The moon, here overexposed to show the corona as it really looked to the eye, put on a fine show last night as high cirrocumulus clouds passed over. The tiny droplets or ice crystals in the clouds diffracted the light into a series of colored disks. Details: 35mm lens at f/4.5, ISO 400 and 1 1/2 second exposure. Photo: Bob King

Last night I spent some time between passing clouds looking at the nova in Eridanus and the moon. When it became clear that the clouds were gaining the upper hand, I stored away the scope and went inside to warm up. My daughter Maria arrived home a half hour later and casually mentioned that there was nice ring around the moon. I walked downstairs and opened the door for a look. WOW! A bullseye of colored rings centered on the moon made me forget both the temperature and my coat. No matter. I quickly attached camera to tripod and took a few pictures as the rings expanded from two to three and even four. It was such a beautiful sight.

This corona around the sun is distorted into a spiral shape. Coronas shine an iridescent blue-green on the inside of the rings and red on the outside. Credit: Andrew Kirk

What we saw was a corona, or series of small concentric rings of color caused by the diffraction of light by millions of microscopic droplets or ice crystals in the clouds. When the droplets or crystals are all very small and nearly uniform in size you get mulitple-ringed and vividly-colored coronas like last night’s. Coincidentally, Andrew Kirk of Bishop, Calif. had just sent me his photo of an unusual, distorted corona he nicknamed "the white hole". Since droplets can vary in size and uniformity across a moving cloud, coronas will sometimes look temporarily squished or stretched.

Although the full moon will be near the Seven Sisters star cluster tonight, you probably won’t see them because of glare. Easier to find will be Aldebaran, Taurus’ brightest star, and Capella in Auriga the Charioteer. Created with Stellarium.

Tonight’s moon is the first of two full moons in December. The actual moment of full-as-it-gets happens at 1:30 tomorrow morning (Central time). Because this full moon occurs at the very opening of December and the time between any two similar lunar phases is 29.5 days,  we get a bonus "blue moon" at month’s end on December 31st.

Moonrise today is nearly an hour before sunset but tomorrow the moon will rise only about 10 minutes after sunset (for Duluth-Superior and region). Since moonlight and twilight balance out nicely around sunset, this is a great time to photograph a moonrise while including an interesting scene in the foreground. Even if all you own is a simple point-and-shoot camera, you should be able to get a few hand-held pictures of the nearly full moon. Find a place with a view of the horizon to the northeast to catch it early. If you wait too long, the moon’s light will overpower everything else and you’ll record little more than a bright blip against a black sky. You can use the camera’s automatic setting but also try a series of different exposures on manual to get just the effect you want. Check the monitor on the back of the camera to make sure you’re in the ballpark.

Full moons in the winter months pass through the constellations of Taurus and Gemini, the same ones the sun occupied six months ago during summer. Winter full moons follow the same high path across the night sky that the sun did. Expect moonlit landscapes to be considerably brighter now than during the warmer months. Throw in some snowcover — which we sadly still don’t have — and you’ve got a photon extravaganza.

This week Venus becomes difficult if not impossible to see from mid-northern latitudes while Mars becomes the third brightest "star" in the nighttime sky, surpassed only by Sirius and Canopus. Illustration: Bob King

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, a storm that’s been around for at least 340 years, is some 2 1/2 times the size of the Earth. Hi-resolution photo here. Credit: NASA

Around 6:30 p.m. Central time this Monday evening Jupiter’s Great Red Spot will face us directly. But only for a little while. Jupiter’s day is just shy of 10 hours, the shortest in the solar system. Any feature we face one moment will drift noticeably westward over an hour’s time. Of all the features on the king of the planets, the Great Red Spot (GRS) is the best-known and most photogenic. This Cyclopean red eye spans more than two Earths and towers five miles above the surrounding clouds.

Polyphemus, one of the ancient, one-eyed cyclopses from Greek mythology (left), and the planet Jupiter with its Great Red Spot. The spot will face us just like you see it in the photo tonight around 6:30 p.m. Credit: Painting by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein; Jupiter photo by Christopher Go.

