Dive dive dive

I know it is a little sad but I have over the years found time to catch Iridium 'flares' just after sunset, and occasionally have even dragged the children out to watch the 2 or 3 seconds of up to mag -3 glare it's way across the sky. Now there is one less in that predictable constellation. Kosmos 2251 was launched in 1993, died some two years later, and some further 15 years of wearing a low earth orbit track managed to take out Iridium 33 in spectacular fashion. Or maybe it was the other way around. Up until this point satellites had always been ably protected by the laws of chance. Not any more

In other collision news: Angus Robertson, SNP Westminster leader, is asking for a public government statement:

"The Ministry of Defence needs to explain how it is possible for a submarine carrying weapons of mass destruction to collide with another submarine carrying weapons of mass destruction in the middle of the world’s second-largest ocean,” he said.

So HMS Vanguard and Le Triomphant, were as per normal routine, utilising passive sonar and probably anti-sonar techniques, and more importantly were sharing the view that the Atlantic ocean is so bloody big that the odds of colliding are... unthinkable.



(This is probably an urban (or marine) myth but:)

Transcript of the ACTUAL radio conversation of a US naval ship with Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland.

Canadians: Please divert your course 15 degrees the South to avoid a collision.

Americans: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees the North to avoid a collision.

Canadians: Negative. You will have to divert your course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.

Americans: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.

Canadians: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course.

Americans: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS LINCOLN, THE SECOND LARGEST SHIP IN THE UNITED STATES' ATLANTIC FLEET. WE ARE ACCOMPANIED BY THREE DESTROYERS, THREE CRUISERS AND NUMEROUS SUPPORT VESSELS. I DEMAND THAT YOU CHANGE YOUR COURSE 15 DEGREES NORTH, I SAY AGAIN, THAT'S ONE FIVE DEGREES NORTH, OR COUNTER-MEASURES WILL BE UNDERTAKEN TO ENSURE THE SAFETY OF THIS SHIP.

Canadians: This is a lighthouse. Your call.

Sick and Tired

Sick as a chook, sinus, sneezing, abdo cramps, febrile. On-call - have refused to go in so far. They often infer that ultrasound isn't important, so no service for the weekend shouldn't matter. It's not as if I'm paid as a sonographer like anyone south of our area health service anyway, we just carry the responsibilty, the work related injuries, the on-call load, and the crap requests from medical officers. There are still days when I enjoy it but they are getting a long way apart. Upon reflection I think I have spent more than 11 years on call out of the last 15. Two exams next week to finish the radiography masters semester, 4 subjects down 8 to go. Next wednesday I can head back into Azeroth without study hanging over me - not that it has stopped me so far. Maybe I ought to take it more seriously seeing as I'm the only one paying for it - the others at work were given very quiet $12k scholarships. Is it any wonder I hate the bastards.

What were the sins of James E. Webb? Which CSM?

last ones

The last of the showable pics of the several score snapped during the icy hours in Magellan Observatory at Lake Bathurst. The first two are my favorite binocular targets.

M6 in Scorpius
NGC 6405 (M6, Butterfly Cluster) has about 80 cluster members spread over a region about 54 arc minutes in diameter. The main portion of the cluster fills a field of about 25' angular diameter and it's distance is estimated to be about 1600 light-years. Giovanni Batista Hodierna discovered it sometime before 1654; but Hodierna's records did not become generally known before the 1980s. Philippe Loys de Chéseaux independently rediscovered it in 1745-46, and was the first to recognize it as "a very fine star cluster." Lacaille included it in his catalog of 1751-52 as Lac III.12, and Charles Messier eventually cataloged it on May 23, 1764.



M7 in Scorpius
NGC 6475 (Ptolemy's Cluster, The Scorpion's Tail, M7) is an open cluster first described by Ptolemy around 130 AD as the "nebula following the sting of Scorpius." M7 was observed by Hodierna before 1654, who counted 30 stars. Edmond Halley listed it as No. 29 in his catalog of southern stars of 1678, and Abbe Lacaille added it to his catalog of southern objects as Lac II.14. Charles Messier included it as No. 7 in his catalog on May 23, 1764. M7 consists of about 80 stars brighter mag 10 in a field of about 1.3 degrees apparent diameter which at its distance of perhaps 800 light years corresponds to a linear extension of 18 or 20 light years.


Carina Nebula
NGC 3372, the Eta Carinae Nebula, in a diffuse nebula discovered by Lacaille (Lac III.6) in 1751-52 during his 2-year journey to the Cape of Good Hope. This giant nebula is one of the largest H II regions (composed of ionized hydrogen gas) in our galaxy. This star forming nebula has produced the very conspicuous peculiar star Eta Carinae, which is among the most massive and luminous stars in our Milky Way, and perhaps in the universe.

proper pics repeat.

