant Director of Outreach and Communications

Driving up the long and winding road to the Ridge that serves as home to the Magdalena Ridge Observatory (MRO), it’s hard to keep one’s nose a respectable distance away from any windows that look down over the rolling hills and plummeting cliff faces. Nestled within the strikingly wild and untamed face of the Magdalena Mountains is the well maintained road made of winding switchbacks and light dirt that contrast the dark trees nearly as much as its manufactured appearance contrasts the untamed landscape that surrounds it.

It may be easy to not give much thought to those switchbacks when preoccupied with the natural beauty of the mountains, but maintaining the road to keep its treacherousness at a manageable level is no small feat.

MROI staff drive the road every single day to make sure it’s in the best condition for anyone venturing to the mountain’s peak. In the winter, many hours are spent clearing the road of snow and ice. This task isn’t only necessary from a practical standpoint, it’s a contractual obligation of the MRO.

The site on which all of the MRO’s telescopes are built sits right in the middle of the Cibola National Forest. In exchange for the use of the public land, it was agreed the road would always be maintained by MRO staff. Keeping its promise, part of the Observatory’s staff includes team members who bear the responsibility of keeping our road safe and accessible for as many days of the year as possible. A job that they have grown incredibly adept at! No one could argue the beauty of the mountain, but an equal share of praise and awe is owed to the road and the men and women who work hard to keep it a functioning part of our Observatory! If you’re still having trouble believing roads can be beautiful, take a second look at the mountain image above. Each colored line is actually a bird’s eye view of the road that leads up to observatories around the world.

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Splashdown

Today Crew Dragon will make history once again as it returns to Earth after a two-month stay at the International Space Station. Descent is scheduled for 1:51 PM EDT, and planned splashdown off the coast of Pensacola, FL, is expected at 2:48 PM EDT. Refer to this NASA webpage for the latest updated information.

You can watch the live stream of activities leading up to and following the descent here:

https://youtu.be/9O7qOxEpOVU

You can find more information about Crew Dragon in one of my previous blog posts.

On This Day in History:

Forty-nine years ago today we were treated to a space flight first, when the Apollo 15 lunar liftoff was televised. Apollo astronauts James Irwin and David Scott spent three days on the Moon conducting experiments, collecting 77kg worth of lunar samples, and exploring the lunar surface in the Lunar Rover.

The camera that recorded the liftoff was mounted on the Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle some 100 meters from the Lunar Module “Falcon”. Of the four lunar rovers that were built, three were left on the Moon by Apollo 15, Apollo 16, and Apollo 17.

If you would like to see the location of the Apollo 15 lunar landing site, refer to the Moon image in my previous blog post here.

M. Colleen Gino, MRO Assistant Director of Outreach and Communications