Jupiter’s big eye is a gigantic high pressure storm system similar to a hurricane on Earth but unlike a hurricane, it doesn’t break apart and fade away when it hits land. No doubt that’s part of the reason it’s been around so long — there’s no land on Jupiter, just atmosphere. Another reason for its longevity may have to do with heat rising from the planet’s interior. Measurements of infrared (heat) light emitted by the planet show that Jupiter’s radiating twice as much heat as it receives from the sun. Its core sizzles at nearly 45,000 degrees Fahrenheit, more than four times hotter than the sun’s surface. This residual heat creates convection currents in the atmosphere that may well keep the spot going and going and going.

Long ago when Jupiter formed, the enormous bulk of its gases were compressed by gravity, and if you compress a lot of gas into a smaller space its gets hotter. Billions of years later that energy is still leaking out. Had Jupiter put on 100 times more weight than it did, its interior would have been hot enough to initiate nuclear fusion. Instead of a big planet out there, we’d see a small star.

Notice the color of the spot. Jupiter’s atmosphere is about 86 percent hydrogen and 14 percent helium gases with pinches of ammonia, methane, water and a few other compounds. Ammonia freezes into crystals in the 200 below temperatures in Jupiter’s cloud tops, creating the parallel zones of white clouds that cross the planet. The darker belts are lower in the atmosphere than the zones and composed of smelly ammonium hydrosulfide crystals plus additional chemicals that give them a distinctive sand-color. No one knows for certain but astronomers suspect the ammonia clouds in the Great Red Spot are colored by exotic compounds containing phosphorus and sulfur. Nature’s palette is like the chemistry set I had as a kid.

This animation of Jupiter’s cloud movements is composed of multiple photos taken during Voyager I’s approach to the planet in 1979. Credit: NASA/JPL

Like a chamaleon, the red spot changes color. Back in the late 1960s it was brick red and easy to see in my small refracting telescope. Lately it’s been more subdued, varying between pale tan to peach to pink. If you do seek the spot tonight, it might look like nothing more than a missing section of the belt in which it’s embedded — at first glance. Crank up the magnification if the air is steady and you should be able to see a very pale pink eye staring back. The spot is located in an open area called the Red Spot Hollow that shows up nicely in Chris Go’s photo at top. I use a power of 100x to 200x to see it best.

Jupiter’s rapid rotation stretches its clouds into alternating belts and zones. Credit: NASA

The outer perimeter of the spot rotates around in four to six days while things are relatively calm at its center. Powerful jet stream winds blasting up to 375 miles per hour race along in opposite directions on either side of it. Matter of fact, all the belts and zones you see in the photo above are shaped by alternating east and west winds in Jupiter’s atmosphere. If you were in an airplane flying from north to south across the planet, every time you’d cross from a zone to a belt you’d encounter hurricane-strength winds blowing due west. Cross from a belt to a zone and you’d suddenly be sent flying due east. All this extreme weather traces its origin to heat bubbling up from the planet’s interior combined with its rapid rotation.

Jupiter is such an alien world of currents and clouds — a meteorologist’s paradise.

When I first met my wife she owned a yellow, rusting Chevy Nova. What a beast of a car. It’s name meant "new" but that was once upon a time. Now it’s gone and perhaps enjoying a second life as a series of bolts in a roadway guardrail. In the world of astronomy, novas pop up all the time and are reborn anew over millenia. Let me explain.

Artist conception of a white dwarf star — buried in the center of the disk at right — pulling matter off a close companion star. Credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

In the space of just a month, three novas or "new stars" have appeared in the sky, starting with a nova in Sagittarius the Archer in late October, one in Scutum the Shield in early November and a third in Eridanus the River this past Wednesday. Novas originate in very close pairs of stars that orbit one another anywhere from a day up to 300 days. The closer stars are to each other, the faster they orbit their center of gravity. It’s similar to the planets — Mercury, which is closest to the sun, travels fastest around it. The stars that partner to create the novas are so close that no telescope has yet to resolve any of them into a pair. We know there are two there because astronomers can see their individual light fingerprints in an instrument called a spectrograph.

Plenty of stars are doubles but what makes novas interesting is who gets paired up with whom. In a nova, a sunlike star revolves around a superdense, Earth-sized star called a white dwarf. As the sunlike star evolves, it expands and sheds hydrogen gas into space. The gravity of the white dwarf pulls the gas toward it, but instead of hitting the star directly, the hydrogen forms a spinning disk around the dwarf. Gas from the disk then funnels down to the star’s fiercely hot surface where it’s compressed and heated. If enough hydrogen gets packed onto the dwarf’s surface it can reach a critical temperature and ignite in a thermonuclear explosion. A natural H bomb as it were.