My first astro pic entry had the pics cut down a little too much: so here they are again with descriptions (it's number 6's fault for encouraging me).


Lagoon Nebula in Sagittarius
NGC 6523 (M8, Lagoon Nebula),one of the finest and brightest star-forming regions in the sky, was discovered by Giovanni Battista Hodierna before 1654 who classified it as "nebulosa," i.e. of intermediate brightness; in his catalog as No. II.6. It has a visual brightness of about 6 mag, apparent dimension of 90x40 arc minutes, lies approx 5.2 kly away and contains the open cluster NGC 6530.


Trifid Nebula in Saggitarius
NGC 6514 (M20, Trifid Nebula) is an emission and reflection nebula with an open star cluster in Sagittarius. Charles Messier discovered this object on June 5, 1764, and described it as a cluster of stars of 8th to 9th magnitude, enveloped in nebulosity. This red emission nebula with its young star cluster near its center is surrounded by a blue reflection nebula which is particularly conspicuous to the northern end. The nebula's distance is approx 5,200 light years, is about 28 arc minutes in apparent dimension and has a visual brightness of 9.0 mag. It lies about 2 degrees northwest of M8.



Sombrero Galaxy in Virgo
NGC 4594 (M105, Sombrero Galaxy) was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1781. M104 is numerically the first object of the catalog which was not included in Messier's originally published catalog. However, Charles Messier added it by hand to his personal copy on May 11, 1781, and described it as a "very faint nebula." It was Camille Flammarion who found that its position coincided with Herschel's H I.43, which is the Sombrero Galaxy (NGC 4594), and added it to the official Messier list in 1921. This object is also mentioned by Pierre Méchain as his discovery in his letter of May 6, 1783. William Herschel found this object independently on May 9, 1784. This brilliant galaxy was named the Sombrero Galaxy because of its appearance. According to de Vaucouleurs, we view it from just 6 degrees south of its equatorial plane, which is outlined by a rather thick dark rim of obscuring dust. This dust lane was probably the first discovered, by William Herschel in his great reflector. This galaxy is of type Sa-Sb, with both a big bright core, and as one can see in shorter exposures, also well-defined spiral arms. It also has an unusually pronounced bulge with an extended and richly populated globular cluster system - several hundred can be counted in long exposures from big telescopes. It has a visual brightness of about 8 mag, apparent dimension of 9x4 arc minutes and lies approx 50 mly away.
Just down the road really.

vir prudens non contra ventum mingit

Two post sabbatical for the format. Mr Numerus Six - you got the job! Coolness. Except for the commute - mind you, if you had to drive a Honda Jazz without an mp3 player, then you would have major grounds for complaint. A dig rad apps dude eh? Anything to get out of actually taking x-rays I see :-) Q: Name a famous dude born at Lennep in the Lower Rhine Province of Germany (hint: wasn't a member of the Adams Family).

Jewel Box
NGC 4755, aka Kappa Crucis cluster and Jewel Box, this open cluster is composed of over a hundred stars, about fifty of which are a mixture of colourful supergiants: reds and blues intermingled with yellows and whites in a profusion of sparkling light. The cluster is just a baby, perhaps no older than ten million years. Many of the stars have very high luminosities, approaching 100,000 Suns. The central star is kappa Crucis, a blue sixth-magnitude supergiant. The cluster is considered to be from 6800 to 7800 light years away.


Eagle Nebula (M16)
NGC 6611, aka Eagle Nebula, Messier 16. This conspicuous region of active star formation, situated in Serpens Cauda is an emission nebula (IC 4703) within which is an open star cluster (NGC 6611). The discoverer, Philippe Loys de Chéseaux, describes only the cluster when recording his 1745-1746 discovery. Charles Messier, on his independent rediscovery of June 3, 1764, mentions that these stars appeared "enmeshed in a faint glow", probably suggestions of the nebula. It lies some 7,000 light years distant in the constellation Serpens, close to the borders to Scutum and Sagittarius, and in the next inner spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy.


M5
NGC 5904 (M5) is a globular cluster first seen by Gottfried Kirch and his wife Maria Margarethe on May 5, 1702, when they observed a comet, and described as a "nebulous star". Charles Messier found it independently on May 23, 1764, and described it as a round nebula which "doesn't contain any stars". William Herschel was the first to resolve this cluster into stars; he counted 200 of them with his 40-foot (48 inch aperture) reflector in 1791, "although the middle is so compressed that it is impossible to distinguish the components." M5 is thought to be one of the oldest globular clusters, with a computed age of 13 billion years. Its diameter is about 165 light years, making it one of the larger globular clusters. At its distance of 24,500 light years, this diameter is about 23 minutes of arc.