The explosion and expanding debris cloud (right) suddenly appear in the night sky as a bright "new star" where there was none before. Well, not none. While no one may have noticed the pair earlier in its normal, faint state, astronomers sift through old photos of the region after the explosion and can usually identify the original star. Novas flare anywhere from 1500 to more than a million times brighter during an explosion than in their quiet states. Back in 1975, a nova appeared in the Northern Cross that was as bright as one of the stars in the Big Dipper. Its presence noticeably altered the outline of the constellation.

I thoroughly enjoy looking at novas because they really do pop out of nowhere. Three in a month’s a cornucopia. During an average year about 10 novas go boom in our Milky Way and most are discovered by amateur astronomers. While the majority don’t cross naked eye threshold, you can usually spot them in binoculars. Right now Nova Scuti (SKEW-tee) shines at magnitude 7.5 so it’s a little more than one level below naked eye brightness but definitely viewable in 7-10x binoculars if you know just where to look. Nova Eridani (eh-RID-en-ee) is currently at 8.4 while Nova Sagittarii #4 is too low in the southwestern sky for easy viewing in mid-northern latitudes. 

To find Nova Scuti, face the southwest as soon as the sky gets dark, around 5:45 p.m. Jupiter and the bright stars Altair and Vega form a slightly bent line across a wide swath of sky from south to west. Drop almost two fists below Altair to spot a pair of dimmer stars that form the Eagle’s Tail then use the map below with binoculars to identify the nova. Maps created with Stellarium.

Nova Scuti will look like an ordinary star about one binocular field below the Eagle’s Tail. More advanced observers may want to try estimating the nova’s brightness using the more detailed finder chart here.

All novas occur in binary stars so the sun will never "go nova" or supernova since it only the well-behaved planets for companions. Both stars in each nova pair survive the explosion intact and gradually fade back to obscurity over a period of weeks to months and even years. Then the process of loading up the white dwarf’s disk begins anew. Astronomers believe all novas recur on timescales of many thousands of years. Unlike my wife’s Nova, the stellar versions will one day roar to life again.

This map shows the location of Nova Eridani just to the right (west) and above the bright star Rigel in Orion the Hunter. Detailed finder chart. Novas shouldn’t be confused with supernovas. Both supergiant stars and white dwarfs can become supernovas but the explosion process is different and the result is the spectacular destruction of the star.

(Photos above: Nova Eridani photo courtesy of Joseph Brimacombe; photo of debris cloud around nova FH Serpentis taken with the Hubble Space Telescope)

The waxing gibbous moon is surrounded by the Christmas lights of Bentleyville last night. Photo: Bob King

Last night I had to photograph a huge Christmas lighting display called Bentleyville set up along Duluth’s bayfront. If you’re reading this and live in the Duluth area, you’re probably already familiar with this 250,000 watt wonder. Many of the displays were very artful — my favorites were the tunnels of lights and an oreboat passing under a twinkly version of our most famous landmark, the Aerial Lift Bridge. Everybody was having a great time oo-ing and ah-ing at the lights while downing cookies and cocoa. Since the sky was clear, the moon and Jupiter were serendipitously included in the grand display. I even heard a dad say to his daughter "look, there’s the moo-oon!"

Like the rest of you, I’ve been bombarded with all this stuff about either the world ending or the start of a new harmonic convergence of consciousness in 2012. Apparently this was predicted by the ancient Mayans over a thousand years ago. Their calender, which had a starting date back before 3000 B.C., will turn up all zeroes like you car odometer on December 21, 2012. It’s similar to what happened when our calendar turned over to the year 2000. If I recall, the end of the world was forecast for that year, too. There have been thousands of instances in history when someone predicted world annihilation based upon manmade constructs like calendars or intepretations of ancient texts, and none have ever come to pass. We’re living proof of that. Back in the 1980s all the planets lined up, books were written and doom was forecast. Of course, nothing happened.

Then there’s the deal about the magnetic poles switching. While that’s not imminent, it’s happened several times over humanity’s history and we appear to be none the worse for it. How about the axis tipping the wrong way? No evidence. Not gonna happen.

The layout of the planets on the winter solstice in the year 2012. We’ve nothing to fear. Illustration: Bob King

The 2012 cult would have us believe the planets are lining up again on December 21 that year but a quick check with the planetarium program Stellarium shows them all over the solar system at that time. Even if they were, the cumulative gravitational influence would be so minute we’d never know it was happening. You may also hear about the sun lining up with the plane of the Milky Way galaxy. First, the midline of the Milky Way is not a precise position since no one knows exactly where the galaxy begins and ends. There are no sharp borders. Given that, the sun does cross the manmade construct of the galactic midline between 1980 and 2016, a healthy span of time, not a particular date. And the sun’s path never takes it in front of the galaxy’s center, a spot called Sagittarius A star. Even if it did, the effect of it would be similar to my car lining up with yours on the freeway. If that does happen, make a funny face.

The sun is one of about 400 billion stars in the galaxy. What careth Sagittarius A prime for a dwarf sun in an outer arm of the galaxy? So don’t worry about the supposed beam of radiation for good or ill that supposed to reach out from the center and alter life forever. Nowhere in modern or ancient Mayan astronomy is there evidence for such a thing.

This map shows the sun’s position at the winter solstice on December 21, 2012. Notice that it’s a healthy distance from lining up from the center of the Milky Way galaxy, also called Sagittarius A star. Created with Stellarium.

Sometimes I worry about our country and the rise of pseudoscience. In the case of 2012 it’s fueled by ignorance of the facts by some well-intentioned people, a doomsday movie and a few charlatans who are cashing in on our fears. What is it with people wanting the world to end? Are we looking for retribution, some kind of ultimate clean up of all that’s wicked with humanity? There are real disasters like supervolcanoes and asteroid strikes that would be a tremendous blows to civilization. They’ll come in their own time and likely not be preventable. The more we know about real disaster potential through science, not Mayan calendar mumbo-jumbo, the better chance more of us will survive. We have such an exaggerated view of our importance as Homo sapiens. Let’s face it, we’re just this wonderful, lovely, hapless bunch of living beings trying to make sense of why we’re here. We need humility as much as we need knowledge.

I’m human and get irrational and love disaster movies (yes, I plan on seeing 2012) but there are so many ways to get the facts these days there’s no excuse for repeating things that aren’t true. So if you’re feeling any anxiety about the year 2012, here’s a link that will take you to other links that hopefully will answer your questions if I haven’t. I realize I’m probably preaching to the choir but if you know someone worried about 2012 tell them it’ll all work out OK.

I leave you with a quote from writer and humorist James Thurber: "Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness."

Lyle Anderson of Duluth was at the ready with his camera when the double-pass of the ISS and Atlantis happened at 5:37 p.m. last night. As the shuttle program winds down, sightings like these will become increasingly rare. To view a gallery of NASA photos from the latest mission, click here. Credit: Lyle Anderson

It cleared just in time last night to see the International Space Station (ISS) closely followed by the much dimmer Atlantis space shuttle low in the southern sky. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the two that close together before. I caught the duo just in time but didn’t have have my camera with me. Good thing Lyle did.  Did you spot them?

Atlantis landed this morning at Cape Canaveral in Florida. Just five shuttle missions remain to complete the construction of the space station. After that, astronauts will travel there in capsule-style spaceships that NASA is currently building not only for transport to the ISS but also for traveling to the moon, Mars and asteroids. Since these won’t be ready until no sooner than 2015, we’ll be sharing rides with the Russians on their Soyuz capsule beginning sometime next year after the last shuttle mission. Japanese, Russian and European unmanned cargo ships will continue to fly food and supplies to the astronauts. Space has certainly become an international effort in the past 20 years. This is a most welcome development since it gives a greater share of humanity a stake in the exploration of universe.

The Spirit rover looked back from where it came to take this picture of its tracks in the Martian soil. The plan is to follow these tracks back out. The distance between left and right tracks is 3 feet. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA’s rover team has been working hard over the past week to free the Mars Spirit rover which is stuck in soft soil at a site called "Troy" on the planet Mars. Between Nov. 17 to 24, controllers commanded 8.1 feet of wheel spin on all operative wheels but only got 0.6 inch of forward progress and 0.4 inch of movement to the left. Not to mention 0.2 inch of sinkage. Plans call for another 8.2 feet of wheel spin during the Thanksgiving weekend. Let’s hope they can free this Spirit.