Galaxy Cluster in Virgo
This rather poor image (taken too close to dusk due to my lack of patience...) is part of the giant agglomeration of galaxies, the nearest big cluster of galaxies that are the largest proven structure in our intergalactic neighborhood, and the most remote cosmic objects with a physical connection to our own small group of galaxies, the Local Group, including our Milky Way galaxy. This structure is another discovery by Charles Messier, who noted behind his entry for M91:
"The constellation Virgo and especially the northern wing is one of the constellations which encloses the most nebulae. This catalog contains 13 which have been determined, viz. Nos. 49, 58, 59, 60, 61, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90 and 91. All these nebulae appear to be without stars and can be seen only in a good sky and near meridian passage. Most of these nebulae have been pointed out to me by M. Méchain."
Like nebula - only different.

mea culpa

Rules wouldn't exist if one couldn't break them. The never altered blurb pic blurb format of the last 0.2k posts will have a one post sabbatical. I won't get back a decent astro photo rig again until late next year, so in response to that depressive thought, here are a few more images taken last weekend. The Venera 3 was originally claimed to have survived it's initial impact on Venus, but as it was only pressure rated to 25 atmospheres and the actual surface pressure is now estimated to be around 90 - it wouldn't have functioned anyway. The Americans claimed at the time that Venera 3 failed before descent - a few years on the Soviets agreed.

47 Tuc
NGC 104, better known as 47 Tucanae, is the second largest and second brightest globular cluster in the skies, outshone only by another southern globular NGC 5139. First cataloged as a deep sky object in 1751 by Abbe Lacaille as Lac I.1, the stars of 47 Tucanae are spread over a volume nearly 120 light years across. At their distance of 13,400 light years, they still cover an area of the sky of about the same apparent diameter as the full moon, about 30 minutes of arc. Globular cluster 47 Tucanae is approaching us at roughly 19 km/s.


Omega Centauri
NGC 5139 (Lacaille I.5, Omega Centauri) - was discovered by Edmond Halley in 1677. This is the biggest of all globular clusters in our galaxy. With its about 5 million solar masses, it is about 10 times as massive as other big globulars, and has about the same mass as the smallest whole galaxies. It is also the most luminous Milky Way globular, and the brightest globular cluster in the sky.


Dumbbell Nebula
NGC 6853 - The Dumbbell Nebula M27 was the first planetary nebula ever discovered. On July 12, 1764, Charles Messier discovered this new and fascinating class of objects, and describes this one as an oval nebula without stars. The name "Dumb-bell" goes back to the description by John Herschel, who also compared it to a "double-headed shot." As for a lot of planetary nebulae, the high energy (mostly non visible) radiation produced by the central star is released by excitation in visible light emitted in one spectral line only- here at 5007 Angstrom.


Omega Nebula
NGC 6618 (aka Omega Nebula, M17, Swan Nebula, Horseshoe Nebula) was discovered and cataloged by Philippe Loys de Chéseaux before 1745 but wasn't well known until Charles Messier independently rediscovered it and cataloged it in 1764. The mass of the gas in the Omega nebula has been estimated to amount about 800 times that of the Sun, enough for forming a conspicuous cluster, and a good deal more than that of the Orion nebula M42. While the bright nebula seems to be roughly 15 light years in extension, the total gaseous cloud, including low-luminosity material, seems to extend to at least 40 light years. Distance estimates are spread over a wide range, but modern values are between 5,000 and 6,000 light years- a little less than that of its apparent neighbor the Eagle nebula (M16) - apparently, these two star forming regions are indeed close together, in the same spiral arm (the Sagittarius or Sagittarius-Carina arm) of the Milky Way galaxy.

my first ever astro pics

The last time we went to the Magellan Observatory at Lake Bathurst (about an hour north of Canberra) was two years ago and was the subject of my first ever notblog. It snowed on us then and we swore we would return to stargaze in a warmer season. We didn't. We spent last friday night swinging through the southern skies with a 24 inch f3.7 truss dob newt. Jupiter was straight up, both red spots were easily visible, and Io entered occultation then later exited Jupiter's shadowing eclipse. Andrew froze solid after two hours and Lachy shortly after even though he had climbed up and down the step ladder to reach the eyepiece about a hundred times. So they bailed out and I followed sometime around midnight. Sat nite was a little milder (i.e. above zero) and Jen, Keryn and Taffy were given a sky tour by Zane on the 24" whilst I learnt my way around a 10" photo rig newt on a german eq mount . It had a modded dig slr on it which worked well with exposures of 2-3 minutes for messier objects, and needed sub second exposures for jupiter.