The Great Square of Pegasus is bright enough to see in moonlight although you may have to block the moon with you fist to clearly the lower left star in the square. Each side of the Great Square measures about one outstretched fist long. Created with Stellarium.

While we’ve looked at the Great Square of Pegasus on several occasions this season, it’s now high up and due south around 7:30 p.m. local time. Moonlight will both hinder (a bit) and help in finding the square if you haven’t had the opportunity to see it yet. As you gaze into that big empty space bounded by four stars, consider that there are dozens of galaxies visible in amateur telescopes there and hundreds in larger scopes. Yet thanks to the light of one modest moon, most all of them are impossible to see right now. Ah, the power of green cheese.

For small telescope users, Jupiter’s moon Io will cast a black, circular shadow on the planet’s pale cloudtops tonight from 6:36 p.m. to 8:52 p.m. Central time. The moon itself will be invisible in front of the planet until 7:36 p.m. when it re-appears along Jupiter’s western edge as a tiny "earring".

A favorite breakfast at Astro Bob’s home — egg in a nest. It was devoured by daughter Katherine moments after the photo was taken. Photo: Bob King

Egg in a nest. This breakfast has become a tradition in our home. Take a slice of bread, incise a two-inch hole in its center with the open end of a juice glass, heat up some butter in a pan, toss the bread in, crack an egg into the center and cook it up. Delicious.

I’ve been making these for my two girls for years. Even during their sullen moods and busy schedules as teenagers, an egg in the nest has always been welcome, a square of love delivered on a plate. On this Thanksgiving Day I’m glad for my daughters and happy to be in touch any way I can. If it means only an occasional breakfast, that will do for now.

This spectacular photo of Saturn was taken on October 23 in infrared light by the Cassini spacecraft in orbit about the planet. The 660-mile-wide moon Tethys (TEE-thiss) — which is out of the frame — casts its shadow on the cloudtops. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

I hope you’ll be enjoying food with family and friends today. While you’re relaxing, nature’s very own egg in a nest will be spinning at the furious rate of once every 10 hours. Composed of two parts — something round and something flat — Saturn reminds me of my girls’ favorite breakfast. I like to play a little mental game and try to think of something that’s always happening in the bigger world while I’m busy with a mundane task. Put your socks on in the morning and at the same time, black, sulfur-laden lava from a fresh volcanic eruption is spreading across the surface of Jupiter’s moon Io. As we pour gravy on our mashed potatoes today, a newborn star will just be sputtering to life in the Orion Nebula. Could the universe be any more wonderful?

Sunlight striking this interesting mushroom growth on a piece of
split oak creates a pattern of long, parallel shadows. Photo: Bob King

One of the reasons the photo of Saturn and Tethys is so appealing to the eye is because of sunlight striking at a very low angle from the side. The other week I was hauling split wood from one pile to another when I was stopped in my tracks by the sight of a mushroom on a log that happened to catch the glancing sunlight. Saturn’s rings and shadows came to mind immediately. I ran in to get the camera before the scene was overtaken by shade.

Tonight the 10-day-old moon will feature the 58-mile-diameter crater Copernicus, one of the most distinctive and spectacular lunar landmarks. For the same reason the mushrooms stood out, Copernicus will too. Low-angled, morning sunlight will highlight its details and depth, making it pop from the landscape. Copernicus was named for Nicholas Copernicus, the famous 16th century Polish astronomer who theorized that the sun, not the Earth, was at the center of the solar system.

The gibbous moon features the crater Copernicus tonight. Because of changing lunar perspective, the crater will be tipped up a little more toward the top of the moon tonight than when this photo was taken back in spring. Photo: Bob King

You won’t need anything more than seven-power binoculars to find the crater. Look along the curved edge of the lunar terminator, the line the separates day from night on the moon. You’ll see a a circle with an upraised rim like a bowl sitting out on an open plain. The asteroid that excavated Copernicus slammed into the moon some 800 million years ago, not a long time by moon standards. Most of the moon’s craters trace their origins back nearly four billion years. That makes Copernicus relatively fresh. It would be a long hike down from the crater’s rim, which stands nearly a half-mile above the surrounding lava plain to the floor more than two miles below the surface.

We’re grateful for what is both near and faraway –  have a happy Thanksgiving all!

The aurora near Saturn’s north pole moves from the nightside to the day side of the planet in these photos taken in early October and assembled into a movie. The spacecraft recorded the aurora in black and white but scientists colored it orange for clarity. No one knows for sure what color Saturn’s northern lights are. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Too cool! Yesterday afternoon NASA released the first visible light photographs of Saturn’s auroras. 472 photos taken over 81 hours were assembled into the movie above. The auroras on Saturn are located near the polar regions just as they are on Earth and move with the planet as it rotates. These flared up at 74 degrees north, about the same latitude as the Canadian Arctic, Siberia and far northern Scandinavia. Saturnian auroras show the same tall curtains and rapid movements as Earth’s, only Saturn’s reach 746 miles high, making them the tallest auroras in the solar system.

A single image from the Cassini spacecraft of the planet’s nightside and auroral curtains. Saturn’s lights are sparked by high speed subatomic particles (electrons, protons) funneled from the sun and Saturn’s vicinity to the planet’s polar regions. When they smack the upper atmosphere they excite the air molecules to glow. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

The moon, Jupiter and star Fomalhaut (FO-mal-howt) form a triangle in the south tonight. The map shows the sky around 6 p.m. local time as you look south. Created with Stellarium.

If you go out tonight on planet Earth, you’ll see the waxing gibbous moon high up in the southeastern sky during the evening hours. You can use the moon and Jupiter to complete a triangle that includes Fomalhaut, the lonely bright star in the southern sky in Piscis Austrinus the Southern Fish. Tonight and tomorrow night also afford the chance to see the International Space Station (ISS) and Atlantis space shuttle chasing each other in formation across the sky. The shuttle undocked from the ISS very early this morning and will be near it through Thursday night. Weather permitting, Atlantis will land in Florida on Friday.

Below are the times when you can see the ISS. While the shuttle will be nearby, I won’t have exact times until later today, so please check back. Otherwise go out a few minutes early and stick around for a couple minutes after the station passes by. For specific times for your city, click here and type in your zipcode.

(UPDATE 8 p.m.: Atlantis is closely following the ISS — about 1 second of time apart.)

* Tonight Weds. Nov. 25 starting at 5:15 p.m. Central time. This will be a brilliant, high pass from northwest to southeast.
* Thursday Nov. 26 at 5:38 p.m. A lower pass across the south. The two will both pass below Jupiter at 5:42.

Four of the eight bird constellations in the night sky. Their creature outlines and constellation stars are shown. Columba is also visible from mid-northern latitudes well below Orion. Created with Stellarium.

Many of us will be sitting down to a large, cooked bird tomorrow so it seemed appropriate to go turkey hunting in the celestial sphere. Unfortunately turkeys are not represented in any of the 88 constellations but birds still abound among the stars. In the northern hemisphere, we have familiar Aquila the Eagle and Cygnus the Swan of the Summer Triangle.The southern hemisphere claims even more flying creatures including the four depicted above plus Grus the Crane, Apus the Bird of Paradise and even a flying fish called Volans.

As we enjoy Thanksgiving dinner with family and friends, a menagerie of winged creatures will be flying circles around our heads.

A raindrop on a small crabapple in downtown Duluth acts like a lens to
focus an upside-down image of the Radisson Hotel yesterday. The apple
is just a half-inch across. The lens in our eye also flips images upside-down
just like the raindrop but our brain corrects the view so we perceive
the world right-side up. Photo: Bob King

These examples show a dog, lizard and hand in visible or regular light (left) and infrared light, also called IR. The cold-blooded lizard gives off less IR and appears blue while warm-blooded creatures glow yellow and red with heat. Credit: NASA

It’s always about the atmosphere getting in the way for astronomers. The air above is transparent to rays of visible light. All the yellows, greens, blues and reds of the world make it through the atmosphere with ease. Unfortunately many other forms of light, including the infrared radiation given off by stars, gas clouds and the sun, try to get through to our ground telescopes but can’t. Water vapor in the lower atmosphere absorbs IR like a sponge, leaving precious little to reach the surface. If you recall from our stovetop heat discussion last week, we sense infrared light as heat. Even when the stove coil goes dark, invisible IR warns us to still keep our distance.