M8 (Lagoon Nebula), M20 (Trifid Nebula) and M104 (Sombrero Galaxy)

Sunday night Zane left me to my own mischief as I alternated between the photo rig and a 12" SCT. Both had GPS GoTo systems with surprisingly intuitive controls. After a short time I found it quite quick to skip around through dark neb, planetary neb, messier, IC, NGC, and cluster catalogs. I got about thirty pics of objects from my wish list before the clouds closed in about 2300. I kept forgetting to put my gloves back on and lost feeling completely in my fingers several times. Half a dozen pints of vitamin G helped. or maybe hindered.

get bach

I'm back, after five days of visiting southern central NSW, normal transmission has resumed. Our time at the astro observatory was awesome, but that in a later post. We spent two days in Canberra and visited the National War Memorial twice, the National Art Gallery, National Zoo and Aquarium, and the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex. The latter was about 30km south west of the city and was utterly brilliant. I admit a leaning towards radio telescopes such as the Parkes Observatory rather than just comm centers but the visitors center at CSSCC captured me utterly. A 26m (85ft), two 35m (115ft), and the 70m (230ft) antennas dominate the bush skyline and the display of rocket and space electronics evolution was really cool. There was even a bit of rock picked up by Buzz Lightminute Aldrin on longterm loan from NASA to CSSCC.
My copy of book of The Right Stuff is out on loan at present, but from memory the pivotal moment for Mr Pete Conrad was the Barium Enema examination aftermath which involved his commanding officers desktop. I did find a reference to an abstract conception test where he implied that a blank card was being held upside down. But the Net is like that.
There were more than 500 young guns listed by NASA for consideration for the Mercury program. 110 were test pilots with the required 1500 hrs flight time and specialty in jet aircraft. 32 young dudes made it into phase two at Lovelace Clinic in New Mexico.

Secondary question: Someone went astray. Who was he?

The main question: the physiologic data collected from the 31 Mercury candidates at Lovelace may be compared to the subset of the 7 selected astronauts. Which of the only single following categories did the selected 7 astronauts score lower in than the total mean candidate group? Height, Weight, Body surface area, Lean body mass, Total body potasium, Total body water, Total body blood volume, Nitrogen clearance, and Exercise oxygen uptake.
(don't look at this hint unless you admit defeat)

cloudy

If Dr James May drove out of the Tardis (and found a Veyron suitable test track) before 220233 then he would have briefly snatched the WLSR off Sir Malcolm. I bet the Veyron had a better stereo than the Rolls-Royce Railton Blue Bird though. Found the episode of Radio Active where Paul Yuk's song "...that's my hatstand" featured. It wasn't as good as I remembered - I much prefer the Hee Bee Gee Bees!
Am slightly peeved about the long range cloud cover forecast, what with the astrophotography sessions already booked and payed for.

The question: is the lunar equatorial escape velocity (in m/sec) greater or less than the year number in which Janeway was made an Admiral?

sluggish

It is interesting that Mr M Campbell died of natural causes, whereas Mr H Segrave had a sea grave (figuratively speaking)- a fate far more likely for speed daredevils of his time. One thing I didn't know about Mr Campbell was that he won the French Grand Prix twice driving a Bugatti T39A. When not gazing starwards, the young Werhner von Braun was also interested in land speed records, but being very a bright youngster tended to make them unmanned toy wagons propelled by attached fireworks. He later drove more sensible cars. The Doctor is torrenting.

Dr. Wernher von Braun with his Mercedes-Benz Type W180 220S coupé

The military recruitment of German scientists to the early American Space Program at the end of World War II was called?
A. Operation Rocket Men
B. Operation Pin Pusher
C. Operation Brain Bunker
D. Operation Paperclip

If you ever get tired, you can use it as a kickstand - clone

Brave Dave has buried his Bravus blog. But it lives on as Braviad. At least the colour is different. OK, so Notablog became Undeniable, but that was only because I got lazy, and could not face the coding every time I had a thought to publish, or the half hour needed to change months. The other reason was the modofac website (all 10mb of it) was full, and I couldn't decide what to delete. Mister 6, what sort of job are you looking for? and don't just say "anything but medical imaging..." I may be missing something but Mondays are not my favorite day either, just as well she was a bad shot :-(
Another verbal fisticuffs with a dropkick O&G reg. Post op rif pain, them: ?ov cyst; me: suggestive of partial tortion but with +ve colour currently; them: do tv; me: what for, visit hades; them: pull rank, insist; radiologist: just operate; me: gain copulatio future tense; them: official complaint; me: early lunch, aubergine and ricotta pasta, 12 chapters of Dark is the moon, book three of The view from the mirror quartet, two coffees, and a pile of macadamia and pecan nuts to crack. Win - win situation really. I miss our last gyn reg, Charlie Evil - now there was a sensible, logical and likable fellow - but they all move on eventually. All this pleasantness at work is making me really look forward to some serious astrophotography on some really cool rigs. Maybe a keg of Guinness as well, but I ain't gonna warm it in the microwave even if it is snowing out.