The Boeing 747 containing the infrared telescope. Credit: NASA/Jim Ross

Next year, NASA hopes to fly the first mission of its Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy or SOFIA for short. Tucked within the rear fuselage of a Boeing 747 is a 2.5 meter (98.4 inches) telescope with optics that will collect and focus IR light. The plane will cruise the stratosphere at 45,000 feet, above most of the veil of water vapor in the air that absorbs precious infrared light.

Planets form within dusty disks around stars but ordinary visible light telescopes like the ones most astronomers use can’t see through that dust to see what’s going on inside. With SOFIA, astronomers will be able peer into the disks to find out not only what they’re made of but how they form. This may help us understand how and where both Earthlike and the larger, more common Jupiter-sized planets originate.

Have telescope, will travel. The German-built scope is stowed aboard the modified 747 and contains a 98-inch mirror. Credit: NASA/Tom Tschida

You might think that a plane would be the last place to set up a telescope but SOFIA will fly in the relatively stable air of the stratosphere unlike the rest of us who spend our flight hours in the more turbulent troposphere. The telescope’s mirror is also physically isolated from the plane and kept from vibrating by a set of shock absorbers.

Material for this article was taken from this  NASA press release. Click the link to read more.

A photo taken by Cassini on Saturday shows plumes of water vapor and other materials shooting out into space from the south polar region of Enceladus. The icy surface shows lots of crinkles and ridges. Temperature at the pole is 307 degrees below. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

The Cassini spacecraft just completed its 8th flyby of the Saturn’s lively, geyser-spewing moon Enceladus this past Saturday. Zipping just 1,000 miles above the south polar region, Cassini took some very exciting photos of plumes of water vapor blasting from fissures called "tiger stripes" in the moon’s crust. Scientists are still puzzling why Enceladus, so far away and so cold, is so active. Current speculation is that heat from the decay of radioactive elements might create pockets of pressurized liquid water beneath the surface which then vent into space. Or perhaps Saturn’s gravitational tug on the moon makes it flex so much it warms up the inside.

Scientists now have a treasure trove of new data to untangle. Good thing. It will soon be winter at Enceladus’ south pole and the beginning of a three-year-long night.

I leave you with a bizarre but true story about Galileo’s finger (right) and the discovery of two more Galilean digits. Three fingers were cut from Galileo’s hand (and a tooth removed from his lower jaw) in March 1737 when his body was moved from a temporary monument to its resting place in Florence, Italy. Since 1905, two of the fingers and a tooth had gone lost. The third finger was secured and has been on display at the Museum of the History of Science in Florence.

Recently the other fingers and tooth turned up at an auction. The buyer took them to the museum where they’ll be part of a new display slated to open in March 2010.The fingers that were removed appear to be the ones he used to hold a pen. Removing body parts as relics was a tradition associated with the Catholic Church and saints. In Galileo’s case, his mind-bending discoveries enlarged our view of the universe and made him a "secular saint" of sorts.

Read more about how Galileo still keeps his fingers busy in this CNN article.

A striking wide angle photo of the aurora borealis over the mountains near Troms, Norway last week. Details: Nikon D700 camera, 16mm lens at f/2.8 with a 15-second time exposure at ISO2500. Credit: Knut Sandaker

So did you see the aurora this weekend? It was spectacular … if you lived in northern Norway, up above the Arctic Circle among the fjords. Even during low times in the sun’s cycle such as the one we’re in now, there’s almost always some aurora present at high latitudes in the Arctic. Places like Troms, Fairbanks and Churchill, Manitoba sit under the auroral oval, a huge glowing donut of permanent aurora centered on the north magnetic pole of the Earth. There’s also a southern version over Antarctica. If you live very close to or under the oval and it’s night,  you’ll see aurora nightly for at least several months in a row. Ovals are the regions where particles streaming from the sun connect with Earth’s magnetic field and get channeled down into the atmosphere. There they strike molecules of oxygen and nitrogen causing them to glow green and red in great arcs and rays we see as the aurora borealis.

This photo was taken in ultraviolet light by an Earth orbiting satellite and shows the northern hemisphere auroral oval. It crosses through Hudson Bay north of Lake Superior. At top, you can see that northwestern Norway also lies under the oval. Once night returns to the Arctic in fall, skywatchers there eagerly anticipate the northern lights. Photo: NASA

When the sun is much more active than it is now, streams of high-speed, energetic electrons and protons come our way and cook the upper atmosphere with so much energy that the oval expands southward. That’s when it becomes visible in Duluth. During really terrific solar storms the oval can expand to very low latitudes. In 1958 an aurora was actually seen in Mexico City, a very rare event. Click this link to see a video of the oval in action.

You can see what the oval’s doing anytime by clicking on NASA’s POES Auroral Activity site and seeing its current shape and extent (shown in yellow). For instance, if it’s nighttime and the oval’s edge is just north of Lake Superior, you should at least see an arc or two of aurora in the northern sky. If it’s directly over Duluth, then get yourself outside right now. At right is a satellite picture of the auroral oval taken around 10 a.m. Central time today. Notice that it’s snugged up pretty tight around the magnetic pole and far from Duluth. If you’re in northern Siberia however you’re probably getting a very nice display.

As most of us in the northern latitudes wait patiently for the lights to return, here are several more wonderful photos to enjoy thanks to our Norwegian counterparts.

Light reflects over Skarsfjorden near the city of Tromso, Norway late last week. The view is to the west. "Lately there has been much more aurora activity than in years here, and I’m really looking forward for more to come," said Bernt Olsen, who took this photo with a Nikon D90 camera, 16mm lens at f/3.5 at ISO 2000 with a 25-second exposure. The silhouetted clouds are just beautiful. Credit: Bernt Olsen

Another eerie wide-angle photo of the aurora from Troms, Norway last week. Credit: Knut Sandaker

And before we wrap up, here’s the current planet updater for the week. Let’s hope we get back our clear skies soon!

Illustration: Bob King

This view shows the sky both tonight and Monday night around 5:30-6 p.m. local time. The waxing crescent will make a fine pairing with the planet Jupiter. Created with Stellarium.

Jupiter is once again in the spotlight thanks to the company of the thickening crescent moon. Sunday night you’ll be able to fit an outstretched fist between them but tomorrow night the moon will sit only a couple fingers above the planet. With your eyes drawn to the display, consider pointing your binoculars or a small telescope at both moon and planet. The terminator, the line dividing line between day and night on the moon, is richly saturated with craters at this phase while Jupiter’s moons will be strung out on either side of the planet.

With binoculars, you can see Jupiter’s four brigthest moons this evening and spot at least three tomorrow night (Europa might be difficult since it’s so close to the planet Monday). The illustrations above show Jupiter through binoculars. If you’re using a small telescope, please flip these upside down so south is at top. Created with Stellarium.

The space shuttle Atlantis is still docked to the International Space Station (ISS) and this morning at 5:14 a.m shuttle mission specialist Randy Bresnik (right) called Mission Control to announce he was a new father. His daughter Abigail Mae Bresnik arrived late Saturday night and both she and Bresnik’s wife Rebecca are doing well. If you’re going to have an excuse for not attending your child’s birth I suppose being stuck 211 miles high in space is as good as any. If you’d like to wave "hello" and congratulate the new dad, you’ll have numerous opportunities in the week ahead. Below are the times when the International Space Station and Atlantis combo are visible crossing the sky from west to east during early evening hours. If you’re outside the Duluth-Superior region, click here and type in your zipcode for times for your town.

(All times are Central standard):

* Sunday Nov. 22 starting at 5:43 p.m. High, very bright pass across the northern sky.
* Monday Nov. 23 at 6:05 p.m. Another very bright appearance. ISS will disappear into Earth’s shadow in the southeast just below the Square of Pegasus.
* Tuesday Nov. 24 at 4:52 p.m. Despite twilight this brilliant pass high across the north should still be visible. Second pass low in the southwest beginning at 6:28 p.m. Three minutes later the ISS will disappear into Earth’s shadow right next to Jupiter.
* Wednesday Nov. 25 at 5:14 p.m. A bright, high pass from northwest to southeast.
* Thursday Nov. 26 at 5:37 p.m. across the southwest. Crosses directly below Jupiter at 5:41.
* Friday Nov. 27 at 6 p.m. Very low pass across the southern sky.
* Saturday Nov. 28 at 4:46 p.m. Crosses the southern sky near Jupiter during twilight.